"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
…no wonder we have the kleptocratic, anarcho-tyrannical “feddle gummint” kakistocracy we have. Massive ignorance (and shameful–WILFULL–stupidity) reign supreme in our society today.
Remember third world county’s corollary to Santayana’s Axiom:
“In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history are in the majority and dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance.”
More and more I’m convinced that truer words were never spoken.
Dealing with hard times. If the engineered onset of depression our current “feddle gummint” has managed to effect continues (and accomplishes its apparent goals *sigh*), then perhaps more folks will learn this ancient wisdom:
“In the house of a wise man are stores of food, wine, and oil, but the foolish man devours all he has.” — Proverbs 21:20
Since our PDG (Pretty Darned Good :-)) deal on our fridge (38% off a price that was already nearly 12% lower than MSRP), we’ve decided to keep an eye on large appliance prices just for kicks, and we’ve noticed something interesting.
In an economy where inflation is a fact of life and the dollar is worth less and less every day, both because of price inflation in general and because of the Fed’s devaluation of the dollar via flooding the economy with paper money coming off the presses far faster than the economy justifies, we’ve noticed something interesting: in general, prices are falling at the retail end on many major appliances from most manufacturers.
Why? I can only surmise at this point that the fact that consumer purchasing is way down is seriously impacting cash flow at these companies. They apparently feel they cannot absorb the costs of warehousing excessive inventory.
Expect more fall-off in manufacturing, leading to more layoffs and lower consumer purchasing, leading to… etc.
Unless the grossly obese “feddle gummint” chimp riding the economy’s back is forcibly removed (and put on a stringent diet), this cycle will likely continue.
Get yours (whatever that is) while the getting’s good. Just sayin’.
Go ahead. Do your own searches for “Emergency Preparedness,” “Survival,” etc. Then, if you’ve not already taken steps to increase your chances of pulling through Obama’s Great Depression of 2012, get moving on it. Now.
This churns my butter in several different ways,
Halperin’s MSNBC suspension latest example of White House press tampering
The Zero’s thin skin is sadly laughable. He gets an easy ride, a sweet deal, a pass on all his gaffe, blunders, lies, equivocations, and outright illegal acts from the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind, for the most (99%) part. But when some uppity ‘porter slips off the plantation for a comment or two, Katie bar the door! All ahead, guns blazing! Whip out another Big Lie and trumpet it from the mountaintops!
The article lists seven (of many) cases where The Zero or one of his surrogates have attempted to directly accuse people in “alternative media” (not completely collectivized into the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind) of false reporting, and making such accusations in a public forum, then says “Bush did it too,” citing ONE case where Ed Gillespie wrote a letter (a private communication that the receiver chose to make public) to NBC refuting specific points in its coverage of Middle Eastern foreign policy.
You see, apparently to The Daily Caller, there’s a moral equivalence between multiple cases of disingenuous public propaganda and one case of private communication of reasoned arguments and facts. THAT’S called “reporting” in the Hivemind… Even when some things that are true get said, they MUST get “balanced” with disingenuity.
Not that I need your leave to be absent, but for the rest of this week I will be anyway. What can you do about it, eh? 😉
Come back next week when my usual babbling curmudgeonry will be back.
So, this was to be the summer when we purchased a new fridge. The one we have has served us well, but it entered this house two owners back and has definitely reached the effective end of its service life.
The glass shelves are still good, though. *heh*
So, we looked around, doing our due diligence, researching options on the web, and selected one from a Big Box home improvement center, the same one where we bought our Whirlpool washer/dryer set and nice Bosch dishwasher last summer. Yes, we would like to have purchased a new fridge last year, but we prioritized things a bit, ran the numbers and decided not to spend the cash that way last year. Instead, we lump summed out of our mortgage.
Now, with more than enough cash on hand, we decided to purchase the fridge we’d selected in July. Then, two days ago, my Wonder Woman noticed that it had gone on sale “through June 27” for $300 off the price we’d decided was our sweet spot. So, we went in to make the purchase and arrange delivery, instead of ordering online (because I needed some plumbing and electrical supplies and because I like making sure the salespeople there get their commission. Makes ’em glad to see me coming *heh*. It was no surprise they had none in stock. No problem as they could order it in. But while we waited for the salesperson to finish up with another customer, we looked around a bit anyway.
Oh. Wait. My Wonder Woman saw a fridge that had been on my own short list but t aprice point we didn’t want to (not couldn’t but didn’t want to) pay. The manufacturer was running a (apparently, “Gotta clear out our inventory!”) special: $610 off, placing it, with nearly 8 cubic feet more storage and a couple of other gewgaws and gimcracks, at juuuust under the one we’d come to purchase.
Got it. The four year extended warranty was also less. Got that. The plumbing kit for the icemaker (to replace the old, old line now semi-installed *heh*) was also less. Heck, with the savings on the bigger fridge with more doodads (features), etc., my additional plumbing and electrical supplies only brought us about even with what we’d been planning to pay for the fridge alone.
Not too shabby.
I love it when a plan comes together. I’m also thankful that “lucky” can still beat “planning” every now and then. 🙂
*heh*
I made a new BBQ sauce the other day.
Put everything but the vinegars a in a food processor and whir away until all is very finely minced.
Dump that and the vinegars in a saucepan, then add the Dave’s Insanity Sauce and stir. Bring it to a boil, then back it off and let it simmer a while. How long? I dunno. I think I let it go about 30 minutes. Oh, I added a little olive oil, which I didn’t bother to measure–probably 3 tablespoonsful–to the saucepan before adding the other ingredients.
Meanwhile, microwave a pint jar full of water until the water’s boiling well. Just before th next step, pour some of the boiling water to cover a lid (use a lid-and-ring Ball-or-Mason-type jar). It’s not going to really be water bath canning, cos it’s going straight into the fridge, but this will lessen the chances of contamination with something nasty.
When you think it’s pretty well come together and the tomatoes, especially, are cooked, dump it all back in the food processor and whir it until it’s smooth. Dump it, still hot, into the hot jar, cover with the lid and screw down the ring. Refrigerate. It’ll keep just as long as it takes to use it up, I suspect. It went very nicely on last night’s grilled burgers (just for Son&Heir and I–my Wonder Woman doesn’t partake of Holy Hotitudinousness *heh*).
… no, I REALLY hate it.
Bought a window AC unit for that never-cool-enough room. Long story. Unboxed and installed it. Plugged it in and followed the directions to turn it on, checking off the steps in the owner’s manual (cos it had a hi-tech remote sensor unit and a buncha other gewgaws and gimcracks and I wanted to make sure no one sneered at me later, “RTFM!” *heh*).
Nope. DOA. Ran through the simple troubleshooting checklist in the back that’s designed for people who are too stupid to even be able to read it. Nope, of course I had plugged it into a live circuit of the correct voltage and amperage rating. *sheesh!* Who did these people think they were talking to? An idiot?
After I got through being insulted by the troubleshooting page, I dialed the toll-free number listed right after the words, “If these solutions fail, call… ”
Yep. Nothing but an automated line directing me to call a toll line for support.
Now, I’m not just insulted but pi**ed off.
Rude cretins and beating down on me with a stupid support process.
So, I finally got some nice lil gal with a checklist to make sure I had already done allthe things in the insulting “troubleshooting” checklist in the owner’s manual. Finally, I had to tell her what was wrong, since her lil list ran out of things. The “reset” switch on the plug was dysfunctional. She offered me three “solutions” to that, and then deleted one for some inexplicable reason.
And guess which one she deleted from the list? Right, just sending me the cord. I had to talk her back into that one. *arrggghh!*
So, the cord I know would solve the problem will be here next week. And? I already replaced it with one I had laying around. (I just had to recall I had it and go get it.) 20,000 screws (well, it felt that way *heh*) and some finicky and delicate plastic clips later, I had a functional unit. The cord I used had the same circuitry for line test and overload/reset, so it fit just fine. Now, I suppose I’ll just have a spare when the other one comes in. And since no provision was made for return of the dysfunctional cord, I’ll have that to play with (and probably repair when I get around to it).
But that was time I’d rather have spent on something else than a BRAND NEW DEVICE that came from the factory broken. Oh, and the dimensions on it were 1/4″ larger (height) than the listed specifications (both at the seller and the manufacturer–I checked). I had to disable the lift mechanism on the aluminum-framed window I installed it in–in addition to removing the storm window. If I’d had the 1/4″, I’d not have had to do that.
I just hate it when companies can’t get their products or their facts right and it costs me, with no real repercussions for the company.
Oh, Frigidaire. The unit had good reviews and ratings, but the company probably changed the production line after the reviews to save $0.25 per unit and invalidated all previous ratings and reviews…
They’d never have had a chance getting started with the music industry/media *gag-spit* here in the USA. But now that they’ve gotten a start via a sort of Italian version of “[Wherever] Has Talent” (“Ti Lascio Una Canzone”–something like, “I Leave/Sing/Give a Song for/to You”) in 2009 and a follow up hit album (Gold and heading for Platinum in Italy, since its release there last year, and just released in the US) it’s a tad hard for the media to overlook them here. And of course, the big shake-up at American Idol caused someone to say, “Hey, let’s have these kids on for a spot!” (Probably because Geffen Records pulled some strings to coincide with their album release here, of course).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbfuYUy3Org
There are plenty of these kinds of YouTube videos posted, including more than a few of their recorded performances before live audiences in their home country a couple of years ago (fun to watch folks singing along at places :-))
But if you enjoy their performances, don’t just leach off low-fi YouTube recordings. Buy their CD or the MP3 album.
At a little over half “classic” songs like “O Sole Mio”, “Un Amore Cosi’ Grande” (a 70s-era Italian ballad–great song) and “Smile”, and just under half new stuff, I could’ve just bought the “classic” songs as individual downloads (since the new stuff isn’t quite as good as the older songs), but I’d not have saved any money, really, and I’d not have been able to make a fair assessment of the new stuff. (Assessment: not crap, and in fact pretty good just overall less worthwhile listening than the older, better-crafted songs, although Notte Stellata, a newer piece, is saved by its musical derivation from a Saint-Saëns tune. And “El Reloj” is very good, despite being written and performed in a language I’m mostly boycotting. *heh* “Painfully Beautiful” is almost painful to listen to, though. Bo-ring. *heh*)
I’d buy more recently recorded music if more of it were this musical, but no. The “recording industry” in this country has its production line and “artist” plantations and absent a revolution, it’s just going to keep feeding crap to folks, making sure the masses are kept musically dull.
*sigh* I’d not downloaded mp3s from Amazon for a lil while here. Amazon is apparently becoming another #@^*$# tyrannical Apple clone, dictating that one MUST use its downloader to download mp3 albums and then f’n associating everything with the crappy M$ Media Player AND, as it downloads another mp3 in an album, starting up the crappy M$ Media Player and bringing it on top of any other app.
What utter crap! Frankly, crap like this makes me want to pirate music instead of buy it. I don’t, but this crap is way,way beyond annoying, all the way into, “I’d like to go to Amazon’s corporate offices and burn the thing to the ground!”
Sure, AFTER it’s downloaded the album, I get my first chance to go in and change preferences, but there’s only one thing to change that will alleviate ANY of the bad behavior–and changing just one of the bad behaviors is not good enough. If I wanted to have someone dictate to me what app to play music with put on an Apple straitjacket, get an Apple-performed lobotomy and use iTunes.
Asshats.
I will give Amazon this: at least it’s still allowing plain old everyday mp3 downloads.
