• I wrote this morning’s post last night, before Mark Smith had posted.

    I felt I got it right.

    It feels wonderful to hear him saying the same things I was trying to write about.

            

  • I am NOT a Lawyer. That being said, I do analyze large systems all the time. And as my mentor used to say, “The justice system is just a system.”

    History of the case:

    January 20, 2025: EO 14,169 was signed by President Trump. “It is the policy of the United States that no further United States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President”

    This is the long-term goal. No more foreign aid that is at odds with the President’s foreign policy.

    for programmatic efficiency and consistency with United States foreign policy…immediately pause new obligations and disbursements of development assistance funds to foreign countries

    Stop all foreign aid payments until we have reviewed it for alignment with current foreign policy. Don’t enter into any new contracts while paused.

    To you and I, this seems like a logical and reasonable situation. There was a short fuse put on the order of 90 days. Each agency had only 90 days to evaluate the situation and report.

    Within the EO, there is an allowance for the Secretary of State to issue waivers. If some entity had a need, and it aligned with our foreign policy, they could get a waiver now to receive funds.

    February 10, 2025: Plaintiffs/Respondents (Bad guys) challenged the pause. The alleged violations of the APA and the Constitution.

    February 13, 2025: The District court (inferior to the circuit courts which are inferior to the Supreme Court) granted relief. The court did not give the government (good guys) an opportunity to file an opposition brief.

    The court said that a pause wasn’t arbitrary or capricious, the government had not considered that aid recipients might be butt hurt.

    Having issued the TRO, the State Department started issuing payments again. The difference was that before issuing a payment, they were evaluating how that “aid” aligned with our foreign policy.

    The order, however, allowed the agency defendants to “take action to enforce the terms of particular contracts, including with respect to expirations, modifications, or terminations pursuant to contractual provisions.”

    The government obeyed the rules as set out by the court. The plaintiffs (still the bad guys) did not see the faucet of cash open, so went whining back to the court claiming that the government was violating the court’s order.

    February 24, 2025: One of the plaintiffs filed an emergency motion to enforce the court’s order.

    February 25, 2025: The court held another hearing. The court did not give the state time to file a written response to the emergency motion. The court then granted the motion from the bench. (Not a written order, yet)

    The court did not address multiple issues the state brought up.

    Instead, the court ordered the state to pay all invoices and letters of credit drawdown by 2359 on the 26th.

    This amounted to around $2billion. The order ignored due dates, standard accounting practices of verification, and other aspects of the contract.

    When I send out an invoice, my clients have a certain amount of time to pay the invoice. Normally, 30 days.

    Government contracts often have longer delays built in. IIRC our contracts with the government had 90 day due dates.

    What the court ordered was that the government had to pay invoices received by January 24th even if the invoice wasn’t due for many days.

    After this hearing and new order, the government filed for an emergency stay pending appeal to the D.C. Circuit court.

    The motion asked for an administrative stay by 1300 on the 26th. If not an administrative stay, the government wanted a ruling by 1600. These time frames are very fast, but the government was given about 36 hours to issue 2 Billion Dollars.

    February 26, 2025: The Circuit court asked the plaintiffs (bad guys, still) to file a response by 1300. This is the deadline the state put forth for an administrative stay.

    The circuit court didn’t issue the stay, nor did they rule on the motions. Instead, they dragged their feet. With time running out, the government appealed to the Supreme Court.

    Just before the midnight deadline, Chief Justice Roberts issued an administrative stay. The Court then asked for a response by 1200 on February 28th.

    February 28, 2025: Everybody got their briefings in. The state by normal rules can reply to the response.

    March 3, 2025: The state filed their reply to the response to the motion.

    March 5, 2025: The application was referred to the Court. An opinion was later issued.

    Analysis

    There is so much going on and so many moving parts, it is easy to get lost without picking up the minutia.

    What we wanted was for the Supreme Court to roll up a newspaper and swat the inferior courts across the snoot a few dozen times. They didn’t.

    The district court’s order was labeled a TRO, it was acting as a Preliminary Injunction, and the modified order granted relief that before the adversarial part of the case took place.

    Said differently, the plaintiffs want the money to flow. The government says that they have paused spending. The plaintiffs seek the relief of having the money flow. The court’s original order said, “The money must flow.” The government started spending. The plaintiffs claimed that it wasn’t fast enough. The court “modified” their original order and said, “let the money flow”.

    Thus, the court actually granted the relief the plaintiffs wanted.

    What the Supreme Court’s opinion said was: The application is denied

    This is the takeaway. The government has to start the money flowing again.

    But here are the important parts that aren’t being noticed in some of the postings I’ve seen (all).

    … Given that the deadline in the challenged order has now passed, and in light of the ongoing preliminary injunction proceedings, the District Court should clarify what obligations the Government must fulfill to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order, with due regard for the feasibility of any compliance timelines. …

    This is an order to the inferior court to change their order and correct deficiencies.

    What the government (good guys) were asking for was time to present their case. The inferior district court stripped them of that right. They were not allowed to respond in writing. They were not given time to make appeals safely. In addition, they were ordered to do things which they cannot recover from.

    If they pay some of these bills, there is no clawback available to the government. We know that the entities receiving that money will disperse it so fast heads will spin.

    I don’t know what Barrett was thinking, but she sided with the denial of the application. I don’t trust Chief Justice Roberts to take risks. He much prefers the safer path, the more limited opinions. It always surprises me when he does join with
    Thomas and the rest of that team.

    But, in my opinion, the big takeaway is that the inferior court has to consider feasibility. They have to make sure that their order is clear.

    The other part of this is that this should take the case out of the TRO state and into the Preliminary Injunction state. While a case is in the TRO state, there are limits in what can be appealed.

            

  • Larry Correia of Monster Hunter warned about the Dem’s white signs from Trump’s speech yesterday. He said they would live to regret using white signs, because they’re so easy to manipulate into memes. He was right. This picture says it all (and says the truth, where the originals probably didn’t). This is a good meme. First, it’s true. Anytime a meme can highlight truths (harsh or otherwise) it’s good. There’s nothing nasty about this, BECAUSE it speaks the truth.

    I will say, whether I agree with it or not doesn’t matter. In this case, I do, but I’ve seen a few lately that I didn’t agree with. But when the message that comes across is intelligent, funny to at least some, and not innately harmful/hateful to large portions of people, I think it does a necessary job. There’s a reason that America and some other countries have had political cartoons for a long time. We need to see satirized versions of ourselves to make sure we keep our egos in check.

    I have a strong opinion that if a meme like this causes you to get upset, a meme that doesn’t attack someone’s weight or call them names, then you ought to take a good look at yourself. Over the past few years, I’ve done just that. Getting butthurt happens to all of us, once in a while. If you find yourself feeling that way over the meme of the week, it’s time to look at the old brain and decide what’s going on up there. Dislike of a meme or political satire or commentary should mean you just scroll on. There shouldn’t be any big emotional bugaboo over it.

    But then we have this. I have real problems with this one. First, it’s insulting on a whole other level. It implies several things to me. First, it says that American voters are so dumb that they’d attempt to have Trump in for a third term. Second, it says Dems are pushing hard for a Trump third term (and while I might agree many of them are stupid enough to do so accidentally, this one’s over the top). But most importantly, it gives the impression that the Republicans don’t care about the Constitution.

    As a note, this was being passed around happily by Conservative friends. I asked them why they would have such a poor understanding or respect for the Constitution, and was met with crickets. That upsets me almost as much as the meme itself. I ask myself… why does this meme burn my chaps so badly? Why am *I* butthurt over it? The answer is, I would not be if it were being passed around by Dems as a way of attempting to make the Right look stupid. I would laugh because it meant the Dems didn’t understand the Constitution and the reason for term limits. But when it comes from the Right? Yes, this one hurts.

    As someone dipping their toes into Constitutional waters, who is learning what it means to be a Constitutional Originalist, this makes me outraged. While I understand that Hamilton felt we ought to let Presidential candidates run as often as they wanted, that was a very different time, and a people who were (sadly) less divided than we currently are. Back then, the average length of time in office was two terms, similar to what we have today. I believe the 22nd Amendment was a good idea (and that it ought to be applied to all politicians, but that’s another political rant), and that if we want to be strong Conservatives, we must uphold that idea of two terms being the limit. Washington had the right idea; after two terms, it’s time for the President to retire back to his farm.

    Don’t put out shit like this, folks. It’s just wrong. And while I know most of you don’t care what the Left thinks, this is just the kind of crap that they love to pick up and parade around, and that they can easily prove was created by someone on the Right.

            

  • Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in this case.

    It is difficult to actually conceive of how long the battle for our Second Amendment rights has been going on. It started in 1792 and has continued through tomorrow.

    In the founding era, there were a number of racist and religious exceptions. These were designed to keep arms out of the hands of Negros, mixed race people, Indians, certain religions, and other deplorable. By the 1870s, all of these exceptions were found to be unconstitutional, leaving very few infringements that would survive constitutional muster.

    At this time, temporarily denying the right to people that have been adjudicated violent in a court of law is the only one I know of. See: —Opinion, United States v. Rahimi, 602 S.Ct. ____ (U.S. 2024)

    In the early 1900s, New York City decided to ignore the Constitution and passed the Sullivan Act. The Sullivan Act was designed to disarm those that would stand up to the corrupt bosses who controlled the city. They used a permitting system.

    They claimed that this was constitutional because some people did get permits and everybody could beg for permission from the government for that permission slip. This continued until 2022, with the Bruen decision, the corrupt NYC permitting scheme was shutdown. For all of 10 seconds.

    The Bruen response bill attempted to create a statewide “sensitive” places replacement.

    After the Sullivan Act, the infringers decided to ban handguns, machine guns, and short shotguns. They did this by placing a tax on these guns that was so outrageous that The People could no longer afford them.

    They did not accomplish this. What they got instead was a functional ban on Short Barreled Rifles, Short Barreled Shotguns, Machine guns, and Silencers. By 1936, this was the accepted law of the land.

    Using a saying that had not yet been published, in the late 1960s the infringers took advantage of a crisis to stop mail order gun sales. The GCA of 1968 created FFLs and required in person sales of firearms.

    The claim was that those FFLs wouldn’t sell to bad people.

    When bad things kept happening, they tried more gun control. Mostly permitting schemes that made it nearly impossible for The People to get permission.

    Using another crisis, they got the Brady Act passed. Thank goodness, the NRA was fighting for some level of a win. The original intention was to create a system where buyers would have to get permission from the government for any gun purchase.

    This was in the form of a “background check” with no limit on how long it took or how intrusive it might be. The NRA got the NICS system for us. Along with a “not denied is proceed”. It put the onus on the government to complete the check rapidly.

    In 1986, we got a win with a poison pill. This was the Firearms Owner Protection Act. This was designed to protect firearm owners from being persecuted by the ATF.

    There was a time when describing the internal workings of a machine gun was being construed by the ATF as manufacturing a machine gun. Selling a gun or two could get you sent to prison for not having an FFL. It was bad. There are stories of ATF agents hanging around gun shows seeking people to arrest or FFLs to bust for trivial things.

    The bad part of the Firearms Owner’s Protection Act was the Hughes Amendment. The infringers had realized that the NFA had outlived its usefulness.

    In 1934, the $200 surcharge for transferring a machinegun was unreachable for most of The People. When a M3 machinegun was selling for under 30 dollars, $200 was nearly impossible. An ad for a Colt M16 shows a price of $236.00 plus $5.00 for shipping. By the mid-1980s, the price was around $1800.

    At $1800, a $200 surcharge wasn’t as bad.

    One of the problems that started happening after 1986, when the NFA was closed to new machineguns, was a price boost of $200 every time a NFA item changed hands.

    Consider buying a silencer today. The can costs $500 + $200. If you want to sell the can, you would like to get $700, to recover your costs. Now, this doesn’t work. Given the choice of a used can for $700 + $200 tax or a new can for $500 + $200 tax, you buy new. Thus keeping the costs of silencer’s down.

    After 1986, there were no new machineguns. This means that every transfer increases the cost of that gun by at least $200.

    At this point, the infringers moved to stop the sale of all firearms. The method they decided on was to sue firearm retailers and manufacturers out of business.

    What they did was they found a bloody victim and then sued the FFL that sold the gun. They knew they would not win the case, but the cost of litigation was punishment enough.

    In 2005, bipartisan legislation was passed to stop this lawfare. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) was designed to protect entities in the lawful commerce in arms from frivolous lawsuits.

    And it worked.

    Until Sandy Hook.

    They sued Remington Arms because they owned Bushmaster who manufactured the rifle that the asshole used to murder children and teachers.

    What they claimed was that Bushmaster produced ads that caused the asshole to decide to murder his mother. Steal her keys to the safe. Open the safe. Steal the AR-15 within. To drive the car he stole from his mother to the school. And there murder children and teachers.

    It was all the fault of the manly man ads that Bushmaster used to sell guns.

    The lower state court dismissed the case based on the PLCAA. It was appealed up to the Connecticut Supreme Court. They decided the case could move forward. That was appealed to the Supreme Court, who denied cert.

    Remington was bleeding money, and this case didn’t help. They went bankrupt. The hull of the company had no assets and no people. The insurance companies were on the hook for the money involved in the suit.

    They settled. No gun people were involved in that disaster. It was a purely money motivated decision.

    Which brings us to this case. Sorry for this long history.

    Mexico was approached by the usual suspects. They filed in Massachusetts claiming that all the gun manufacturers were causing horrible things in Mexico.

    The argument goes something like this:

    The Cartels get guns from an illegal gun dealer. That illegal gun dealer purchased that gun from an illegal gun smuggler. The illegal gun smuggler purchased the gun from a straw purchaser. The straw committed felonies when they filled out the 4473 and when they sold the gun. The FFL knows that some of the guns he sells are being sold to straw purchasers. The distributor knows that the retailer knows that he is selling some guns to straw purchasers. The manufacturer knows that they are selling to distributors that know that the FFL is selling some guns to straw purchasers.

    Therefore, the gun manufacture is guilty of adding and abetting murder in Mexico.

    Yeah, it is that bad.

    The lawyer for the petitioners (good guys) gave his opening statement explaining this. He then stated that the path between crime and manufacture had too many intermediate steps to make them responsible. This is known as “proximate cause analysis”.

    He didn’t say anything about PLCAA.

    Thomas started the questioning. The conservatives asked the right types of questions.

    Then Sotomayor stepped up to the plate. And asked good questions. Not great, but good.

    After Gorsuch and Barrette, Kagan asked questions. Again, not great, but good.

    Then the surprise of the day.

    Jackson started asking questions. And her leading question was, “Why wasn’t this stopped by PLCAA?”

    It was a Good question.

    I’m looking forward to reading the court’s opinion. At this point, I am finding myself thinking that this maybe a 9-0 opinion.

    Transcript of oral arguments in 23-1141

            

  • Not great music but it feels right after Z decided to FA and is now FO.

            

  • When I was in elementary school, the principal still had a paddle hanging on the wall behind him. The principal was the person that hired and fired teachers and all other staff at the school. They had significant power.

    To quote Stan Lee, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

    Most principals did use their power responsibly. They used the power of the paddle to control their schools. They used the power to hire and fire to control their staff. And they did not abuse that power.

    Unfortunately, when there are positions with great power, that power attracts people who are interested in power.

    There was abuse. There were principals that abused the power of the paddle, taking it over that line. There were principals that hired and fired at a whim. Being a teacher had no stability.

    The answer that was put into place was to remove the power of the paddle and the power to fire from principals.

    Today, teachers are one of the most protected professions in the country. In my state, it is illegal for anybody to speak negatively of a teacher at a board meeting. You cannot say that a teacher is a bad teacher.

    The only way that I could make that statement was to say my kids have Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Jones and Mr. Kilroy as teachers. Mr. Kilroy and Mrs. Smith do a fantastic job.

    I had to leave “but Mrs. Jones sucks as a teacher” out. To say anything negative was forbidden.

    Our president was given the job as chief executive. He was given the job of commander in chief. He is in charge of the executive branch.

    This is stated in our Constitution, under Article II.

    He delegates power to different people to oversee the executive branch.

    Unfortunately, like those principles of times past, the power to fire somebody at will was abused by some.

    To deal with that abuse, Congress stepped in and usurped the power and responsibility of the president. They did this by passing unconstitutional laws, which have not yet been struck down.

    The Special Counsel shall be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, for a term of 5 years. The Special Counsel may continue to serve beyond the expiration of the term until a successor is appointed and has qualified, except that the Special Counsel may not continue to serve for more than one year after the date on which the term of the Special Counsel would otherwise expire under this subsection. The Special Counsel shall be an attorney who, by demonstrated ability, background, training, or experience, is especially qualified to carry out the functions of the position. A Special Counsel appointed to fill a vacancy occurring before the end of a term of office of the Special Counsel’s predecessor serves for the remainder of the term. The Special Counsel may be removed by the President only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. The Special Counsel may not hold another office or position in the Government of the United States, except as otherwise provided by law or at the direction of the President.
    — 5 U.S.C. §1211(b)

    Our first highlight is almost constitutional. Where it fails is “for a term of 5 years”. Congress does not have the authority to set term limits for appointees. Appointees serve at the pleasure of the president.

    Prior to Trump, this was never an issue. All such appointees tendered their resignation when a new administration came into office. Nobody had to be fired.

    The Special Counsel may be removed by the President only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. is unconstitutional. Why? Because every person in the executive branch serves at the pleasure of the president.

    When congress put limits on when the Special Counsel could be fired, they overstepped their authority as granted by The People through Our Constitution.

    Simple.

    Challenges

    Dellinger was fired. He was fired because the president did not trust him. Or because the gentleman wore bow ties instead of real ties. It doesn’t matter. He serves at the pleasure of The President.

    When he was fired, he ran to the courts and asked the court to unfire him.

    The court granted an “Administrative Stay”, stopping the firing. Now administrative stay is in quotes in all the paperwork by the state (good guys) filed and here because it is a made up term.

    Courts can grant injunctions, temporary or otherwise. Superior courts can issue stays against inferior courts. Courts can issue administrative stays against themselves or inferior courts.

    The common example is when an inferior court grants an injunction or final judgment, and they know the decision will be appealed. Rather than give the parties whiplash, they put an administrative stay on their order go give the parties time to appeal.

    If the superior court does not issue a stay, then the administrative stay expires and the order or judgment goes into effect.

    In this case, the plaintiff (bad guy) claims that he was fired in violation of 5 U.S.C. §1211(b). The Administrative Procedures Act.

    He was. The state (good guys) did not offer any reason when the fired about Dellinger about “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office” Thus, they did not meet the requirements of the APA regarding Dellinger.

    I do not believe that the state attempted to justify the firing under the APA. Instead, the state made a Constitutional Challenge.

    Otherwise known as a Civil Rights case.

    This triggers a bunch of legal stuff I am not confident in my knowledge about. I.e. I don’t know what I don’t know.

    I do know that the challenge should be addressed via the Winter factors.

    The most important of which is the likelihood of success on the merits. Followed by irreparable harm, balance of equities, and public interest.

    The Supreme Court has ruled that any denial of a Constitutionally protected right is irreparable harm. They have also stated that violation of a Constitutionally protected right balances to the person harmed. And that the public has no interest in enforcing an unconstitutional law.

    In other words, if the challenger is likely to win on the merits, they win on all four Winter factors.

    The Order

    It is DECLARED that plaintiff Hampton Dellinger is the Special Counsel of the Office of Special Counsel, having been appointed by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate on February 27, 2024.

    It is further DECLARED that the February 7, 2025 email from the Assistant to the President, Director of Presidential Personnel Office, The White House, announcing plaintiff’s termination was an unlawful, ultra vires act in violation of 5 U.S.C. §1211(b). Therefore, it is null and void, and plaintiff is and shall be the Special Counsel of the Office of Special Counsel for the remainder of his five-year term unless and until he is removed in accordance with 5 U.S.C. §1211(b).

    (“ultra vires” means “beyond legal power or authority”)

    This is the judge saying that the President broke the law when he fired Dellinger.

    The judge reasoned:

    The Court finds that the statute is not unconstitutional. And it finds that the elimination of the restrictions on plaintiff’s removal would be fatal to the defining and essential feature of the Office of Special Counsel as it was conceived by Congress and signed into law by the President: its independence. The Court concludes that they must stand.

    My interpretation of the judge’s reason is: Since Congress created this position in the executive branch, they get to decide the limits on what the President can do regarding this position, regardless of what the Constitution says.

    Conclusion

    Social media is all a fuss about Trump losing. This isn’t over. This case took 3 weeks to go from filed to final judgment. It has already been appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court.

    This is being done on an expedited basis. If the Circuit court does not issue a stay on this, the state (good guys) will appeal to the Supreme Court for a stay pending the appeal.

    It is my belief that a stay will be granted by the D.C. Circuit court or by the Supreme Court. This will stop the delay tactics that the left loves to use. If they want this done, they will have to push to get it done as quickly as possible.

            

  • When I started writing, regularly, for Miguel, I took it upon myself to cover legal cases. Since that time, I’ve learned more than I really wanted to about our justice system.

    As my mentor used to say, “The justice system is just a system.” As a systems’ person, that allowed me to look at cases through the lens of my experience analyzing large systems.

    One of the first things I noticed was that most people reporting on cases didn’t provide enough information for us to look up what was actually written or said.

    CourtListener.com has come to my rescue for most legal filings in the federal system. If you know the court and the docket number you can find that case on CourtListener.

    Once you have the docket located, you can start reading the filings. These are stored as PDFs. Most of my PDF tools allow me to copy and paste directly from the PDF.

    What isn’t available on CourtListener is Supreme Court dockets. I’ve talked to Mike and others, the issue seems to be something about scrapping the Supreme Court website as well as other stuff. I’m not sure exactly what.

    I want to be able to keep up on all the current cases in the Supreme Court, what their status currently is, what has been filed. They entirety of the case. I’m not concerned about most of the cases, but often it is easier to get all than a selected portion.

    To this end, I have code that uses patterns to pull cases from the Supreme Court docket without have a listing of cases.

    This tool will have search capabilities and other tools shortly, for now, it works well enough.

    I am using the PySide6, which is a python implementation of the Qt framework. For the most part, I’m happy with this framework. There are parts I don’t like, which I work around.

    My most recent success was figuring out how to allow me to click on hyperlinks in text to bring up my PDF viewer. This was not as simple as I wanted it to be, but it is working.

    The other night, I wanted to write about a current case. I had the case docket in my tool. I pulled up the docket, clicked on the link, and John Roberts’ order popped up in my viewer, exactly as it should.

    I started writing. Went to pull the quote and nothing.

    Copy and paste does not seem to be functional in my tool.

    Which takes me to the rant, which @#$)*&@$) coordinate system should I be using to get the right text!

    Qt is built around widgets. Every widget has its coordinate system. In addition, there is the global coordinate system.

    Each widget also has a paintEvent() which is when it paints itself.

    To start the process, I capture mousePress, mouseMove, and mouseRelease events. While the mouse button is down, I draw a rectangle from the place clicked to the current location of the mouse.

    I attempt to draw the rectangle and nothing shows up on the screen.

    Through debugging code, I finally figured out that I am not updating the right widget.

    The QPdfView widget properly renders the PDF document in a scrollable window. I have made a subclass of QPdfView so I am catching all paint events. But even though I’m telling the system that I have to redraw (update) my widget, there are no paint events being sent to my widget.

    Turns out that my widget only cares about update signals that require the framing content be redrawn. I.e. if the scroll bar changes, then I get a paint event. Once I figured this out, I was able to tell the viewport that it should update and things started working.

    So now I can draw a frame on the screen. But what I want is to get the text from within that frame.

    I asked the QPdfDocument for a new selection from point_start to point_end. It tells me nothing is selected.

    Where do I currently sit? I have my frame in my PDFViewer coordinate system. I have the PDF document in a different coordinate system. The PDF coordinate system is modified by the scroll bars or viewport. The scroll bars and scroll area modify the actual coordinate system of the viewport contents.

    Somehow, I need to figure out which of these coordinate systems is the right coordinate system to use to get the text highlighted by my mouse.

    I’m tired of this fight.

            

  • Actual filing in the case:

    Dear Judge Englemayer,

    Currently there is an Operation of DOGE, a highly questionable Agency of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, rummaging through US Government Financial, Treasury, CFPB, DOJ Files etc looking for Messy Dirty Scandalous Materials etc.

    Recent US history reveals MAMMOTH financial crimes and criminal networks at the heart of TRILLIONS of financial looting, laundering, and many other RACKETEERING ACTIVITIES. USDA, FHA, FHLB, FANNIE, FREDDIE, SALLIE, FDIC, FSLIC, USAID, Soc Sec, DOD, FERS, DOT, DOD Financial Accounts and many others have been robbed for enormous sums of money, assets and Real Property etc etc etc.

    See

    BING search link

    The enormous FISHING EXPEDITION and HUNT for SARS information and DIRT on Political Opposition is being directed by Donald Drumpft Trump who is an ACTIVE AGENT OF CIA and the SECRETIVE GROUP KNOWN AS “Trump January 6th MAGA Mobsters”.

    It gets worse from here.

            

  • I’m tired, I’m stealing this from Miguel.

    Old readers from the blog know that I view the conflict between Ukraine and Russia as a large version of a war between the Barzinis and the Corleones. For some reason, Ukraine went from being a cesspool of corruption and international crime to an innocent country bullied by Putin, basically they are the George Floyd of the international scene. And I won’t even go into Mr. Former KBG psychopath Putin The Great (in his mind anyway) and all the barbaric things he has done through the years.

    So I know I am going to catch shit from those who have emotional investment on Ukraine, but what Zelenskyy did in the Oval Office went beyond the pale. You are a guest, invited to the most important office in the world and icon of our country a decided to act like it was one of your cheap sketches when you were a comedian and throw a hissy fit.

    If you did not like what was going on or what Trump said, you’d simple courteously express disagreement, stand up, shake the President’s hand and leave without another word said. But what Zelenskyy did was the equivalent of the Liberal assholes that would go to the Family’s Thanksgiving and start a loud of drama about the plight of Muslims transsexuals in the Transvaal region just because you can.

    He was asked to leave the White House which shows the actual occupant has more restraint that I would have because sure as hell he would be tossed out by a couple of marines all the way to Pennsylvania Street.

    PS: We need to DOGE the hell out of the money sent to Ukraine just for shits and giggles.
    —Opinion, United States v. Rahimi, 602 S.Ct. ____ (U.S. 2024)

    Sorry Miggy.

            

  • Planning out your garden beds is important, because where you put your plants matters. Some plants can’t go near one another. Others love to be close together and help one another. It’s a complex dance, and you need to learn a lot to do a good job at growing enough food to at least supplement your stores.

    Luckily, garden beds can be made out of anything. As I mentioned last week, I have beds made out of planks (sort of the standard, and one I actually would no longer suggest), buckets, bins, and tires. Some folks will tell you that tires leach chemicals that can get into your veg, but I have not seen any real evidence of that. Most of the leachable chemicals in the rubber are gone long before tires end up in landfill (which is where you can usually find them, often for free). All items used to grow stuff in should get a good wash before use, and anything small enough to allow it should get at least a rinse every year. I find using Dr. Bronner’s soaps (peppermint or tea tree) work best because they’re biodegradable, won’t harm your plants, and are concentrated so you don’t need a lot.

    My garden, circa 2015.

    In-Ground Garden

    If you have a very large, square (or rectangular) sized patch, you may want to just till it up and use it as-is. It would be a miniature farm field, basically. With no sides, it takes longer to warm up in the spring, but it allows you to rearrange your garden each year (which is good, as you don’t want to plant the same thing in the same space, year after year). When making a very large garden of this sort, you will need to put down rocks, stones, or planks of wood to walk along between rows. While you can just leave the ground as it is, you will find that weeds come up very quickly and will threaten to overtake the whole garden. Also, walking on the dirt compresses it in ways that can negatively affect your plants. Walking on boards or beams, or on a brick path, will keep the garden from being compressed so much, while also keeping weeds down.

    Generally, you want to make an in-ground garden into rows and/or blocks, depending on what you’re growing. Vegetables like peas, beans, and tomatoes are best planted in rows. Potatoes, squash, and corn do better in blocks. You can plan out the garden to keep companion plants together, and keep your veggie foes apart.

    Requirements for an in-ground garden are a large, regular shaped space with enough sun, and the ability to till the soil in some way. While tilling can be done by hand, it’s not easy. You can rent or purchase a rototiller at most hardware stores these days, and there are expensive ones and cheap ones.

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