Mindconnection eNL, 2025-05-18

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Good News | Product Highlight | Brainpower | Finances | Security | Health/Fitness | Factoid | Thought 4 the Day

Celebrating Freedom

• After 44 years as a registered Democrat, the LA County Sheriff has changed parties. Pay attention to his last sentence in this video: https://twitter.com/i/status/1918813432075190513
   
• The BATFE has removed an anti-gun propaganda display in its DC headquarters. This was installed as part of the Brainless administration's efforts to disarm, disenfranchise, disinform, and generally dis the people of America.
   
• An excerpt from a Daily Wire article:
  The Department of Justice announced Wednesday that the FBI arrested 205 child sex offenders throughout the country in Operation Restore Justice, part of a nationwide crackdown on child sex trafficking and abuse that the agency says “resulted in the rescue of 115 children.”
   
• The professional moron and America-hating communist AOC may soon go to jail. She's just asking to be prosecuted and stepping into a trap of her own making. Here's an article about it:
  https://www.dailywire.com/news/aoc-dared-tom-homan-to-come-after-her-for-helping-illegals-heres-his-response
   
• Senator Joni Ernst introduced a bill aimed at stopping yet another insane, ignorance-based "Green New Deal" program that would pretty much kill trains. As you know, trains are far more fuel-efficient to haul X amount of cargo than trucks are. Ditto for people. Her bill is called the Lifting Overburdensome Commerce Obstructions and Motives (LOCOMOTIVES) Act.
   
• Senator Ernst has ideas on how to fuel the Great American Comeback: https://youtu.be/nsTdgCD9cdk
   
• RFK, Jr speaks on ending Gain of Function (make a virus far more deadly) research (2:50), something that has not produced a single benefit: https://twitter.com/i/status/1919499057984070010
   
• Florida recently became the second state to ban the deliberate addition of fluoride to public drinking water. Other states should soon follow.
   
• Batya Ungar-Sargon explains why "peace through commerce" is working: https://twitter.com/i/status/1923359487705972925

Commie Update

• The Commies are continuing with the idiotic narrative that President Trump is a "dictator" even though he has said he's not interested in a third term. And even though, among dozens of other things that kill this accusation, he doesn't micromanage his team.
   
• PBS fawned over Comrade "I want America to fail" Nutcase Nancy. Here is an excerpt from that ridiculous episode and proof that PBS does not deserve taxpayer funding: https://twitter.com/i/status/1918664936776933475 . Please boycott PBS and refuse to donate to them.
   
• Look at this crazy old Congresswoman (Rosa Delauro) who claims that FEMA does a good job. Kristi Noem gives her a reality check, and that really sets her off. https://youtu.be/tglwHlAW72Q
   
• The professional moron and America-hating communist AOC is talking about running for POTUS in 2028. I hope she does, and gets the nomination! Now that election integrity has advanced so much since the 2020 coup and people are sick of the financial and social damage caused by communists, this will be a drain on the Communist Party that will result in a continuation of America First policies in the Executive Branch. It will also mean no more AOC in the House.
   
• This 4:24 audio clip is from an interview with Brainless in October, 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugM76taxz2E. Not only does his answer show his dementia, you can hear his aides correcting him and providing answers. In this interview, Special Counsel Robert Hur asked Brainless a simple question about where he kept classified documents. Instead of answering that question, he went on a 4-minute ramble that included confusion about what year his son Beau died. All this time, Brainless had the nuclear codes! Thanks to Jeff Childers for his excellent coverage of this disgrace in his Coffee and Covid newsletter.

The Covid Scam (yet another update)

• The American Josef Mengele: https://x.com/i/status/1920288808110641648.  Fauci should have to stand trial in Nuremberg. If that psycho mass murderer ends up hanging from a rope, so much the better.
• I've noticed a trend, at least in my area. Masktards seldom venture out alone these days. Either a single masktard feels like a total idiot for masking up and needs a fellow idiot to feel less idiotic, or masktards have been getting so many stares, jeers, and negative body language from normals that they don't want to wear their stupidity symbol in public while alone. I guess it's a case of stupidity in numbers!

The Wall Street Journal Scam

Some years ago, I was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal. The story that ran got several major points wrong, leaving an overall general impression that was very different from reality. I contacted the writer about running an errata, he told me some excuse about why they "couldn't" do that. I ended my subscription, since this fiasco made it clear to me that the WSJ could not be relied upon to tell the truth. Here's President Trump echoing my thoughts, recently: https://x.com/i/status/1919214443738915209

*****The Lefty Lies Report*****

A Litany of Lefty Lies to Expose and Ridicule (after all, they are ridiculous lies)

The Maryland Father Lie

Sebastian Gorka (an American of Hungarian ancestry) destroys this stupidity in an interview on the fake news channel Politico: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhgiehbxaWI

The SCOTUS Stopped Deportations Lie

The lefties are now using a recent Supreme Court ruling as "evidence" that President Trump is overstepping the law and cannot deport illegal aliens just because they are illegal aliens. What the Court actually said was he couldn't do it via the Alien Enemies Act but he “may remove the named plaintiffs or putative class members under other lawful authorities.” Quite a difference there. The commies will keep trying to solve the perceived shortage of wife-beaters, rapists, and human traffickers while also addressing the sharp reduction in fentanyl deaths. And they will continue to lie to do so.

One must ask why it's bad for fentanyl deaths to hockey stick downwards, and why so much value is placed on wife-beaters, rapists, and human traffickers. Maybe they are just extremely stupid?

At 30th class reunions, parents beam over the fact their kids grew up to be lawyers, doctors, successful business owners, and so forth. You don't see one proudly proclaiming, "My son is a successful rapist" or "My daughter makes a good living selling both crack and fentanyl." When I was a kid, children aspired to grow up to be astronauts, police officers, teachers, firemen, etc. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" was often asked.

So today, do parents really smile when Little Johnny says, "I want to beat my wife and be a human trafficker!" It appears that is the case in the homes of libtards and communists.

The Bezos is Bad for the Washington Post Lie

The Washington Post, which was derided as the Washington Compost due to extremely flawed "reporting" and articles so full of BS the smell was overpowering, was dwindling down to nothing. Then Jeff Bezos bought it. He doubled the size of the paper's staff and infused it with other badly needed resources. He also gave it a bit of editorial direction, but largely left it alone. His not micromanaging it is now being mischaracterized as his being "absent" and uncaring about the paper.

He was, and still is, the ideal owner for a newspaper. And he saved this one from extinction. The one thing he didn't do was purge it of libtards, and that has come back to bite him.

Back when we had a choice between extending the disastrous Communist Occupation via Cackling Kamala or restoring the country to lawful and America-first government via Donald Trump, Bezos did not want the paper to take sides. That is an odd concept called "journalistic integrity".

The libtards have been pouting about it ever since. And now they are spreading the lie that Bezos has demoralized the paper. No, they are whiny, ungrateful brats who are in a funk because there's a >100 point IQ spread between the Cackler and the President and they wanted stupid. They are blaming Bezo for elevating the paper to a minimum level of integrity for the fact that, despite massive cheating, an unrelenting lawfare campaign, extreme slander, extreme libel, and two assassination attempts by the commies, Trump won by a landslide.

Look again at that last statement and see if you can follow the logic behind the behavior of those WaPo employees. For that degree of stupidity alone, Bezos needs to hand out pink slips. A newspaper is arguably an intellectual product. People with zero intellect do not belong in its employ, at least not in content-creating jobs (writing, editing, etc.). His patience and forbearance have been exceptional. But there are limits to everything.

The Trump is Divisive Lie

The commies are beating this particular drum quite loudly now. It's idiotic in the extreme. Brainless managed to destabilize the entire world, which by definition is divisive. Trump looks for what's good in people and lets everyone know. Just as one example, he recently said of Syria's new leader, "He's pretty amazing." During the 2024 election, Trump had a "big tent" that included a wide range of people with widely divergent backgrounds and viewpoints. By contrast, the commies had a monoculture of hatred and bitterness.

The commies also claim that Trump is a selfish ego maniac. Anybody who has ever watched a Trump rally would conclude the opposite. He's a gracious man who elevates others. This is appears to be an unforgiveable sin to the commies. The sane among us consider it a virtue to which we should all aspire. Most of us were taught this as children, and it's a core concept in how we navigate the world as adults. That could be why the commies hate us, too.

The Market Volatility = Trump is Awful Lie

Warren Buffet does not believe this for one second. Here's an excerpt from the Epoch Times:

Warren Buffett urged long-term investors not to be shaken by short-term swings and focus on fundamentals amid recent market volatility.

“What has happened in the last 30, 45 days … is really nothing,” Buffett told shareholders at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting on Saturday in Omaha, Nebraska. “This has not been a dramatic bear market or anything of the sort.”

Buffett made clear that wild market swings, while unsettling in the moment, are nothing to panic about.

“If it makes a difference to you whether your stocks are down 15 percent or not, you need a somewhat different investment philosophy,” he said. “The world is not going to adapt to you. You’re going to have to adapt to the world.”

The Trump Accepted a $400 Million Personal Gift from Saudi Arabia Lie

The lamestream media are calling Trump a criminal for accepting a personal gift of a luxury jumbo 747 from the Saudis. As usual, the LM lie through their teeth. The Saudis did not give Trump any such gift. They gave it to the United States, to replace the two aging (40+ year old) planes that are currently Air Force One because Woke Boeing isn't capable of delivering. When Trump leaves office, that jet stays with the Office of POTUS. It does not go with him.

And for those idiots who claim our nation should not accept a gift like this, take a good look at the Statue of Liberty. What a wonderful gift from another nation, of course the commies probably find fault with it too.

The real problem is the TDS people don't want us to have a strong economy, valid elections, personal freedoms, or anything else other than the cold, dark world of communism. Look at what Trump accomplished on that trip (as quoted from the Epoch Times on 15 May): "President Donald Trump announced more than $243.5 billion in economic deals between the United States and Qatar on Wednesday, including a $96 billion agreement for Boeing to sell up to 210 jets to Qatar Airways." This is the largest order of jets in Boeing's history (the CEO himself said so).

I live in Kansas, where Boeing builds those aircraft. Those of us Kansans who are not terminally stupid are pretty happy about what Trump did in Qatar.

It's not just the jets. That same issue of Epoch Times reports, "The White House stated that the agreement with Qatar is projected to generate at least $1.2 trillion in economic exchange between both countries." Plus there's a renewed interest in the Abraham Accords (peace in the Middle East!) that the Brainless administration kicked to the curb, an olive branch extended to Syria, and a whole lot of "let's make each other better off rather than fight each other" deal-making. What a change from being on the brink of WW III.

The following day, the Epoch Times reported, "Emirates Global Aluminum agreed to pour $4 billion into a smelter facility in Oklahoma, the first of its kind in the United States in 45 years. The move is set to double U.S. aluminum production capacity and expand the local workforce by about 1,000 positions."

We need to keep this example of lefty lies in mind not just at election time, but at any time where we encounter masktards, communists, TDS people, and other crazies who spread their lunatic ideologies via the lamestream media and their reach into our education system. They can no longer deplatform us, thanks to Elon Musk. And since Liberation Day, their toolbox of coercion has shrunk dramatically.

In 2024, candidate Trump said he would get his revenge through success not retribution. That is a very smart strategy, especially considering his outsized ability to succeed. We sane people should emulate that, for example by doing A+ work in our jobs. The crazies spend huge amounts of energy whining, abusing, attacking, and undermining. That gives us sane people a big edge when competing against them in business, whether an employee or an owner/executive. The more we win there, the more power we have elsewhere. Whining, abusing, attacking, and undermining are "negative value" tactics. They consume wealth, rather than create it. Let us be the creators. And we will dominate.

The Vote for Biden Job Creation Lie

As the 2024 election for POTUS neared, the Brainless administration released figures showing that, despite the administration's devastating blows to the economy, rampant inflation, chronic shortages, and frequent layoff announcements, the country had a net gain of 800,000 jobs in the Third Quarter. Now the BLS has gone back through the data and reports it was actually a net loss of 160,000 jobs. This latter figure fits the surrounding data (which I listed in my opening sentence).

This should not be surprising. Nothing the Brainless administration did would lead to job creation. Everything they did worked in the opposite direction. So a net loss of jobs is predictable and inevitable. The fact they reported such massive numbers of jobs created destroys any credibility they might have left after all the other lies they told.

And it's not just a few lies or some small ones. The communists lie about everything. They have to, because when people see the truth they oppose rather than support the communists. The lamestream media have been complicit in suppressing the truth and propagating the lies, which is the main reason people increasingly tune out the lamestream media. We need to see the commie mouthpieces like the New York Times go completely under. If you know anyone who subscribes to it, keep mentioning that paper is unreliable and dishonest. Just the mention should do the job, if done often enough, because nobody who reads that rag does any due diligence on the contents so it's all about accepting by faith. Undermine the faith, and you stand a pretty good chance of freeing a human mind.

Without the lamestream media, the commies will have no means of spreading their toxic ideology at scale. They will have no platform. Some of the lamestream media have an undeserved reputation for being conservative. The Wall Street Journal is one example. It's a crappy paper dedicated to inaccuracy. Nobody should subscribe to it.

The Sex Assigned at Birth Lie

Here is a message I sent to a particular bank. Since I am working on getting a very favorable loan from them, I'll keep their name out of this.

A [name of bank] loan form has a question that needs to be reworded. It asks you what sex you were assigned at birth. Sex is not assigned at birth.

Sex is determined when the sperm fuses with the egg. This is why, for example, we can tell from a sonogram if that embryo is male or female. The process doesn't wait until birth to happen, nor does someone "assign" the Y chromosome at birth.

If that sperm contains a Y chromosome when it fuses with the egg, the resulting zygote will be male (which, by definition, means that cell contains the Y chromosome). Otherwise, it will be female (by definition, no Y chromosome). That zygote will split into two cells, each of which have the identical DNA and thus will be the same sex as the original zygote.

I learned this at age 9 from a book our family doctor gave my parents for 9 to 12 year olds. It's not rocket science, it's biology for 9 year olds. This form needs to be corrected. It may sound like a minor point, but I am so DONE putting up with woke theology and the resultant apologetic yet dishonest approach to getting an honest answer to basic question. The form should ask "What is your sex?" If an adult is seeking a loan and is too mentally ill to know the correct answer, then you don't extend the loan.

The Judge is Innocent Lie

A Wisconsin judge abetted a federal crime by physically helping an illegal alien evade ICE. It's not that this judge ruled on a case and her ruling was wrong. She simply decided to break the law. And she was arrested. She pled not guilty, even though she was caught red-handed. Many lefties say they simply cannot fathom what, if anything, the judge did wrong.

*****The Scam Report*****

Some Serious Scams to Know More About

The Trans Identity Scam In Colorado

This father confronts the School Board for what they did to his family: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1A5JYOc67M

The Trans In the Military Scam

The Supreme Court allowed the US Military to ban troops who identify as trans gender. According to the commies, this is genocide, unfair, intolerant, Nazism, etc. But let's look at reality for a moment.

1. People who believe they are somehow the wrong sex and can "fix" that via surgery, drugs, and flat-out lying are mentally ill. Their illness makes them unfit for service.
2. People who are surgically or chemically mutilated via "gender affirming care" are permanent medical patients with ongoing medical costs. These are not minor. Why should the military have to pay for them?
3. Do we want people who cannot see the obvious being trained to kill?
4. Women who serve in the military are put at increased risk due to sharing showers and other facilities with men who gain access merely by cross-dressing. Our female troops deserve better.

There's a lot more, but those four points alone make a pretty clear case that the military is obligated to ban trans people from service. It's not done out of hatred toward them, but in recognition of the fact they are not fit for service and trying to accommodate them is inordinately expensive. Similarly, we don't permit entry into the armed services by people with various other medical or mental issues. There's a minimum fitness level required, and people suffering from the trans mental illness simply do not meet that level of fitness.

What about people who go trans after joining the military? Well, they have proven they don't meet the fitness test. If they have served honorably to that point, then they should get an honorable discharge and/or a medical discharge. What if they "discover" they are trans after starting their military service and this would allow them to escape a military service commitment created by, for example, using ROTC to pay for college? In that case, they should have waited out their service commitment. The timing says they used fraud to default on their commitment, so the relevant penalties should apply.

The Flame-Retardant Mattress Scam

Perhaps in some homes, toddlers smoke in bed. In that case, those kids are already doomed to a short life. In the other 99.999+% of homes, it serves no purpose to have a flame-retardant mattress. These mattresses don't protect the children from any danger, but they do expose these kids to chemical emissions that greatly harm their health. This also goes for flame-retardant bedding and pajamas. Worse, many of these products also have fiberglass woven into the fibers!

If you have these things in your home, make a priority of replacing them with safe alternatives if you still have a toddler or grandchildren (simply toss them if you have no use for them, don't give them to charity as that would be most uncharitable). If you have adult children with these products in their home, it's time to have a discussion about these products.

The Green Energy Scam

The Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) recently suffered the worst electrical blackout in European history. Now they are saying that perhaps part of it was due to overreliance on "green" energy. No, the entire fiasco resulted from stupidly believing that intermittent energy sources are always available, a belief which arises from believing the "green energy" lie.

In the libtard fantasy world, anything that doesn't emit carbon at the final stage of generation doesn't emit carbon at all. This non-sequitor way of viewing things leads to idiocy in public policy. In reality, there is no such thing as carbon-free energy generation that we can scale up to power our grids.

Let's look at wind power, as an example. In the libtard fantasy world, these magically appear with no carbon aspect at any point. When you consider these as a system from cradle to grave and count all of the inputs, a very different picture emerges. First, there's the excavation for the massive footings needed to support the massive blades and the forces that act upon them. This takes a lot of fossil fuel. Then there's the concrete, something well-known to be CO2-intensive to produce. Creating the blades, which by the way will be disposed of in landfills after end of life (25 to 30 years), also is CO2-intensive. Each turbine, being an electromechanical system, requires ongoing maintenance. The maintenance also requires fossil fuel. All told, the CO2 per kilowatt produced is only a few percentage points less than the CO2 per kilowatt produced by a coal generating station. This gives rise to the question, "Why bother?"

As these wind farms continue to proliferate, populations of eagles, hawks, condors, and other birds plummet. At some point, we will kill off these species entirely if we don't stop erecting these massive structures with their 220 foot long blades. And if you hate whales so much that you want them all dead, then you need to do what you can to get more wind turbines erected off shore. They are killing whales and dolphins by multiple means. Maybe after 20 more years of this insanity someone will make a documentary called Bye Bye, Flipper that will show us the last few of these noble creatures remaining on the planet.

With solar, there's a similar analysis and again the difference is a few percentage. But what else do you see around any solar farm? No trees! Trees are massive carbon sinks, plus they provide homes for many different creatures (eco diversity, anyone?) plus they clean our air and do wonders for our soil.

The cleanest scalable energy source is natural gas. With this, the carbon difference is more than a few percentage points. And you don't have to drive whales or birds extinct to use it. But, like every other energy source it has its downsides and that includes CO2 emission.

In the libtard world, personal responsibility is anathema. It's always someone else's job and preferably that would be the government. In the real world, the answer is to think about how you personally can use less fuel and then take the steps you can take. For example, lower your thermostat in winter and raise it in summer. All you have to do to stay comfortable is dress warmer in winter and use ceiling and floor fans in summer. Combine trips with the car, and drive sensibly instead of like a crazy person. On this last one, if you look at the fuel consumption when going 75 MPH versus 65 MPH it's a huge difference. Just that 10 MPH difference can mean 25% or more faster fuel consumption depending on the car make and model.

At the grocery store, I often see people standing there holding the GLASS doors of a refrigerator case open. For what purpose? On one outing, I saw a person doing this while wearing a shirt that said End Fossil Fuels. That was too much for me, I said to her, "If people stopped stupidly holding glass doors open, we could eliminate a few coal powered generating plants. We need to end thoughtless waste, not fossil fuels."

Another source of big waste is the masktards. How much CO2 is generated to make all those millions of masks they, as a group, discard each year? Masks that serve no purpose other than libtard virtue signaling. The vast majority of these people have Trump Derangement Syndrome and are all upset about his opening up drilling instead of pushing for, you guessed it, "green energy". But they don't care that they are part of the problem of overall pollution including CO2 generation.

Do what you can to reduce, re-use, and recycle. Don't expect "green energy" to be any kind of a pollution solution. Because it's not. And we all need to keep reminding policy-makers of this immutable fact. As for libtards, they are constantly being gas lighted by the lamestream media. To free them from this mental control and possibly even get them to think, our single best shot is to show them how their "information" sources lie to them and to disparage the fake news outlets as not being credible. That is a tall order, because the "walking braindead" have to overcome things like confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance. But we still have to try.

• American Hard Bag aftermarket sound system parts for Harley Davidson motorcycles
• BlindShell phones for the blind
• CAT tools
• Cold Steel knives
• Connex radios
   
• Dosy meters
• Flexilla hose connectors
• Funko collectibles
   
• Galaxy 10 meter and 11 meter (CB) radios
• Hogue pistol grips
• iRV products for RVs

• Liberty Monitors security cameras
• Metra saddlebag lids
• Mike Holt Electrical Exam Preparation products
• Minigadgets hidden camera CO detectors and receptacles
   
• Nagy's aftermarket sound system parts for Harley Davidson motorcycles
• Optoma projectors
• Paraben Consumer data recovery sticks, porn detection sticks, and similar diagnostic/ IT tools
• Plantronics headsets
• RealSAM Pocket, which is a voice operated Galaxy smart phone for the blind
• Ridgid Tools work lights and related
• ROK straps
• Rostra universal cruise control kits
   
• Sig Sauer pellet guns
• SmartPens4U Rocket Pen Reading Tutor Scanning Pen | Case Bundle
• Texas Ranger radios (Chuck Norris not included, sorry)
• Uniden radar detection systems (hard-wired)
• Uniden radios and scanners
   
• Victron DC power modules and related
• Wera Tools
• WeWalk Smart Cane "Cane with a Brain" for the blind

1. Hatred takes a lot of mental energy.
2. It's a negative emotional state, thus it floods the body with stress chemicals. This invariably reduces mental performance. An example is when an athlete chokes under pressure, another example is when someone is in a rage and later regrets the stupid things they said.
3. It causes tunnel vision and a focus on the negative.
4. When hatred takes over, the cortex and hippocampus are suppressed.

While we can talk about commies in blunt, accurate terms, for example remarking on their stupidity, we should never hate them for it. Since hatred is in large part responsible for their blindness to reality, we don't want to fuel that with more hatred.

We also don't want to let them bully us into "going along to get along" because that path will ultimately lead to false imprisonment (as the J6 protestors got), ruin by lawsuit (as they tried to do to Trump and have successfully done to others), concentration camps (as was seriously and credibly threatened against jab-refusers), reputation assassination, and other means to destroy those who are not in their thrall.

The first option (hating them back) is aggressiveness. It has blowback. The second option (being a doormat) is called passiveness. Rather than ending in defeat, it starts that way. A third option, assertiveness, is appropriate and effective.

Unlike aggressiveness, assertiveness produces an intelligence-friendly chemical environment in the brain. The focus is on solving the conflict or problem, not on attacking the individual.

Consider how a plumber might handle a customer who put dry rice down the sink drain. He could get mad at the customer and berate that person for doing such a stupid thing. How effective is that going to be? Well, maybe the customer won't put dry rice down the drain anymore but he's going call the home office to complain about how he was treated. The same plumber could be gentle toward the person and just point out the cause of the clog. "I just figured you'd want to know. And if you can keep rice out of the drain, then you'll save yourself the $80 service call."

We can use this approach when being treated with aggression. Recently I was e-mailing a European supplier about a tariff problem. Customs had gotten it wrong and instead of $70 they were charging over $4,000. I reached out to my supplier and asked them to contact the carrier from their end while I would do it from mine. The supplier wrote back, "I know what the problem is, it's Donald Trump." OK, them's fightin' words. But I didn't fight. I wrote back, "No, the problem is the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. Our President is merely addressing a decades old problem that they caused." Then I detailed what we needed to do and why. So I was assertive with them, not aggressive and not passive. I didn't let the slur stand, but I didn't get nasty or hateful about it. They still were having meetings figuring out what to do when I wrote to them, "Problem solved. The invoice has been corrected and the tariff has subsequently been reduced to $70."

You've probably noticed that calm conservatives have been fixing one problem after another since Liberation Day. For example, it was recently reported that illegal border crossings are down 99.5% from what they were toward the end of The Occupation. That's a huge decrease in human trafficking and fentanyl, too. The angry, hateful libtards have not solved any problems in decades, but they have caused all kinds of them. In massive quantities.

• Keep your tires inflated. Everyone knows to do this, but it's often impractical. After decades of not doing a good job with this, I bought a Botmaxx fire inflator. It makes the job really quick and easy. You set it for the desired air pressure and just hook it up. No more back and forth with the tire gage. And I added the job to my Outlook calendar as an every other week recurring appointment.
• When on the interstate or other major highway, drive at the speed limit rather than 20 MPH above it as all the other fools do. Going from 65 to 75 uses hugely more fuel; most people can expect a drop of 5 MPG. At 85, it's even more severe.
• Use defensive driving techniques to reduce fuel waste due to acceleration/deceleration. Having a defensive driving certificate also qualifies you for a reduced premium on your auto insurance. Using those techniques also allows you to maintain the kind of driving history that qualifies you for low rates.
   
• Buy individual vegetables rather than semi-prepped ones that come in a plastic tub. You'll save about 50% plus eliminate the exposure to microplastics and other toxins from the tubs.
• Eliminate highly processed food from your diet. Not only will this protect you from illness and perhaps 7 figure medical bills, real food is less expensive per unit of nutrition.
• Eliminate spoiled leftovers by not having leftovers. "Prep" each meal ahead of time. This works best for single people or couples, not as well for families. And it's generally not appropriate for guests. In the event of leftovers, combine them into a prep of another meal. Have a system of glass bowls with lids, in which to store prepped meals.
   
• Learn how to properly prune shrubs and trees. Obtain professional tools and do this job yourself instead of hiring it out. In the case of tall trees though, this generally is best left to the pros.
• Cut your own grass and do your own string-trimming. Many people hire this out, because they believe it is exhausting work. Buy a premium mower (e.g., get a top-line Honda self-propelled mower rather than a knock-off that costs half as much), and you will be pleasantly surprised. Ditto with the string trimmer.
• Check your home exterior for damage to siding, damage to trim, possible rodent entry points, etc., and fix these yourself. If you don't know how to fix them, hire a handyman to fix them while the problems are still small.
   

Also, clean your sink drains pre-emptively. It will eliminate the need to call a plumber to unclog your drains. Use this method:

1. Remove the drain plug.
2. Use an appropriate tool to dig out any hair or gunk.
3. Pour about a half cup of baking soda into the drain.
4. Ensure you have ventilation, such as an open window in the kitchen or a fan on in the bathroom.
5. Pour about a cup of vinegar down the drain. It's going to foam. Pour more vinegar until there's no reaction.
6. Put a small pot of water on the stove and heat to about 160 degrees. This should take at most 10 minutes.
7. Pour the water down the drain.
8. Shut off the fan or close the window.
9. Put the drain plug back in.

How often should you do this? If you notice ANY odor coming from that drain or the water does not drain quickly, then do this. Else, once a month will probably be sufficient.

Do you get packages delivered to your house? Unless you work from home AND have the drop-off area (e.g., front porch) monitored by camera with audio alert, OR you have a lockbox for deliveries, stop doing that.

Porch theft became a full-time gig with the Covid Scam and sellers are not liable for your lack of care. Yes, you can berate your credit card company into filing a chargeback to steal from the innocent seller what was stolen from you, but this will also get you blacklisted from places like Amazon, eBay, and Walmart.com if you pull this stunt two or three times. And it's just immoral. Prevent the theft in the first place by using a safe delivery option.

Safe delivery options:

1. Get a The UPS Store box and have all of your packages sent there. Go in and pick them up after being e-mailed that you have a package. You can do something similar with USPS, but no other carrier can deliver to your PO Box. The UPS Store accepts packages from all carriers.

2. Go to www.ups.com and sign up for for their free Drop Off Pick Up service. Here's the direct URL: https://www.ups.com/us/en/business-solutions/pickup-dropoff-options. This, of course, works only with packages arriving by UPS.

3. Go to www.amazon.com. Sign into your account. Designate an Amazon locker location as your receiving address. This, of course, works only with packages for orders you placed on Amazon.

Unsafe, but popular option: Have it sent to where you work. Package thieves troll lobbies and entrance areas, watching for delivery trucks. Then they come out and pretend they have the authority to sign for packages delivered there.

On a somewhat related note, "vishing" scams are on the rise. This uses AI to fake a person's voice then call people on their contacts list (especially "Sis" or "Mom"). Some defenses against that:

1. Use VOIP instead of a cell phone as your main phone. Most people are unwilling to do this, but it does make vishing your contacts list impossible.
    

2. Always check your Caller ID. While this can be faked, it usually is not faked correctly. For example, your friend is Sammy Smith and Caller ID has always showed that. Now it's S Smith or Samuel Smith. Take the call, then ask, "Can I call you right back?" Don't pull the number from Caller ID, type it in.
    

3. If "friend" or "relative" calls and then asks you for a loan to be sent electronically, ask a verification question. "Say, do you remember when we went on that trip to Niagara Falls in 2018?" If you didn't go, you may get a puzzled, "Uh, I don't remember that." In which case, you ask another verification question. If you get a yes, you just hang up.
    

4. If they ask you to mail a cashier's check or cash or anything else, it's a scam. Tell the caller to send the request in writing, then give them the address of your local police station as if it's your address. Or just with them a painful death from diarrhea and hang up on them.
    

5. A trick they use to get past your guard is to ask for personal information instead of money. For example, "I can't remember your mom's maiden name. Was it Jones?" Now they have a commonly used ID question. Other commonly used ID questions are past addresses, favorite pet's name, first pet's name, and favorite color. Defense? Give them fake info. If it's a legitimate friend or relative, they won't know the difference. If it's a scammer, they won't have anything useful.
    

6. Don't give out your birth date. The caller may ask for it in two parts, playing the role of forgetful cousin. "When did you graduate from high school" and the other "Is your birthday on the 10th or was that the 22nd?"--now they have the day and year, but most people will simply volunteer the month as well.
    

7. If you get a call from someone who sounds like Anthony Fauci, hang up immediately because it might really be him!

Driving

On an unrelated note, reckless driving has become an epidemic. Many factors have contributed to this, and the lawlessness of the communist regime that illegally occupied our country for four years was a major factor. Another major factor was the "defund the police" insanity that was "justified" when George Floyd committed suicide by fentanyl. As if defunding police will reduce fentanyl deaths, how stupid is that? This criminal protection project left communities everywhere with too few police officers.

Due to the severe shortage of police, it has been hard for law enforcement to protect sane citizens from the "video game drivers" who aggressively race along our streets and highways, tailgating, lane splitting, and excessively speeding. Even in the People's Republic of California, the government is putting the safety of people above the convenience of criminals--at least on the roads and highways. In the PRC, the famous California Highway Patrol is using specially modified vehicles to nail the crazies and get them off the roads.

What can you, as a sane person, do? The common advice is "Don't antagonize them." It's good advice, to a point. But I also don't let them bully me. I'll get out of their way if there is space in the next lane for me to get over. If there isn't, then I stay where I am and tap my emergency lights a few times to simulate brake lights.

Occasionally, I will make an aggressive move. For example I was recently driving on a city street during a light rain. I was sitting in a two-lane turn lane, with a motorcycle patrolman next to me. There was a car behind him, and it was way too close. When the light changed, the cop zoomed ahead then dropped to the speed limit. I saw the tailgater coming up behind me, so I put my car in the path of the tailgater. He tried to go around me, but I didn't let him. My goal wasn't to win one of his delusional contests, but to protect the officer from being hit by Mr. Crazy if the officer's bike slipped on the wet roadway. If not for the danger to the officer, I would have let Mr. Crazy go around me. It's not like Mr. Crazy has enough smarts that my move would teach him anything, so there was no reason to engage him except the clear threat to the safety of another human being.

At the other extreme of reckless driving are the morons who do not understand the meaning of the word "merge". I guess that wasn't covered when they got their driver's license from the snack machine at the gas station. While aggressive drivers threaten us at highway speed, passive aggressive drivers threaten us as we try to get on the highway in the first place. In Dallas, these dangerous drivers are pulled over and cited for a moving violation. At one time, their cars were impounded for severe cases; I don't know if that is still the case.

Milwaukee and many other cities are employing Darwinism to address the problem. They put a light at the start of the entrance ramp to prevent a chain of slow-moving cars from endangering dozens of people at once. The passive aggressive driver will presumably get creamed by a semi doing 65 in a 65, thereby removing one threat from the highway system. The innocent drivers behind the moron will have a free and open ramp upon which they can get up to speed to properly merge. It's not a perfect solution, but it helps. A better solution is a radar device that is set to operate only in clear daytime conditions. If it detects a passive aggressive driver (for example, the highway is 65 MPH and the moron is doing 45), it unleashes a barrage of paintballs onto the passive aggressive driver's vehicle. That would end this criminal behavior very quickly and make our roads far safer.

6. Health tip/Fitness tips

Statistics when this photo was taken, 10 days before my 63rd birthday: Height: 6'0" Wingspan: 6'1" Weight: 152.6 lbs, which is more than the 148.8lbs from the 2022 shoot. I am also leaner for this one (notice the striations in my left pec). Bodyfat: Unknown, but well below what the Tanita scale says is 5% Waist: 29 Chest: 48 Arms: 15 Quads: 20.25   Max bench press: Unknown, but I do 4 sets of 10 reps with 150 lbs to warm up on chest day Max squat: Unknown, but I do 4 sets of 8 reps of front squats with 90lbs to start Leg Day Cholesterol: In normal range, on low side Testosterone: Above the upper limit of the normal range   Last illness: 1971 Last workout missed: Spring of 1977 Training days per week: 6 Type of training: Split routine, heavy on supersets   Meals per day: 7 on training days, 6 on rest day Number of eggs eaten per day: Between 7 and 10 Percent of diet that is processed food: 0 Amount of meat, wheat, corn, or soy eaten annually: 0 Number of clot shots received: 0. ********* See all of my climbing videos here: https://tinyurl.com/ClimbingSigChannel. Some cool climbing  videos: https://youtu.be/s4G0ssyJ3hc https://youtube.com/shorts/5919UDqCXDc https://youtube.com/shorts/jYvKJ9mKyyE My hardest climb ever, a 5.11d on lead: https://youtu.be/UT5h0heUUBc . I made a dumb mistake initially, letting the rope wrap over my shoulder. Watch what happens. The scale: Beginner: 5.6. 5.7. 5.8, 5.9  (roped) / VV, V0, V1, V2 (boulder) Intermediate: 5.10a, b, c, d ;5.11a, b, c, d  / V3, V4, V5, V6 Advanced: 5.12a, b, c, d; 5.13a, b, c, d. / V7, V8, V9, V10. Elite and Pro: Even harder. Almost nobody climbs at either level at any of the 6 local climbing gyms.

• The best workouts are short and intense.
• A good diet contains far more flavors and satisfaction than the typical American diet.

Italian-Americans make up about 4% of the USA population, yet are not recognized as a minority.