Free Republic

In that scene the woman behind the guitarist is John Belushi’s real life wife.

She is also dancing with John at the toga party.

Keep in mind that the Geo-fencing technology that Fani is disputing as proving definitively Wade was there is the exact same Geo-fencing technology that the FBI has been using to get arrest warrants against Jan 6 people.

So which is it?
Not definitive for Fani?
Or definitive for the FBI vs Jan 6th?

Can Trump sell his properties in New York?
And get fair value for them?

He might be best off long term to sell them off to raise the money for the bond so he can move forward with the appeal.

When (if) he wins the appeal and gets his money back, take that money somewhere else to reinvest it.

New York is lost... and will NEVER regain it’s former glory.
The precedent has been set - they can go after ANYBODY and NOBODY is safe from them.

And they will continue going after Trump.... so leave NOW! Get out of their reach.

Ah, I think alcohol testers in cars are already mandated to be in vehicles in just a few years - or they are working on mandating them.

Can’t make this s**t up....

I live in the area - they haven’t done an environmental impact statement (as far as I know).

This is on the edge of a National Forest with several major rivers in the area.

Who trusts Chinese companies to observe environmental rules?

I suspect it would only be a matter of time before they have a big problem.

Reportedly they are going to house several hundred Chinese workers/managers in one of the dorms at Ferris State University in Big Rapids. Don’t we already have a problem with Chinese companies infiltrating out Universities?

I read that the agreement setting up the company says that they are limited to 300 Chinese workers/managers. Who expects that that is going to be enforced?

While all this is going on Ford has suspended further construction on a battery plant near Jackson MI.

There are several other pull backs on EV’s across the industry.

This plant would be half way around the world from their raw materials to make their product and their customers are hundreds of miles away.

Doesn’t make sense to me.

A playa is a dry lake... dry sometimes, sometimes not so dry!

The interesting part of this for me is that the Applegate Trail crosses this playa just a few miles east of the Festival.

What is the Applegate Trail you ask?

The Applegate Trail is an alternate route of the Oregon Trail that doesn’t cross the Snake river or require you to raft down the Columbia river - both of which were quite hazardous.

This alternate branches south on the California Trail just west of Pocatello Idaho. You then follow the California Trail southwest to Imlay NV where you turn west then northwest (crossing the Playa), then north for awhile and finally west out of Nevada into northern California. It crosses northern California nearly to I5 where it runs north along the current I5 corridor.

It wasn’t an easy route with challenges like the Playa and mountains along the way - but it was safer than the rivers.

I came east of of Susanville on my motorcycle one time onto the res before turning south on the access road that leads to Gerlach. If I had realized I was that close to the Burning Man site I would have gone and checked it out - off season of course!

My great great grandfather went to the California gold rush, so it was likely that he took the California Trail to get there.

I have a friend who is a GOP precinct worker in a northern Michigan city of around 10k population.

That person tells me that there are about 1500 more registered voters (voter ID numbers) than there are residents over the age of 18.

That person checked their voter registration information in the states official voter roles - there are multiple voter ID’s attached to their name.

Which means that somebody could vote for each of those other voter ID’s that hadn’t been used by the rightful voter.

The states voter rolls are a MESS!
To such an extent that you have to think it’s deliberate.

Actually, the Army finally broke the resistance of the Comanche by wiping out their horses.

The Army had been chasing the Comanche up and down the panhandle for several years.

They would capture a few of their horses with the Indians getting away. The Indians weren’t worried - they were good at stealing their horses back.

Finally, there was a big engagement where the Army captured around 1700-1800 horses. The Army then killed around 1500 of the horses - just east of Lake City Texas.

When the Comanche realized their horses were gone they surrendered and were marched back to the reservation in Oklahoma.

And remember this - horses are NOT native to North America. They were brought over by the Spanish. Indian life before horses was REALLY tough - it was called the ‘Dog’ days. North American Indians never had the wheel, they traveled by foot dragging everything they owned by travois pulled by dog or humans.

In 2000 I met a SA couple living in the UK.
They were both college educated.
They said 80+% of the college classmate3s had left SA.

One of them had an English grandparent so that person could stay permanently in the UK.
The other did not have an English grandparent so that person had to leave after 2 years.

When they ran out of time they packed up, left the bulk of their earning in a UK bank, and traveled the world for a year and a half.

Then they returned to SA.
There was a outreach program going on to have the SA out-pats ‘return to their homeland’, that ‘there was opportunity’ awaiting them.

One got a job right away, one it took over a year to get a job in their field.

There were quota’s in job hires, and so many slots had to be filled by ‘natives’.
Who also didn’t have to work... or even sometimes show up.

Got an email from them about a year later...
They said the outreach program was a load of sh**
All they wanted of them was to bring back the money they had earned elsewhere.
At that time you could not take money you had in SA out of the country.
So, if you brought your hard earned hard currency back to SA, it stayed there.

Now here’s the real kicker.
Both of these people had had summer jobs in the US when they were in college.
They had desperately tried to immigrate to the US.
We wouldn’t take them.

I’m not buying the 500,000+ job created in January.

It just doesn’t pass the smell test.

There are still help wanted signs all about....

There is a law on the books that defines what bills MUST be paid first if we have no more borrowing limit.

Paying the interest on existing debt first.
Then pay things like Social Security
The last things priority wise is the discretionary spending.

I don’t remember the name of the law, and the exact order of the spending, but the crux of it is we pay out DEBTS first.

The Federal Government is collecting record revenue, so they have plenty of money to pay their DEBTS, just just don’t have money to spend foolishly.

So they are worried about loosing everything.
And they might well loose everything....
EXCEPT the debt.

Wanna bet on that?

I have one simple question -

Did the lawyers that searched Biden’s house for these documents have the appropriate Security Clearances?

If not, lock them up!
And the person who signed out those documents is responsible for their security... which is woefully lacking.... so lock them up too.

At a minimum the person who signed them out should loose their clearances. Permanently.

One other problem with the Osprey is that when you tilt the engine up in desert environments the dust cloud gets sucked in to the engines. Think of the dust cloud as a giant donut with the engine vertical in the center.

That problem causes engine life to be shortened by 2/3.

Thereby almost tripling maintenance costs.

In the 280 the engine stays horizontal and sucks in much less dust.

The reason these plants exist is that George W. Bush got a regulation changed to say that if you get a permit to build a new plant to a specific design that is approved - and you build it to the design - then they have to issue a permit to operate it.

Previously you had to get a permit to build a plant to a design.
Then while you were building the plant the government could change the design regulations - forcing you change what you’ve already built. This could - and did - happen many times during the build.
When you finally got the darn thing built, they sometimes then denied you the permit to operate it.

Midland Michigan had one that was 98% complete - needing only fuel load - that they canceled. So they converted it to - I think - natural gas powered.

Based upon all that, who would want to build one?

We had a nuclear power plant here in Michigan that in off peak hours would pump water out of Lake Michigan up to a nearby holding reservoir - usually at night. Then, during peak usage hours they would release that water back through hydro generators.

I seem to recall that nuclear plants take about 24 hours to ramp and down.

So the water storage idea worked great.

Then the State - at the urging of the greenie weenies - sued the power company because there were too many fish being killed at the intake screens on Lake Michigan.

Forced the power company to give up lots of land along rivers above dams they had built long ago as part of the settlement.

So they are sending 12 BILLION dollars to Community Banks where it will be totally pissed away.

That 12 BILLION dollars would have almost completely built a wall at our southern border.

One of these choices is not the Federal Governments business.
The other choice IS part of the Federal Government’s business.

That’s the part of all this that pisses me off the most.

The Disney exec’s probably own chucks of stock and most certainly have stock option’s as part of their compensation packages.

So it IS sticking it to the execs.

So you saw Steve Jobs cruising around?

He was famous for NEVER having license plates on his car.

What you didn’t know is he had a series of identical high end cars that he leased. You don’t have to have plates for the first 6 months, and when the time was up to get plates he instead got a new car... an identical car.

December 1st at around 3am a guy tried to kick my master bedroom door in.

First he tried kicking in the living room/patio door in - that woke me up, then he came over to the bedroom door (there used to be a hot tub just outside that door) and tried again.

I live in the country and both of those doors open onto the back patio.

I hollered at him, heard some mumbling, then footsteps running away in the snow.

Called 911, Sheriff’s department sent 2 cars which arrived 20 minutes later. There were walking footprint through the snow along the power-line to my house, and running footprints in the snow back to the road.

They caught the guy - he had outstanding warrants - so he went to jail. Claimed he was homeless with mental problems looking for a warm place to sleep and thought my house was abandoned - never mind the kitchen night light being on.