• Nerd Babble, the good

    git is a source code control system. It is the most powerful or one of the most powerful SCS’s I’ve used.

    Like all powerful things, you can break it in hundreds of different ways.

    One of its most powerful features is the concept of a remote repository. While other SCS were able to have remote repositories, git takes it a step further. A remote repository is just the bare part of a normal git repository.

    This meant that if you had access to a remote server, you could have a remote repository on that server. The issue came when you wanted to restrict what a user could do on that remote server.

    The answer came in the form of small applications that allowed you to configure remote access via a git repo. That access, in turn, allowed users to access other repos. By combining SSH keys with this simple software package, you could have multiple users accessing the remote repositories through a single “user” on the remote server.

    This simple tool grew into a monstrosity called gitlab. If you purchase a GitLab seat, you get all the tools and do not have to worry about the resources used. Unfortunately, this can be expensive if you have more than a few members of on your team.

    There was an option to self-host, but the self-hosted version was missing some very useful features as compared to the paid version. And the thing is a resource hog.

    GitHub went a slightly different route. It offers almost all the features of GitLab, maybe more. It has a free tier. But if you want private repos, again, you have to pay per seat.

    Enter gitea, as they say, “Git, with a cup of tea.” This thing is fast enough in a low resource environment. It has the remote repos. It allows forking and pull requests.

    It has organizations and teams, allow easy control of collaborations. It has everything we need for remote git repos.

    And then the extras. First, it has a good issue tracking system. It is not jira but it is good enough. It has projects with Kanban capabilities. It has a wiki.

    And it looks like all the “extras” are handled as repos. I’m very impressed.

    I feel like we won this round.

    Nerd Babble, the bad

    Computer motherboards are supposed to be standardized. Yes, some manufacturers make custom boards for their custom cases, but in general, standard is better.

    Over the last couple of years, I’ve discovered a small form factor motherboard that is small enough and light enough to attach to the back of a monitor. We have three of these at the house. Thank you to my son for discovering these.

    When looking for NAS enclosures, I discovered 4 bay NAS enclosures that were designed to hold a Mini-ITX motherboard.

    A Mini-ITX motherboard is 170×170 mm.

    This size allows for exactly one expansion slot to the right of the back i/o ports.

    Unfortunately, there is another motherboard that isn’t a Mini-ITX which gets sold as a Mini-ITX. It is 170x190mm. This gives enough space for 2 expansion slots.

    The NAS enclosures only accept the 170×170 motherboards.

    I now have a 170×190 MB that I will have to home.

    Snope and Ocean State Tactile

    My frustration with the Snope case knows no bounds. This case is old.

    It started as a challenge to Kolbe. Kolbe was a challenge to Maryland’s assault weapon ban. It went before the Fourth Circuit court where they assumed that assault weapons were arms under the Second Amendment, and then proceeded to say that they were not protected arms because of “interest balancing”.

    This was appealed and cert was denied.

    A few years later, Bianchi v. Frosh was started. This was a challenge to Kolbe. The district court followed the Fourth Circuit’s opinion in Kolbe and found for the state. The case was appealed. The three judge merits panel found for the state because they could not override an enbanc panel. A motion was made to have the case heard enbanc.

    Regardless, the Fourth found for the state and Bianchi filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court.

    Somewhere around that time, Frosh was replaced with Brown. Thus, the case became known as Bianchi v. Brown.

    The Supreme Court sat on the case until after Bruen.

    After Bruen the Supreme Court granted certiorari, vacated the Fourth Circuit’s finding, and remanded the case back down for a do-over. This is a GVR.

    The Fourth Circuit then had the case briefed in light of Bruen and then heard oral arguments before a three judge merits panel. They were the first circuit to hear a Second Amendment case after Bruen.

    The merits panel split 2-1 in favor of Bianchi. The sore loser refused to write and submit his dissent on the case. This kept the case in limbo for almost a year. At the end of the year, it looked like the merits panel was going to publish their pro-Second Amendment opinion without the dissent.

    At which point the Fourth Circuit decided to take the case enbanc. They required the parties to submit another set of briefs. They then held oral arguments again.

    Around this time, Mr. Bianchi left the state of Maryland. This would have mooted the case, but David Snope was also a plaintiff and thus the case was renamed Snope v. Brown. The Fourth circuit then found for the state, again.

    This case is now before the Supreme Court seeking certiorari, again.

    The court has discussed this case in conference six times. It was distributed for conference seven times, with the first conference being rescheduled.

    Which takes us to Ocean State Tactical. This is a magazine ban out of Rhode Island. It is in the same posture as Snope

    And now we have Antonyuk v. James. This is a sensitive places case. This case has been to the Supreme Court multiple times. Has been GVRed once. It was denied certiorari once, but with a statement by Thomas telling the inferior courts to do it right.

    With all three of these cases before the Supreme Court, seeking certiorari, we might get a trifecta. Here’s hoping.

    The Continuing Lawfare against Trump

    It is difficult to express just how fast these cases are moving. It is my opinion that the people engaging in lawfare had an expectation of stopping this administration dead in its tracks.

    Even when the administration appears to have lost, they are winning. The only case that I’ve noticed that is moving at “regular” speeds is the DoJ v. State of New York. Note, that is not the actual case name.

    We’ve had cases move from district court through the circuit courts to the Supreme Court and back down in a weeks time.

    In the case of Mahmoud, the administration moved so fast that the lawyers filed in the wrong court. Now they are arguing that it was the right court because at that instant of time, M.K. was in a particular location. This does not seem to be the case.

    The left is claiming that Trump is being forced to pay $2 billion dollars. He’s not. The new order says that they have to pay what is actually owed. Not “all billed”. This is another win. That judge was slapped down hard.

    Question of the Week

    Which of the lawfare cases is most concerning to you?

            

  • This is an interesting and challenging case, for me.

    This is a Constitutional challenge to Mahmoud being detained and then deported. His claim is that this is a violation of his First and Fifth Amendment protected rights. Because it is a violation of his rights, the court should grant him relief.

    Mahmoud is an Arab that claims to be a Palestinian. He entered the United States in December 2022 on a student visa to study for a Master’s degree at Columbia University in New York. He completed that degree in December 2024 and is going to graduate in May 2025. He married in November 2024 and got a green card.

    He was granted a green card because he was married to a US citizen. He is still an alien, just not illegal. He has not overstayed his visa, nor is he required to leave when his visa expires.

    His lawyer describes his actions in this way:

    As a Palestinian, M.K. has felt compelled to be an outspoken advocate for Palestinian human rights and more recently, to speak out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the role of Columbia University in financing and in other ways facilitating the genocide. M.K. is committed to being a voice for his People, and calling on the rest of the world to stop providing weapons and support to enable the genocide in contravention with international law.

    This describes his actions as speech. Regardless of how reprehensible that speech might be, it is still protected. The First Amendment protects reprehensible speech, not just the words we want to hear. It is easy to believe in “free speech” if the only allowed speech is that which we agree with.

    This case is seeking the following relief:

    1. Assume jurisdiction over this matter
    2. Declare that the state violated Mahmoud’s First amendment and Fifth Amendment protected rights
    3. To keep Mahmoud in New York
    4. Release Mahmoud
    5. Pay Mahmoud’s legal fees

    Item 3 is mooted because Mahmoud was out of New York before the case was filed. In a later filing they requested that he be returned to New York.

    So we look at the Constitutional challenge. One of the things to note is that not all the Constitution applies to everyone. Some apply to Citizens and some apply to “the people”. The rights limited to citizens are called out by the term “citizen”. The rest of the time the founders use the terms “the people”, “person”, and “the accused.”

    The Supreme Court has issued many opinions that restrict “The People” to those with a strong connection to the community politic.

    With these in mind, it seems clear that Mahmoud is a member of the people. His rights are protected by most of the Constitution.

    Is he challenging a federal law prohibiting the free exercise of or abridgment of his speech? Not directly.

    Instead, he challenges the law as applied to him, His claim is that he can’t speak while detained and that the threat of detention has a chilling effect on his ability to speak freely.

    The state has not justified his detention in court documents — yet. Instead, they are fighting the most relevant parts first. Bluntly, I don’t care if this asshole is deported or rotting in a jail cell. He’s not out there intimidating the people of the United States.

    What the state did was they revoked his visa and his green card.

    When can a green card be revoked?

    5. Security-Related Reasons

    Green card holders who engage in activities deemed threatening to U.S. national security can lose their status. This includes involvement in terrorism, espionage, or other activities that undermine the safety of the United States.

    Examples of Security Violations

    • Membership in Terrorist Organizations: Being part of or assisting a terrorist group can lead to immediate revocation and deportation.
    • Espionage or Treason: Activities related to spying, intelligence gathering for foreign governments, or attempts to overthrow the government are considered severe violations.

    Consequences: In addition to deportation, individuals accused of such activities may face criminal prosecution and significant legal penalties.

    —How a Green Card Can Be Revoked – Rebecca Black Immigration Law, (last visited Mar. 12, 2025)

    What this means is that the state need only prove that Mahmoud was part of or assisting a terrorist group. Hamas is a designated terrorist group.

    Conclusion

    The left loves to talk about hate speech. They love it because it allows them to justify their violence. Hate speech is always in the eye of the offended.

    “Violent” speech is violence, according to the left.

    Violence can be countered with violence.

    Therefore, you saying something that they disagree with is hate speech, which in turn is violence, which means they can punch you.

    In the other direction, any real, physical violence they engage in is “just protests” and is “speech” protected by the Constitution.

    They are going to lose this one. I’ve seen to many good filings from this administration to believe they aren’t going to win. Maybe not at the district level with all the rogue inferior judges, but they will win higher up.

            

  • This case is distributed for Conference on 3/28/2025. This adds an interesting twist on our Second Amendment cases before the Supreme Court.

    Could this be combined with the Snope (assault weapon bans) and Ocean State Tactical (magazine bans)?

    This case is where New York State’s Bruen tantrum replaced “proper cause” with “good moral character” and then proceeded to make almost all of New York State a sensitive place.

    We are living in interesting times.

            

  • I’m going through some personal stuff right now, and it’s been rough. Some of the responses I’ve gotten to my last few posts have left me feeling raw and frustrated, and unsure of what to do and say going forward. After some long talks with Chris and others, I’m writing this to try and get some general thoughts out that I hope will help you guys and me.

    First and foremost, if something is labeled “From Behind Enemy Lines,” then I am doing just that – talking about the Left, FROM the Left. That is what I’ve been asked to do, when I’m posting under that banner. I’ve been asked to give a Left perspective, or at least a “more Left” perspective, so that you guys can learn and to be sure that Vine isn’t an “echo chamber.” I am going to be more obvious in it, adding FBEL at the top of posts that are “representative Left” or “explaining Left” so that they stand out.

    So my last post was about the memes I’d seen floating around, and in particular, about the Trump 2028 one. From where I’m standing, there are three groups of people. First, we have the far Left. They’re going to do what they’re going to do, and nothing you or I say is going to change it. I ignore them. Second is the group of “normal Left” or what I tend to call “thinking Left.” These are people who have chosen willfully to be Left of center, but are self-consistent, thinking, and reasoning. I might not LIKE their reasoning, and I may think it’s false in the grand scheme of things or missing important points, but they’ve shown me that they give actual thought and consideration to their position. I have many friends in this group.

    The third group consists of people like me. We were a little Left of Center, if you asked us. People on the Right just lumped us in with “The Left,” and the Left considered us oddities and “too far Right for comfort” but generally tolerated us. We are no longer “a little Left of Center.” We are deep state Right, at this point, because the Left has shifted so far Left that we’re not even close anymore. Some, like myself, have chosen to take the couple of steps Right to join the rest of you under the Conservative tent, albeit in our own little corner while we acclimate. Others are dithering out there on the sandbar, wondering where the hell the tide went and why it’s so fucking cold these days.

    (more…)

            

  • What does this have to do with the Second Amendment?

    It appears that Mel Gibson is a prohibited person.

    If you read §922(g) closely, you will find that prohibited person includes people who have not been convicted of a felony nor any of the things we might consider reason to prohibit.

    It gets better, under Rahimi, a person can only be prohibited temporarily and when found to be violent.

    This means that many of the cases challenging the §922(g) sections are likely to win on the merits. The Range case for example. A non-violent felon. He pleaded guilty to fraud. He did not claim income from his lawn care side hustle when he was asking for financial help.

    He served no time. It has been many years since Range pleaded guilty to this crime.

    Oh, it wasn’t a felony when he pleaded guilty.

    Over time, crimes that were not “felonies” under §922 have become felonies. I.e., if you can be jailed for the crime for more than a year, then it is a felony under §922, even if you serve no time.

    Mel Gibson pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault on his ex-girlfriend. He paid a $500 fine and put it behind him.

    Turns out that this misdemeanor assault actually triggers §922(g) and he is now a prohibited person.

    He has been attempting to get his Second Amendment protected rights back.

    Pam Bondi?

    A lawyer at the DoJ was fired. She ran to the New York Times to whimper about how unfair it was. About how she was the victim of the Evil Trump administration. She was doing the right thing.

    What was she claiming to be the “right thing”? She claimed that disobeying her superiors was the right thing. In particular, she “couldn’t sign off” on a DoJ’s working group working to get gun rights restored to The People.

    Yep. She mentioned that she was told to work to restore Mel Gibson’s rights and refused. She seems to feel that nobody should have gun rights, and that keeping as many people from having the right to keep and bear arms is the “right thing” to do.

            

  •         

  • One of the great things about following people on X is that you get news faster and from different points of view.

    One of the worst things about X is that you get idiot NPC talking points dumped into your feed constantly.

    For the last three weeks, every weekend, there is a spat of NPCs telling me that Trump has gone golfing. That he has gone golfing every weekend since he took office. That his golfing has cost some number of millions of dollars. The number is the same across every post.

    This week, the talking points included that Trump was golfing while there were fires on Long Island. How can he be so cruel. And he went golfing last weekend during the fires in North and South Carolina.

    Last weekend it was about how the fires in the Carolina’s were happening despite the claims of good forest management. Claims that there wasn’t water to fight the fires. While showing the same video of firefighters using water to fight the fires.

    The biggest NPC talking point has been on “Tax cuts for Billionaires.” The claim is that Trump is taking money away from veterans, the sick, and the elderly to give to his “billionaire friends”.

    If you open the curtain and peek behind it, you find that they are lying.

    So let’s do a little numbering.

    We are going to look at somebody making $12000/year, $50,000/year, $100,000/year, $500,000/year, and a million dollars per year.

    We use a progressive tax rate, so as your income goes up, so does your tax rate.

    Income Tax Rate Amount
    Paid
    $0 10% $0
    $11,601 12% $1,160.12
    $12,000 12% $1,208.00
    $47,151 22% $5,426.22
    $50,000 22% $6,053.00
    $100,000 22% $17,053.00
    $100,526 24% $17,168.74
    $191,951 32% $39,110.98
    $243,726 35% $55,679.06
    $500,000 35% $145,374.64
    $609,351 37% $183,647.49
    $1,000,000 37% $328,197.62

    Somebody with an income of $1,000,000 pays 328 thousand dollars in taxes. If everybody got a 1% tax cut, he would get to keep $3,281 of his money. The person making $50k per year would get to keep $500 of his money. Oh my goodness.

    So what are these huge tax cuts that “Trump gave his billionaire friends?” The Trump tax cuts apply to everybody. The NPCs claim that everybody getting tax cuts is not fair because a millionaire gets $3k back, but regular folk only get $500 back. This is so horrible, that they proposed an amendment that would have increased the tax rate of people making more than $999,999.

    This would have added another tax bracket. They are literally saying that if we don’t raise the taxes on those making more than $999,999 we are giving a tax cut.

    It doesn’t make sense to anybody except NPCs.

    This entire talking point also avoids the question of how billionaires make their money.

    If I was working a full-time job and pulling in a billion dollars per year, I would be charging $480,769.23/hour.

    It isn’t happening. A million dollars per year income is only $480/hour.

    Yes, there are some professions that charge at the $500 to $1000 per hour rate, but they are generally not taking it all home. Instead, that hourly rate goes into paying for many people.

    What a millionaire does is they make money by investing. Pretend you made $174,000 in 2024. After paying all your bills, you might take home $50 to $75 thousand for fun stuff.

    Now, supposed you took that $50k and invested it in a stock, like $TEM in January 2025 at $32/share. If you sold it at the end of February 2025 at $89.44 you would have made a profit of $89k. Not a bad return over the course of a month.

    This is a short-term capital gain which gets taxed at your as above, according to your tax bracket. On the other hand, if you hold that stock for a full 12 months and then sell it, you would only get taxed at 15%, not 24%. That is a 9% savings in taxes.

    If you were to have a taxable income of over $533k/year, then your rate would be 20% on that $89k, not 37%. That translates to savings of $15,140.

    Trump is not talking about cutting the capital gains taxes. He is talking about income tax changes.

    Representatives make $174k/year. $TEM was one of the purchases a representative made in February.

    This is the same language game that congress critters make every year. “We made cuts to the budget!” translation, “We aren’t going to spend as much as we wanted to. We are only spending $500,000 more, not the $3.3 million more we wanted”

    A cut is when the amount spent this year is less than the amount spent last year.

    I believe that I managed to lose some of my article. Still, it is just a rant.

            

  • Or “You don’t know what you don’t know.”

    The short of this is that I’ve been building PCs for years. They are LEGO blocks. You make sure the parts will fit together, and it all just works.

    As an example, I “knew” that LGA sockets were for Intel CPUs. Last night I learned that LGA just means the motherboard socket has the pins. PGA means the CPU holds the pins.

    How did I learn this? I was researching AMD CPU sockets and learned that the AM4 socket was of the PGA style, while the AM5 socket is of the LGA type.

    I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

    We run a local data center. It is still a work in progress. We have enough disk space, but not enough redundancy. We have some compute servers, but not enough.

    We try to do some upgrade every month, trying to improve things. The last improvement was another node in the Ceph Cluster.

    After spending weeks researching, I found a 4 bay NAS enclosure that took Mini-ITX motherboards. This felt just about perfect.

    It uses a flex style power supply, which is balanced for the actual load of 4 HDD and a motherboard. 350 Watts is what I went with. Thus, it draws less power than older machines.

    Finding a Mini-ITX board was another research hell. What I wanted was MB with 4 SATA 3.0 ports, 1 or more SFP+ ports, one gigabit Ethernet port, at least 16 GB of memory and NVMe support for 512 GB of storage.

    I couldn’t find one. I haven’t given up, but I haven’t found one yet.

    After searching, I found a Mini-ITX MB with an LGA 1155 socket, 4 SATA2.0 ports, a 10/100 Ethernet Port, 2 DDR3 slots (16 GB), and a PCIe slot.

    This might seem low end, but it meets our needs. HDDs only require 3 GB/s to keep up. We would need 3.0 if we were using SSDs.

    The 10/100 is useless for moving data, but meets our needs for a management port. All in all, a good choice.

    When all the parts arrived, I couldn’t get the MB installed. The fan was too tall. I got a better cooler that was a low profile style. When that came in, I installed the board. It was painfully tight getting everything in. Took me over an hour to get all the cables hooked up just right.

    Everything went well until I went to put the cover back on. At that point, I found the cover didn’t fit “because the case had the motherboard too close to the edge.”

    I fixed that in the machine shop. Grinders and cut off wheels to the rescue.

    Everything goes together.

    After everything is configured and running, I slap a drive into the case and it works. Wonderful. Final step? Install the SFP+ network card.

    It doesn’t line up. The damn thing doesn’t line up with the slot in the back.

    After mulling it over for way to long, I made the cut-out in the back wider and moved the standoffs. Machine shop to the rescue.

    Except I had a bad network card. Easily fixed via a replacement. No big deal.

    After over a month of fighting this thing, making massive changes to the case. Taking it entirely apart to get the motherboard in, the machine is now in production.

    Yesterday the motherboard for an upgrade arrived. The case I bought to hold it had the PCI slot moved over. This looks like it will all just work.

    Except that when I go to install the MB, I can’t get it to fit into the case. No big deal, I’ll take this case apart too.

    But the board doesn’t line up. It doesn’t line up with the standoffs. It doesn’t line up with the back slot. It doesn’t even line up with the onboard I/O baffle.

    At that point, I measured my Mini-ITX board. It should be 170mmx170mm. This board is not. It is 0.8 inches to wide. It isn’t a Micro-ITX nor is it a Mini-ITX. It is some none standard PoS.

    I’m spitting mad at this point. I’ll put everything back in boxes until the new MB arrives. When it does arrive, I’ll be able to retire an older box that has been holding this data center back.

    Everything now fits.

    It wasn’t the case that was the issue with the last build. It was the motherboard. Time to update the reviews I wrote.

            

  • Years ago, I was in conversations with a lady, we agreed to meet for coffee and then a movie. When I arrived, she was busy with other people. I waited. When she was finally done with the others, I asked her which movie she was interested in seeing.

    “I’ve decided I don’t want to go to a movie with you.”

    My reply was, “I’m disappointed with you.”

    I walked away. Later, I heard through the grapevine that my sentence had nearly broken her. “I’m disappointed” carries great weight, emotionally.

    For years, I’ve felt like I’m in a political battle where the other side gets to decide what rules I fight by and what rules they fight by, but their rules are not the same as mine.

    I remember every time somebody called me a murder for wanting to keep my guns. Every time I was blamed because some asshole killed children. I was to blame for the blood spilled in the cities.

    If only I would consent to common-sense, reasonable gun laws. It is all about safety.

    After Sandhook, I was hearing the same things again. One of the people doing it showed up on my Facebook page.

    I proceeded to call her a heartless subhuman for wanting children to die. Why wouldn’t she agree that it was just common sense to have teachers armed to kill assholes that would harm our children? How could she be so selfish?

    Every attack that had ever been leveled at me, I threw back at this lady.

    Turns out that his lady was a friend’s aunt. They came to me and asked me to tone it down. To back off because I was being hurtful. She was a teacher and had spent her entire career helping children.

    I did. I took the highroad, again.

    This is where we always went.

    When Trump v0.1 came on the scene, the Democrats loved him. They loved him because they knew he was a Democrat at heart. They wanted him to win the primary because he would be easier to beat than Hillary.

    Trump v0.9 showed up when he became the Republican candidate for President. The Democrats turned on him like a pack of hyenas.

    Trump v1.0 started when he took office the first time.

    One of the reasons he won that time was because he was fighting back. He was calling the left out for their lies. But he used belittling terms for them. He fought from the gutter where the left lives.

    Ally was so upset about his words that she couldn’t accept his deeds. Almost every interaction regarding Trump was her telling me about something he said that was mean.

    She was still part of that leftist mindset. That mindset that looks for a reason to throw a person out of the tent. If a person is in perfect lockstep with the sheep of the left, then they are kicked out.

    Every conservative was unacceptable to her because they had done something that disqualified them.

    She has come around. But some of those old habits die hard.

    We got into a big argument after a Republican representative introduced the mentally ill representative as “The representative of ??? Mr. ???” sorry, I don’t recall the names.

    When I was talking at dinner, I mentioned this and mentioned that I got a chuckle over this.

    She was very upset with me. “I expect better of you.”

    From her perspective, I was being mean to that ill person. It would have been easy for the Republican to introduce the other member as “Representative X”. No Mr. No Mrs. No Miss. Just “Representative”.

    Yeah, she could have. But I was pleased to have her punch back.

    But everything she observes from her new group gets that same, “I expect better of my team” treatment.

    I read Alito’s dissent. It didn’t pull any punches. Thomas joined him in his dissent. When those two are in agreement, then the right thing to do is what they are saying.

    Barrette didn’t agree with them. She voted with the majority to deny a stay pending appeal.

    Having mulled over it for a few days, I have to agree with Amy. And it is one of the reasons why she is a good choice for the Court.

    I do not want somebody who votes the “right” way on my issues. I want somebody who respects the law and follows the constitution, regardless of where it leads.

    I am sure that it was hard for her to withstand the powerhouse that is the Thomas-Alito team.

    The short of it was that Roberts made the issue moot. This saved everybody time. It kept the status quo for a bit longer. And it put the case on the correct footing for an appeal of the preliminary injunction. In addition, even the denial was a win because it slapped the inferior courts square in the face with their rogue behavior.

    I expect more of my justices. Amy gave me more. It hurt, to be sure, but she did the right thing.

    When I see Trump 2028 I know it is not going to happen. The push for allowing a president to have three terms happened near the end of the Obama presidency. The left wanted their chosen one to have another term.

    I didn’t like the idea then, I don’t like the idea now.

    Because I don’t see any real push to get Trump a third term, I know that Trump 2028 is a troll. It is a good troll because the left can’t treat it as a joke. They can’t because they were serious when they were trying to get Obama a third term.

    When I see “Trump 2028” posted on the idiot signs held by Democrats during the address to the joint session of Congress, it makes me smile even more.

    It trolls on so many levels, and it makes me chuckle. It isn’t being pushed by anybody seriously. J.D. 2028 is what I’m actually hearing. The serious faces of the people holding idiot signs makes it work more. The fact that if it happened, the Democrats would have an even bigger meltdown. There would be accusations all over the place.

    And not a single Democrat would admit that they had seriously looked into it for their guy, for Obama.

    As a practical matter, getting a third term for a president requires a Constitutional amendment. If somebody were to propose one, I would be on the phone to my Senators and Representative to tell them to vote against the amendment.

    Until that happens, this is a great troll. I’m not going to let realities get in the way of good humor.

    As many have said, the left can’t meme.

            

  • If you live in any of the Plant Hardiness Zones that are 1a through 6b, then you need to know how to start your seedlings indoors. This is something that can be a lot of fun, but it’s a lot of work as well. Doing it right takes effort and time. The end results are worth it, though! Of course, you could simply buy “starts” (ie seedlings) at your local farm store, but what if TEOTWAWKI has happened, and there are no more farm stores? That’s right, you need to know how to do this.

    There are various methods for starting seeds, but the one I’m going to talk about today is indoor sowing. The basics of it are fairly simple: fill containers with soil, add seeds, care for them, and voila, you’re ready to plant as soon as the ground is warm enough. This can give you as much as 45 days of extra growing time for vegetables, and that gets important when you’re in New England or any of the northern states.

    Common plants to start indoors include tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, leeks, eggplant, kale (and other large, leafy greens), sweet and hot peppers, cabbage, most flowers, and most herbs. This is obviously not an exhaustive list, but I picked the most common ones to start indoors. Tomatoes are definitely the most popular, with peppers coming in a close second. All of these plants will transplant well from indoors to your outdoor garden later in the spring and early summer.

    On the other hand, there are a variety of plants that should NOT be started indoors. The reasons vary, but generally speaking it’s because they either grow quickly, have incredibly sensitive roots and will die if transplanted, or they like the cold. Common plants that go direct to the garden include beans, beets, carrots, radishes, some lettuces, peas, squash, corn, spinach, and root crops like potatoes and sweet potatoes.

    The first thing you’re going to need is a list of what you want to grow. For a typical first garden, I suggest the following: bush beans, peas (either snap peas or shelling, your choice), tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini (if your family likes them), broccoli, kale and/or cabbage, spinach, and one or more of beets, carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and winter squash. It seems like a small list to me, and it may seem huge to you, but this is a very small but decent kitchen garden for a first year. Add to that your herbs, and you have the beginning of a new hobby that will engulf your life.

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