Rolled back into town Wednesday afternoon from the trek across the hot desert. The Ol' Ford Expedition turned in another stellar performance in its long life: about to hit 90,000 miles on the odometer; loaded to the gills with kids, luggage, blankets, pillows, water, various electronic entertainments; a/c and radio blasting; no road or engine noise; going most of the roughly 300 miles at a speed of between 80 and 90 mph; and getting 22 mpg--and with a lot more comfort than in a Prius. My hat is off to the workers in St. Louis who built this beast.
I always enjoy Vegas. I know, I know. It's tacky, vulgar, brash, and totally lacking in subtlety. Everything is about money, and how to get it out of your pocket, but it is done with a smile, and you're entertained while you're being robbed. You also get to meet some very nice German tourists. The place was filled with them. It seems they're dumping Euros while they're still worth something. All the Germans I ran into were exceptionally polite, seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely, and couldn't believe how "cheap" everything was. Some, however, were severely sunburned--I guess they haven't been much in the desert since Rommel came home.
Anyhow, I got home, flopped onto the sofa and flicked on the TV. Big mistake. The One, Hashem, The Man Behind the Curtain, himself, was on in HD on my flickering 60" screen giving a truly vintage speech about the economy. It was so vintage, in fact, that I thought I was watching a clip from the 2008 or 2012 election. He was still blaming Bush for the current state of the economy, at the same time, however, claiming that the economy was doing well! He also was mumbling some rambling nonsense about how it was time to focus on "growing the middle class" and not let ourselves get distracted by a bunch of Republican ginned-up phony scandals. The whole thing was pathetic, especially so with the fat bobbing heads his handlers placed behind him to nod sagely at every bit of froth spewing forth. Anybody who still has any faith in this man, or places any credence in what he says is a boob, an idiot, a liberal.
OK, time to rest. I will be back on the warpath tomorrow or so.
P.S. Don't ask how I did at poker. I ain't talking about it.
WLA
Sounds like poker went a bit like a certain South Korean airliner, coming up a bit short of joy, as alliterated so well by a certain mythical Bang Ding Ow. Yep, wise not to talk about, Dip.
ReplyDeleteBut welcome back refreshed and recharged for more adventures, high times and high jinks on the WWW.
Jack
Poker . . . I curse thy name!
DeleteCards are pitiless things.
DeleteMy Dad in his 70's could still visit poker parlors and pay his expenses. Including cheap flights to Vegas. Me not so much!
DeleteWelcome back home. Nice to see your hair did not catch on fire in that desert heat.
ReplyDeleteOnly when I turned on the TV . . .
DeleteTransporting water from California to Las Vegas does not make as much sense at it first appears. We do have many grocery stores, WalMarts,Costcos & Sam's Clubs that will be happy to sell you water, and not collect the 0.10 per container ransom you are accustomed to. Happy you enjoyed our hospitality.
ReplyDeletePfft... I know a bluff when I see one. So, you won big time and want to 'hide' that fact from the IRS. Consider yourself outed.
ReplyDeleteCurse you!
DeleteGee, Mr. Amselem, how could an intelligent, former Foreign Service Officer such as yourself miss how Dubya Bush is to blame for the recent earthquake in Gansu, China, and the flash floods in our own SW?
ReplyDeleteNot to mention any and all bad poker hands dealt.
DeleteI live in NV, so pass through "gaming" rooms all the time: going in and out of supermarkets, restaurants, and even visiting the occasional casino for a nice dinner. I never gamble myself -- the odds are too daunting for me. (I have enough challenge flying a sailplane hundreds of miles over our mountains and deserts.)
ReplyDeleteBut the thing that always impresses me is, despite the smiling faces you describe of the croupiers, the patrons (especially at the slot machines) appear not even to know what they are doing. Passing through the gaming room to breakfast in the Prospector hotel in Ely two weeks ago (good soaring there) we passed one middle aged woman who was mesmerized, trance-like, before a slot machine. She wasn't smiling, animated, anything. Just push some buttons (no coins any more even)and wait for the wheels to stop spinning. Then push some more. Her "club card" was inserted into the machine, tracking the amount of money she was spending and whether the casino was ahead or behind.
Fun. Not.
"we passed one middle aged woman who was mesmerized, trance-like, before a slot machine. She wasn't smiling, animated, anything. Just push some buttons (no coins any more even)and wait for the wheels to stop spinning. Then push some more."
DeleteJust like todays Liberal/Progressive Democrat at the voter booth.
Right!
DeleteAh, Diplomad, have you not learned by now that with this administration, nothing changes? 4 1/2 years into his administration, Obama still blames George W. Bush for his failure. But he has added a new twist with blaming the Republicans for silly "scandals" that are standing in the way of his totally "transforming" this nation into his Alinsky-styled Socialist utopia.
ReplyDeleteNow we learn that the government is going to profile your neighborhood to make sure that it is suitably diverse. If yours is a middle income neighborhood, where home owners cut their lawns with regularity, and try to keep up with standard upkeep, you are going to be targeted. Nothing says "diversity" like having neighbors with goats in the front yard or old junk cars in the driveways, or a woman who experienced a miracle birth two or three times due to the lack of a baby daddy. Perhaps the Administration will throw in a drug dealer, or two, just to make you feel inclusive with the inner city neighborhoods. I fully expect Obama to import a few Hispanic or white, maybe white-Hispanic, gang bangers into Chicago so that those neighborhoods can experience the Great Goal Of American Diversity that Obama so desperately wants. Can't have just black kids killing other black kids in Chicago, don't you know?
Not to mention that Obama is going to spend 100's of millions of dollars that we don't have to convince those Doubting Thomas states that Obamacare is the panacea we have all been waiting for. You see, the citizens of those states are just too damn stupid to understand what is good for them.
And just in; Eric Holder, functioning as Obama's gestapo enforcer, has decided that he not only totally disagrees with our system of justice in the George Zimmerman case, but he now intends to abuse the SCOTUS decisions of dumping Article IV of the voter act. Seems Eric Holder is wiser than the justices that sit on the SCOTUS bench so he intends to correct their error by demanding that Texas adhere to now defunct rules when it comes to our elections and voting laws. Never mind that Texas is now a minority-majority state. Watch was Greg Abbott does. This could turn into a blood sport.
As to your Expedition, I'll take that and raise you one '95 F250 diesel with over 300,000 miles on it. Still has its Made in Missouri window sticker. Yeah, the UAW once knew how to make vehicles. Now? Not so much. Now they just know how to destroy major American cities. Of course, the St. Louis plants were closed a long time ago in order to protect Detroit. That worked out well, didn't it.
Welcome back from Sin City. Next time take the kiddies to the Alamo. No other place will show them what it means to be willing to give all for your right to be free from oppression.
Zane
The Sovietization of our Executive Branch of government. We may yet lose the Cold War. This time to a bunch dormant proxies of the USSR.
DeleteGerman tourists? Were they building human pyramids by the swimming pool?
ReplyDeleteWhat happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
ReplyDelete(Unless of course you post it on the Internet.)
There's always a loophole . . .
DeleteMy own 2-cents worth:
ReplyDeleteThere's a BIIIG difference between reading somewhere that "the odds favor the house", and the actual real-world application of that statement to one's own personal cash-money as it vanishes across the table.
Sigh. And yet, some people do win. Sometimes. Butt -- it's never me.
I think the term they use to describe fellows like Dip (and myself), is 'sheep'.
ReplyDeleteAt grad school at UNR, an undergrad I worked with made about $20/hr grooming the out-of-town sheep in the card rooms.
I think he would've made less juggling, but probably would've also resulted in less satisfied customers.
Would you rather win $100 off a fellow sheep, or lose $100 to a wolf?
If it isn't 'fun money', it wouldn't be on the table anyways, I presume. :)
-physicistate
Baaa! Baaa!
DeleteWhy would you spoil a perfectly wonderful unloading of excess cash in Vegas by watching the doofus-in-chief? Listening to him is like getting the same tooth drilled over and over and...
ReplyDeleteThe "I" President.
ReplyDeleteImmature, Irresponsible, Incompetent, Illogical, illinformed, illprepared, idiotic, giving inconsequential speeches, bordering on historically illiterate.
Favorite movie: Idiocracy.
I do like that, perfect for the Apple I-generation of sheeple-well done.
DeleteAs a matter of curiosity, do you know anything about Nicole Avant's tenure as ambassador to the Bahamas? She was an Obama political appointee. Michelle Malkin ran a column on it.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about Christie. Maybe he is being this way to win over the Liberals and Democrats; then they vote him into the white house. THEN he becomes a conservative and saves this country.
ReplyDeleteHey, can't blame me for trying to be optomistic . :-)
V
Eugene McCarthy once quipped that the only purpose for Liberal Republicans was to shoot all the wounded after the battle.
DeleteV, it's "optimistic", not "optomistic". The mad teacher strikes again!
DeleteGiven the information we now have about IRS, NSA and the Obambi maladministration I am inclined to believe that Obambi has "something or several things" on Christie.
DeleteWhatever the truth, the country would be well rid of this RINO.
Whoa! I've been known as the spelling queen all my life. I guess I was too hasty in sending my comment, and I neglected to double check. My bad :/
DeleteThanks for the correction, Kepha.
V
Slightly O/T, to be slightly "onary" for undereducated type "effek", on the background matter that smolders, of which side of the Snowden coin one should be on, (no I haven't yet made the jump) hero or devil, there is much to question on the security front (vis-a-vis the Constitution, amended), and the principle is "unlimited power corrupts", and many more in management are highly willing to be tyrannically, satanically corrupt in our land today, along with the "phony in chief" on down. See what I'm blathering about at a good source on another story in circulation this past couple days at:
ReplyDeletehttp://unclevladdi.wordpress.com/2013/07/26/us-government-orders-internet-companies-to-hand-over-user-account-passwords/
This is damn serious surfacing of high danger for the honest Patriotic citizens of today and tomorrow. And it is on many levels, as when one has entry access to your's and my computer, one's deviant enemy can plant all matter of devious and deviant trouble, let alone define conveniently any number of entries as undesirable, that are both non-violent and patriotic, but thoroughly out of class of the examiner and his education or attitude. Remember, most such examiners are kids, like Snowden, or geeks or narrow individual specialists, many of an anti-American ideology or philosophy, of unimaginable lack of broad or literate education or experienced seasoning.
These are days of danger, since we all know of a "moviemaker" in jail for nothing, really, made as an example of the deviant white house and shrillary. Many have heard of swatting, and know of false flags and plants that can be done to people on other peoples "sh*t lists". And of course, so much can be done with inside knowledge of business matters and plans, gained from examining management computers. And unknown hell is possible from phony "navigators", and unknown hackers, perusing your health and tax, income, and employment records info on the wondrous new "obamacare" all in one computer records.
Jack
Well, just for the heck of it, since there are such a variety of dangers we all face, from the potential devestating EMP, to unlimited technological vulnerabilities, both from themselves and from deviant humans taking advantage of them. Computer controlled medical devices, vehicle control computers, now revealed ships at sea, aeroplanes, and all types of computer controlled devices. Here is some elaboration on the theme:
ReplyDeletehttp://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/16698/hacking/gps-vulnerability-exploitable-to-control-the-route-of-a-vessel.html
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2012/02/23/gps-emerging-threat/
This is all in addition to the "pilot" types that sit there in a cockpit acting as computer operators of large commercial passenger/freight jets, rather than acting as "pilot-in-command" types actually, on modern type, computer aided aircraft. I've flown and instructed both types, simple and computer aided, and a pro-pilot always trusts nothing completely, constantly cross checks all flight modal situations, in simple or system aircraft.
Six pairs of eyes did NOT maintain an effective pilot responsibility at even a student pilot level scan of basic situational awareness (airspeed, altitude, rate of climb indicator, and runway aspect, and in the case of a pure turbines and fan turbines, thrust level relative to approach range), mattering not what flight management system mode is selected or not, in case it fails. The pilot is charged with the responsibility to not fail, in case any or all else does!
In other words, it will be found that not one of those sets of eyes was a "pilot-in-command"--all just riders!! When you're "taxiing on water" to the rocks, witulate bangdingow sums up all they did--watch a "train wreck" way to late!
Pretty much that's likely what the Spanish train wreck engineer did, after 60 transits through that specific curve, if the press reports are to be believed.
If we needed computer operators to fly commercial passenger/freight jets, we could fly the commercial passenger jets remotely with the command centers of "drone pilots"!!! And drones can be simply hacked and taken over, these days, anywhere, anytime!!!
Here's the details on the short stall "landing" here: http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/AW_07_22_2013_p25-597816.xml
Jack
He's also dangerous. He's gassing off about the middle class expansion because he wants to target them - us - for extinction.
ReplyDeleteHe's expressed dismay that the expanding middle class is using so much energy, yet another leftist scare tactic.
He's dangerous. Always was. He never fooled many of us for one second. The sinister, vengeful, subtext to his vapid exhalations has always been there.
He's the stuff of which great genocides are made.