Loose Cannons On Deck!

A "loose cannon" in nautical terms is one that breaks loose from its moorings on a ship during a battle or storm, which then has the potential to cause serious damage to the ship and her crew. Applying this expression allegorically or idiomatically, then, it describes an uncontrolled or unpredictable person who causes damage to their own faction, political party, or team, etc., to wit:

Jack is considered a loose cannon due to his volatile personality and his track record of being unable to maintain his composure.¹

I would say we have a few of those in our county's Republican Party, most notably among the male spouses of a couple of our female candidates for public office. They seem to think that their wives' increased visibility in the public square, by virtue of having highly publicized campaigns of their own, affords these husbands an opportunistic soapbox to loudly bloviate on just about anything that suits their fancy--often to the detriment of their own wives' political capital with the public.

My complaint with such behavior has nothing to do with abridging these guys' "free speech rights"--as is their frequent comeback--but actually has more to do with them not being such deliberate jerks! One of them uses the fact that he's from New York as a lame excuse for his big mouth. BFD! Excuse me, but is this supposed to mean he's a real badass or something? I'm sorry, but I'm not impressed. I grew up in South Tucson, and in ethnically/racially mixed neighborhoods with Blacks, Mexicans, Italians, and Serbians. I've got Serbian blood coursing through my veins, and we happen to start World Wars (any history buff can confirm this). In Nazi Germany during WWII we were locked up in Hitler's concentration camps right along with the Jews. Who the hell cares anyway?

I'd like to believe that I've got a Spirit-controlled temperament to mitigate against such natural tendencies (which these self-styled "tough guys" may want to look into for themselves)...but I digress here. Let me just offer this for their consideration:

He who is slow to anger is better and more honorable than the mighty [soldier], And he who rules and controls his own spirit, than he who captures a city. (Proverbs16:32 Amplified)

What these male spouses seemingly fail to appreciate and/or understand is that the public really doesn't give a tinker's damn about what they may think or say about anything, since they aren't the ones running for any public office. These campaigns are not about them or their opinions anyway! They're actually being quite selfish in stealing the spotlight away from their wives, who need to be given ample opportunity and space to establish their own public personas and relationships with their potential constituents. If these husbands truly loved their wives (more so than their own egos and opinions!), they'd keep their damn mouths shut, and let their wives stand or fall on their own merits--and let the public be the rightful arbiters of who they may want to represent them in the hallowed halls of government.

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¹ en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/loose_cannon

Twain in Twenty Twenty-Two

As Mark Twain once wrote, “Everybody talks about the weather, but no one ever does anything about it.” Apparently the same can be said for all the feigned outrage and noisy ruckus that's been made over our country's "election integrity"--or rather, the lack of it--with its susceptibilities to cheating, fraud, hacking, and other shortcomings. Now the movie "2000 Mules" by Dinesh D'Souza comes along, and only reinforces such long-held doubts and suspicions.

Katie Arrington, a Trump-endorsed Republican running for a Congressional seat in South Carolina's GOP primary, has this quote on her website: "My mother had a saying in our household--'If you are telling me about a problem without a solution, you are whining.'" It seems to me there's been a whole lot of whining going on from "America First" or Trump conservatives about the 2020 election results, but very little corrective action(s) taken since then to ward off any future repeats of such systemic failures.

What do I have to say about this entire imbroglio, one may ask? Just this: Get back to me when someone in authority actually does something to correct such faults, and holds any persons or parties responsible for them accountable under the law. After all, we elect our officials to enact, enforce, and adjudicate such laws in our stead; we as ordinary citizens are pretty much powerless to do little else--other than boo or cheer them on from the grandstands.

As one astute observer has commented, it will happen "right after we see the arrests for Hillary's emails, Holder's gun running, Hunters laptop, Lerner's weaponizing the IRS...", etc. I don't know about you, but I'm not holding my breath unless and until these actions are taken. I've got more pressing issues to concern myself with, such as the imminent return of our Lord Jesus Christ to set right all that fallen humanity and Satan's hordes have corrupted and defiled since His last appearance on this earth.

"Swingin' with Sinema"? No Thank You!

I never thought I'd see the day when both my own Republican County Chairwoman and District Director urged us PCs (Precinct Committeemen) to lobby our AZ Democrat Senator Kyrsten Sinema to vote against her own party's HR 1 bill in Congress (ostensibly because of her newly designated status as a "swing voter" in the US Senate).

This to me is a tragicomical commentary on how far we've slipped as a party with any real influence of our own in Congress, that we're now reduced to grovel at the feet of our political foes "across the aisle" and beg for their help in advancing our party's opposing interests on Capitol Hill.

I'm reminded here of John Anderson's classic country song of the '80's--"Swingin'"--but I should probably rewrite it and title it "Swingin' with Sinema" (although she's one of the last women on earth with which I'd want to be caught doin' it!). For the benefit of any Xennials or Millennials who may not have heard it, here's a YouTube link for his song: https://youtu.be/07_rnlBezQg

A White Guy Feeling Blue While Seeing Red

Alright, all of you self-professed conservative activists and pot-stirrers in Mohave County: where were you on Saturday, April 22nd? I'm talking about at the Arizona "Red White & Blue" Unity March/Rally held at our State Capitol. For one of the "reddest" events to come along for Arizonans in quite some time, the paltry attendance from arguably one of the "reddest" counties in our state was abysmal. Next to the Ward family, my wife and I were the only ones there from Mohave County.

Enough with the excuses already! My wife and I can match every one, yet we still made the effort and found time to show up. There were representatives there from a wide panoply of groups and organizations, one who even flew in from across the country to be there. I would think that showing support for the one candidate who has a chance to defeat Jeff Flake in the upcoming AZ primary for US Senate, and go on to win in the General against all comers--Kelli Ward (one of Mohave County's own, mind you)--would be reason enough to be there!

No? Then there was Senator Steve Smith, Representatives Vince Leach and Kelly Townsend; Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb; Bobby Lawrence from PA; and candidates Steve Ronnebeck and Frank Schmuck, just to name a few dignitaries worthy of our support. Or how about in support of some of the groups there--like the Arizona Liberty Guard, AZ Sons of Liberty Riders, March for America, and United Liberty Coalition (not to mention a few Tea Party holdovers like Darla Dawald and myself)?

At least three TV news outlets were there, and they don't usually cover events like this unless they find something newsworthy in them. It's too bad more red-blooded Arizona patriots couldn't see it the same way, instead of being CINO "keyboard kommandos"!

BSoD's Due to DDoS's -- or Just a Bad Hair Day?

I have just come back online a short time ago after frantically working around the clock for about 48 hours to restore my PC to proper working order. I suffered through a major computer crash with multiple BSoD's ("Blue Screens of Death"), which ultimately necessitated my complete reinstallation of Windows 7 Pro.

Who knows, I might also have been the target for a nasty DDoS ("Distributed Denial-of-Service") cyber attack, as apparently had happened to several firms across the globe at about the same time that I was indisposed.

This meant that I effectively lost* all of my old data files, programs, and settings through that entire process in order to restore my PC (and myself) to some semblance of normalcy. I have never before seen so many BSoD's in such a short time; it was like being caught in an angry, tempestuous storm on a billowing ocean, with wave after wave constantly confronting me (and challenging my software navigation skills).

I must admit that it had me licked for awhile, as I exhausted every trick in the book--as well as some tricks I developed on my own after several years of geeking around with PC's as a longtime nerd. I can thank my dual-booted installation of Ubuntu Linux (recommended to me by my near-genius son) from saving me from complete and utter disaster, however.

Just maybe, Donald Trump could be onto something vis-à-vis his soon-to-be counterpart Vladimir Putin. As in the world of geopolitics, I have retained the services of a well-known Russian security firm to once again watch over my PC. Some might object by saying, "Isn't that like having a fox guard the hen house?"--to which I would answer, "Perhaps, but have you ever heard of the saying, 'Keep your friends close and your enemies closer'?"







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*All right, I didn't actually "lose" my original files; they were saved by the Win7 reformatting process to a folder named "Windows.old"--but who wants to get technical about it?

Playing Russian Roulette with Cyber Security

One would think that the Russian security software vendors would have "it" all together regarding how best to manage their own product offerings. After all, they are supposed to be pretty smart as technogeeks--if not also in other areas--right? At least that is what I thought until recently.

For the last several years I sought to protect my Compaq/HP and Dell PC's (using 32-bit Windows XP Pro) by experimenting with all the major players, as well as several minor ones, in the security software field from around the globe. I finally settled on a little-known Russian vendor's product out of St. Petersburg as the best all-around solution for me, but this did not come easily.

I first had to wrangle with their tech support staff to find out why it would not install on my machine(s). This process involved back-and-forth email exchanges using diagnostics, memory dumps, screenshots, uninstallers, and virus removal tools. Each time I submitted more data for them to mull over, they suggested other options to try. It became obvious that they were just as much in the dark as I, and were stumbling around blindly to come up with a workable solution.

After several weeks of this, I eventually received a revelatory insight that I believe came by direct inspiration from the Lord (something with which I have been frequently blessed in my Spirit-led Christian walk spanning over five decades). After applying the Holy Spirit's "hotfix" solution, my software installation proceeded flawlessly. I didn't bother to inform the Russian IT support staff of this, since by then they had become largely irrelevant. I am still using this vendor's product on my Virtual (Windows XP) PC contained within the 64-bit Windows 7 Pro on my new Dell.

Something similar to this again happened to me just recently, as I sought to install the latest offering from another well-known Russian security firm based out of Moscow. Again I hit an installation snag (this time with 64-bit Windows 7 Pro), and again their tech support staff offered me nothing but asinine "solutions" that didn't work, after I followed their instructions to the letter and fed them with every report they asked for. In the process I also uninstalled several good supplemental security programs I have come to rely upon over the years--all for nothing!

This time, however, I ran out of my own man-hours and patience in trying to help them debug their own software--should I really be doing that for free anyway?--and went with another nation's vendor with a proven track record of reliability and user friendliness. I am left with the impression that, if I have to come up with my own solutions for using someone else's software, I may as well be paid for it as some sort of field consultant. I certainly don't need to be paying them for it!

As for the Russians' famed "intelligence"? They don't appear to be so smart after all.