Guard Dog

Well, isn’t this a hot mess? Biden Admin seeks to extradite a former US Marine who helped a NK diplomat defect in Spain. i’d say that dude is probably screwed. US Presidents over the past 25 years or so have been only too happy to throw American citizens on under the bus just to suck a dictators ••••

On Amazon Kindle Fire is you buy a script to the DC Comics app you get unlimited access to their whole library. That will keep you busy for years

Maybe they just don’t fancy being lined up and shot. Or being “disappeared”

Actor apologizes for calling Taiwan a country Ahem..... TAIWAN IS A COUNTRY. IT IS TOTALLY A FREE AND INDEPENDENT COUNTRY. No apologies

The Panthers forced game six last night with a rookie goaltender. That has been our biggest failing throughout this playoffs. Actually throughout the whole damn season. Weak goalie play. Bobvrosky has been a horrifyingly expensive bust. Drieger Is a second string goalie at best. Throughout the series it’s not like the lightning have had a lot of shots on goal for the amount of goals they scored. The Panthers fore checking and blue line game is pretty decent. Knight got in there last night and made the stops. I wonder if they will stick with him. they are down three games to two. They have to win two more in a row. I don’t know if my heart can take this.

You are correct that nationalism was on the rise and had been in "slow burn" mode for a while. But immigration did help spur it along. Not so much THAT it was happening, rather it was the behavior of some of the immigrants. In Germany and especially France immigrants from the middle east in particular showed little interest in assimilating into the French, German, or "European" culture. Instead they set themselves up in insular communities and became little nations in themselves, both foreign and somewhat hostile to the people who welcomed them in. That was bad. Worse was when the German and French governments are telling their own natural citizens to accommodate themselves to that behavior. Germany in particular refusing to prosecute assaults. In France the police will not even enter some of these "communities". It strikes me that the immigrants to the US, illegal and refugee not the legal immigrants, don't get enough credit. This doesn't happen here that I've noticed. Or heard of. This is purely anecdotal. In all the years I lived in South Florida you could not miss the fact that folks were self segregating. West of Downtown Miami is 99% Cuban. East 79th St and 81st St is mostly Hattian. Opa-lacka was largely Dominican. Coconut Grove was a Latin American melting pot. But none of those made anyone feel uncomfortable or like you didn't belong there. The dangerous parts of Miami like Overtown and Liberty city the folks were near 100% born in the USA. This may be an unfair comparison though. The immigrants drifting into the USA are 95% from South & Central America. Yes the language and culture are different. But not THAT different. Particularly Mexico and the US the differences are more details than gulfs. A lot of folks in Mexico speak some English and a lot of Americans speak some Spanish. That certainly eases things. But the folks from the middle east moving to Europe are sometimes so different they might as well be from another planet. But cultural intransigence and refusing to become part of your new country, or even worse, demanding your new country accommodate YOU only exacerbates hostility. And the national government allowing it breeds right wingers like mushrooms after a rain.

There are days I wish I had had kids. If I could’ve been half as good a father is my own was to me I would’ve done pretty well. But considering how both of my marriage is turned out probably just as well I didn’t.

I have one credit card with some pretty decent cashback benefits. I actually use the hell out of that one. I pay the electric bill by streaming service bill, all the groceries, pretty much everything I buy I buy on that card. Then just pay it off. But the trick is you have to keep the balance for the full billing cycle to get the cash back. So what happens is you wind up one month behind on the payoff. For example this month I paid off The charges from the March billing cycle. Next month I’ll pay off the charges from the April billing cycle and so on. The end result is paying a little bit of interest. But with the cash back benefits you come out a little bit ahead.

Watched The Woman In the Window on NetFlix. It was OK. 6.5/10.

The biggest hurdle facing working families in the United States in my opinion is debt. Credit cards are a necessity. But nobody is ever taught to manage them. The smart ones figure it out themselves. But far too many end up being trapped by them. People in heavy credit card debt are making payments on meals they ate years ago. Things they bought they no longer even have. Look, emergencies happen. Cars breakdown. Water heaters need to be replaced. The kids need clothes and school supplies every year. That’s what credit cards should be for. It’s when you use them to buy things you want but not necessarily need that the enslave you. Buying a new TV is wonderful. But save for it. Don’t buy it on debt pay pay interest on it for years. Too many people are trapped to making minimum payments on credit cards. The card will never be paid off paying the minimum. you guys have heard me harp on this for years. But there was one thing I wish I could make everybody in the world understand it’s the proper management of debt.

It seems to me the ones most eager to tell you about Jesus are the ones who understand Him the least. No excuse for that really. Not like there are not four recountings of eyewitness testimony. One of which (Mark) is likely written by the eyewitness

Agree completely. Vo-Tech is undervalued. I would not say the military experience is undervalued because the educational benefits are pretty much common knowledge. And the truth is even without a draft the US military has never had a major man power crunch. It comes up from time to time but they usually pull out some incentives that make up the difference. By far the best way to get a college education is to pay as you go. Becoming essentially a debt slave for the first 10 years of your professional career as my niece has done is no way to run a railroad. The best way to pay as you go is to have a job that pays you a decent salary. And to get that you need a skill. It’s like building a building. You put the foundation down first. Then the walls. Then the rest. The biggest downside to this approach though is you will be in your late 20s when you finally get that college degree. A lot of folks don’t want to be starting their career at that age. Or will already find themselves with families and different priorities. But life is all about the choices we make.

I saw an ad on LinkedIn. That was about all the research I put into it. But I think the ad said the candidate needed a CDL.

I would like to wish a very happy birthday to my childhood friend Pac-Man. He’s 41 years old today.

Except for the corn and the watermelons the garden has been completely picked. I took 12 hampers of veggies to the Green market this morning and now I’ve got 55 bucks burning a hole in my pocket. And I’ve also got about 10 baskets of veggies in the kitchen that have to be washed bagged or canned or otherwise preserved. Going to be a busy day. The upshot is there’s plenty of great stuff on TV today. The Panthers/lightning playoff game comes on at 11:30. After that the Marlins play the Mets and after that the Habs/ maple leafs playoff game comes on. Definitely a good TV day.

Vanilla

I’m going to echo the sentiments of my friend from out west. Working before higher education is an excellent idea. Not the least reason it allows you to save money so you can go to school on your own terms. Going into extreme debt for a degree does not make a lot of sense. You don’t have to do it that way. In my case my rich uncle paid for most of my education and all I had to do was go to work for him for a few years. He is your rich uncle to if you want to go to work for him but coming right out of high school I think vo-tech should be considered. Think about this for a second. HVAC technicians are always in huge demand and they’re starting pay at entry level is about $60,000 per year. That’s here in BFE Tennessee. In populated areas it’s a higher. A two year course of study at a technical college will set you back about $12,000. Not a terrible amount of debt when there is a high-paying job at the other side of it. If you’re a single full-time employed student going to a university part time is not so terrible a financial burden. Case in point. My niece is graduating from Stetson University down in Florida in a week. She has a bachelors degree in international business. And a job offer making $75,000 per year. But she financed the entire cost of her education. So she has around $80k in student loan debt. That’s like a mortgage without a house. Who’s better off? Her or my theoretical vo-tech student? One other thing to consider. There’s absolutely no rule written anywhere that says you have to graduate with the institution you started your education with. Unless you have a scholarship that is specific to a school don’t pay premium price before your first two years. Go to a community college or a small college. The tuition is literally half. I did my first two years at MDCC in Miami. well it really took me four years because I was going part time but you get the idea.

The comments on the tweet were worth the price of admission!

https://babylonbee.com/news/laid-off-american-construction-workers-dress-up-as-russians-in-hopes-of-getting-job-on-new-russian-pipeline

They did not. In fact a few of them specifically warned against “foreign entanglements“ that sap our strength.