Obama is arguably more audacious about it, but look at the TSA.
Sarah Palin is arguing for impeachment, though that's really all about making damn_registrars foam at the mouth and driving subscriptions. We can impeach our way through the whole federal government, but if we are discussing systemic changes, then we're pissing in the wind, say I.

Drills
        I got woke up early again, about five thirty this time. Fire in passengers quarters number forty seven. God damned drills, but I had to get up and inspect forty seven anyway. I put on a robe and trudged down there.
        Yep, just a stupid drill. I noticed that Tammy was in the commons with the German woman as I walked past on my way back home. It was still early enough that I could still get another hour's sleep or so.
        Nope, as soon as I got back there another damned alarm went off, this time a fire in engine seventeen. This one might be real, so I hurried down there and told the computer do deliver some nasty robot coffee.
        The computer wouldn't let me in at first, it must have been in a vacuum. The door finally opened, and the robot that had been working on it was charred and still smoking a little. I unhooked it from the engine, and another one rolled up for me to hook up, and a third dragged the smoking robot to the repair shop.
        I logged it and trudged back up the five damned flights of stairs towards home, but by then it was too late to go back to bed, quarter after six. I made a pot of real coffee and put a game on, but it was almost over. When it was over I switched it to the always old news.
        Nothing new, of course, they were still trying to scare people about the Venus virus. Destiny came in, kissed me, and poured a cup of coffee. "You're up early again," she said.
        "Yeah," I replied, "fire drill in the passenger section and a burned up robot down in the engine room. I was up at five thirty. I'm sure glad we went to bed early!"
        "Did you eat yet?"
        "No, you hungry?"
        "Yeah. Computer, make a turkey and cheese omelette."
        I said "Computer, a turkey Denver."
        The stupid thing said "Error, no Turkish dishes named Denver are listed in the database."
        God damn stupid computer. "A Denver omelette with turkey meat you dumb computer."
        "Affirmative."
        "Fuck you."
        Destiny laughed. "Had your shower yet?"
        "No," I said, "Want to take one together?"
        "Sure," she said, with a twinkle in her eye. God, but I love that woman.
        We had a pretty long, really fun shower and ate our breakfast. By then it was almost eight. I kissed her and took a cup of coffee to the pilot room. We were going the right way and all the computers were agreeing with each other that everything was cool.
        After that I had inspection. The German woman was eating in the commons and the rest were asleep, except Lek who was in her quarters reading, still dressed. I complimented her on her clothing.
        "Thank you," she said. "I want Doctor Winters to cure me."
        "So do I," I said. "I want her to cure all of you."
        "I want that too," she said.
        I went down those five damned flights of stairs again to the bottom of the boat. The good generator was still good and the busted generator was still busted. So was engine seventeen, with the robot I'd plugged into it still working on it.
        It had been an easy inspection. I trudged up all those damned stairs. There were fifty or so women in the commons, pretty much behaving themselves.
        As I went in my quarters Destiny said "You're a little early. Done?"
        "Yeah, I hope so. Are you hungry?"
        She said yes, and laughed. "Computer, ham and beans."
        The computer replied, of course, "There are no pork products on the menu."
        I said "I think I'll have prime rib, baked potato and a glass of wine."
        "Sounds good to me," Destiny said.
        Right then a light lit up on the map. "Damn it," I said, and went to the pilot room to listen in. Thankfully it wasn't pirates, it was a boat from a different shipping company about five light minutes away.
        The robot was finished cooking lunch right after I got back, so we ate. Then we watched an old two dimensional movie called "The Blues Brothers", and I loved that movie! Funny as hell and it had some really great old classical music. Some of the musical greats from the time, like Ray Charles and John Lee Hooker were in it.
        The closing credits were rolling on the screen when an alarm went off in cargo nine. I hoped it was a drill. "Is cargo nine occupied?" I asked the computer.
        "Negative."
        That was Lek's room; she was in the commons. The light on her door was solid red, so I went in to investigate; there was no fire.
        I went to the commons to talk to Lek. "Here because of the fire drill?" I asked.
        "Drill? I thought my apartment really on fire! Scared me when the alarm go off."
        "Yeah, it was just a drill, you can go home if you want."
        "Thank you," she said.
        I went home myself and we had Polish sausage and sauerkraut with shikes for dinner. Destiny put on an old two dimensional western, True Grit.
        We'd each had a glass of wine with lunch and finished the bottle watching the western, since it would be sour by the next morning. No sense wasting it.
        We listened to a little Clapton when the movie was over and then we went to bed. It was still early but Destiny had gotten up earlier than normal and I'd gotten up way early and was just plumb wore out.

When I posted the last chapter, I'd started this one but it had been nowhere near finished. After posting the previous chapter I "finished" this one and the next, as well. So there will be a new chapter in a few days.

I heard about the launch of The Sarah Palin Channel online today. Apparently for just under $10 / month she'll tell you regularly how Obama is colluding with the "lamestream media" to ruin our country.

I cautiously looked at the page. For me the main attraction was that I read they had a "countdown clock" on it counting down the days left in the Lawnchair Administration. I thought this might have meant that someone finally showed her a calendar and broke the news to her that impeachment is really no longer on the table as it is not realistically capable of ending the current administration before it reaches it's natural end in 2017.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, though, the maverick is trying to have it both ways. Yes, there is a clock (which I'll point out has the headline word "days" in it and then proceeds to give you days, hours, minutes, and seconds), but there is also plenty of stuff calling for impeachment. And if impeachment were to end with removal of the POTUS, then the clock as it is currently set up would not make sense.

But then again, most of what is on there doesn't make sense either.

So tonight around 12:30 am, and I'm sitting downstairs watching TV. It's hot right now, so I had the windows closed and the central A/C on. Set to 76, so it hadn't run in a while.

My "living room" (it's an open concept downstairs in my townhome condo, so it's really just one big room) part is right by the front door, and I have my ceiling fan on at its highest speed during the hot months.

So the vertical blinds are flapping away in the window by the front door, and my TV is on this end, facing towards the front door, so at my doorstep you can hear that it's on.

And my recliner is 12-18 inches from the door handle. At about ear level where I'm sitting.

So I'm sitting there, and plain as day, someone tries the door handle. Now the setup here is that the door handle turns freely (although outside there's nothing to turn, you grab the handle and depress the latch with your thumb), but there's a deadbolt above it, keyed on the outside and with a switch on the inside, and that's what locks the door.

So whoever it was, clearly could tell that someone was home, up/awake, and most likely downstairs, given the blinds were flapping and the TV was semi-blaring (I play it a little loud, having lost some hearing or quality of from too much loud heavy metal with headphones, such that sometimes I have a little trouble making out what someone said).

And unless the person's watched me for a while and knew I was single and lived alone, would think potentially there was another person in the house, because I left the light on in my 2nd bedroom upstairs. (It's a CFL, and those I like to not cycle too much, and just leave on if I plan to come back into the room in a little while.)

And yet this person tried to come into my house. Now I've got 3 other doors around me, to my neighbors' places, but I can hear when they come and go from my recliner, because one door is right next to mine and the other two are in the next building just a skinny walkway's width away (we're packed in pretty good here).

Now I've heard reports of prowlers coming into peoples' homes when they're asleep at night, through an open or unlocked window. But this person had evidence to the contrary that the folk(s) who live here had gone to bed.

Which brings to mind the question, what if I hadn't had the top latched. What was this person prepared to say or do upon entry into my house, to the person(s) downstairs they would expect to encounter.

This person did not ring my doorbell nor knock on the door. I can't hear doorbells of my neighbors', but I can hear knocks on their doors, and their weren't any, so it wasn't some lost person in need of some kind of assistance.

The last neighbor who left their light on all the time for our walkway moved out recently, and my outside light on the light-sensitive controller broke a few years ago, so it's been completely dark out there, unfortunately. Apparently I should get that fixed and be the one who leaves that switch on all the time.

And maybe it's time to think about getting my first firearm. (And some lessons some where, having only ever shot a BB gun before.) I live in a nice neighborhood, but maybe that makes us a target.

And since I'm a heavy sleeper, maybe even getting an alarm system. Although I think those only detect a window opening, and not breaking.

Which leads to the other question that had come to mind about this person of the night. S/he was evidently prepared to confront this residence's awake occupants, so why not break a window to get in. The only thing I can think of is that the person wanted the element of surprise, and quietly slipping in through a mistakenly unlocked door would enable that, that a shattering window would not.

And yet occupants could come from other parts of the place, potentially with guns, so even if surprise was had on a downstairs occupant, it still potentially could've gone very badly for the presumably would-be intruder.

Oh, and no one tried the keyhole on the deadbolt, so it wasn't a neighbor who was just coming home drunk or something and walked down the wrong walkway, in this row of buildings.

And so I'll close with the ultimate question that came to mind: Why does really weird shit, happen to me. And no it wasn't a dream/I wasn't asleep, I'm a night owl kind of person, and had slept in until about noon-thirty today. I was watching stupid Friends reruns, after coming downstairs to catch Stossel's "Security and Liberty" special from 10-11. (Who's a whole topic unto himself.)

Mod points again, which i prefer to spend in JEs. Last time i had points, i could not find the moderate button. Now i see that of you have javascript turned on it is automatic.

• Automatic mod point application is amazingly stupid.
• What if i make a mistake?
• What if i see a post later that was unfairly modded down but now i have no points left?
• The FAQ says, "Do you still have any moderator points left? You only got 5..." I got 15.
• Why doesn't it mention the auto update somewhere?
• After moderating it reports how many points you have left. Messages end up conflicting.

Overall, the heralded new age of Slashdot is being designed by morons.

he shot the woman twice in the back while the male accomplice ran away.

Does the right to self-defense really extend all the way outside your house, into the alleyway, and into the back of the person who is running away from you?

Since ObamaCare is just a river of lies anyway, this sort of blatant falsehood must be deemed entirely in character.
Just don't forget to salivate when these deceivers are done with the whole ObamaCare falsehood and offer to "fix" the whole situation with Single Prayer.
No matter the magnitude and frequency of the falsehoods spewing from these liars, you have to give them the benefit of the doubt. Because "it's the right thing to do". Also, you've been stupid enough to vote them power thus far, America: why change now?

Smiles
        Destiny woke me up about seven thirty; I'd been the one up early the day before because of that engine. "Wake up, sleepyhead, or you won't have time for breakfast." She'd already made coffee had the robots make chicken cheese omelets. God but I love that woman, meeting her was the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. Of course, were it not for the monsters I'd never have met her. You take the wonderful with the insanely horrible, I guess.
        We watched the news while we ate, but there was nothing new. A war had broken out in Africa, but there's always a war somewhere, it seems. People are stupid.
        Lankham Farms in Mexico closed down, citing Mexico's new environmental laws. The environmental regulations in almost all countries were strict to the point that raising pork just wasn't economical enough to earn any money. About the only place you could buy pork was from the fanciest farm restaurants, the kind you had to be a Dewey Green to afford eating at.
        Like I care about the price of pork. Sheesh.
        I finished breakfast, showered and got dressed, kissed Destiny and went to the pilot room for my normal morning routine.
        Everything in the pilot room checked out. There were no upstairs inspections today so I trudged down the five damned flights of stairs, which is better than trudging up them, and inspected the generators and engines. Yep, port generator and engine seventeen still broke. A robot was working on seventeen so I logged it.
        I got done quick today! Probably wasn't even noon yet. Destiny was in the commons drinking coffee with Tammy and Lek, who was still wearing clothes, although different ones. I wondered where she got them, probably traded drops to the naked animals for theirs. Or maybe Tammy gave her some, I don't know. I sat down with them and complimented Lek.
        "Thank you," she said.
        "You've come a long way, Lek. You should be proud." She smiled widely. Thailand is known as "the land of smiles" and unless they were short of drops the three on board were smiling almost all every time I saw them. Lots different than that German woman, who was always frowning and never seemed to smile.
        "Doctor Winters help me," she said. I was startled. "Tammy?" I said, really confused.
        "She's smart, John. She figured me out after a couple of weeks and confronted me. She noticed that I was the only one wearing clothes and had plenty of drops and she guessed correctly that I was pretending to be an addicted prostitute, so I told her I was a really a scientist studying them and trying to find a cure."
        "I no tell anybody," Lek said. "I only call her doctor when we alone. She say I not animal because I have respect, and animals no have respect."
        I asked "What was up with that one woman yesterday?"
        "She knocked her drops off of the sink and thought they went down the drain. She went through withdrawal for nothing, if she'd been in her right mind she would have realized that there's no way that bottle would fit down that drain."
        Then she started talking Thai with Lek. Lek said "We need speak English, they no understand." I gathered that Tammy spoke very good Thai and communication was easier between them in that language.
        "Uh," I said, "Are you working right now, Tammy?"
        "Well, kind of," she said.
        "I'm sorry, we're in the way" I responded.
        Destiny blushed. "Oh, God, Tammy, I'm sorry! You're making great progress, though. Both of you. Come on, John."
        We went home, ate lunch, and Destiny put on a two dimensional science fiction movie from the twentieth century, and it was funny as hell. I think it was called "Star Wars" or something. Huh? I don't know, it was Italian food, Destiny ordered it. Some kind of cheesy noodles with meat and tomato sauce. Huh? Oh, there's quite a few of those Star Wars movies. After the first one was so successful they made it into a trilogy. Back then computers were still way too primitive to make movies in so it was all models and puppets and probably drawings by hand. Oddly they shot episodes four through six first, and didn't shoot one through three for another twenty years, probably because the technology to do it wasn't there. It was another fifteen years before another was made.
        Then we had beef and beans for supper and watched Forever Old, a new holo.
        We listened to the Vaughn brothers for a while and went to bed.

The last nine chapters are ready to post, but the next 3 or 4 haven't yet been written so I don't know when the next chapter will be available.

What I've been doing is I'll read the whole thing, usually adding stuff and sometimes taking stuff out; I removed about a thousand words from one chapter. when I get to the next chapter to be posted is when they get posted, so I'll post the next few as I write them, then the rest as I edit.

I doubt I'll hit my 100,000 word goal, with so few chapters left to write and only 54,515 words in the manuscript as of now.

So, past all of the theorizing, what ends up happening in pretty much any political system you can name is that power gets concentrated, corrupts leaders, and ruin follows.
The act of trying to separate the theory of a system from the ensuing existential wreckage is among the more amusing acts one can watch other human beings undertake. No Christian wants to admit that Adolf himself made Christian utterances, for a bit of auto-Godwinism.
Thus when evaluating the goodness of a system of thought, I submit that not only should the abstract ideas be considered, but also the historical results of the ideas, and the subjective effects.
For my observation, Socialism offers some emotionally pleasing notions, but, like every single bureaucratic solution I've ever seen, winds up loving the problems it purports to "solve", and leads to stagnation.
Restated: you'll always have a statistical distribution of income. What matters not is that there are rich and poor (that's inevitable), but that there is a current flowing inside the distribution, so that people can reap as much/little as their genius and effort supports.
The big fib of Socialism is that, with just a few more pages of legislation, we can make that current flow "fairly".
Socialism, for some, seems a substitute for a proper faith in something that will endure beyond the final heartbeat.

These two numbers show why impeachment talk is trouble for the GOP

What I find most interesting about the impeachment coverage, though is that nobody is bringing up the biggest thing that makes impeachment a total losing proposition for the GOP:

They can't remove Obama before his term is up

Even if they started the impeachment process this afternoon, it would take far more than 2 years to get all the way through it. Republicans getting on board with impeachment now or before election 2016 are writing their own obituaries.

So, there was a JDRF sale at the company. Or rather, the sale benefited the JDRF. With company themed items, i was interested, for whatever reason.

The sale was Thursday, the email Wednesday (well, after 5 on Tueday), declaring a company "sample merchandise sale". "Pre-Sale 8:00 am - 9:00 am ($10 donation to get in) Sale 9:10 am - 3:00 pm (No charge to get in)".

I sent an email to the sender:

Please excuse my ignorance.

What is a presale?

Which got her response

Pretty much gets you in before the big rush and you have a better chance getting something you really want. Kind of like getting to meet a movie star and get an autograph before having to stand in line and not getting it.

I sent a thank you, and a little later:

I'm sorry to bother you again. I spoke to a couple people and realized I didn't understand two things.

1) Are things able to be purchased during the pre-sale?
2) What is a Sample Merchandise Sale? Specifically, what is meant by "sample"?

to which i received no response. Oh well.

A friend encouraged me to go and to just spend the $10, so i did. I found out a few things:

• Samples are samples of branded items from other companies. That is, the other companies want to sell stuff with this company's logo.
• Almost everything is sold within 2-3 hours.
• You can purchase items during the pre-sale.
• Very few people show up to the presale.
• They have the sale once a year.

The prices were on the board, i wasn't sure what was what. There were a number of tables, a few people, and stuff lying here and there. Model cars of all sorts, Playstation games, shirts, caps, pants, wallets, and more. I found some police trucks on the "dollar table" and grabbed all eight. At first i hesitated from taking them all, but they encouraged me to do so and brought me a box to hold them. I also got a Captain America snap together model truck (Round2 AMT AMT857) and a cap and shirt. I went to pay and they had forgotten to charge me the extra $10, but after i reminded them, my price was $33.

The truck is fun. It's a KiNSMART KT5365, though it is a police truck. The doors open and the spring loaded action lets me pull it back and it rolls forward. It's not a small car, but is about the size of my hand ("Scale 1/46"). It happens to be a F-150, prompting me to ask, "Have you played with a Ford, lately?"

Back to the office, the lady who sits next to me showed no special interest in the truck. That is, until she saw the doors opened and the spring loaded action. All of a sudden she wanted one for her son. Her son is in his twenties and lives out of state. But who's counting? Two other people wanted it for their children. Heh. I find the whole thing amusing.

When my erstwhile boss asked me to meet him downstairs around lunchtime, i came down with the truck to show it to him. It was he that encouraged me to go in the first place and i thought he might want one. No interest. On my way back up, i was toying with it in the elevator. Two people were there of which the woman was eying me strangely. So, i asked with feigned surprise, "What?! You didn't go to the sale this morning?" There might have been a smile or a "what sale?", but it was all over soon. That is kind of out of character for me, but it sure felt good. :) For now at least, one of the trucks is being left at my desk.

At the register, i was asked if an emailed recipt was ok. Sure it was. My email address? I used a plus sign to help identify it. The program wouldn't take it. I hate stupid programmers.

I replied to the email with a thank you and then:

Hope i'm not spamming you. I just have to let it out.

I _really_ should have bought more models.

There aren't any left, are there?

A few minutes later she responded

Not spamming at all. Unfortunately, there aren't. I can follow up and see if any come up in the future though. What kinds are you interested in?

Really? There's a chance? I sent a response starting with:

Thanx for replying. I know i am hoping against hope. :) But it doesn't hurt to ask.

Who knows where that will go?

The Captain America truck is being sold on ebay for around $20. $5 was a pretty deal.

"Featured Videos" for just the afternoon of today included:

* (Something like "boy dies after stunning collapse", before I saw some of these others and noticed a pattern)

* "Boys Perish Soon After This Selfie"

* "Teen Dies While Attempting World Record"

* "Exchange Student Falls to Death"

<Goes there right now to see if there are any more>

* "Study Abroad Trip Turns Tragic" (the still for the video showing a young guy's face)

* "Cause of Death Released for Teen"

What the heck is it with their fascination for young people dying? I just wanted to see how fucking hot it was today (work on-site in fed. govt. bldg, and they don't give us A/C, in SoCal). I don't want to see death porn or whatever.

p.s. "Incredible Photos of People Laying in a Week's Worth of Trash" WTF?

Playing the Godwin card when the topic is really the meaning, ownership, and usage of the symbol "Socialist" (by, for example, the U.S.S.R) is really kinda l4m3.
Yet, strangely, in character.

http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5444485&cid=47519545

"Sustainability" is, as far as I can see, a project designed to keep this culture - this lifestyle - afloat. The modern human economy is an engine of mass destruction. Of course, I am conflicted about this. I live at the heart of this machine; like you, I am a beneficiary of it. If it falls apart, I will probably suffer, and I don't want to. ...

I don't think any "climate movement" is going to reverse the tide of history, for one reason: We are all climate change. It is not the evil "1%" destroying the planet. We are all of us part of that destruction. This is the great, conflicted, complex situation we find ourselves in. I am climate change. You are climate change. Our culture is climate change. And climate change itself is just the tip of a much bigger iceberg, if you'll pardon the terrible but appropriate pun. If we were to wake up tomorrow to the news that climate change were a hoax or a huge mistake, we would still be living in a world in which extinction rates were between 100 and 1000 times natural levels and in which we have managed to destroy 25 percent of the world's wildlife in the last four decades alone."

http://grist.org/climate-energy/i-withdraw-a-talk-with-climate-defeatist-paul-kingsnorth/