Hail,Ya Betcha

 Hail

Thunderstorm season and it is starting off as a bad one. A small tornado passed by Scottsbluff and the picture is from Facebook. Kids holding melon sized hail. Sisty’s insurance adjuster’s agency has nine claims in Scottsbluff and more will likely come in.

Speaking of Sisty, much like a mechanic’s Snap On tools, she has upgraded her tool kit with a new computer and monitors. Her skills are in demand.

Places around the Foothills and out on the plains received as much as 6” of rain in a few hours.

 TABOR for Roads-A Colorado Specific Topic

In 1992 Colorado taxpayers passed the Taxpayers Bill of Rights as a constitutional amendment; the only state to do so. To basic parts are, taxpayers, not the state legislature and/or other government agencies (cities, water districts, et.) must approve tax increases and taxes collected in excess of the approved budget must be refunded to the taxpayers. Since Colorado went blue, the (P)regressives have been fighting to neuter TABOR.

To feed their feckless spending they have siphoned highway funds, among others. Now on the 2006 ballot will be Initiative 175, a constitutional amendment, to insure highway funds are spent on highways. Just the thought is giving the (P)regressives vapors. 

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The three Justices on the Colorado Supreme Court were openly Democrat activists when elected. They have let the Polis Administration slide on many important legal issues including the State Constitution mandating a balanced budget. What will they do, assuming the initiative passes, and the question reaches them?

“Fix our Roads” seems close to becoming a bipartisan movement.

There may be as many as nine other Initiatives on the ballot; most push backs against (P)regressive cherished ideas.

Long reads but for those interested:

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 h/t Cory Gaines

Uranium

Growing up around the 1950’s uranium boom, friends and I ‘prospected’ for uranium with a second or third hand Geiger counter that ate batteries. The closet we came was finding Thorium within the city limits of Steamboat Springs. There was a kind of intoxication in prospecting. Likely what motivated the gold rush? Many in our extended family/clan are fanatic rock hounds.

Now Wyoming is enjoying another uranium boom.

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Hopefully lessons learned will keep mine tailings being used in concrete mixes poured for building foundations. Craig, CO comes to mind.

Colorado Sun

An online daily newspaper I read but don’t support. Despite their claims, they are a left wing econazi propaganda machine.                              

What they claim.

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Cory Gaines, who I also follow, takes them apart on just one subject.

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Being retired, I amuse myself by reading a lot of opinions, bloggers, and watching YouTube. No television for me. Blogging is another outlet, inflicting my opinions on an uncaring world.

Car Story 

Left Hanging – Not especially proud of my actions nor ashamed. Shit happens.

Management was upset when they found a salesman hanging from barbed wire. I was responsible and knew my days there were numbered.

Sunset Cars backed up to I-405 and had a 6’ chain link fence across the back of the lot. After hour troubles prompted the fence to be topped with barbed wire.

One evening a 20’s smart ass and I got into it. He was a 5’6” 120 lb ‘martial arts expert’. He came at me and got picked up and tossed against the fence. His arms got caught in the barbed wire and his feet were off the ground.  I walked away.

Others dropped the tailgate of a pickup and backed up to him then helped him get untangled after he was found by other salesmen.

So how did a 50 year old man prevail? The old man is a lifelong dirty white boy. When Mr. Martial Arts tried a head high spinning leg kick, the old man stepped into the kick, grabbed the leg, grabbed the groin, lifted and tossed. The position of the fence wasn’t part of the plan. Oh well, the fence was there.

Sunset’s structure was two sales managers with two sales crews working shifts. The young warrior was on Al’s crew and I was on Jeff’s crew. Jeff had personal problems including drinking on the job. Not too long after the hanging he was fired. I knew my time was at an end.

 My departure was cordial. My unemployment lasted four hours. Such was car sales in Washington State in the 1990’s.

Not my first, nor my last, rodeo. Physical altercations were common during my car sales days and I was in several. That said, the only customer I ever touched was the punk who pulled a gun on me.

As always, YMMV

Didn't Pay Climate Tax

 Spring Equinox

81° on my balcony.  I turned on the apartment A/C this morning. This is the strangest winter I can remember. We need a minimum of precipitation to keep the soil microbes alive and I fear we haven’t had enough. Bad summer coming?

 Sick Propaganda

A high school classmate posted this on Facebook. I called him out.

This man is well educated, a world traveler from a Little Snake River ranching family. I am baffled by smart people getting sucked into lies. Of course, that would never happen to any of us, right?

David StLouis

pdrensotSo53t1c5u5354562a9mff65i2m1cuufc9uhti4gtm1hu3106l7i1 ·

I'm angry! Copied from a blog:

The United States, once the repository of truth and freedom preserving institutions, can betray all morality, all law, by intentionally attacking a girl’s school in Iran for children of Iranian Guards in order to demoralize the Iranian military force in hopes of reducing its ability to resist Israeli-American unprovoked aggression against the Iranian nation. Trump and Netanyahu opened their war by murdering 185 little girls.

Do governments so totally evil, so overflowing with self-righteousness and self-justification for their crimes against humanity as Washington and Israel have a right to exist? This is the question that is before us. Yet the entire world, including Putin and Xi, refuse to confront the question, preferring to defer to evil.

Comment

Frank White

Nice propaganda hit. Any creditable third party verification? Any likelihood that school was intended as a human shield ala Hamas in Gaza? Seems Irianian military forces are targeted directly

.Let us remember Iranians during the Iran/Iraq war (1980-1988) used their own children to clear mine fields. Yes, those children became martyrs, so that was a noble thing. (sarcasm intended)

Fence Me In

My late mother liked to joke, “Glamorous cowboy occupation. Stacking hay and fixing fences”. In my teens I stacked many tons of hay and fixed fences, made fences, and cursed fences. This technology changes the fixing fence part.

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The downside might be the satellites going dark.

 Nothing new to those who read this blog, joining the Army filled me with anticipation. Drive a tank. Shoot Artillery.  Infantry; mortars and such. Nope, MOS 122 (later 12B) Combat Engineers. Stack sandbags and string nasty barb wire. If you have never worked with concertina wire, count yourself lucky.

Lithium

In previous posts, I reported a huge lithium brine deposit on University of Wyoming trust land. Could this process work?

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 What we are talking about. 

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The evaluation made after the find was the amount of lithium in the brine wasn’t high enough for economical viable extraction. Maybe a new evaluation is in order?

Dream on, Jon Caldera

He presents a case for independent audits of elections and the Secretary of State operations.

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 IMO, the (P)regressives are only interested in winning and to hell with what the voters want.

 Are they going to be deterred from their higher calling, their God complex, by any laws?

 Way Back Story

Not a car story; a trip down memory lane and why some customers are best lost to your competition.

Larry Lambert  (Virtual Mirage) recently posted about exploring places in Utah. During the 1970’s that was part of  my sales/installation territory for a modular and pre-fab operation out of Ogden, Utah.

Long ago and far away long distance phone calls were expensive. Companies could enroll in a WATS line (Wide Area Telephone Service) with unlimited one line long distance phone calls, in or out, but not both. Patience, this has a point.

The sales rep for our competitor in the area was Max Phelps. We were friends. Max started his sales career hauling around coffins in a pickup to isolated Utah and Arizona towns and ranches selling direct to consumers. This was a common practice at the time, especially among Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints families. I remember him telling a story of being up in an oxygen tent beside a hospital bed showing his prospect a catalog while the grieving family filled the room. Motivated customer!

 Mr. Blivet, with access to a WATS line, was the purchasing agent for a coal mine in Utah, who wanted to buy a modular house for himself. Among other demands, he insisted no dimension could exceed 1/8” out of spec. I politely told him we couldn’t meet his requirement and suggested he contact Max’s company. With unlimited WATS access, he was able to torture others. I didn’t want the hassle.

Fast forward a few months when Max and I were having lunch in a Kanab restaurant. I waited until he took a bite then asked, “How are you getting along with Mr. Blivet?”.

After choking, and taking a gulp of water, Max freely expressed himself on the subject of Mr. Blivet, with a sidebar directed at me.

Blivet: Two pounds of horseshit in a one pound bag.

As always, YMMV

 

Droning Along

 

Drones

No insightful comments here. This curmudgeon has never flown one; knows little about them, and will give way to those who do. It seems they subject has stirred up the citizens to my north.   

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Loss of gun rights in Wyoming? The horror!

La Nina/El Nino

Which weather pattern we are in is questionable but this winter, so far, in our little patch on the northern end of the Colorado Front Range has been dry with moderate temperatures. Down towards Colorado Springs is a different pattern entirely. Banner isn’t complaining. So far, it has been light sweaters for him.

Life

Boring, for the moment. Lots of extra assignments. Some of the work involved areas of Denver where I haven’t been for 40-50 years. Many changes but a bar, where I spent too much time in my twenties, is still the same, from the exterior.

Stuff I might blog about hasn’t been stirring my umbrage; Colorado politics is the same old b.s. as in the past few years.  That will likely change in the future.

Looking forward to January 20^th; hope President Trump survives until then.

As always, YMMV

F**ck Joe Biden, but I repeat Myself

Hey Joe, kick rocks

Utah has started, and Wyoming may follow, taking state control of energy production away from the feds. It is complicated, I don’t understand all of it, but heartily approve.

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That will ruin more than just your day

Bear Spray

Anthony Fauci is not pleased – face mask edition

Surprisingly, this research is from Jolly Olde England. Face masks don’t work?

Oh, No

He is our homegrown Josef Mengele, along with his co-conspirator, Christine Grady.

Wolves – Not a good idea?

Tisk, tisk

Soon the wolves will turn their attention to feral horses. That will cause a shit storm.

Knees are Kaupt

Recent knee examination showed bone on bone on the inside of both knees. Not a surprise. Replacement at this time is not recommended. Weight loss will help. Steroid shot in each knee for now. Age is bitch. The doctor looks like he just graduated high school.

Damn, I must change my ways

Next year (Jan 1) no more holding a cell phone while driving goes into effect in Colorado. This old geezer will need to read instructions, learn how to use Bluetooth (whatever that is) to link the phone to an earpiece, buy and install a cell phone holder, etc. Yeah, I hear a bunch of you saying, “Oh, poor baby”. I will continue to bitch, regardless of what others may think.

Hail

Colorado had a bad hail storm that hit Yuma hard (5/20-5/21) overnight. Golf ball to baseball sized hail stripped vinyl siding off some buildings. Roofs everywhere destroyed. My sister’s sister by another mother lives in the area and is facing challenges.

Korf Motors in Yuma had one new car roof punctured, like shot by a bullet punctured, by hail per one of Sisty’s insurance adjuster friends.

Hail Broke Loose

Democracy is wonderful until it isn’t – Ballot initiatives

Wonderful, until your pet ox is being gored. A long article about efforts to place initiatives into law bypassing the legislative process and having voters decide. This has seen past success in Colorado (wolves, anyone). A recent successful initiative will put a constitutional amendment guarantying a right to abortion on the 2024 ballot.

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My last foray into the process was the Weld County, WY effort. That went nowhere.

Shrewd Hire

Deion Sanders, Coach Prime, as head coach of the University of Colorado football team. After many dismal years, all season tickets are sold out for the second year in a row. Sales of sports paraphernalia has soared. Interesting, he isn’t the highest paid coach in Colorado. That is the head coach in Ft Collins at CSU.

Rick George, the Athletic Director, has used all this new revenue to improve facilities for all sports. Lights for the soccer field as an example.

Disclaimer. I’m no CU fan. That said, I admire the way Coach Prime runs his program. He demands high standards in academics and behavior. Several high profile 5 star players have left because of those standards. He hasn’t wavered and I admire him for that.

Plus, my evil heart relishes the angst of the woke (P)regressives that invest Boulder County and CU. A God fearing and preaching black man in their midst who speaks his mind and damn the torpedoes? How do they attack him? How do they bring him back on the plantation? TeeHeeHee!

Oldie but goody

Always like this cover from a Leaning Tree Greeting Card.

Iranian Helicopter crash

Two other helicopters, per reports, were accompanying the bigwigs and didn’t have a problem. Further, it took ground crews to find the crash site. Now, LL may be correct about the Jesus nut. That is the simplest answer (Occam’s razor). All the political intrigue that permeates that part of the world along with the many Mossad successes, will we ever know (or, given the assholes who died, care)?

I feel so protected

My Colorado tax returned showed up in the mail. The accompanying explanation explained their effort to combat fraud. Democrats worried about fraud? Perhaps they are motivated to hang on as long as possible to the $800 TABOR refund every filer is entitled? Nah, couldn’t be that.

 To be clear I’ve loathed this department since 1968 when my wages were attached for taxes levied against my Army earnings even though I spent one day in Colorado after joining.

 As always, YMMV

 

Unapologetic Deplorable

 Ruining my social credit score

Meme swiped from Knuckledragger and reposted on FB. Instant reaction. False information gray out instantly. Click on the “why”, goes to a USA article and 30 seconds later AVG “blocked the threat” – URL blacklist.

Will this post cost me my cot by the stove in the reeducation camp? Will this useless eater even make it to the camp? 

Lipstick on a pig – EV Colorado 

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EVs may, just may, make sense as commuter vehicles along Colorado’s Front Range. Anywhere else? You need an intervention, IMO.

Jowl Shaker

Disclaimer. I’m not a baseball fan but got caught up in a click bait that read,

“Rockies introduce new menu items at Coors Field. Among the new offerings this season to distract fans from the on-field product”

Not going to link. I did read some of it and was amazed to find several vendors are offering burgers with ‘vegan’ cheeses of various types. No mention if the burgers are meat.

Dodged another bullet

Click bait involving pesticides and kale didn’t get read. I don’t eat the stuff.

Old West lives again – on the taxpayer’s dime

Seems the current wolves attacking livestock remedy is to hire range riders. In the old west range riders shot the damned things. Should you want to dive into this feel free.

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 Personally, having a taste of range riding in my youth, I will say it is a hard, lonely and thankless job.

More Nanny State and race belittlement

There is ongoing effort to ban menthol tobacco products. ‘Studies’ show among blacks who smoke, 81% smoke menthol flavored tobacco. The message I get is,

 “Oh, you poor black people. You can’t make good decisions on your own so we will make them for you”.

As a heterosexual Caucasian male senior citizen, I’m not to have an opinion.

Seasonal disorder

This time of the year, should I use the sunscreen in my windshield or the windshield cover? Both, to be safe?

The trees are starting to bud. Too often we will get a wet spring snowstorm after the leaves are out and lots of branches get broken. A cousin in Boise experienced that a few days ago.

Banner’s new post COVID record

During the COVID lock down, in one day, seventeen people petted him. In a building of seniors, many who don’t/can’t drive and with few visitors, he was a godsend to many. Wednesday, eleven people petted him and four gave him treats. A few even spoke to me.

Banner gracefully accepts all the attention. When treats are in the offing he gets quite animated. The treat givers usually make him “sit”. That is a problem on tile floors as his butt slowly slides across the floor.

I supply the treats because I want to control what he eats. When questioned, I threaten to leave him and his flatulence in their apartment.

 As always, YMMV

Colorado Weather - Beware

 Springtime in the Rockies

My maternal grandfather would always say, “I don’t care if you go naked, bring all the clothes you got”. Toponas, CO circa 1956 an April blizzard shut down both the highway and railroad for four days.

For today, Banner is enjoying his sunbath on the balcony.

A Colorado government program that actually works as intended?

Works more or less as intended. It hasn’t been hijacked (yet) by (P)regressives.

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Volunteer funding by people who are bad at math is a great idea, IMO, and I am one of the volunteers.

Faster than a speeding train

Banner hearing the refrigerator door open

Drones

My sister in an independent insurance adjuster who is often called to investigate truck wrecks in Wyoming and Nebraska. Most are on I-80 and she must contend with traffic speeding by. She is exploring using drones but is hampered by Wyoming winds. More experience will lead to better results. I’m all in favor of anything that lowers her risks.

My criminality thwarted

Recently I parked across the street from the barber shop and jaywalked. Haircut complete, walked up to the curb with car keys in hand and waited for traffic to clear. A Greeley police car pulled up behind my car and sat there until I walked up to the corner and pressed the crosswalk button before moving on. Oh well, exercise is good.

Francis Scott Key Bridge failure

Disclaimer. I’ve no knowledge or experience in ship handling. What surprised me was the damage to one structural support could bring down so much of the bridge. Was that because of faulty engineering? From available pictures it appears the structural steel portion collapsed.

 Some sixty years ago the Army spent several weeks teaching a few of us the rudiments of destroying structures. We were taught bridges have built in shear points. Failure of one portion would be isolated from the rest of the bridge. We were taught to look for these shear points and exploit them.  An example used in our instruction was the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen.

Just to be clear, only enough of the bridge remained intact enough to get troops across to secure a defensible bridge head. Soon a float bridge was across that could support heavy vehicle.

Californication guide

TABOR

Colorado is unique in having passed a Constitution amendment called the Taxpayers Bill of Rights. Two important points are all tax increases must be subject to a vote by the taxpayers and excess taxes collected be returned to the taxpayer. ($800 this year).

IMO, this is the only thing preventing total Californication by (P)regressives. Recently a water district got a TABOR smack down. 

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By national standards home taxes in Colorado are among the lowest in the country. Without TABOR Portland, OR will happen. Portland? Median home value is taxed at $14,000+ annually.

Spendthrift politicians are always seeking ways to get around TABOR. Fees are popular.  For those interested, here is a long and somewhat arcane explanation.

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 As always, YMMV

Sometimes You Eat the Bear and Sometimes the Bear Eats You

 Wet Year     

Life is a bitch, and then it has puppies if your livelihood is agriculture. After years of drought farmers east of the Front Range should count on a great crop. Then along comes massive thunderstorms with tennis ball sized hail. Those crops not pummeled by hail are flattened by high winds and/or drowned from excess rain.

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West of the Rockies, the Intermountain West crops are being devastated by katydids (Mormon crickets).

Enemy of the State

Recently, circumspection was advised to avoid being labeled, “An enemy of the State”. Good advice, but too late for me.

My activism began

in the late 1960’s after leaving the Army and then attending College. The VA was screwing over Vietnam era vets. Three other students and I started with a table at the end of quarterly college registration. A few years later, long after I’d moved on, it grew into a fairly large and active movement among the colleges and Universities in Colorado.

I married a stubborn 1^st generation Norwegian (Ya sure, ya betcha), who as a USO volunteer, had stirred up a hornet’s nest about the mistreatment of certain airmen at Lowry Field. These were fuck ups that were in a disciplinary barracks, with no heat, and very limited medical care.

Later, our first born was severely autistic. This prompted us to become active once again.

Wife was hired as a reader/aide for a blind employee of the Department of Education. After six months she was still a temporary. The manager told her getting clearance was the problem, that her and my combined FBI file was 5” thick (before computers took over). Eventually, she was “let go” during a “reorganization”.

How do you become an enemy of the state? Seems all you need to do is exercise your rights as a citizen.

From time to time the FBI actually catches real criminals. It seems most of their efforts are directed to compiling information on vocal, but law abiding, citizens.

Soon to be “Settled Science”

Gas stoves are bad? Electric stoves don’t pollute? Where does the power come from for those non polluting electric stoves? Unicorn farts?

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 Semi Informed Rabbit Hole

Seems the courts are taking a dim view of the ATF assuming the power to write laws that Congress didn’t pass. Could this be a trend?

Currently the BLM is radically changing rules on use of public lands. Primarily this affects cattle and sheep grazing but can easily be expanded to all types of recreation. Might the courts put the BLM in its place? One can hope.

These are hardly isolated practices.

Perhaps President Trump’s greatest legacy will be the 500+ Federal Judges he nominated that are now on the bench.

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More Wokeism – Colorado Edition

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Some are just silly, like the OWL Party. Laugh, but it took enough votes away from the GOP candidate to elect Democrat Dixie Lee Ray. She went on to prove women can be just as incompetent as men in high political office – a true pioneer.

We were living in Washington State at the time so remember the OWL Party. For those interested, here is a long and detailed article on how a bunch of drunks in a bar affected the outcome of  an election.

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Whiskey is for Drinking – Water is for Fighting

Colorado water wars never end.

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Fired for Caring

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They are owned by Kroeger.

Build Back Better

Colorado Bankruptcy filings up again.

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My “part time” job is keeping me busy. I could easily make it a full time job if I accepted all the assignments offered.

Legacy

One of my two remaining aunts died this year (cancer). This past Saturday a remembrance was held at the Wheatridge, CO Historical Park. The land was once settled and worked by several generations of our family. My remaining aunt was born in the sod house and my late aunt in the brick house.

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She had five children. We lost one to cancer several years ago. Her surviving children organized the remembrance. As I sat there I thought of her children. Good, honest people raising good honest children and great grandchildren are her true legacy, IMO.

As always, YMMV