Feliz Festivus

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Author: patd

“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked. "Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad." "How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice. "You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

72 thoughts on “Feliz Festivus”

  3. this saturday on christmas morn, to infinity and beyond …

    NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, poised to launch, will open a new window on the cosmos — if everything goes just right – Washington Post

    NASA’s long-delayed James Webb Space Telescope, a $10 billion marvel of engineering and scientific ambition, is finally poised to rocket into deep space from a launchpad in French Guiana, on the northeast shoulder of South America. What happens in the following days and weeks will either change our understanding of the universe or deliver a crushing blow to NASA and the global astronomical community.
    The Webb must cruise for 29 days to a unique orbit around the sun that keeps it roughly 1 million miles from Earth, four times the distance to the moon. At launch, it will be folded upon itself, a shrouded package inside the cone of the European Space Agency’s Ariane 5 rocket. After it escapes Earth’s gravity, it must begin opening up, blossoming into a functioning telescope.
    That starts with the deployment of the solar panels to make the whole thing work. Next comes the unfurling of a tennis-court-size expanse of multilayered foil — the sun shield, akin to a giant umbrella, ideally more reliable than what you would get from a drugstore.
    Then, the telescope must deploy 18 hexagonal, gold-covered, beryllium mirrors, which collectively act as a light bucket 21 feet across, designed to capture ancient light emitted more than 13 billion years ago as the embryonic universe was still learning how to create stars and galaxies.
    […]
    This is an international endeavor, a partnership among NASA and the space agencies of Europe and Canada. NASA estimates that 10,000 people have worked on the mission, many of them at its Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Professional astronomers and amateur space buffs across the planet are emotionally invested in the telescope’s success. The Webb’s scientific potential has made it something more than a NASA project, in the same way the little telescope Galileo employed to discover the moons of Jupiter was more than just an object in Italian history.
    NASA is taking no chances with the Webb. It has delayed the launch twice in recent weeks to deal with technical problems. At one point, a huge clamp broke suddenly, shaking the telescope and rattling everyone’s nerves. A close inspection found no sign of damage. Then came a glitch in the communications interface between the launch vehicle and instruments on the ground; a bad cable was deemed at fault and the problem solved.
    NASA plans to launch at 7:20 a.m. Saturday — Christmas morning. If something causes a further delay, there will be launch windows every morning, lasting 30 minutes, until Jan. 6, when the moon will cruise into the picture and create a gravitational disruption for a week.[continues]

  4. “Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
    And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
    Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds –
    and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of –
    wheeled and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence.
    Hovering there I’ve chased the shouting wind along
    and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air.
    “Up, up the long delirious burning blue
    I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
    where never lark, or even eagle, flew;
    and, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
    the high untrespassed sanctity of space,
    put out my hand and touched the face of God.”

    [High Flight by John Gillespie Magee]

  5. Before the grievances begin, a reminder of how elaborate things in day past.

    Long before Santa Claus, caroling and light-strewn Christmas trees, people in medieval Europe celebrated the Christmas season with 12 full days of feasting and revelry culminating with Twelfth Night and the raucous crowning of a “King of Misrule.”

    How Christmas was Celebrated in the Middle Ages

     

  6. I watched a Science Channel show on the Webb satellite. Interesting instrument. This one, unlike Hubble, is going to be on its own and is beyond the range of the space shuttle if it breaks down or needs adjustment. 

    Festivus. My favorite holiday. I am pissed at not being able to go out for dinner without risking exposure to a deadly virus. I am pissed about stupid people in my state and our country who care so little for themselves that they won’t get a shot that will save their lives and ours. And I’m pissed that the press still pays any attention to the disgraced former President. Finally I’m pissed that Joe Manchin has become the dishonest self-serving prick he is. 

    There, that’s better.

  7. My old buddy and colleague Elgin Wells, guitarist for Joe Savage the Snake Man, 1972.   Also one of those fellows who loved to slip the surly bonds of earth in his plane “The Stargazer”. 

  9. Oops. Sometimes those surly bonds of earth are a little too strong for heavier than air flying machines.

  12. By Smiley Joe Manchin’s logic, we shouldn’t have roads because some people drive irresponsibly.  What a vicious dolt.
     
    All hail Joe Manchin, King of the Yokels

  13. Maybe Manchin’s constituents smoke crack because there’s no opportunity in his state because everybody left after the coal industry poisoned the entire region 🤔 

  16. https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/23/politics/faith-leaders-voting-rights-letter-biden/index.html
    “More than 800 faith leaders are urging President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats to pass voting rights legislation in 2022, writing in a letter released Thursday that the issue needs to be the administration’s “number-one priority” after measures stalled in the Senate.“

    Democrats are not the problem. They need to go after Republicans (who love to hide behind the Bible).
    Ask the so-called, Christian, Republicans why they are more beholden to big oil, the NRA etc., than to human beings.

  17. CDC/administration/state gov public health folk would have a better chance of convincing the unvaxed to be vaxed if they would stop just announcing the number and rate of new cases and instead make daily announcements of the number of deaths and the percentage of which were the UNvaxed.

    perhaps it’s a reg requiring a certain protocol on official announcements from public officials, but why can’t the media take the info and massage the message to headline/highlight the fact that the *overwhelmingly vast majority of preventable covid deaths are the UNvaxed.

     

    *from ABC via msn

    Like the federally compiled data, state-level data from January to December also shows that infections among vaccinated people were still relatively uncommon. Meanwhile, it remains exceedingly rare for a vaccinated person to die of COVID-19.

    Data for breakthrough infections, cases, and hospitalizations varies greatly by state. Some states provide data for all three variables, while others only offer statistics for one or two variables.

    Data from 36 of the states showed that approximately 1.37% of those fully vaccinated have experienced a breakthrough infection between January and December. Similarly, data from 34 of the states showed that about 0.05% of those fully vaccinated Americans have experienced a breakthrough case that required hospitalization, and data from 36 states showed only 0.01% of those fully vaccinated have died of COVID-19.

    In October, unvaccinated individuals had a 5 times greater risk of testing positive for COVID-19 and a 14 times greater risk of dying from it, as compared to fully vaccinated individuals, according to data compiled by the CDC. Additionally, unvaccinated individuals had a 10 times greater risk of testing positive for COVID-19 and a 20 times greater risk of dying from it, as compared to fully vaccinated individuals with a booster.

  19. Yep, the first tRUMPer at the office to get the cofeve last year (and who says he has now been vaxxed) says the new variant is more contagious, but it’s just a “runny nose and a scratchy throat.” Gee, I wish that were true.

  23. Forecast for tomorrow here –
     
    82 F degrees with blowing sand. Gusting to 50 MPH .
    That’s 28 F degrees above average. 
    Forecast for the West Coast  –
    Another “atmospheric river ”  San Diego  4 to 5 inches of rain. 
    By Sunday parts of the Sierra  may see 12 feet of snow. 
    Watch this one coming out of the Rockies. 
     

  25. BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Researchers studying the wreckage of the last U.S. slave ship, buried in mud on the Alabama coast since it was scuttled in 1860, have made the surprising discovery that most of the wooden schooner remains intact, including the pen that was used to imprison African captives during the brutal journey across the Atlantic Ocean.
    While the upper portion of the two-masted Clotilda is gone, the section below deck where the captured Africans and stockpiles were held is still largely in one piece after being buried for decades in a section of river that hasn’t been dredged, said maritime archaeologist James Delgado of the Florida-based SEARCH Inc.
    https://www.npr.org/2021/12/22/1067078342/wreckage-of-last-slave-ship-clotilda-alabama

     
    Henry Lewis Gates  profiled Quest Love on his show , Quest’s people were on the Clotilda.
    The whole venture was a bet  between 2 men, that it could be done.
    The descendants  of that voyage founded Africatown after the war. It was pretty amazing TV  when Gates told Love the story, for both men. 
     

     

  27. Trump’s lawyers filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court ahead of a Thursday deadline to seek a review imposed by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected the former president’s suit earlier this month.

     
    They just beat the deadline.

  29. Trump’s lawyers argue that it is unconstitutional for the archives to follow the order of the sitting president to release documents over the objection of the former (disgraced) occupant of the oval office.  I gotta see the authority they rely upon in making that constitutional argument. That constitutional basis just may be hard to find.  Legal Information Institute,

    Executive privilege is the power of the President and other officials in the executive branch to withhold certain forms of confidential communication from the courts and the legislative branch. When executive privilege is invoked in litigation, the court should weigh its applicability by balancing competing interests.  TheConstitution is silent on the executive power to withhold information from the courts or Congress; the privilege is rooted in the separation of powers doctrine that divides the power of the United States government into legislative, executive and judicial branches.

    United States v. Nixon, also known as the Watergate Scandal, has established that even a President has a legal duty to provide evidence of one’s communications with his aides when the information is relevant to a criminal case. By requiring the President to turn over recordings of private conversations that he had with his aides, the Court’s decision has helped frame how to define executive privilege in judicial setting. Even before the Nixon decision, however, some courts have required the executive branch to provide governmental records and documents prepared for the President.

    In civil actions, federal decisions have recognized the executive privilege over the officials’ internal communications and advice based on the law of evidence. However, the courts have held that the applicability of the privilege should be decided on a case by case basis by weighing the need for the administration of justice against the need to protect confidentiality. Courts have generally held that statements of facts are exempt from the privilege while subjective opinions, recommendations and advice are protected.

    Thin gruel since the sitting president is the gatekeeper between the Congress and the Administration.

  30. Trump’s relocation of the Bureau of Land Management was part of a familiar Republican playbook
     
    In his 1981 inaugural address, President Ronald Reagan famously proclaimed, “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” The goal, plain and simple, was to paint the federal government as an unnecessary evil.
    Reagan succeeded beyond his and his advisors’ wildest dreams, setting the political stage for a Republican Party that has elevated anti-government grievance to an article of faith. The destructive impacts of the ensuing cuts to Medicaid, housing aid, food assistance, unemployment compensation and other crucial programs are still with us.
    The Trump administration, despite some vaguely unorthodox campaign rhetoric, followed the same playbook. Trump chief of staffMick Mulvaneyopenly gloated about how many federal employees he was going to force out of a job by making their lives miserable.
    https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/586760-trumps-relocation-of-the-bureau-of-land-management-was-part-of-a
     

  31. Kicking dedicated career public servants to the curb and giving more power to huge corporations and their lobbyists is not a good path forward, but it’s what Republican leaders keep promising and keep doing. We should start paying closer attention to the consequences and remind ourselves that the alternative to a fairly treated, productive, hard-working federal workforce is not some free enterprise utopia. It’s the Robber Baron era all over again. 
    Raúl M. Grijalva chairs the House Committee on Natural Resources. He has represented Southern Arizona in Congress since 2003.

  32. So, sturg,  did you buddy Elgin play all that brass sitting between him and the singer?

    I always entertained the idea of learning to fly but never pulled the money or time together at the same time to do it. What few flights I took in small planes were either very enjoyable or just fucking terrorizing.  High school friend was an AFROTC pilot – flew home from college with him once in a Cessna 150 (terror flight).  He ended up crashing one in a landing in Birmingham – wasn’t hurt badly, but kinda put a damper on my enthusiasm about flying.  At the time he crashed he had been a pilot for probably 5 or 6 years – still a kid, but not so much a novice.  

    It’s trite, but as they say, I imagine he (your friend) died doing something he loved.  Hope so.

  33. SCOTUS Will Give Up A Vacation Day To Ensure American Workers Get Exposed To COVID As God Intended – Wonkette

    Last night the Supreme Court scheduled oral argument for January 7 in two cases involving federal coronavirus mandates. The first case involves the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) mandate that employers with 100 or more workers ensure that all of them are vaccinated or tested regularly. The other centers on a challenge to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services requirement that all healthcare workers in federally funded facilities be vaccinated.
    As the country gets pummeled by Omicron, both of these would seem to be no-brainers, the very least the government could do to get this shit under control and protect workers. But half the country has lost its damn mind, so naturally the Republican attorneys general and a gazillion business lobbies rushed into court to challenge it.
    […]
    You can bet that the Supreme Court is going to do something horrible here, and that many people will get sick and die as a direct result of it. But lest you think this pack of robed jackals don’t give a shit about your opinion, they’ve done us all the favor of scheduling oral argument on a more-or-less emergency basis, rather than doing it on the shadow docket.
    The court has taken a lot of flak lately for issuing opinions with major consequences without a full briefing and argument. And they’d like to continue being partisan hacks who are systematically dismantling civil liberties and good government without the hoi polloi calling them out on it, so they’re doing us all this huge favor and scheduling an expedited briefing for a day they weren’t even supposed to be in session.
    After which they’ll go on to send all the meat packers back to breathe in Omicron droplets, as they always intended.
    Well, the good news is that the Supreme Court knows how much we hate them. The bad news is that they’re still going to do all the horrible shit they had planned — but they’ll jump through a few extra hoops first to pretend they’re really giving it serious thought and not just destroying the country for sport.

     

    good thing wonkette doesn’t have a case right now before the venerable court – it would be toast and she would forever be barred from bringing anymore cases before it or any other fed ct.  it’s a no-no and frowned upon by various bars for lawyers to say nasty things about judges 

  34. Pogo –
    Thanks for that last nugget , Trump’s game has always been to string everyone out in court , well these aren’t drywall contractors, and little ole’ ladies in Atlantic City.   Time to lance this boil on the American butt. 
    If they side with Trump , the next mob will be coming up the steps of the court. 

  35. It’s  telling that after Roe, Reagan, and Newt .  That “Shining City on a Hill” turns out to be an old John Ford set made of tin foil  , and damp moldy particle board. 
    All of it owned by some hedge fund in South Dakota. 

  36. Just had the misfortune of accidentally seeing a current picture of SFB.  Terrible looking.  Looks like some disease(s) are doing the creature bad. My best to the nasty things in it.

  37. I remember that in early 2009 the rumor here was that Obama wasn’t going to take our guns,  he was after our ammo. 
     
    And I thought , if I was an ammo dealer that’s a damn good rumor .
    Then I thought about this entire industry of fear they have invented .  I guess Ike was right in more ways than we imagined. 
    This “Industry of Fear” gave us a man who said if we were just rich enough,  we could grab any woman we wanted, anywhere we wanted.  And that would make us great again .
    The bible thumpers were all in. 
      As for me ,  I have placed all my eggs in that James Webb basket.  After it gets off the Earth,  346 things have to go as planned , and then it can make it’s Million mile trip to it’s new home. 
    The hot side and the cold side are nearly 700 F degrees apart. if it gets there. 
    This heat shield is the size of a tennis court. Made of a stacked layer of reflective sheets less than the thickness of a human hair. 
    All of it folded up like a butterfly in a chrysalis on top of a rocket. 
    I have followed this stuff since the 5th grade dragging our “portable TV” to P.F. Brown  in my red wagon , to watch the Mercury missions. 
    So if this mission works, it will be the best Christmas gift any of us will ever get.  It will make the the building of the Great Pyramid look like getting a box of Lego’s under the tree. 
    One last thing , this is a world wide effort that’s why they shipped it to South America , it’s riding on a French rocket.
    America isn’t only nation that needs this to work, mankind needs it very badly as well. 
     
    The House of Reps tried to kill it more than once.  Deep thinkers that they are. 
     

  38. Bob,  love the lancing that boil reference – it’s apt.
     
    BB, yes, I wish Dumbass’ fungi, bacteria and viruses the best this holiday season and urge them to work harder.

  39. I haven’t been in a plane since 77, I got no use fer ’em…..I’m pretty sure that God frowns upon his humans sailing thru the air at any old high speed.  Elgin’s dad was a pilot though and Elgin just seems to have followed in the deal.
    He was a natural bone showman and a really talented moo-jician.   His airplane music was a lot different from his snake man music…..
    .

  40. I told my son-in-law that if I should just keel over out here some day sanding on some piece of wood or another and he hears somebody say “Well, at least he died doing what he loved,”  he’s to punch them square in the nose. 
    lol

  41. The “Reptile Mind” has never understood just what “Big Government” throws off. 
    They all hated the idea of the TVA , Grand Coulee , the CCC , etc. 
    Then along came the war  and Boeing had the power to make the B-29 , Oak Ridge made the bomb , and Texas has all these wonderful places in her state parks. 
     
    The “Reptile Mind” has never seen beyond the tip of it’s tongue. 
     

  44. Pogo –
    John Ford  gave us the only great “boil scene” in the movies , ………. William Holden in the “Jorse Soilders”,  I’ve taken up  Confed rate  Spelling. 

  45. How glorious would it be if Romney flipped Dem and Smiley Joe had to sit alone on his houseboat?! 
     
    Come to the light, Mitt!  i’m sorry for anything i said about you when you ran for President😘

  46. Sturgeone – I worked with a former Air Force pilot.  Shot down twice in Korea (he was older than me) and he would never fly anywhere for any reason.  The company allowed him to drive where we were to be working.  I liked that because we had extra days for some travel.
     
    Pogo – Hubble was a spy satellite turned one eighty.  It had some issues until it got glasses, literally. 
     
    Boat Ladies Wine Club is one of my little efforts on the YouTube.  We are still experimenting with it.  Here is Boat Ladies Dance to the Music, just because it is Festivous. https://youtu.be/etH1soLGEsg

  47. By the way, any Republican senator who wants to be the most powerful Senator in Washington just has to flip Dem, think about the opportunities!!!
     
     
     

  48. i told my Air Force pal that i couldn’t be paid to get on a helicopter, to which he replied, facetiously:
     
    ”What?  You don’t trust 50,000 moving parts above your head?!”

  49. Flying  –
    My great uncle Jimmy was an oil well insurance  man.  He gave me a ride once in the early 60’s .  I spent those summers  after school  with my uncle Monk and aunt Lori at Dangerfield , Tex. 
    Jimmy flew me back one year from Love Field to Lubbock. In July on his way to Wyoming.  The thermals  were a trip a min. 
    I was young , it was the early sixties in a toy airplane. 
    I loved it , I wasn’t on a bus. 
    Then years later at Rifle , Colorado  we were landing and taking off  inside a triangle of  power lines.  I was 29 , my only comfort was that the best long line piolet in the world was flying us around. 
    I water skied on the long line under his Lama on the Yampa River .
    Had my boots tied around my neck , after I skied the river  he took me to the deepest part and lower me like a tea bag. 
     
    Anyway one morning at Rifle we were sitting in the triangle of power lines , and as he got ready to lift off just before he pulled the “collective” , he looked right at me and said , ” Gravity  Never Sleeps” , flipped his tinted visor  down, and pulled on that “collective” .
    We when straight up as fast as that beast could go to 4 or 5 hundred feet.  Then he lowered the nose , and we were off like a rocket. 
    I will never forget asking Lewis what he was doing as I was trying to drink myself to death.  And Lewis said , “Bob I’m jumpin’ outta helicopters , and scaring the shit out of the wild life.” 
    I said , can you get me a job?
    That’s all I know about flying. 
     

  50. BB – The boat was decorated very nicely. It looked like a fair amount of wine was involved in preparation for the club meeting. You can never go wrong with a march.

  51. Bink – True.  Manchin wouldn’t be the kingmaker anymore.  Actually, by not even being coy about how he would vote, he lost all of his shine already. You can’t really shine a turd.

  52. bId – well it is the wine club.  What you don’t hear is the CD player is a very crappy Chinese pile of garbage.  The CD skips and sometimes smashes sounds.  Yes we do have fun,most days starting around five pm, sometimes a little earlier.

  54. I remember that helicopter safety lesson  word for word.  At Lost Canyon Res. Utah. 
    I sold everything I had to get there.  I took a cab from Salt Lake to Morgan to get to that lesson.  I was 3 hours late , the next day I was hired. Then I got that lesson. 
    Two years later , I was drilling the worlds highest shot hole on the West end of the Uinta’s at over 10,000 feet on a Texaco  contract. 
    We were the “Flying Squirrels ” , and we slammed steel .
    Rocky Mountain  Geophysical  invented the helicopter portable  drill.  And I got help make it better. 
    We danced with death every morning , you have know idea how great that is.  The helpers flew with 10 caps in an old ammo box between their feet . After we got to the drill,  they flew us  a 100 lbs . of 60% high velocity nitropel. 
    The helpers always carried the cap box. 
    Everything else flew in the drill basket  gas, ATF , the dynamite , pipe bits tools.  Everything. 
    Landing those things was a bitch  3,000 lbs. in a 3x3x6 foot steel box rotating on a 100  foot wire in the trees .  And it had to be on the fall line. 
    I had this morning  South of Nephi , when I knew I would never be more live. 
    My helper Dennis built a fire and rolled a joint .  I woke up the drill.  We were 2,000 ft above   on the East side  where I-17 was to be,  and as we smoked that joint , I declared that this as the apex of my  life. 
    I when on as I am wont  to do.  Dennis  turned into a ball .  Then I finished , and we slammed steel  up that hog back, like missionaries  on a mission.  
    Dennis  really grew up that frosty morning.
    There is nothing like teaching someone who is clueless to the point  where you can look at them and they know what to do. 
    It is a thing of beauty. 

  56. That morning  I was right , and I knew it.  I  was never  better that morning , I was never more alive. 
     
    Tell me friends  lets do a thread on this topic , ……….
    “I was never more alive”
     
    I showed mine , let’s see yours.
     
    Having babies, and making them  is a non starter.  
    Something  to remind us of who we are this Christmas. 
     
     

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