Now as you can tell, I’m back on line. I tried getting in touch with the service hosting my blog and eventually got the phone number but when I called it said they were having a problem with their phone service. I figured it was a system wide issue and figured I’d wait and see if it got resolved because there was no way I could fix it. Sure enough when I tried again my site came up with a note indicating that they had needed to update their software because WordPress had updated theirs and so were now not compatible but they upgraded and everything is good.

Now with respect to the subject of this rant, I will continue to believe that the stock market is just legalized gambling. Tell me one solid thing that is different today than was yesterday but the market lost 1700 due to speculation. There is not a single item that costs more today than yesterday. And remember that during the Magoo debacle, the market did well and the economy tanked.

Now my take is that a couple of things are going on. First the market manipulators are playing politics. They like the way things were and did their best to try to keep Trump from changing things. When he ignored them, they decided to basically sell short to try to force him to change his mind, and they will keep it up for a few days or maybe weeks to try to force Trump to blink and that ain’t gonna happen. In a few days or weeks they’ll buy the stocks back and make a tidy profit. Note that in none of this does actual profits and/or losses factor in. It’s all speculation and market manipulation.

Mixed feelings. I support the woman who took a knee and refused to fence against a man. This event had separate male and female categories and that should be respected.

However as I think I have ranted about previously, I have a son who got into fencing and went to Nationals twice. And in Nationals and Regionals men and women are separated. However in local tournaments, they are not separated. Women do just fine, although the men usually win but there is no danger because of size or strength differences. The men may benefit from being a little quicker but not by much. You’re not running a sprint so speed is not a big enough factor to make it unfair.

However if there are two different divisions you have to go to the one your genitalia dictates.

Musk and DOGE have uncovered the true reason that the left is so concerned about DOGE looking into Social Security. Turns, unsurprisingly, that Magoo and the crew were giving the illegals SSN’s, registering them to vote and putting them on Medicaid as soon as they got here.

Congratulations to the tournament selection committee. You got it right for the first time in a long time. All four number one seeds made it to the final four much to my surprise as I will explain below. But first I have a problem with their brackets. If you have four number one seeds and two of them are from the same conference, you don’t put them in a situation where they do what you expect and then have to cancel one of them from playing in the championship game. Yes the SEC is guaranteed one team in the final game but they could have had two. I think this was intentional. Obviously the SEC was head and shoulders above every other conference in the country and got 14 teams into the dance. A record of three more than any conference had ever done before. And the committee didn’t want that to happen.

Now why I said I was surprised at the outcome is because with all you Dukies out there including my daughter, I thought that Duke was overrated all year, not because they were a bad team, because obviously they’ve not. But because they played a week schedule. For those of you who don’t know, the first time Duke played a ranked opponent since December was when they played Louisville in the ACC Championship Game. The SEC teams played ranked opponents almost every game. But Duke is everything that they were supposed to be and good for them unless they come up against my Gators in the championship game.

Hopefully this is the last time I will be talking about this. So looking back on this nonsense, here’s my takeaway. First Goldberg really has nothing to do with the real controversy. He only gave the Dems something to try to exploit. The real issue is that the Dems are claiming that the Trump administration shouldn’t be using Signal because it’s not secure. Now there are two problems with this.

First, the use of this app was approved and used by the Magoo administration. And it was installed on all the phones given to the incoming administration. So it is ridiculous to claim that the use of the Magoo approved app was negligent.

And second all their doomsday scenarios are predicated on the app having been compromised. Because otherwise they can’t explain their nonsense. And guess what, there is no allegation let alone proof that it was! Goldberg somehow got added to a group he shouldn’t have been, and I’ll dicuss that below, but no one other than him had inappropriate access to the conversation. So what’s the basis for their the sky is falling and the Yellowstone cauldron is erupting tomorrow nonsense?

Now let me talk about Goldberg and what at least one of you question whether his inclusion should result in the firing of Waltz. If he intentionally added him, then yes but there is no evidence that he did. In fact I believe that some deep state subordinate did what happened last time and was trying to sabotage the Trump administration as the intelligence community did in his first term. They need to find whoever did it and prosecute him. But they also need to put in place protocols that verify exactly who’s in these groups,

Now with respect to Goldberg, he should have exited as soon as he knew that he got inadvertently on a conversation that he shouldn’t have and which he was not allowed. And it just occurred to me as I’m writing this, but what other conversations was he privy to? I can’t believe that this group was set up for just this operation. And this sob claimed that he didn’t publicize the war plans was because of his journalistic integrity. What bs. This guy is a TDS idiot . I’m pretty sure he knew that if he had disclosed war plans in realtime to our adversaries, he would have committed treason and his ass could be fried, hopefully by electricity supplied by a bank of solar panels.

I saw a post today that raised the question of how is it that the Trump administration is able to arrest all these bad hombres in just a couple of months and the Magoo crew couldn’t seem to find them? I never thought about it but it is a good question. The author posed that maybe the reason is because the Magoo FBI had information about their location but was more interested in prosecuting Catholics and parents and people who roomed the Capitol on J6., even those who never entered the Capitol. Good question!

Not because I think my Gators will lose, but because I am also a fan Maryland. I lived in Maryland for 30 years and always rooted for them particularly in basketball. I still have my Fear the Turtle t-shirt from the year they won the dance with Len Bias before he unfortunately died from crack. And for most of my time there the dance went down Tobacco Road. This year not so much. This is the first year in forever that there was only one ACC team in the second round.

I would much have preferred that Maryland was in a different section so both teams could continue on, but I think my Gators are just a little too strong.

Today I saw a lot of people talking about the fact that the information in the Signal chat was classified or should have been. And I considered yesterday saying the same thing because from my experience I couldn’t believe that they didn’t classify it.

However, with a few exceptions like restricted data, nothing is classified unless a classification official actually classifies it. And so when you have the top original classification authorities at the departments and agencies involved all say it wasn’t classified, then it wasn’t classified. Since they all had the authority to declassify it if it was classified, you can take their statements to do that if it was even necessary. It always amazes how many of the supposed experts are actually clueless. They seem to think that there is some amorphous entity that pronounces information as classified. Trump as president could declare that nothing is classified and that would be that with the few exceptions I referenced above.

In true Trumpian fashion, Governor Abbot should get a license plate or decal for his wheelchair that says Hot Wheels!

And as is usually the case they are apparently only obvious to me. First, as you probably know by now, the use of the Signal app was approved by Magoo and installed automatically on the cell phones of the new intelligence community.

Now the left is crazy claiming that the addition of the biased journalist could somehow lead to the end of the world. Pilots falling from the sky and cats and dogs playing together. But they never explain how. What they have to be saying is that the app was not secure because that is the only thing that could make any sense, but they can’t say that because Magoo approved it. So how can one American journalist who somehow got admitted to the chain have compromised our soldiers? Apparently he knew maybe two hours ahead of the bombs hitting that they were going to hit but he didn’t know where. And absent him being an Iranian or houthis spy he couldn’t have conveyed that info a manner that would have mattered. And even if he was, I seriously doubt that the houthis could have made significant changes in their positions. They’ve got to pretty well dug in by now. So how is this an issue?

The second thing that struck me as obvious but no one is talking about is that obviously team Trump knows what was said and they wouldn’t be denying the allegations if Goldberg could put up screen shots to prove his allegations. They are not that stupid and his track record is spotty at best.