Mail in ballot fraud is a lie…a big lie..

Well…as you’ve seen for the past fifty years, the go to whine of the repub party is that there is “widespread” voter fraud and they have taken this lie to use it to make sure that eligible voters (that vote democratic) can’t vote by shutting down polling stations, voter ID laws, and lies….but their latest, that mail in voting is rife with fraud and can’t be relied on is just them lying again to try to make sure that only their motivated voters will be able to have their votes counted. We even had Bill Barr this week lying his ass off that there has been “massive voter fraud” associated with mail in ballots and that other countries can just print off fake ballots and send them in to skew the vote. First, I have been taking advantage of Michigan’s no reason absentee voting this year and I can tell you that there is tight control over who gets ballots and how they are handled when you send them in…each ballot has a registration number that applies to that ballot alone and a barcode that has my information on it…and if those two don’t match, the ballot is invalid…so how could a foreign country do that kind of  a match? They can’t…they could print up a ballot but unless they have a spy in every precinct stealing the information, there is no way they can get past the security measures in place here. The second thing that would prevent mass cheating by a foreign country (or the repubs) is that every town, city, and township in Michigan and across the country has it’s own ballot that include local issues like school funding and millages along with local elections like sheriffs and water commissioners, etc. so anyone trying to mass effect the mail in ballots would have to print the exact ballot of every entity that is holding an election…it’s not just one generic ballot. But, Barr knows this and he is cynically stoking this uncertainty since he also knows that trump is so far behind the only chance he has is to use the entire government to cheat…and we all know they have no problem lying, cheating, and stealing every damn day. It is heartening to see the immediate pushback from Secretary of States across the country calling this fraud claim a bald faced lie…it’s never happened before…ever… and now we need the media to tell the truth that they are lying and take this weapon away from them….

July 31st

Well…I wonder if I’ll ever sleep again? Needless to say it was another crappy night with getting up at 4:44 this morning so that’s another 5 hour night…and I’m tired….oh, well…there probably has to be some long term health problems that go along with not sleeping but I’m not ready to find out what they are yet…I did get a few things done yesterday and I picked the first of my tomatoes and had one for a snack and I can’t believe how much better they are than the cardboard ones you get at the grocery store….and that makes the fact that I’m not going to get too many of them really suck….I guess I’ll just enjoy what I get and plan for the next garden….I am getting some cukes now and that will allow me to refine my pickle recipe and that is cool….I did get the lawn mowed yesterday and I am going to feed it tomorrow in front of the rain that is supposed to come Sunday and Monday to try to green it up some….I think they will be working on the gas meter today and I hope they finish it up so I don’t have to look at it anymore and I can get things back to normal around here…I do need to get out to depot this morning to pick up and return a new garage door receiver that I ordered since I fixed the old one and don’t need it…and that will save me 37 bucks that I can use….more later….

The economy crashes and burns…

Well…the stupid trumpites are still running around saying the economy is “coming back” with a roar any day now…just wait for it…okay, and wait for it….and wait for it. The numbers that came out today tell the real story and it’s the most ugly numbers in the history of economic reporting….in one quarter, the economy contracted over 9.5% and projected on a yearly basis which is the normal reporting, that means we are on the way to a contraction of 1/3 of the economy…yep, almost 35% of the economic activity is gone and there is only one reason why…the idiot trump’s and the repubs handling of the coronavirus pandemic…or I should say their NOT handling of the outbreak…what did trump’s voters think would happen if you put a stupid, lazy asshole in charge of keeping the economy and the American people safe? And this goes for Mnuchin, McConnell and the rest of those morons who are now spouting that they can’t approve any more extra unemployment benefits since all it does is keep people from going back to work…hey, assholes….there are 25 million people out of work and there are only 5 million jobs listed out there…and another 1.5 million people just filed for unemployment as the bungling of the virus response hits the red states right in their smug asshole faces….what jobs are they supposed to go back to? These are the worst economic numbers ever recorded and the repub morons diddle on the sidelines arguing where the deck chairs should go on the Titanic they created…while people lose their homes and apartments and over 150,000 Americans have now died from their callousness and stupidity. There could be 20 million homeless if McConnell and his repub cronies do nothing and they are doing nothing…they’ve had two months to address this crisis and haven’t done a damn thing….so let’s remember that in November and get rid of every damn one of them…cripes…

July 30th

Well…cripes, it seems like my waking time is slowly moving back toward bed time with this morning being at 3:18 instead of the normal 3:40 but I still got out of bed before 6 so I’m not sure there is much of a difference….I did break down and take both some ibuprofen and allergy meds last night and I feel better for it this morning….my head is clear and the normal pains are down about 50% so that is cool….hope it continues all day….the swelling in my foot is down some too, so that is encouraging…had a nice visit with T yesterday and it was nice to see her and laugh a bunch but the whole thing was marred by DTE being here to move the gas meter from the basment to outside the house and they had to replace the steel gas line with a plastic one that they tunneled under the road for…but that still leaves the meter job and I just hate the disruption to my life that this three day process is doing….need to be here for them to be able to get in the basement so that means another day of only one ride…oh, and I just did one ride yesterday since I needed to clean this place up and that may be part of why I don’t hurt as much as normal…I did pick the first two tomatoes from my garden yesterday and I am going to have them for lunch today…they are pretty small so I think I need to feed the plants more…so I’ll do that today….not much to do today….just going to hang around here after the first ride and wait for the guys to finish the meter job so I’ll work on the gardens and the last of the trim on the front of the house….I did get a big box of baking soda to clean the copper trim and I may try some of that today too….more later….

Trump’s campaign is just a grift…

Well…as everything the idiot in chief does, his campaign is just another grift to take money from the rubes and put it in his pockets and the pockets of his “campaign staff”. It was reported over the past week or so that 170 million dollars in donations have been funneled to companies that trump and his kids still run and to his demoted campaign manager, Brad Parscale, who alone has gotten 30 million dollars to launder through his companies…no wonder he has a couple of new Ferraris and condos worth a couple of million bucks….and you can really tell that it is all a grift when Kevin McCarthy, who is in charge of getting repubs elected to the house, is publicly bitching that trump and his campaign are hoarding donations that normally would be shared with house and senate repubs.  Don’t you feel bad for them? This is what they get when they protect a grifter who only cares about himself…and I think it’s great that they are stealing all this money…after all, they won’t be spending it to get the asshole in chief re-elected…

July 29th

Well…okay, my allergies are really bad this morning and I know I should have taken something for them last night…but I didn’t and now the decision is whether to take something this morning with only having a few left….maybe after the first ride…slept okay last night but feel as bad as I have in a while and it may be that I need to take a day off the bike to recover….I may have to only do one ride today with doing the grocery run and needing to clean this place up with having a visitor this afternoon…should have done that over the weekend but just couldn’t get moving to do it…I did take an ibuprofen last night since I was so damn sore everywhere and I think that is making a difference this morning…just small aches and pains that I can live with….I did get some work done yesterday and I bought a small sprinkler to use to try to save the front lawn so I don’t have to use my hose end sprayer and blocks so that will make it easier to keep it presentable….I think I’m going to be able to pick 3 tomatoes from my garden today and I even picked an inch long potato that was on the surface and that made me laugh…I planted the potatoes on a lark from sprouted ones in my cupboard and never expected to get anything from it…and there are more little ones just below the surface of the ground and I wonder how long they have to stay in to get big enough to eat? Not much to do today…just need to get going right now to get the bike ride in…okay, after one more cup of coffee that is….it’s not 7 yet so I can sit for a bit….more later….Oh, and I will get to a political one today…I know I’ve been slacking a bit on that lately but there was a reason for it….maybe even two of them if I don’t take the second ride….

The black veil lifts a little…

Well….as I’ve said over the past week or so, I’ve have had another bout with depression that had me essentially shut off from everything but I’m a little happy to say that the veil seems to be lifting some today and I have been able to enjoy the bike rides and have even got some work done on the house…got the tuck pointing finished on the brick on the porch and have worked on watering the lawn a little but I still do need to buy a cheap little sprinkler so I don’t have to use the nozzle on the hose supported by blocks to water it….have been looking for one of those little ones with a turret that has different holes for different shapes but haven’t been able to find one…and that’s weird….oh, and I got a text from my youngest son that his wife is getting close to delivering and they are thinking of inducing labor so it could be any day now…and I am a little excited about that…and he made me laugh when he told me he is growing a “dad” mustache and he thinks he looks like me from when I was younger…I always had a mustache then and I think it’s kind of cool that he thinks of me….that made me smile…

July 28th

Well…another morning of getting up at 3:37 and I’m pretty damn tired…but, my foot doesn’t hurt at all and the swelling is improved too so I’ll take that…it feels weird to be able to walk without pain but everything else hurts but I guess small progress is all I can hope for right now…yeah, I know, I could take something for it but you know how much I avoid that since I do like to have working kidneys….and I know part of the pain is from pulling all of the crab grass out of the back yard and the abuse that it did to my thumb…and I really expected to hurt worse from all of the bending over but I think it helped stretch my hamstrings and that helps on the bike…I did do the full 36 miles yesterday even though I’ve been trying to convince myself to take a day off but the weather didn’t cooperate by giving me an excuse….so that means I’ll need to rig up my sprayer for the front yard today so I don’t lose it to the heat and drought…I think I figured out what was wrong with the receiver on the garage door not having any power…just some corroded wires that I cleaned up and it has been working fine for the past two weeks…but that means the new receiver that I ordered from depot has to be returned and it just got here and I haven’t even picked it up yet…I wonder how that is going to go? Not going to spend 37 bucks for nothing, though…not much to do today…I am going to test out my foot on a ladder out front today to get some grout repair done and start working on the last of the trim around the front porch and maybe even start prepping the gutters on the garage to paint them…the weather is going to be a little cooler so I need to take advantage of it….more later….

Things got a little better today…

Well…it seems that nothing is easy anymore, even ordering checks from my bank. Back in June, I ordered checks for my checking account since I was down to the last booklet and I write a lot more checks since I moved in here….so the whole thing turned into a fiasco with the check company sending the checks to my old address for some reason and they just disappeared…the company said they were sent on the 2nd of July but I had still not seen them this past Friday so I called to find out what had happened and the person I talked to freaked out that I hadn’t gotten them and cancelled all 140 checks…but he couldn’t get the charge for them removed or order me new checks so I had to go over to my branch to get that done this morning. The woman I talked to was quite a bit of help and took care of everything in about 5 minutes and also changed my checking account to a better one since I keep a high balance in it and that gave me free checks so I got my 30 bucks back and didn’t have to pay for the new ones…and getting it straightened out was basically painless other than the drive over there. So, things got a little better today…oh, and I finally remembered to change the address on my car insurance so I’ll get the bill and can pay it on time…and that only took about a minute so that was cool….still haven’t gotten my new tabs yet but the expiration has been extended until Sept 30 so that should give them enough time to get them to me….I’ll probably start working on on them in a month or so just to guarantee that I get them on time…I’ll take the baby steps…

There are still funny things in the world…

Well…okay, have been quite down lately but I can still appreciate that there are still funny things in the world. Just the other day when hurricane Harvey hit Texas one of those funny things happened…you remember that the idiot trump boasted and boasted about his “big beautiful, strongest wall in the world full of high tech that the world had never seen in a wall”….well, that big , beautiful, strongest wall in the world just got blown down by 60 mph winds…it just collapsed like every other piece of crap that trump has ever built…and I find that not only funny but perfectly descriptive of trump…every damn thing he touches turns to crap….if only all he touched was just the wall…but his tiny little stubby fingers are in healthcare, the pandemic, and everything else in this country and the results are all the same…nothing but crap where everyone but the idiot gets hurt…cripes, November 3rd can’t come quick enough…