Stuff my Senior newsletter doesn’t want.

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This is what I was expecting from the 21st Century!

Posted in 2019, Blogbits, Tech | Leave a comment

I’ll take one, Ted.

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Eric Trump. Another point of View

I am keenly aware of how fortunate I was to be born the son of one of the wealthiest and most well known businessmen in America. I am also the first to admit that things are different when you grow up as a Trump.

Anyone who has paid attention to the news, especially since my father announced his run for the White House, knows the media has attacked every member of my family viciously and given us anything but kind treatment. The adult “children” in our family are certainly not off limits. We did after all fight alongside our father in his quest to win the presidency. We stood on that stage and campaigned across the nation, and are certainly willing to take the punches where they are warranted and deserved. The double standard, however, is nothing short of glaring.

It would be a waste of print to recount every smear, hit piece, and invasion of privacy my family has faced. But allow me to sum it up by highlighting an article published by Forbes and reposted in virtually every major news outlet, attacking a charity that I started when I was 20 years old. In less than 10 years, I raised more than $20 million for terminally ill children at Saint Jude Children’s Research Hospital. I maintained just over a 9 percent cumulative expense ratio, one of the lowest expense ratios of any charity in the nation, and funded the construction of one of the most cutting edge intensive care units and surgery centers dedicated to children.

The Eric Trump Foundation intensive care unit treats some of the sickest children in the world, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and it gives their parents and families hope. Yet I was viciously chastised by the Democrats and the media who relentlessly tried to manufacture stories about me, my mission, and my intentions with the charity. At the same time, the Clinton Foundation controversy was in full swing, and the media knew that it could use me as their punching bag to distract from one of their own.

One might say it comes with the territory, and that is absolutely true. As a Trump, I am held to an incredibly high public standard and I have lived an exceptionally clean and honest life with that in mind. But can you imagine, if they were willing to try and destroy a “kid” who dedicated his life to pediatric cancer and philanthropy, what the media would say if I had secured a $50,000 a month job on the board of a Ukrainian company, with no discernable duties, in an industry I knew nothing about, in a country where I did not even speak the language? What if my father on live camera threatened to cut off military aid to that country unless the prosecutor investigating that company for corruption was fired?

To make the hypothetical picture sufficiently vivid, also imagine that I had previously been kicked out of the United States Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine or was given a contract potentially worth $1.5 billion by China weeks after traveling to Beijing with my father aboard Air Force Two. I worked hard to raise millions of dollars for dying children, yet crickets from the media and weekly parodied me on Saturday Night Live.

For the record, I do not know exactly what Hunter Biden did or did not do in Ukraine, in China, in his personal life, or elsewhere. There are plenty of other controversies that measure below the dignity and character of this article to regurgitate. I do like to give people the benefit of the doubt, since that courtesy is so seldom bestowed upon me and my family.

One thing, however, is absolutely certain. If the situation were reversed, I would have been front page news in every newspaper, online publication, and cable news outlet for the rest of my life. Reporters would be camping outside of my door, my family would have been picked apart, my name would have been smeared in the news every single week, and my father arguably would not even be president of the United States today.

I do not always agree with Bill Maher, but the late night host was honest enough to admit that if my brother or I had done what Hunter Biden did, “it would be all Rachel Maddow was talking about.” I do not know what he learned while growing up as a Biden, but if what we know about his life indicates anything, it is that there are different rules if you are the son of a powerful Democratic politician. Money grows on trees, there are no rules, and the press will always cover for you if it benefits the political left.

To quote the great Marcus Aurelius from The Gladiator, “Your faults as a son are my failures as a father.” I owe all of my work ethic, character, integrity, and moral fiber to my father. Hunter Biden can say the same.

Posted in All the News not fit to print., Deep State, Media Bias, Trump, When Progressives Attack | Leave a comment

Fallout from Trump abandonment of Syria

ABC News Airs Authentic Footage Of 164-Foot-Tall Godzilla Rampaging Through Syria

NEW YORK, NY—ABC News has been praised as a bastion of journalistic integrity and in-depth reporting after being the first ones to air authentic footage of a 164-foot-tall radioactive dinosaur rampaging through Syria.

The footage, dubbed “Slaughter in Syria,” shows the monster, named “Gojira” or “Godzilla” by people screaming in the video, rising from the ocean to attack coastal cities throughout the region. Desperate locals try to fend off the monster with depth charges, a huge electric fence, tanks, and fighter jets. But mostly it doesn’t work and they just scream a lot.

Some experts believe we created the monster through too much nuclear testing and some drone strikes and feel we should study the monster. As these experts were opining on the matter in Syria, Godzilla appeared again and destroyed them with his atomic breath.

“Here we can see the harmful effects of Trump’s actions in the region,” said an anchor grimly. “May God have mercy on us all.”

Fortunately, at the last minute, the US military returned and used a weapon called the “Oxygen Destroyer” to defeat the monster for good.

ABC News reporters warn, however, that Godzilla may return to Syria soon to fight other monsters, most notably in a disappointing attack in 1998 and pretty cool attacks in 2014 and 2019.

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Truth

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My Senior Group-List doesn’t want my contributions anymore?

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Deer/ Headlights

Posted in All the News not fit to print. | Leave a comment

He gets it.

EXCERPTED: Donald Trump Minnesota Rally Speech Transcript: Minneapolis, MN Rally October 10, 2019 – Rev [Edited for length — GV]

From now on, we want to fight where it is to the benefit of the United States of America, not to the benefit of other countries. And we will only fight to win.

I sign letters, “Dear Mr. and Mrs. Smith from Arkansas. “Dear Mr. and Mrs. Jones from Alabama. Dear Mr. and Mrs. Somebody from some great state, I’m sorry to inform you, your son has been killed in combat.”

And every letter is individually done because sometimes the parents, they’re grieving, and they get together with other parents, and I don’t want to see that it’s like the same letter…

And I sign those letters, and it just, it breaks your heart.

….And sometimes I send letters out… it’s called blue on green… where the people we’re training how to fight and turn the gun on our soldiers and shoot them in the back. And that’s the hardest thing for a parent because they learn how their child has died. We’ve had a lot of that, a lot of it in Afghanistan, more than we’ve ever had proportionately before. It’s a horrible, horrible thing.

But I have to sign those letters.

Sometimes I go out to a place, Dover Air Force Base, it’s a very tough experience. Mike Pence goes, I go, other people go, Tom Cotton goes. We go out there, and we meet the parents and the families, the wives, the children, the sisters, the brothers. We meet them, and we talked to them, and their son or daughter is being flown in from some far-away place in a coffin…. I don’t know how parents can do it.

We have a particular Colonel, that’s all he does. So good. So professional. That’s what he does. He said, “I greet the dead, sir. I greet the dead.”

What happens is this big incredible machine flies in, this tremendous cargo plane, and it flies in so powerful, so big. I’ll be talking to some of the parents, and they’ll act like they’re fine. I said, “How are you doing?” “We’re fine, sir. We’re fine. We’re really good.” I say, “That’s great.” And I’ll tell the Colonel, I’ll say, “Colonel, I think they’re doing great.”

“No sir, they’re not going to do great. You’ll see.” And I didn’t know what he was talking about, this was the first time.

Then we went outside to the runway. The plane lands and it pulls up, and we have military guards and musicians play. That’s what they do. The Colonel told me, “Sir, when that door opens up, those same people that you think are okay, do things that you’ll never see. You will hear sounds like you’ve never heard.”

I saw that door open up with a coffin with a flag over it. The door was opened, and these beautiful soldiers, five or six on each side, lifting the coffin and walking down onto the runway,  off this cargo plane.

And I see parents, that just 20 minutes ago were absolutely fine, make sounds, scream and cry like you’ve never seen before. A mother who was fine 20 minutes ago breaking the military line and then jumping onto a coffin of her son or her daughter, jumping on, lying on top of the flowers, on top of the American flag.”

I’ve seen this.

Then I have all these people that want to stay. They want to stay. And I don’t want to stay.

We were supposed to be in Syria for 30 days. We’ve now been there for 10 years. We were supposed to be in Afghanistan for a short period of time. We’re now going to be there for close to 19 years. It’s time to bring them home. It’s time to bring them home. It’s true. Time to bring them home. We’ve done our job, we’ve defeated everyone that we’re supposed to defeat.

 

Posted in All the News not fit to print., President Trump, War | Leave a comment

I’d be throwing rocks at the useless panels on my roof.

Californians Learning That Solar Panels Don’t Work in Blackouts

(Bloomberg) — Californians have embraced rooftop solar panels more than anyone in the U.S., but many are learning the hard way the systems won’t keep the lights on during blackouts.

That’s because most panels are designed to supply power to the grid — not directly to houses. During the heat of the day, solar systems can crank out more juice than a home can handle. Conversely, they don’t produce power at all at night. So systems are tied into the grid, and the vast majority aren’t working this week as PG&E Corp. cuts power to much of Northern California to prevent wildfires.

Hilarious!  The long explanation is that Solar Panels produce low voltage DC, that is passed through an Inverter changing it to AC current.  Which is connected to the power wires coming from (and going back to the outside pole) the power utility.

To keep the power that is coming from the roof panels for use at home you would need to store the power inside your own house.  The most common and easiest way is with batteries.  Batteries are not cheap, and enough battery storage to get you through even one day of no power from the utility is going to take up a bit of space.  That space will need to be in the garage (if you have one) or in the basement; because batteries are also very heavy (and expensive, did I mention expensive?).  BTW,  I’d think twice before I’d invest in Lithium cycle batteries for this purpose!  At least inside the house, a Lithium battery that overheats can catch fire and is exceedingly hard to extinguish.

So then you need another (expensive) device to regulate the DC power being sent to the battery; charging the batteries to their capacity and then sending the excess power to the grid through the Inverter (still need that!).

During a power outage, you are going to want to draw on the power stored in the batteries, right?  Unless you invest in 12volt DC appliances and lightning, you are going to need another DC to AC inverter.   My, my!  The cost of all this stuff is really starting to add up.

Might as well start saving up for when the time comes to replace all that expensive equipment, including the Solar Panels on the roof (15-20 years).  The inverters (20-25 years).  The batteries (5-10 years).  However the system won’t last that long unless you budget in regular maintenance by a certified electrician  ($150/ hour).

Of course you could just get a gasoline/LP/Natural Gas/diesel  emergency generator, sitting outside ready to kick in automatically as soon as the power goes out; that’s what I’d do.  Be a lot cheaper and much more reliable and long lasting.   But then that’s all EVIL fossil fuels, so you couldn’t do that!

Posted in All the News not fit to print., Can't fix Stupid, Global Warming Hoax, Tongue in Cheek | Leave a comment