All posts by James DeVol

It just keeps getting worse…

Well…just got back from a long bike ride and I am still trying to warm up with little success so after I do this, it’s under the blanket time…after the release of more information about Lev Parnas’ involvement in the Ukraine extortion scandal, the scandal just keeps getting worse and worse. With the latest revelations, it appears that Parnas and his cronies had the ambassador they were trying to get rid of under surveillance and were tracking her movements for some reason…and that reason was cryptically revealed to be the possibility of paying someone in the Ukraine that Parnas and his criminals were working with to “get rid” of her and they talked about how much money that would take. Now, to me and to other people who have experience with reporting on organized crime, this sounds like they were getting ready for a “hit” on her and the state department took the threats so seriously that they told her to get out of Ukraine on the “next plane”. So now we have a “president” whose criminal cronies were going to kill an ambassador to get her out of the way of their corrupt schemes and not one damn repub is saying it’s wrong or commenting at all…I guess now murder is not an impeachable offense, either….and they are going to help idiot boy get away with it…but not for long…

January 15th

Well…running late this morning and I am wondering if I should try to get in to see my doctor with all of the coughing I’ve been doing lately…and I feel like crap this morning…even worse than yesterday and I know for a fact it isn’t from cocktails since I was good again last night…but, I had both a flu shot this year and a pneumonia shot last year so it shouldn’t be that…it does have an eerie resemblance to when I had pneumonia last time where I had a low level infection for weeks that just exploded and put me in the hospital…hmmm…and I didn’t sleep too hot, either with getting up at four and then back to sleep until a little after the coffee started…that has left me worn out today but I still need to do the grocery run in a little while and then get the bike downstairs on the trainer after I wash it….it is going to cold after this week and with the rain and snow coming, I just have to bite the bullet and give up on riding outside for a while….I did get to 100 miles so far this month so I don’t feel too bad about that….but it will be down to 6 mile days inside unless I do two a days like I did last year….not much to do today…I’m going to have to gauge my activity on how I’m feeling but it feels like I’m going to run out of steam after the grocery run unless the coffee starts to work….more later….

They’re not even trying to hide their interference…

Well…with reports over the weekend that Russia has hacked the Ukrainian gas company Burisma that was in the center of the trumped up charges of corruption against Joe Biden’s son, we can see that Russia is at it again, trying to throw the election to trump. And, this time, they are not even trying to hide that it is the Russian intelligence service GRU who is doing the hacking since Moscow Mitch has made it clear that he is not going to do a damn thing to stop them. Mitch won’t even allow election security bills to come to the floor of the senate, even though there are many of them that have been passed by the House and Mitch has been told by the IC that the measures are critical to keeping the Russians from installing trump for a second term. I am little puzzled by the hacking of Burisma looking for dirt on the Biden’s since we saw in 2016 that actual evidence was not necessary for the Russians to be successful in getting Fox news and the entire repub party to spread the lies about Hillary that hurt her campaign…but, it may be that just the announcing of Russian hacking of Burisma will be enough for the fevered brains of the trump cult to just “know” that there must be something there or why would the Russians waste time hacking them? Sowing doubt is one of the favorite ways that Russian intelligence disrupts elections around the world and to think the repubs would want to give up that advantage…of having an entire foreign government helping you win elections is living in a dream world…they are all evil traitors led by evil traitors….after we win in the fall, there will be no more protecting these criminals by refusing to cooperate with investigations…and the legacies of all of these traitors will be burned to the ground…as they deserve…

January 14th

Well…cripes that was a crappy night of sleep and I was up and down all night….the congestion in my lungs is finally starting to break and that made me cough all night but I can feel it’s getting better so that is good news but I’m sitting here sweating and that is tough to do with it 65 in here….so I’m wondering where this is going…feel okay but I think most of that is from being good last night and I know that will continue at least until Friday….I did get out for a bike ride yesterday but it was a lot of work with the trails being snow covered and having to pay way too much attention…couldn’t go much over 9 mph but I still got almost 8 miles in and I’m hoping that the the trails will be a little more clear today and tomorrow…but, it is going to get cold starting thurs so I do need to decide whether to put the bike on the trainer…it looks like I’ll get to 100 miles before that happens so that is cool….didn’t get much done yesterday but some work downstairs and I am trying to not feel guilty while I feel crappy…but that’s tougher than it looks with the weeks going by…I’ve been here three months and the progress has slowed to a crawl….I do need to start to get a project list together so I’ll be ready for spring and to make sure that everything will be done in here before then….not much to do today…I’m going to take it easy to see how the lungs hold up to start but I am going to get out on the bike around 10 and see if I can break more of the congestion up….and I need to clean before I run the instant pot for lunch….more later….

Liars and incompetents….

Well….as I’ve asked many, many, many, many times…is there anything that this WH won’t lie about? Or are they just the most incompetent screw ups that this country has ever seen? Yep, trick question…they’re both….just yesterday the idiots at the WH tweeted a picture of the WH with snow falling around it with the caption: “first snow of the year!” and that set twitter ablaze with comments…especially since it was almost 70 degrees in DC Sunday and there was not a hint of snow anywhere for hundreds of miles….and the first snow of the year was early last week. Now, who are these people who would get up in the morning and think to themselves “I think I’ll go to work today and lie about snow”….can we finally call them the worst people in the world? I know it’s wearing to point out all of the lies these people spew on a daily basis, but we have to…we have to keep calling them out on their BS or it will be normalized and that will mean the end of this country….I know I’m tired….

January 13th

Well….running a little late today and part of it is this damn cold that has been hanging on for what seems like a month now…still coughing and have no energy at all and that makes it hard to get going…but, I’m banking on the coffee helping here in a few minutes or it’s going to be a long morning…it’s going to be a long morning anyway but that’s pretty normal right now…I did get some work done yesterday with taking the huge headboard/bookcase apart and getting it moved up into the attic and will get the rest of the tables etc. moved today so I can get started on the repairs and painting….I am going to get a bike ride in today just to see what the trails look like…not sure if we got enough rain to flood them again but we did get enough snow/ice to screw the trails up so it may be a road ride today…I do need to clean today but I have leftovers so there won’t be any need to cook but I am going to drag the instant pot out and do some chicken tomorrow…haven’t used it since I moved in here and I really like playing with it…have to remember to over spice the chicken since pressure cooking seems to need it…and I need to put the rest of the chicken in the freezer later this morning to stock it up…I really should be taking things out of the freezer instead of putting them in…oh, well….more later….

Let’s try something different…

Well…sitting here trying my best to avoid doing any work today so I thought I’d do another one of these…but nothing political…just noodling a little to try something different…I’m sure you wouldn’t mind if I didn’t talk about idiot boy for a while and I know I don’t mind talking about something else….I didn’t win the powerball last night and that is a little disappointing…and the weird thing is I really do expect to win it at some point but it appears I’m running out of time….have it all figured out in my head how I’ll spend the cash but I don’t spend a lot of time on it…just something fun to think about…I think I bought way too much chicken this week with buying two trays of thighs at Meijers so I guess I’m going to have to freeze some of them or drag the instant pot out to cook some of them…maybe I’ll do that tomorrow but I just found a pasta recipe that uses cream cheese instead of parmesan that I want to make….I guess you can’t call it Alfredo sauce but with onions, garlic, olive oil, marinara, pasta water and crushed tomatoes with the cream cheese, it still sounds good to have over fetucinni… and Meijers has cream cheese on sale for a buck this week so I think I’ll give it a try after I do the grocery run on wed….I’m not sure how successful I’ve been with not spending any money after I did just do the math of how much I owe this month…over 800 bucks? Okay, 240 of that is for food and a hundred is for the winter taxes that are due next month but I still have almost 300 bucks that I owe on the credit cards for the month so I guess I’ll have to try harder…I did get my electric bill down by 20 bucks but it’s still a hundred bucks…yow…I did have to buy some stuff for the downstairs project on the cards that won’t show up until next month but that is only 64 bucks and I really needed to spend that money…so, I will need to stop using the card completely until the 4th week of Feb…actually the third week of Feb…need to get my balance up and the only way to do that is to not spend…so I won’t….no cocktails will help with that….okay, I’m done for now…need to get some work done….

Guess what? trump’s lying again…

Well…cripes the reasons for killing General Soleimani are growing like weeds in the backyard going from “he’s a bad guy” to planning to attack everything in the world including 4 of our embassies…but, do you believe any of this? Nope, not from the administration that does nothing but lie….and they can’t even get their lies straight…just this morning the ridiculous secretary of defense was on the morning shows trying to justify murder and let it slip that he hadn’t seen any intel to support the claim that 4 embassies were targeted…maybe one, but that wasn’t even clear and none of the rest of the idiot trump’s lies were supported either. Is it any wonder that the rest of the world has had enough of the liar in chief and are just basically ignoring anything he says…and are working actively to circumvent the latest attack on Iran with more sanctions? You could have heard the crickets from here when the other idiot Pompeo toured Europe trying to get them to back the ratcheting up of sanctions and he was told to get the hell out of Europe…hey did this ever happen when the black guy was president? Yeah, we all know the answer to that….the whole damn bunch of them is laughed at every day by the sane world and what reaction did they expect? Okay, yeah, delusional assholes expect that they are the most brilliant people in the room no matter what the evidence is…god, only 10 more months of this crap…

January 12th

Well…yeah…it is weird for me to be here this early on a Sunday morning but I got up early and it’s still too early to go out for the paper so I thought I’d come here and do this while I wait…I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a weather forecast so far off as the winter storm warning from yesterday…not that I’m complaining that we didn’t get smothered in ice and snow but damn, I actually was worried and did some prep for losing my power for a day or so and just got a dusting of snow and a little ice so I’m sitting here in the warm with a quiet furnace and will have a stress free Sunday….didn’t sleep too well last night and that damn cold is still hanging on so I think I’ll make this a veg day and just watch some sports….I did have a couple of cocktails last night but two days in a row is enough and I’ll get back to being good tonight…I kind of like getting up and feeling good…or as good as an old guy can feel…I may even be able to get back out on the bike this week since there are going to be a couple of days in the 40’s before the cold comes back for the rest of the winter…will take a look at the trails tomorrow but with the rain, the flooding will be back and I may just have to do a street ride…not much to do today…going out for the paper in a minute and soccer starts in a while but I am going to ease into it with more coffee first….might even have to run the french press for more today…we’ll see….more later….

That was a waste…

Well…do you have any ice where you are? If this is the worst ice storm in 20 years, I’ll take it any time….the roads here are clear and there is a little ice on the trees but that is about it…so I guess the prep, what little I did, was a waste of time…but the forecaster are now saying  “wait for it”….the bad stuff is going to start at 8 tonight and we are going to have snow/sleet to the tune of 3/5 inches overnight…but, I just looked at the radar and I just don’t see it unless it just pops up out of nowhere…which it can do here in Michigan so we’ll see….but the inch to inch and a half of ice is just not going to happen so I think my power will be just fine…I did get annoyed with the noise coming from the furnace blower so I did work on that today so I don’t feel too bad about being lazy…went the completely opposite direction with the belt adjustment and left it loose along with leaving the adjustment screw loose as well and it is almost quiet now…at least the banging is gone which is just so counter intuitive that I am still thinking about it…but, I’ll take it…still feel like I have a damn cold, though….