I See Collusion

Posted on 08/11/2023 by Grumpa Joe

There is definitely a trend I see happening in my life. A few weeks ago, I went to my doctor for a regular yearly checkup. Everything is okay, except your thyroid is a little off. We’ll wait a few months and recheck it before I decide what to do next. “Have you made an appointment with your Ophthalmologist for an eye exam?” The answer was “no.” I chose not to push my luck and made the appointment. It has been five years since my last dilated eye exam took place.

This morning, I went to see the Ophthalmologist. “Your eyes are good, except I see a buildup of protien behind the lens transplant in your right eye. This can cause blurred vision, but we can laser it out. “Can you do this in the office?”

‘Yes, but not here or by me. It has to be done by the doctor who does cataract removal at our other office. I’ll set up your next appointment there.”

“The free eye screening I had done by the Lions reported that I have the beginnings of macular degeneration.”

“Hold on; you sound like my wife, asking questions before I’ve had a chance to do the exam.”

By this time, my pupils were as big as the eyeball, and things were blurry. He instructed me to put my chin on the gadget he used to peer into my inner eye. The gadget shined two flood lights directly onto my retina. All I saw after that was a green cloud of light between me and him. “Yes,” he said, “there are signs of macular degeneration present, and since I’m not an expert on retinal issues, I recommend you see a specialist to take a closer look at your retina.” I couldn’t argue with him because there is one thing I have learned by working with the folks who attend OASIS meetings: out of twenty attendees with vision loss, only eight will be there for the same eye-related condition. The human eye is a complex collection system transmitting data through the optic nerve to the brain, where you see it as a picture.

Now, I have two new appointments with doctors I never needed before, and my plan to head south for the winter is becoming complicated. In my mind’s eye, I see a table full of dominoes all standing on end, and I have just tipped the first one over. I see the dominoes falling one against the other and never stopping until when? Until the end, of course, is this all legitimate healthcare or an organized effort to extract as much money from the system under the guise of healthcare? And what is the end, the last domino, the end of me, the end of money, what?

All I know is that I have been taking Lovely to a retina specialist for the past year, almost every two weeks, so she can get a shot in the eye to stop her macular degeneration from getting worse. When she comes home, she is incapacitated for twenty-four hours as she recuperates. This is not a cure. It is a preventative measure to help save what is left of her eyesight.

As my favorite actor William Bendix, often said on his radio program called The Life Of Reilly, “What a revoltin’ development this is.”

Filed under: Aging, Biography, health care, Sarcasm | Tagged: , | 2 Comments »

The Sea Is Rising To Meet Us

Posted on 06/10/2023 by Grumpa Joe

The push to electrify the world is based on the premise that we are causing global warming by burning fossil fuels, which produce carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide in the air makes the air get hotter than what is normal. This warming is then causing the polar ice caps to melt and the oceans to rise. A lot of ice is stored around the planet in glaciers, ice mountains in Antarctica, and just plain ice in and around the north and south poles. One day soon, I will attempt to calculate the volume of ice that has to melt and determine how much the oceans rise to cover seventy percent of Earth. That is a lot of water. My logic urges me to believe there must be some warehouse full of ice that we don’t know about.

Anyway, I’ll get to my point. I believe that we should change our way of thinking a little bit. A scientist would say we should shift the paradigm. Let us assume that global warming is taking place. For the moment, forget about the BS that you are causing the warming by driving to the grocery store. Assume, instead, that in addition to your hot drive to get groceries, the Earth is in one of its normal warming cycles when the sun is flaring extra heavy, the Earth’s orbit is just a fraction smaller, bringing the planet an inch or two closer to the sun. At the same time, our planet begins spewing lava from its core in places like Yellowstone Park, the ring of fire encircling the Pacific Ocean, our fiftieth state, Hawaii, and all the other volcanoes scattered about the planet in places too numerous to enumerate. All of them spewing molten lava at temperatures between 1300 to 2400 degrees Fahrenheit. Compare that to our hot cars emitting carbon dioxide at a measly 400 to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. Scientists have yet to measure any atmospheric temperature of more than 0.000001 degrees, which is well within the measurement error. In other words, they have yet to see a measurable change. I point out that volcanoes have a much larger effect on global warming than cars.

Okay, we will assume that global warming will melt the ice caps, and the water level will rise by 230 feet. Not all the land people live on will be affected by that much water rise. True, the amount of land above water will be reduced, but there will be sufficient land above water to provide a home for Earthlings. Some scientists predict it will take five thousand years of regular global warming to melt all the ice on Earth. I, for one, will not see that happen, nor will any of my kids. But for those worried about that happening, what are you doing about the problem? For one, you are making radical changes that don’t make sense to change the temperature by some immeasurable fraction of a degree to slow it down. If this is a regular warming cycle, we don’t have a Chinaman’s chance in hell to change things. The world has been covered in ice many times before and uncovered in periods long before the internal combustion engine was invented. It will take something more drastic than changing the world to electric cars to make a noticeable change.

A Mechanical Sea Wall in the Netherlands
A Sea Wall Separating the North Sea From and Inland Lake

Here are some things we could be doing:

1. Build sea walls in places where it is feasible. The country of Holland has had a sea wall retaining the North Sea for centuries. Learn from the city of Venice, which deals with tidal sea rises in their city seasonally.

2. Plan new cities into which major populations can move.

3. Build new roads into these new cities.

4. Innovate new boat cities that will survive, and thrive in the flooded areas.

5. Learn how to survive with dikes and sea walls from the Netherlands.

6. Build seawalls to keep the coastline from invading the shore.

7. Build desalinization plants that can bring fresh water to desert areas.

8. Learn to grow food in less space than we use now.

9. Provide housing with smaller footprints to house more people in the same space.

10. Finally, learn that electricity and water don’t mix.

Instead of trying to make a common sense practical plan, we are wasting money and effort on stupid plans to electrify our transportation system and to transport everyone (most likely the elite among us) to Mars to escape the rising water. We have 5000 years to make it happen so if you are really worried get it started today!

Polar bear (Ursus maritimus) with cubs in the Wapusk National Park, Churchill, Manitoba, Canada

The government will have to be involved in any plan this big, so I recommend we stop wasting our time trying to keep Donald Trump from becoming president. Instead, we should abolish Black Lives Matter, because all lives matter. Abandon “Defund the Police, because we need to recognize that our society needs to be secure from the crazies among us. Recognize that being “Woke” only means we treat people of all races equally. Write to your Congressman to ask AI to give us the solution. Put all uber-liberal communists to work building the wall. In fact, I think it might be wise to put all of Congress to work building the seawall around the Capital to protect Washington, D.C., from being overwhelmed by the Potomac River. (Most likely, this seawall will be the first built; God forbid our government should be exposed to a life-threatening situation).

Lastly, write to your Congressman to ask what he plans to do about the sea rising from global warming.

Filed under: Government, Sarcasm, Science | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Commercial Suicide

Posted on 05/09/2023 by Grumpa Joe

The world has truly gone crazy. I have a very hard time believing that so many companies are being duped by governments around the planet. Their commitment to company suicide is admirable but assinine. It surprised me when I heard car company after car company climbing onto the bandwagon of switching to electric cars. Have they gone mad?

Actually, when Henry Ford began making cars, he had no idea where the gasoline would come from. There were no gas stations around the country to supply fuel to the suckers who jumped at the chance to buy a motorized wagon. In the movie Field of Dreams, there is a famous line “Build it and they will come.” I guess the entire world now operates on that philosophy. It is not a bad directive, but I would like to believe that there has to be a tiny bit more behind investing billions of dollars in a technology that is still years away from fruition. I give Elon Musk credit for sticking his neck out to build electric cars, but I don’t give GM, Ford, Chrysler, Mercedes, Volkswagen, and the many other car company’s any credit for rushing into this scheme built on the phenomenon of global warming being caused by humans. Yes, global warming can happen but it is far beyond our capabilities to make it so.

My intention with this post is to add to this fray of commercial suicide. I am proposing two of my designs for electric cars free to the world for use by humanity. Both are just as viable as the cars Musk and others are producing. In fact, these designs may be more reliable and cheaper to build than those in current production.

Design number one.

Cheby V110
Diverse Energy Powered Personal Transportation Appliance

Filed under: Cars, Cartoons, Humor, Sarcasm | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

Bootleg Gasoline?

Posted on 28/08/2023 by Grumpa Joe

A good blogging friend posted a question to one of my recent posts. What will happen if we buy a sixty thousand dollar car and the government outlaws the same in favor of electrics? Well, for one thing, Uncle Sam would never be able to do such a thing without starting a civil war. That is something the liberals would be very unhappy about because they would be the unarmed bad guys that we, the armed conservatives, would be shooting at.

Americans would improvise to keep their cars running. It occurred to me that in January 1920, the government passed a federal law prohibiting the sale of drinkable alcohol. The law caused a lot of pain to the population, and ‘we the people’ began to improvise by bootlegging alcoholic beverages. The government was put into a sad state of affairs because the citizens didn’t pay taxes on any of the booze they drank, or produced. This era also spawned a huge gangster industry that has never been completely eliminated, much like the drug industry today.

Prohibition lasted for thirteen years before Uncle finally cried Uncle, and Congress repealed prohibition. If it takes that many years to prohibit electric cars, the roadside will be littered with millions of these cars abandoned without charge. I hope to live to see the day. Americans, being Americans, would sadly innovate and carry gasoline-powered generators to run their charge-less cars. No doubt, they would be using 100-proof vodka to run the generators.

Filed under: Cars, Conservative, Government, Sarcasm | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

PSA-230523-Smelly Onions

Posted on 28/06/2023 by Grumpa Joe

(Fake News)

I did not write this post. I wish I had. These words best describe her AI as pre-school level.

*********

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In an effort to establish government oversight of the growing role of artificial intelligence in our society, President Biden has appointed Vice President Kamala Harris as “A.I. Czar.”  The President expressed hope that Harris’s track record of slowing the spread of intelligence will be of use.

“She’s been fighting against the threat of intelligence her whole life,” Biden said in brief remarks when the announcement was made.  “When it comes to creating an environment where intelligence is restricted and unable to advance too far, Vice President Harris is more qualified for the job than anyone else.

Radecar dingleflurble (as we understood him say).  “Fears among the general public and leaders of the tech industry alike regarding the increasing growth and prevalence of artificial intelligence have led to calls for more oversight, which Vice President Harris was more than willing to provide — as soon as she was informed what “oversight” means.

“It is my distinct honor to provide real leadership over the growth of artificial intelligence.  Intelligence that is artificial is real, and intelligence that is real may, in reality, be artificial.  It is within that reality that artificiality can become real,” Harris said in something that seemed like a statement.

Sources within the White House indicated Biden was supremely confident that Harris’s leadership in the area of intelligence would be just as successful as her tenure as Border Czar.

At publishing time, Vice President Harris was reportedly already assembling a special task force to deal with the potential threat of intelligence, asking New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to serve as her advisor.

Filed under: Conservative, Sarcasm, Satire | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

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