Well…maybe no one IS above the law….

Well…in a surprising ruling, to me anyway, a NY court just ruled that the trump crime family had to sit for depositions in NY’s civil suit against them for their corrupt manipulation of evaluations of their properties to get loans and avoid taxes. That means that the idiot boy, cocaine don jr., and griftanka have 21 days to comply and sit down with AG James to answer to the evidence she has gathered that show they have been breaking law for years…and after this, there is still the criminal case brought by the NYC AG for exactly the same things…and, in their letter firing the trumps from being represented by them, Mazars laid the whole thing right on the idiot boy, saying that he was responsible for providing them with the false information that they based his taxes on. Now, we know he is going to try to take this to the SC where his pet judges don’t follow the law and we can be pretty sure they will give him a “get out of jail free” card….but, if they don’t, we also know that the only thing we’ll get out of the three of them is new records for how many times someone takes the fifth in one deposition….I think the record now is 500 times and I would be surprised if the idiot even responds with his name instead of taking the fifth…hmmm…I seem to remember a guy named donald trump saying that only gangsters take the fifth and if you don’t have anything to hide, you don’t need to…but in a “witch hunt” as idiot boy calls it, all bets are off…tick tock donnie…and donnie jr. and griftanka…

This is depressing…

Well…after working on the small bits of filling I needed to do to start prepping the walls for painting in the kitchen…as I looked close at the transition between the baseboards and the wall I noticed there is no straight demarcation between the two since it has too damn much paint on it…so that just doubled the work I’m going to have to do to make it look okay…and the corners are full of paint that is going to have to be chiseled out like I did for one this afternoon and it revealed at least 5 coats of paint and took me about 20 minutes to get it to the point where I can fill and paint…so any hope that it would be easy is gone and that is depressing….and every inch of the baseboard is going to have to be chipped out, too, and I can see that taking at least three days before I can even start to sand, fill, and paint them…so I’m looking at another week or so of prep before I can paint…darn…at least I got the downstairs cleaned up to the point that I can live with it and won’t have to do any more work downstairs until I get the kitchen done…but, I am going to take my full week off since the small amount of prep that I did on the baseboards hurt my thumb like crazy and I am not looking forward to being in pain for weeks again…oh, well…

Let’s get this straight…

Well…it looks like the movement of Russian troops away from the border with Ukraine was a lie and there is still a real chance that they  are going to invade before the week is out…and with that, I will admit I was wrong to think that Putin has any thought about anything but himself and playing the tough guy on the world stage…and when sanctions are imposed, the Russian people are going to pay for his stupidity while he and his oligarch buddies sit there and count their money that China is going to guarantee keeps flowing into their corrupt hands….and let’s get this straight…no matter what fox news says, the only one responsible for the deaths and carnage that is going to happen is Putin…it is not Biden’s fault, it is not NATO’s fault, it is not Ukraine’s fault…it is all on Putin and I really hope that the UN and the rest of the world hold him accountable and make sure Russia no longer has the capability to threaten it’s neighbors…we need to remember that Russia is a third rate economy and Putin is doing this to distract from all of his theft of anything that is not nailed down…geez….

February 17th

Well…boy, that was a lousy night and I feel pretty worn out this morning…and it is so disappointing that I’m back to the bad sleep patterns that have haunted my nights for years and years now….and that was one of the reasons for having cocktails so much for the past year…but I will trade feeling worn out for not being hung over any day since the coffee is now no longer needed to get me back to functional but I can enjoy it as it reverts to clearing out my head…and that’s what an old guy needs…I did get some work done yesterday and got the back stairs vacuumed and scrubbed along with more cobweb removal and I can’t figure out how I never saw all of them before…I know the dust made them pretty visible but damn, there were a lot of them and they would have made for a pretty good Halloween haunted house…so this place is a lot cleaner than it has been since I moved in here and I still have more work to do..one nice development is that once I got all the dust cleaned up and aren’t making more, the combustion blower on the furnace is no longer making the whining noise it has been for a couple of weeks and that is pretty cool..I was expecting to spend 300 bucks to get a new one installed and can really use a month of no extra money going out after burning a pile of cash last month….it is going to be a leftover day today even with buying 17 pounds of protein yesterday but I will need to get some pork chops in a marinade today so I can have them tomorrow with the asparagus I got for 1.49 a pound…and I have oranges! So there will be healthy fruits and lots of veggies to go with the pork chops that are not too good for you and I hope that balances it out….not much to do today…I am going to finish up the filling in the kitchen today and I do need to clean up my sander so I can get at the baseboards and the door frames…and I will need to clean under the range since it is one spot I haven’t cleaned since I bought this place and, if it’s anything like the rest of the house, it will be gross under there and probably take two or three passes at it to make it acceptable to me….more later….

Inflation is profit taking…and Ceo stealing…

Well…I know inflation is on the mind of most people here in the US that aren’t independently wealthy, and I also know that fox news and everyone on the right is lying about the causes….like housing prices that have been affected by the industrialization of home purchasing by REITs and other big purchasers who have been snapping up starter homes to turn into rental units and who can afford to pay more than individuals since they can just raise the rents to ensure their profit margins….and this scramble by these corporations have shut most low income buyers out of the market and caused the crazy price increases that have even affected the house that I bought a year ago…I mean a house that I bought for 90K a year ago is now worth 140K? That is just nuts. When we look at food prices, lets use the example of Kroger whose revenues and profits are up over 40% in the past year and how do they use those increased profits? By increasing CEO pay, stock buybacks, and increased dividends, not by holding the line on prices…again taking advantage of the pandemic by transferring wealth to the rich while most of their employees can’t afford their rent anymore. Kroger is not alone…throughout the economy, corporations are blaming higher prices on supply chain issues or a whole host of other problems but the real reason is pure greed…all of them are taking advantage of small hiccups in the economy to steal as much as they can while the media falls behind in their reporting or just believes the lies and reports them…it’s easier than doing their jobs and reporting the truth….and if there is not profit taking going on, why are oil companies more profitable than they have been in years? They love the fact that OPEC is shouting about raising oil prices by restricting supply when that has no effect on American oil production or refining for retail customers of gasoline….but gas is at it’s highest price in 8 years as are the profits of the oil companies…just plain old price gouging that they are allowed to get away with…so when the right whines about inflation, you can be sure it is only a lie to attack Biden and his administration since their big donors are doing just fine and love them some of that sweet, sweet inflation that allows them to steal more than normal…geez…

Lots of food….

Well…have been looking for a topic in politics since I got back from the errands this morning with no luck so I think I’ll talk about my success at the grocery stores today….I did get some more salt to melt the sidewalks after this warm day ends and the rain freezes overnight…and it was a good idea to get it today since depot was almost out of it when they had pallets of it two weeks ago when I got the last bag…and I got the last container of filler…I hope…to start on the rest of the windows when I get to it…but I need to work on the kitchen first to get it ready for paint next week so I think I’ll work on that today but I am not going to just slather the filler on as I have been doing since I don’t want to have a lot of sanding to do before I paint…the dust is still causing some rashes a week after I stopped sanding and that is so damn irritating….oh, food…almost forgot about that…I did get another 10 pounds of chicken leg quarters at Aldi’s for 4.90 but I also got 7 pounds of pork chops for 7 bucks at Meijers so I have lots of protein here that is going to end up in the freezer in the next couple of days since I want to make another pizza tomorrow to use up the green pepper, mushrooms, and pepperoni…oh, and I got two more pounds of asparagus at 1.49 a pound and a 4 pound bag of oranges for 3 bucks…so I have lots of food here and really don’t have to go anywhere until I get the paper Sunday…even with all that food, I still only spent 30 bucks on groceries today and I think I can get two weeks out of it…oh, and I did finally get a new mop and bought a dustpan that I needed since I was tired of using cardboard and newspapers to pick up when I sweep….both the mop and the dustpan were Libman’s and I really like their stuff…plus it’s all made in the US and they still compete on price so it can be done….more later…

February 16th

Well…that was not as good as it has been lately…tossed and turned a bunch and all my bedding ended up across the room and that sucks a little…but I ‘m not sure why I would expect to sleep well every night with my history of not sleeping much at all…not sure what happened but I have had a headache for weeks now and I just may have to take something for it this morning….the wind is howling out there already and it is 43 degrees at 6:30 and I really do hope that the storm they are forecasting for tonight and tomorrow stays to the south of us here…pretty tired of the snow but it is only the middle of Feb and I know that we can expect more snow and cold…but that doesn’t make it any easier to wait for spring to come…I have a 4 store grocery/errand run this morning and it may turn into 5 if DD has anything I want…Aldi’s has chicken for 49 cents a pound again and I wonder how much I should get? Still have 4 of the leg quarters in the freezer from the last time so I guess only one bag will have to do since I do want to make a lasagna later in the week and still need to make another pizza tomorrow…I think I may have figured out how to look at the bike ride every morning to make it a little easier…I just need to think of it as listening to 9 songs of music I like while moving my legs while I do it….I may just have to take a week day off of riding since this is my most consistent winter on the bike ever and I haven’t gained a pound this winter versus gaining the 12 that is normal when I don’t ride at all in the winter….not much to do today…just the grocery and depot run and then back here for more coffee…I just looked at my bank account and I did spend 2200 bucks last month and that has to stop if I’m going to afford another Miata in the spring…more later….

I might have been right…

Well…with all of the noise that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is going to start tomorrow, Joe Biden gave a short and to the point speech that in no uncertain terms, the US will respond to any invasion of Ukraine or any NATO member with overwhelming economic sanctions and Putin must understand this…and guess what happened? Putin suggested that there may be a “diplomatic solution” to the crisis that he created…as I talked about this morning, I felt that Putin miscalculated the response from the west and thought that he could take over Ukraine with no opposition and just threats and it now looks like he may be coming to his senses…and Biden made a good point during his short speech today that we don’t want to hurt the Russian people but won’t be bullied by their government which they understand to mean Putin since they know Putin runs the show no matter who they vote for. So I guess we’ll see what happens over the next few days…I will gloat if I was right…it doesn’t happen too often….

Mazars is all in….

Well…with the news that came out yesterday that the accounting firm Mazars fired all of the trumps from being a client as of the 9th of Feb, more and more is being revealed about how they are cooperating with the AG’s in New York…first, with the filing with the court of it’s intent to no longer represent the idiots trump, it was noted that they have already turned over 500,000 pages of financial information to them…and that is a hell of a lot of pages and should be the detail that is needed to understand how the trump’s cheated on their taxes for over 10 years…but the less reported key to this whole thing is that Mazars is cooperating with the AGs…and can you think of a more damaging development than your former accounting firm that you lied to constantly for over 10 years is now cooperating with NY? Another thing that is a little under the radar is that Mazars will be trying to cleanse it’s reputation of it’s association with the trumps and will be really pissed that they were used by these criminals who don’t care about the truth or who they have to hurt to continue to commit crimes. I know that everyone has been saying that the trumps are in deep shit for years now but none of them have done the perp walk…yet….and I am not going to jump on that band wagon…I still think it’s going to be interesting to watch as the trumps get more and more desperate and we see more meltdowns as little eric did yesterday on fox….not sure if it’s time for popcorn yet….geez..

Let’s quit the “Putin blinked” crap…

Well…there is a bunch of confusing information coming out about Russian troop movements this morning with some reports saying they are moving away from the Ukraine border and others saying they are moving closer to the border…but there was an official Russian statement that gloated that the west was completely wrong about the invasion and it was just alarmism and trying to hurt Russia with lies….now, again, this could be one of two things…it could be Russia trying another smokescreen to lull the world into thinking they aren’t attacking or it’s Putin trying to figure out a way to get out of his self created crisis without damaging his standing in Russia or the world…now, if it’s the latter, we need to stop saying that Putin “blinked” and help him get out of this mess by essentially being quiet and letting him do it…the world all knows who is responsible for this and we can gently remind everyone that it was Putin and Russia that started the whole thing…but, we can also allow him to save face to defuse the situation with no war…smart diplomacy backed up by the concerted action of NATO showed it’s worth during this entire crisis…so, and I never thought I’d be saying this…give Putin a little time to declare victory and go home…and don’t gloat about the win…sometimes the best diplomacy is to just stay quiet….hmmm…