Why am I HERE?

After the last 5 years and the last week, why? What exactly is there here that would draw me here if I weren’t already here? There are airplanes out there that will take me to places that don’t seem to suck as much. Maybe you, my friends, can explain it to me. I don’t get it.

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71 thoughts on “Why am I HERE?”

  2. tho’ ms P, lil P and you’d make great neighbors please don’t come to KY.  too many people here already.  given climate change, my advice is: go north, young man, go north…. and somewhere near sustainable food and water supply.

  3. speaking of travelling, this traveler should be something to behold

    from earthsky

    2021’s best comet
    A much-anticipated comet – C/2021 A1 (Leonard) – is likely to be 2021’s best comet, and its brightest comet by year’s end. Astronomer Greg Leonard discovered the comet as 2021 began. Discovery images showed a tail for the comet, suggesting we might see a nice tail as Comet Leonard draws closer to the Earth and sun. And telescopic observers and astrophotographers do now see a tail, as photos on this page show. The comet is currently heading sunward, toward its perihelion (closest point to the sun) on January 3, 2022. Comets are typically brightest around perihelion. Comet Leonard has been in the morning sky, but, in December, itll become visible in the evening sky. All in all, it’s time to look for a comet!
    Over the coming month, as Comet Leonard heads sunward, it’ll sweep closest to Earth on December 12. It won’t be particularly close at its closest, passing more than 21 million miles (34 million km) away. But six days later – on December 18 – the comet will have an exceptionally close pass of Venus of just 2.6 million miles (4.2 million km). Then it’ll round the sun on January 3, 2022, at a distance of about 56 million miles (0.6 AU, or 90 million km).
    According to TheSkyLive.com on November 28:

    The current estimated magnitude [brightness] of Comet Leonard (C/2021 A1) is 10.64 (JPL) while the latest observed magnitude is 7.5 (COBS).

    So, again, Comet Leonard is too faint to see with the eye. But it’s a good binocular comet now and might be possible to be glimpsed with the eye alone in dark skies as 2021 draws to a close.
    Or maybe not. Comets are unpredictable. But C/2021 A1 (Leonard) is very much a comet worth watching.

    [continues]

  5. among other things, stephen colbert last night mused:

    “The newest batch of online stupid maintains that omicron is a hoax, Their proof? If you scramble the letters of omicron, you get the word moronic.”

    “Wow … that theory is incredibly omicron,”

    That stench emanating from the Supreme Court Is the smell of conservative justices, five of whom were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote, doing exactly what they were put there to do: restrict access to abortions. Elsewhere, anti-vaxxers have been cooking up wild new pandemic conspiracy theories since the emergence of the Omicron coronavirus variant.

  6. Everybody has to be somewhere.  

    Remember, if the world didn’t suck, we’d all fall off.

  7. bbronc, apologies for not seeing your thread idea before i jumped the gun and posted pogo’s which was submitted an hour or so later and was tagged “pending”.  anyway, before publishing it for tomorrow, one question: yours says “draft” – is it really a draft with more to come or is it a finished product? 

  9. I wasn’t as clear as I could have been. By  “here” I am referring to this country. I believe that over the past 5 years the country has become broken and it isn’t getting repaired that I can see. The Senate – broken. The Supreme Court – broken. The lower courts – broken. Bipartisanship- broken. Sanity with respect to public health – broken. Racially neutral voting access – broken. Race relations – broken. Self determination over one’s own body – broken. Am I wrong? 

  10.  Florida State Guard of 200 Floriduh man volunteers controlled by DeInSanity to respond to events in FL?  What could possibly go wrong?  

  11. patd – I wanted to let it ferment overnight before sending it on.  I will hand it over in a few minutes, ready for publication anytime.  It seems to fit in with Pogo’s lament.

  13. I do wonder if Denmark would have me?   Their social structure is interesting. A Year of Living Danishly, is a good read.

  15. pogo & BB & BiD,

    here’s a song for you from 2017 — things haven’t gotten much better, eh?

    This is the parody version of oh Canada a national anthem of Canada, which has been made after the president Donald trump inauguration.

     

    and one from 2020 welcoming all comers

  16. if you do move out of the country, please don’t give up your u.s. citizenship until after you vote in the 2022 elections.  if the magaTs get deservedly pummeled, god willing, you might want to come back now and then.

  17. Oh Jesus…  why does someone always bring up Canada.  Canada doesn’t want baby boomers trying to come to their country in search of their healthcare system.  They will accept you if you have skills they are looking for and give a minimum of 15 yrs of work.
     
    BTW…  I don’t know what the requirements are to emigrate to France… or Norway… or Italy… or Switzerland… etc., etc.   But it wouldn’t surprise me if at least some of them don’t want American baby boomers either.  
     
    Why should a country be willing to take on citizens that will take from it and basically give back nothing.

  18. And to my feelings about leaving.  I’m an American…  this is home.  Am I disgusted with what’s happening here… hell yeah!  But I ain’t going anywhere…  well…  maybe in the future to a retirement condo in another part of NH.  My family lives here….  my friends live here.  
     
    I no longer want to continually discuss politics….  I no longer will make everything political.  But just before the last presidential election I said I would walk across broken glass on the gym floor to get to a voting booth.   That sentiment still applies.

  19. All of the pleasant alternatives want you to be able to support yourself unless you have some pretty specific genetic relationships for citizenship.  I fall in one of the loopholes (except for Barbados recently) but even with the plus of some land owned by my former brother-in-law in Canada couldn’t handle it financially.  

    For Pogo’s question, the US is still one of the great nations of the world.  Except for its asinine habit of picking on groups of its citizens (native, ethnic, poor, women etc) it remains among the best as a place to live if you have a fairly stable source of income.  

  20. Looks like Joe Biden and the Democrats saved Christmas.
     
    Andrea Mitchell sucks repeating the gooper daily blast word for word

  22. There are no assholes in France and they  love Americans.  There’s no racism in Europe either, fun fact

  23. KGC

    I wouldn’t worry that much about Mitchell.  Her speech patterns are so hideous that no one can stand to listen to her for longer than two minutes.

     

  25. I’m here because those who came before me had it worse, and, managed to scrape together funds to get here.  

    I’d still like to know what it feels like not to worry about a medical bill. My crappy, new insurance required a copay for the labs. That’s new.

    There are many issues that seem beyond mending. I get it. Sometimes you feel like running away from home.

  27. Blue

    Sorry about your insurance costs.  Is your policy employer choice or is the problem with those available in TX?  

  28. patd, won’t happen before the 2022 or even the 2024 elections, and I’m not going to give up US Citizenship even if I move to another country to retire.  Canada – I could do that – lived in something akin to the Quebecois and Nova Scotian climates for 6 years and tolerated it just fine.  It’s not that much different than here – at least in and around Quebec.  Nova Scotia – a different kettle of fish, but with great tides.  Not sure I could sell Mrs. P on that, though. 

  29. We get it, you’re rich.  Take your money and go.  We’ll be here, fighting the good fight, enjoy your wine

    Really sorry your access to abortion is threatened 🙄

  30. “Lawyer Wonders Why This Country Sucks” would make a good Onion headline, just sayin’
     
     
    Ok, i’m done, too easy.   Au revoir, ne la porte permittent dans le derriere pas! 👋

  33. Hey Pogo…  been to Nova Scotia many times.  I have relatives that live there.  LOVE the place and the tides! 
    But you do know that Quebecers hate anyone that can’t speak French… don’t you…

  35. A long time ago Colorado ski resorts, and others, came up with the slogan “Ski Colorado”, or other.  The posters showed people breaking powder and having fun.  Other pundits came up with some others, “Ski Nebraska” with a person on skiis standing in a corn field, is one.  You can make up others.  The best one I like is “Ski Hawaii”.  Every now and then ski season does hit the high peaks of the Big Island.  One year we went there for Thanksgiving and there were a couple of skiers hoping to ski Hawaii.

  38. https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/02/politics/booster-partisan-split-analysis/index.html

    “In the new Kaiser poll, just 36% of Republicans overall said they would get the booster. This is significantly less than the 77% of Democrats.“

    https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/03/europe/italy-man-silicone-arm-vaccine-intl-scli/index.html

    “A 50-year-old man tried to pass off a silicone arm as his own at a Covid-19 vaccination clinic in northern Italy, in an attempt to get a vaccine certificate without actually getting inoculated.“

    Jamie – It’s my employer’s choice of plan to save a buck in the company’s part of the premium.

  41. i watched a youtube that shooter made 6 years, ago, and he was such a sweet little kid.  Tragedy all around.

  44. I’ve been on a pair of skis, water or snow, exactly once. Water. Not a disaster but not my cup op tea. 
    We did used to hook up all manner of weird objects to a car and ride em cowboy…..some of them were kind of like skiing.

  46. Satellites reveal Arctic rivers are changing faster than we thought

     
    https://phys.org/news/2021-11-satellites-reveal-arctic-rivers-faster.html
     
    A civil and environmental engineering researcher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has, for the first time, assimilated satellite information into on-site river measurements and hydrologic models to calculate the past 35 years of river discharge in the entire pan-Arctic region. The research reveals, with unprecedented accuracy, that the acceleration of water pouring into the Arctic Ocean could be three times higher than previously thought.
     
    This discharge is coming from melting permafrost , and that water is full viruses , and bacteria that have been in cold storage for tens of thousands of years. 

  53. This tiny beast is not done with us , not by a long shot. We’ve seen it in tigers,  and other mammals.  And the 50 mutations seen on the Omicron point to it jumping from one mammal to another , and back again. 
    One of our saving graces is that  viruses don’t kill off their hosts  at 100 % . If they did that they are out of business.
    But they share information when one meets another. 
    They do all this with out a brain or sex organs , they are not truly dead , and they are not truly alive.  When they need to , they sleep for God knows how long.  And there are trillions in a tea spoon of sea water. 
     
    Roll that marble around your head on the pillow tonight. 
     
     

  54. coup-sters eastman and clark are pleading the fifth or so they’ve told the jan 6th committee.

    i think they’ve been reading up on the ollie north ploy for immunity (not the vaccine kind) and his successful career on fox afterward.

    ‘course they also could be trying to work around the NDA they had to sign when they started coup-ing for the former guy. 

  55. Maddow Blog | Another Team Trump lawyer to plead the Fifth in Jan. 6 probe (msn.com)

    “While Dr. Eastman emphatically denies committing any illegal acts, he nonetheless has a reasonable fear that the requested information could be used against him in court,” his lawyer wrote.
    Remember, as recently as 2016, it was Trump himself who derided those who asserted their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. “The mob takes the Fifth Amendment,” the then-candidate said. “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”

  56. Bob, Lara Logan is a South African POS who will make a great press secretary for SFB if (when) he wins re-election in 2004 and Mrs. P and I start making travel plans. She knows her racism.

  57. RR –
    I find your comments about fleeing to Canada spot on ,  like all those Mayans sitting on the border at Del Rio. 
    Up to this year BC  was a good place to flee , but there was that town this summer that saw 118 , 119, 121 , and then burnt down  all in 4 days. 
    As for Norway , it’s all rocks.  This why the Vikings moved to France, and rebranded themselves. 
    There are several things I would do as far as moving………
    Get out of flood plains.  Life next to the creek / beach can be wonderful , until it’s not.  
    Stay out of the woods.  Nothing worse than old people and their dogs fleeing wildfires. 
    Stay East of the 100th meridian , all that red sandstone in Utah  is there for a reason. 
     

  61. Something hit me the other night about centuries , and how see them .
    The death of Custer , and the birth of the light blub are 2 years apart. Col. Drake drilled his well in 59′, the car age came 50 years later.  Salk’s polio shot , and the Covid one are nearly 70 years  apart.
    Biology was not like cracking gasoline. 
    We are now entering  an age of electric / biology . 
    And that kids , is life. 
    Never in the history of the world have so many human brains bent on solving so many problems with so much horse power at their finger tips. 
    And that is hope. 
     
     

  63. This virus has  split  me off from the last of my family .
    My hippy nephew , and my little sister failed to tell me that he had it , and then came home in Oct.  And not vaxxed. 
    I learned this after when Thanksgiving  was 2 days out. 
    I bit my lip.  And then wrote him calling him a jackass . Then little sister in all caps informed me I was that animal. 
    I would hope that all of you here write her and inform her that I am  indeed a rather large Jackass. 
    lizlangford at Gmail .COM
     
     

  66. So, liberals spent decades maligning “big pharma”, rightly or wrongly, whatever, and now, feign befuddlement when dumb kids mistrust “big pharma”.  Those kids are just behaving according to what they were told

  70. Blink –
    You cut into a big nerve with that observation. 
    Funny how “Big Pharma”  killed so many , and saved much more. 
     But only  a few were chasing the dragon. 

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