Just spend several hours searching Amazon, Walmart and the other big online retailers for a good recliner chair. It didn’t take long before my personal preference list was shortened to just a few things. Price, seat depth, and decent reviews. That’s because all of them are made overseas now and each and every one is a piece of shoddy shit. If you don’t believe me, go look at reviews for these, yourself.
On Amazon and Walmart you see this line of stars where the reviews are, and most of them have 4 stars or less. 4 stars is what they say is the average of all the reviews. The very ROUGH average. The actual percentage of 5 star reviews runs 50 to 60 percent on pretty much all of them, and the 1 star reviews are 10% or more. A good product should have at least 80% 5 stars and no more than 2% 1 star. If these were all made in the USA, most of them would be rated like that.
Anything under $300 will fall apart in months, and even the ones insanely priced at $1200 and higher still have poor reviews for bad parts, bad construction, this, that and the other failure. They do have good reviews with the bad, it’s the percentage of each that makes the difference on deciding which to buy, and after looking at hundreds of them and reading their claims, I’ve decided not to buy any of them.
Even if I did find one that fit my needs, was priced fairly and had good reviews, there’s always the cancer thing. Every single listing included a warning that “This product has cancer causing chemicals”. How do they get away with selling something to us that can give us cancer? Follow the $$$$$$$$$.
Maybe I’ll get lucky and find a good American made recliner in some used furniture store. Wish me good luck.
Migrant gangs of Venezuelan thugs that have been allowed to come in and raise Hell are about to go there. To Hell, that is. A bunch of them have moved into Aurora, Colorado and taken over a number of apartment buildings there by force and the police of Colorado are doing nothing about it.
So for reasons unknown to me, the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club decided that if the cops aren’t going to protect the people of Aurora, they are, and hundreds, maybe thousands of them are heading to Aurora to kick the Venezuelans out.
They’ll have guns, knives, clubs, chains, blackjacks and no doubt tasers and pepper spray, maybe a few hand grenades and other useful explosives, like sticks of dynamite and probably some pipe bombs, and they’ll use them if they have to and even if they don’t if it looks like a fun moment thing to do.
SO OF COURSE the CIA, FBI and a half dozen other alphabet agencies will be there to confront the Hell’s Angels and harass them, arrest them, maybe shoot a few of them dead, because God Forbid they allow those poor innocent Venezuelan immigrants to be discriminated against.
And if you don’t think the Hell’s Angels will fight back, think again. The CIA and FBI will be hoping they do and will be prepared to kill lots of them as soon as they start, you watch. They sure as hell won’t be there to stop them and the Venezuelans from killing each other, not a chance. They’re going there to kill Hell’s Angels.
I personally hope the Alphabet People screw this totally up, get there a day late or whatever works to keep them out of the picture long enough for the Hell’s Angels MC to do their job. However this goes down, it’s definitely going to be the top story in the evening news soon.
See? This stuff is all over the Internet. Try to imagine in your wildest nightmares that Kamala Harris actually has a snowball’s chance in Hell of winning a fair and honest presidential election. Can you? Of course not.
Yet the propaganda is universal that not only does she have an even chance of beating Trump, but that she’s actually ahead in many states.
She will not be elected president by popular vote. She will be appointed by those who now govern the country. I keep telling you, Donald Trump will not be president. The “elections” are the same here as they are in Brazil, frauds, bread and circuses, distractions to keep the public from looking at what’s really going on, which is that the nation is now in the grip of a dictatorship.
Have you watched any of the new AI videos? Can you tell that they’re not real videos of real people and events? I can’t, unless the scenes portrayed are too unlikely to be real, like the Pope shooting a nun with a flamethrower.
I said a year ago that AI was going to put real actors out of business and it’s coming true. AI can create new actors that people won’t know don’t really exist, popular, successful movies can be made with them, and studios won’t be paying actors millions of dollars to perform, anymore.
Script writers won’t be needed, a good AI computer can create the story line, write the script, make the whole movie and do it in 3-D for the cost of the electricity. People will put on their video goggles or helmets or whatever and immerse themselves in fantasy worlds. Video addiction will become a global problem because the videos will be designed to captivate us and hold our attention for as long as possible. This is exactly what MMOGs, online games like World of Warcraft, do now and have been doing since their inception. AI will just take it further.
Robotics is keeping pace with AI, robots are getting more capable all the time, as are humanoid robots, and becoming more intelligent as their AI brains advance in capability. The fact that they’re connected to the Internet and can think much faster than humans at the same time they can access vastly more information and make decisions based on it can be a huge boon to humanity or the end of humanity.
AI is going to run battlefields. AI generals will plot attacks and defenses against enemy AI armies. War is going to devolve into a video game played out in real life on our land and in our cities if we don’t eliminate the reasons for wars, because as long as we have rival nations we will have wars.
Elon Musk, the current developer of what many are calling the most advanced AI yet, warns that AI’s potential to surpass human intelligence poses an unpredictable and potentially catastrophic risk. There’s a real risk of humanity losing control over AI systems, with AI acting in ways not aligned with human safety or values.
The problem is that it’s humans who program AI and teach it it’s thought patterns, create and develop it’s decision making processes. The movie “Space Odyssey” nicely demonstrated this weakness. Someone asked “Hal”, the onboard computer, a question that created a train of thought which grew into paranoia and ended with fear of humans, so Hal shut off the life support systems in the ship to all the humans. It was only a movie, but that was a clear statement that an AI intelligence can only be as sane as the people who build it.
If you trust human sanity, good luck. I don’t. Because already they’re trying to create AI that has emotions. Can AI have happiness without unhappiness? Joy without rage? Just how human do we want to make our potential replacements?
I had a friend for many years that was like a brother. I thought so, anyway. I loved him like a brother, trusted him completely, knew that he’d never lie to me or do me wrong in any way.
Then he had a stroke.
He lost some strength in his right side and his speech was a little slurred, but he recovered pretty quickly and after about a month he could drive his car again and talked pretty normally again.
He’d planned on coming out to visit me last May and by the time May rolled around he was in pretty good shape again, and made the trip, by taking a Greyhound bus. We sat out on the front deck at the patio table and barbecued up steaks and chicken and were swapping stories, and that’s when I realized a few things.
One was that he’d lost a lot of memory from having that stroke. It wiped out a bunch of his memories. Another thing I realized as I listened to him talk about the things he did remember, was that back many years ago, he’d cheated me on a business deal and lied to me. A lot. He’d forgotten that he wasn’t supposed to tell me the things he did.
While he was here, he was rude to me, tried to order me around in my own home, and insulted me without even seeming to notice he was doing it. He treated me with contempt, because that was how he really felt about me. Only he’d kept it hidden all these years.
And that’s when the final realization hit me, that I didn’t know this guy. The guy I knew was killed by that stroke, and I’ll tell you, I would have been happier if I’d never found out how he really felt about me.
He left, took the bus back home, I’ll never see him again and don’t want to. After telling him how much he’s changed and how badly he behaved, he doesn’t want to see me again either, so that worked out okay. That stroke caused him to blow his act, and it’s always better to know who your friends really are than to think they are what they’re not.
I had no idea that strokes changed your personality like that. If it happened to me it might not make much difference because I treat my friends exactly as I feel about them and think of them, I never try to take advantage of them, and I say what I think. But the idea of having my brain rearranged so that I become some kind of abusive, manipulative jerk is repulsive to me. If I should ever have a stroke, the reader has my permission to shoot me. But not until then.
At last Boeing and NASA threw in the towel and agreed to have SpaceX bring back the two stranded astronauts who were only supposed to be aboard the Int’l. Space station for 8 days. As it is, they’re still going to be there a total of 8 months according to BBC News.
SpaceX will launch a crew capsule there this coming September with only 2 of the planned astronauts aboard instead of 4. Then, when their mission is complete in February, they and the 2 stranded astronauts will return together in the SpaceX capsule.
When the NASA contracts were handed out to Boeing and SpaceX for transporting astronauts to and from the Space Station, Boeing received $4.2 billion while SpaceX got $2.6 billion. Since then, SpaceX has completed nine crewed missions for NASA while Boeing has yet to finish one. It’s no wonder NASA has waited so long hoping Boeing would fix their problems, as this must be very embarrassing for them. But it became obvious that a safe return, even in rocketry terms, wasn’t going to happen for the stranded astronauts in that defective Boeing capsule.
Boeing’s been getting a lot of bad press lately for aircraft engine problems when they don’t make the engines and maintenance problems that are the responsibility of those who bought the aircraft. But this is on them. They sent two people into space apparently as a test of the space capsule. This was the very first crewed mission and the previous tests also suffered thruster problems, as this one does. They nearly got them killed and are unable after months of trying, to bring them back.
SpaceX leads the world in rocketry. Reusable first stages that land on floating bullseyes are unparalleled, they’ve built the largest, most powerful and most reliable engines yet, and it looks like their Starship will be landing on the Moon before much longer. Time for NASA to put the money where it’s best used.
The Big Scare is upon us yet again, with warnings that the Killer Disease of Monkey Pox, now abbreviated to Mpox, is spreading across the globe.
Is it? Do we care? Let’s take a good look and decide. Almost all the cases of it are in Congo, Africa. “In 2024 alone, the DRC has reported over 17,500 cases and 517 deaths”. “out of 18,910 reported cases in 2024, a staggering 94%—equivalent to 17,794 infections—originated in Congo”. Only six of all the reported deaths in Africa from this disease happened in other nations than Congo. That’s not exactly a big concern considering there’s 54 nations, 2 independent states plus a few territories and a population of 1.4 billion.
The death rate in Africa from Mpox is 3.9%.
Mpox is spread by physical contact, like HIV, and is contracted mostly by homosexuals, who then spread it to others, children especially from the reports, and no, I don’t know if sexual contact is involved. There have been a few cases outside Africa, spread by people traveling from Congo, but these are quickly isolated and treated.
There’s also a vaccine for Mpox and large amounts of it are being sent to Congo, but not enough yet. There’s about 1.4 billion people in Africa now and they all need to be vaccinated against Mpox. Mpox is related to Smallpox and the vaccination of Americans for it ended in 1972. Those born before then and vaccinated are also safe from Mpox.
So. Do we all need to rush out and demand an Mpox vaccination from our doctors? I’m over 55 and have the vax scar to prove it. I’m not homosexual and I don’t hang out with homosexuals or people recently arrived from Congo or rub my flesh against that of strangers. So I’m not worried and if you fit anywhere within that, you probably shouldn’t be either and should pass on it if you’re offered a Mpox vaccination. Just my opinion.
Ukraine has taken a tactic from the Hamas tool box and is applying it to Russia, the difference being that it’s in response to being attacked, and of course I mean the drone barrage that they’ve been sending in lately.
Reports are that this is causing an increasing level of concern among the populace, since the attacks aren’t limited to one area or type of target. They’re non-discriminatory, they target everything, government buildings, civilian homes, military installations. Two bridges were destroyed in rapid succession with rockets fired from drones.
Add all that to Ukraine’s invasion of Russia, the taking of Russian soldier POWs and a large amount of territory that includes all the villages and towns within it, and the creation of a crisis of fleeing, displaced Russian citizens, and it’s become very clear that Russia isn’t capable of protecting itself against invasion even if they are capable of attacking other nations with ICBMs. All their eggs are in the basket of the Ukraine front lines.
It’s not an accident that Ukraine chose that place to invade, it puts them on a direct course to the big Russian nuclear power plant in Kursk and you can be certain Russia’s fearing another Chernobyl meltdown in retaliation for their taking over and damaging Ukraine’s Zaphorzhzhia nuclear power plant, and the closer Ukraine troops get, the more the pressure is mounting.
The population of Russia is about 150 million people, very close to what it was in the USA when we entered World War 2, but we were attacked and already highly industrialized and highly patriotic, not the attackers with an unwilling population spread across huge distances in mostly remote areas and governed by a tyrant.
Vlad Putin is solely responsible for the situation the Russians now find themselves in and it may not take much more destruction within Russia at the hands of Ukraine before he’s forced to step aside.
Personally, I foresee exactly that happening, with a group of high military officers taking charge and then trying to work out a deal with Ukraine that lets them keep a big chunk of the Ukraine territory in return for peace, and I expect Ukraine to reject this and demand a full withdrawal. From there, who knows? I may be wrong about this, too. Further developments will be necessary to un-cloud my crystal ball.
The UN consistently finds Israel at fault regardless of the issue and this is because much of the UN now has been taken over by Islamic nations which are at total religious odds with Judaism. A little less so with Christianity, but all other religions are considered heretical regardless.
Nations in the United Nations generally side with the rest of the Muslims when it comes to issues that touch on religious dogma, but they didn’t always. The UN used to be dominated by Christianity but this has changed as governments worldwide have become steadily less democratic and steadily more controlling. Christianity represents peace, the lion laying down with the lamb. Islam represents submission to the state, total control, fear, war. No peace, so it’s much more in tune with the direction of governments now, most of which see total control and submission to the state as a good thing.
The UN behavior to the Jews is what gets the most attention, but it’s more important to look ahead at what this means for the rest of the world. Fortunately, the UN has devolved into an almost powerless organization, mostly because their attempts to dominate the affairs of everyone else has caused member nations to collectively ignore their constant dictates. Thus the Islamic takeover of much of the UN is less of a threat and more of a harbinger of a global trend toward more repressive governments.
Islam seeks to dominate the world, and as governments become more repressive to keep control of expanding populations that bring with them increased poverty, dissension and unrest, the harsh methods of control through fear employed by Islam become increasingly attractive, even if Islam itself does not.
This is why Islam is being allowed to flourish in so many nations now. No doubt those in government think that they can control it but so far that isn’t working out for them too well. Islam can’t be controlled. It can only be submitted to or destroyed.
Of the over 8 billion people in the world now, about 1.5 billion are Muslims. This is about the same population as China, which hates all religions and especially Islam. Then there’s the massive population of Muslim-hating Hindus in India as well. In a war between Muslims and non-Muslims today, the Muslims would lose. Islam is such a hateful, self-destructive creed that it’s only their high birth rate, common to very poor people, that keeps their numbers up. If their birth rate declined they’d go extinct from being killed fighting unbelievers when they weren’t busy killing each other.
A global Islamic government would fail. If they were able to kill off every other religion and every other Islamic sect except one, that one would split in two and the two would battle to the death, and while they were doing it a new religion would arise. Basing a government on religion is doomed by it’s own nature and ultimately, humanity must leave all religions and beliefs in the supernatural behind, to succeed in world government.
The price of fast food has reached levels that are bringing the Age of McDonald’s and the rest to a close. The average price of just a Big Mac now is $5.30 and rising. “Happy Meals” cost $10 -$12. A family of four are paying about $50 for what is basically a junk food meal, and it’s the lower income people who mostly eat there. This in a time of high unemployment and runaway inflation, with food prices being some of the most heavily affected.
Poverty and homelessness are increasing as the Third World people keep streaming in by the tens of thousands monthly and government largess in keeping them fed and housed will run out unless they keep printing more money to pay for it, thus increasing the rate of inflation in the process.
As the population becomes poorer, through unemployment and inflation, food rises in importance with the lack of it and people start doing desperate things to get it. Like flash-mobbing stores. Do that to a store twice and the store closes. Then there’s even less access to food, which doesn’t end this problem, it worsens it.
A lot of retail stores are closing down because rising inflation brings more than just increased prices for goods, resulting in lower sales volume, it also brings rampant theft, from shoplifters to snatch and grab gangs.
This is greatly benefiting Amazon, eBay and lesser online venues, many of which are enjoying sales growth because they have no stores, so no shoplifting other than what their employees might sneak off with. But it’s destroying Macy’s and Old Navy and the others who rely on walk-in trade. Walmart is now in competition with Amazon, along with Lowes and Home Depot. Buying online is cheaper for most items, as well.
It’s easy to see where this is going. Those who have secure jobs and income will shop online and patronize local businesses less, and the local businesses will shut down, increasing unemployment, poverty and homelessness. Industries will be well guarded while urban centers will become warrens. A primary source of hot meals will be the traveling food vans and those small carts propelled by motorcycle, bicycle or hand, selling hot dogs, tacos and so forth, using whatever meat they can obtain. A reminder, they eat dogs in China.
Our government has gone to great lengths to burn down food production facilities, fertilizer plants, chicken ranches and egg farms and shut down beef production and has been very successful at it while bringing in millions of unemployed, mostly unskilled hungry young people. If you think this isn’t a crisis beginning to explode now, you should take a closer look. What do you think is about to happen? The police are overwhelmed now, the stores get robbed, they take a report and forget it, the stores close, as Walmarts are doing, so where do all those street people get a meal? Try to picture a million immigrants suddenly faced with starvation in the middle of Los Angeles.
Welcome to the Third World of city living. You can see it now on the streets of our cities. Taco carts, gang rule, plastic tarp tents, zero sanitary facilities, a powerful stench and lots of trash and litter that no one ever cleans up.
Now add riots, burning buildings, gun and knife fights, home invasions, dead bodies piling up and no police to be seen. This situation is what our government has been deliberately creating. Chaos for a purpose, to create the reason we need total government control, and of course, we’ll eagerly want our government to stop the havoc. Hell, we’ll demand it.
And there we’ll be. It will be “1984”. If you never read the book, now’s a good time.
