Thanks to the magazine catch on my lower being out of spec, all work on the skirmish rifle had to come to a halt. The slot for the magazine catch is supposed to be 0.250″ but looking at the measurement, you can see that this is not the case:
Since it is several thousandths too small, the catch doesn’t fit. I sent this photo to 5d, the maker of my 80 percent lower, and they shipped me a new one. As soon as I get a day off, the build will resume.
What if Donald Trump declared that he was transgender, and her new pronouns were to be she/her, and then the newly minted Desmond Trump announced her candidacy for President? Which would win? The hatred of all things Trump, or the love of all things tranny?
Disney has announced that all employees must be vaccinated within 60 days or be fired.
Today is finally the day that most American landlords can begin getting rid of the people who have been stealing their property. That’s right, the eviction moratorium is finally going to be allowed to expire. The Biden administration refused to extend it and even the Communist wing of the Democrat party couldn’t muster the votes in Congress to make it a law.
For some landlords, it has been YEARS since they were paid a cent in compensation for the use of the property that they purchased and were still required to maintain, insure, and pay taxes on, while the government refused to intervene as people were living there for free, even while destroying the place.
In the beginning, it was the government who created the problem- they forced everyone to stay home, which caused businesses to shut down, some permanently. What began as “two weeks to flatten the curve” became “until there is a vaccine.” Then the government mailed out billions in free money, paid billions more in enhanced unemployment benefits, all the while telling people that they didn’t have to pay rent because evictions were prohibited.
Instead of paying their bills, many Americans went on a shopping spree. Amazon, Netflix, and other companies saw record profits. Many businesses, including landlords, were bearing the costs of this orgy of spending. A year and a half later, and people are now upset that the evictions are coming, as if landlords are the villains.
Yes, landlords are being made into the villain here. Read this piece from Politico. They claim that 12 million people are behind on rent, including 50 percent of all black families. The article blames landlords for that, pointing out that Forty-eight percent of voucher holders are Black and 18 percent are Hispanic, so the refusal to accept vouchers is a coded form of racial discrimination, in other words, calling landlords racist. Why?
The reasons that many landlords, myself included, don’t accept government Section 8 vouchers is purely financial.
All of the above increases my financial risk, my workload, and decreases my income. The only way to make money with Section 8 is to buy cheap, shitty, substandard housing. In other words, be a slum lord. I don’t want to do that, so I avoid Section 8.
The fact that most people who are receiving Section 8 housing vouchers are black has nothing to do with it. I am not in business to do people favors, I am in business to make the most money that I can by doing the least amount of work and taking the smallest risk that I possibly can. If I could make money selling goods to black people by taking little risk and expending minimum effort, I would do so. The money just isn’t there.
That isn’t enough. Some governments have made it illegal to discriminate against those who are receiving Section 8 vouchers. The latest effort is a push to get banks behind an effort to refuse loans to landlords unless they agree to rent to low income, Section 8 recipients. This will drive more landlords out of the market, especially smaller ones, leaving nothing but larger, self funded landlords in the market.
This is a push for the removal of the entrepreneur from the American experience.
When I left work on Tuesday, the hospital where I work had more than 30 COVID patients admitted. I was off for two days and returned to find that the COVID totals had more than doubled to 84 patients. So an entire wing of one floor is now occupied by COVID patients, and they are putting them two in a room, which hospitals don’t like doing because of Obamacare and its reliance on Press-Ganey scores.
As far as I know, we have not had any fatalities due to COVID lately. The ICU is now full, with more than half of the patients in it being COVID patients.
That’s all I know for now.
Florida surf and turf.
Pictures from my trip:
The last Wednesday and Thursday of July each year brings the most Florida of events to the state: mini Season. Each year, thousands of people from all over the state head to the Atlantic ocean to hunt. Lobster. I usually look forward to this, and sure enough, my son and I went.
I made sure that I was not scheduled to work during mini season this year, because we didn’t go last year due to the lock downs. I packed up my SCUBA gear and headed down south with my new, $27 dollar fishing license. We managed four dives to a maximum of 95 feet and had some good father son bug hunting time. We were in West Palm Beach, within sight of Mar A Lago, about a mile and a half offshore.
The water was cool for this time of year, but there was plenty of visibility and plenty of wildlife. We had a great time, and there will be more posting later today.
The CEO of Phillip Morris surprised many this week by saying the company wants to get out of the cigarette market. This doesn’t surprise me in the least. As a (former) teacher, I can tell you that cigarette smoking is almost unheard of among teens.
What is popular with teens is vaping. Vapes come in different flavors: bubble gum, Tutti Fruity, Watermelon, Cotton Candy, and other candy flavors are enticing a new generation of customers into smoking at a time when cigarette smoking just isn’t cool anymore, and that doesn’t even address the vapes that contain cannabis. Most of the kids in high school are vaping.
Two years ago, Jim Cramer did a story on how vapes were killing the cigarette industry. If you were surprised by this, you haven’t been paying attention.
The press is surprised that a person making MINIMUM wage can’t afford the MEDIAN cost of renting a two bedroom apartment in Florida. This is largely because they apparently don’t understand math. The minimum of anything will, by definition, not be the same as the median.
“Right now, the University of Florida estimated in 2020 that almost 70,000 metro households in Orlando and surrounding areas earning 50% of the area median income or less are paying more than 50% of income on their housing. That is not sustainable,”
Median income in Orlando for a household is $61,876, but this includes two incomes (pdf alert). A household with one wage earner would of course earn half of that, or about $31,000. I can’t believe a college had to study this, it seems like common sense to me.
A person making minimum wage (currently $8.65, soon to be $10.00) would make half of the individual income, or a quarter of the median household income.
“If they have children, we’re talking three to four full time jobs at minimum wage and obviously that is not something a single parent can do,” Nazworth said.
They are of course ignoring two things: If you make minimum wage, don’t have kids, and those who do aren’t forced to pay rent without assistance. They are actually making more than the rest of us. Read an older post on this, and see that a woman making minimum wage gets another $40,000 a year in benefits from the government.
A single mother with four children who earns $2,500 a year in a part time job (that works out to 6 hours a week at minimum wage) gets another $40,000 in government benefits.
But landlords are the greedy ones here.
Take a few minutes to read this article and see if it sounds like propaganda to you.
They took a Klan murder case from 2017 and have twisted it into a story implicating police and Trump supporters. A quote:
During the Jan. 6 insurrection in the U.S. Capitol, “Thin Blue Line” flags flew alongside white supremacist signs and banners, and more than 30 current and former police officers from a number of departments around the nation were identified as attendees.
Then the piece goes on:
On a recent visit to the prison where the three klansmen worked, numerous cars and trucks in the employee and volunteer parking lots were decorated with symbols associated with white supremacy: Confederate flags, QAnon symbols and Thin Blue Line flag decals.
Couple this with statements that white supremacy is the largest threat to the nation, and you see where this is headed. Anyone associated with the thin blue line, Jan 6, or other people accused of racism will be enemies of the people.
This is called “othering,” a tactic where you cause people to think of those you wish to eliminate as being outside of the herd, less than human. The racism tag is how that is being done.