March 16, 2020

I'm about to board a flight from Bakersfield to DFW...

And then on to Jacksonville, FL

Into the teeth of the beast!

March 14, 2020

He LIKES being president. He's no bloody good at it, but he likes doing it....

Of that there can be no doubt.

Notice how often he flies on AF1? It’s almost every fucking day. Finding actual hours he flies is not easy, but I would bet that in the 3 years he has held the office, he has put more hours on Marine 1 and Air Force 1 than Obama did in his entire 8 years. If not, its fucking closing in fast.

A significant amount of the time he interacts with the press is when he stops to talk to the “gaggle” on his way walking to Marine One on the South Lawn.

HE. FUCKING. LOVES. BEING. PRESIDENT.

It is a role he is playing. A role in which he has found that he gets to write the script, do the editing and control the lighting and post production as much as he possibly can. It infuriates him when things spiral out of his control. According to numerous sources and books, he goes ballistic when he feels he is being made to look bad. His skin is thinner than the film between layers of an onion.

That’s why when things like this come along, he feels absolutely ZERO shame or problem with blaming someone else.

He is utterly incapable of taking or assuming blame for ANYTHING. It’s always someone else’s fault, NEVER HIS, and if you have the temerity to question him about it, you’re asking a “Nasty Question”.

Donald Trump is currently living out his ultimate dream; To be in charge and to do what he wants and get away with just about anything. He gets to fly anywhere he wants, on a whim, on the worlds ultimate private jet - a fucking fleet of them in fact, and while doing so, he has a shitload of people who are required to address him with more dignity and respect than he has ever been able to command in his private life. He absolutely ADORES the fact that people call him “Sir” as a default, thinking he somehow deserves it, instead of it simply being the trappings of the Presidency.

If he gets re-elected, and that is a DISTINCT possibility, this country is fucking doomed, plain and simple. We will devolve into a conservative Utopia, which means basically FUCK YOU to anyone not making a quarter million a year or more, screw your healthcare, your vagina is a factory and you had better learn to live with it, you will worship the approved god and if you talk back to anyone with a gun and a badge, you get what’s coming to you, so help me god bless ‘Merica

If he is defeated in November, it will take this country decades to undo the damage he and McConnell have done.

Decades. If we survive it, that is.

February 6, 2020

Remember the ship that capsized off the Georgia coast? They're gonna start cutting it up.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/giant-crane-cutting-chain-saw-230201775.html


MV Golden Ray has been on its side in shallow water off the coast of Southern Georgia since September 8th, and now salvage crews are getting ready to begin the removal operation, which will take several months.

This accident and recovery is not without precedent, as 2 similar Auto Carrier ships sank in the North Sea in the last number of years.

The MV Tricolor and the MV Baltic Ace both sank in very busy shipping lanes and were salvaged, but with a total loss of cargo.

The Golden Ray has at least 4200 cars still onboard.

The Golden Ray;



As she presently sits, just outside the entrance to the Port of Brunswick, Georgia;



They have apparently removed all her fuel and as much of the lubricants in her main engines as possible, according to stories I have read over the months, but each individual car still has a few gallons of gas and of course, engine oil on board.

They're basically going to cut it up into chunks and haul it away, cars and all!


I hauled cars out of the Port of Brunswick a bunch of times, and I wouldn't be surprised if I carried units that were discharged from the Golden Ray. Brunswick is unique among deep water ports in the US, as it is almost entirely an automobile and rolling stock/heavy equipment port or "RO/RO" ("Roll on/Roll Off" ). The only other ships that call there are bulk cargo vessels, like those that haul grains and other large tonnage, bulk commodities. No containers are trans-shipped at all, as is so common in almost every other port in North America.

If this at all interests you from an engineering perspective, here is a 3:40 minute video of how they removed the MV Baltic Ace from a busy shipping lane near Rotterdam back in 2012;



And a 26 minute vid of the removal of the MV Tricolor off Dunkirk, France;