Leavin' on a U-Haul - Washington State

 

The cost of living in Washington State is among the highest in the land. Every time you turn around they're taxing some new thing you can't live without. I suspect it's going to keep on and on until one day, in the name of controlling obesity, the progressive Nazis will finally put a confiscatory tax on chocolate. That, I figure, since this is such an effeminate leftist culture up here, will be the last straw. One Hershey bar too far.

But I kid you not, this is the land where it can cost you three or four Benjamins just to put tags on your car. Property taxes are confiscatory, and grocery prices have more than doubled since Joe Biden swore on some sort of book in 2020. Some mainstream pundit recently opined that a hundred dollars worth of groceries only cost you $125 after 3 years under Biden. Well I want to know what store that is and do they put a limit on how many baskets you can buy at once?

Okay, my rent only went up 25%. My landlord is kind. That's about all that's only 25% inflated. Utilities? I had to sign up for an assistance program to be able to keep up with that. Fuel prices go up and down like a roller coaster. People are putting little stickers on gas pumps all over showing Joe Biden pointing to the price on the pump and saying, "I did that!" Thank heaven my Internet Company is based out of Louisiana and I'd already signed a lifetime no price increase deal with them back during the Trump administration. Everything up here is higher than a cat's back. We gave up trying to own a car and now are experiencing the wonders of old people on public transportation. I didn't realize back in East Texas when I was doing advocacy work for senior and disability transportation, that public transportation involved so much walking. Sometimes it's miles between where you need to go and where you can be picked up. AND the cab driver's union has negotiated new regulations with the cities that have driven up the cost of Uber and Lyft.

But one area where you can still get a bargain is on Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and at local garage sales. Particularly, if you want to buy, say, used guitars, keyboards, refrigerators, recliners, sofas and such, hit Craigslist or FB Marketplace up here. We refurnished our living room in all leather furniture for $140, including end tables, 2 recliners, a leather sofa and my office chair. And if you're looking for musical instruments.....

I just saw a Takamine Guitar for $100. You can also find Taylor, Ibanez, Gibson, Fender, Martin and other prime condition guitars in that price neighborhood. I think rich Washingtonians buy their teenage boys guitars so they can attract girls and maybe make them grandparents. Trouble is you have to practice and that's way too much like work for the snowflakes growing up in Seattle and the guitars wind up shoved in closets or laying around unused and the parents, forgetting how much they laid out for the things, put them up on marketplace cheap so they won't have to stumble over them anymore.

The furniture and appliances go cheap because people are fleeing Washington for red states and a lower cost of living. Most are in a hurry to get out and find they can't get it all on the truck. I got a really good Maytag fridge with an ice-maker for $50. The people were leaving the next day so they just wanted it gone. Don't you just love preying on progressives? They voted for the people that are systematically wrecking the state's economy. They are leaving en masse, escaping the fruits of their history of voting for Democrats and fleeing to where voters have elected better stewards of their economies.

Don't you love karma!

© 2024 by Tom King

The Other Sound of Freedom

I was up at 4am yesterday morning after sleeping most of the night in my chair watching Northern Exposure. I noticed after a bit that something seemed to be thumping around downstairs in the garage. I asked Sheila of the super sensitive ears if she heard it too and she confirmed that I was indeed hearing a regular thumping noise - two thumps every two or three minutes. It was the regularity of the noise that troubled me.

I got up and went out on the catwalk between our garage apartment and the landlord's house. In about a minute I heard the thumping sound again only this time it was clearly coming from outside. A couple of more double thumps and I could tell it was coming from the west of us. I've only heard that kind of sound coming from the direction of Ft. Lewis once before since we moved up here to Washington from Texas. Then, I thought it was a thunderstorm, something rare in this region. It wasn't a thunderstorm then. Nor was it now.

It was early morning gunnery practice. I confirmed it with a retired Army officer I know. It seems that the base conducts firing drills and maneuvers along with a lot of planes and helicopters flying around, which I've also noticed over the past week. My Army friend told me the military tends to flex its muscles quite loudly when things get unsettled here in the States. Apparently, they do it to impress the Chinese and Russian (and now Iranian) spies that if they are thinking of getting frisky during this period of unrest, they should think again. The military is warming up just in case they mistake some riots, flag-burning, resignations of political candidates and attempted assassinations as a sign of weakness. 

Japan and Germany made that mistake in World War II. Then we were still in the depression, half the country was flirting with communism it seemed, the president was in a wheelchair, and there were some serious anti-war protests going on. So the Axis decided to poke the bear and see what happens. 

When you poke the back end of the bear, you dang well better have a plan for dealing with his teeth and claws. And it better be one heck of a plan, because he's a huge bear and if you poke him, he's going to turn on you and reduce you to a bloody pile in short order. It was true then and though the tyrants of the world may think we're on the brink of a civil war and vulnerable, they obviously weren't paying attention in history class. 

Come after us, and they'll find us united in a heartbeat. Watch our military grow as enlistments explode. Watch our industry ramp up overnight. And see us lose patience with y'all's nonsense and come together in a breath-taking hurry.

Can't say they weren't warned. It's amazing how short politicians' memories, especially those that didn't grow up in the land of the free and home of the brave. Meanwhile, we're having howitzer practice just down the road at the break of dawn and I'm going to sleep like a baby.

Just sayin'

© 2024 by Tom King

We American Peasants Have No Betters

 

Here in 2024 we're still getting threats from the Progressive State that if we don't get vaccinations and boosters and lay off the Ivermecting and Hydrochloroquin we're going to lose our jobs and fined and God knows what else. I don't know what else they'll threaten us with us next, but cancel culture has supplied the progressive forces within federal government an exciting (for them) tool for bringing the proletariat into line. Next it will be digital currency, something the Biden administration has already proposed. 

 

Really? Threatening to end people's jobs and businesses the feds believe is "forcing" Americans to do something they don't want to do. Suppose I threatened to throw you off Facebook for getting the vaccination. I don't know where you did your research. If it was off NBC, CNN or The New York times, you might want to check out some actual scientific journals and talk to actual physicians out there in the field treating this disease. I work for myself, so the president can't fire me. I'm lucky in that respect. My wife and I get out very seldom and we do so with medical grade masks and practice social distancing. We both have experienced bad reactions to flu-type vaccines AND we're in the kill zone for this particular virus. 

 

We have carefully chosen our response to this based on risk factors (and there are risk factors with these vaccines). Were I younger and didn't have an underlying health condition, and I were out in public a lot, I might get the vaccine. As it is, my wife and I chose another approach. Others my age and physical health have faced CoVid and taken Ivermectin, Hydrochloroquine and Z-Pack treatments and now with the monoclonal antibody treatments, CoVid has been rendered a rather minor ailment. So on the outside chance I do get the disease, there are treatments available to get you through.

There are "solid" reasons for my choice in this matter not to mention my constitutional right to do what I want when it's my body. Isn't that the pro-abortion argument? How come it's no longer my body. Besides, with the feds telling you that if you've had the vaccine you can still get it, and still transmit it to others, and that it may make it a lighter case if you do get it, it's hard to trust the advice we're being given by so-called scientists who seem dead set on enforcing their own will in the form of what seems more of a political than a medical solution.

 

Then there is the organization of teams of public health officials and Homeland Security Officers up here in Oregon and Washington to go door to door asking whether people are vaccinated, recording it in a database along with information about whether you were flying Revolutionary War flags, had Trump signs, wore "certain" T-shirts or hats described by organizers as evidence that you are a white supremacist and potential terrorist. And don't start with that being a conspiracy theory. I sat in on the County Commissioner's meetings where they discussed the CDC/Homeland Security plans to do just that. When the County Judge was asked if Klickitat County was planning to do that, he turned to his public health director and asked, "Do we have any plans to do that?" 

The Public Health lady went pale and said, "Oh, hell no! You think I want to get shot?"  Southern Washington State's natives celebrate a culture, that I discovered would give East Texas a run for the money for being redneck. They have bears running around loose. Those folks are armed! They might get away with that over in Oregon, but they do NOT want to bring that stuff across the Columbia River. Mt. St. Helens blew up in the middle of south Washington.

That bullying is the reason people are resisting the mandates and quitting their jobs rather than comply. It doesn't help that the same people telling us we must get vaccinated, were the same ones telling us the vaccines were dangerous and not to get them back in December and January before Biden was sworn in. Afterwards, through some sort of magical incantation, I suppose, after Biden became president, the vaccines became miraculously perfect and wonderful and essential to the survival of mankind.

So forgive me if I think that belittling and berating people who choose not to take the vaccine is a small-minded, anti-American thing to do. As Americans we are not averse to giving up some liberties in an emergency or to taking risks where risk-taking is needed. Were my circumstances different my choices might be different. But my choices are my choices and I live in a nation where individual rights are sacred. We don't live in a collective thank God, where people serve the state. The state, in the American Constitutional Republic, serves at the behest of the people.

This high-handed imposition of mandates based on the will of our dear leaders is foreign to American beliefs. Americans don't believe in complying, obeying or submitting to the will and authority of our betters. That's because we don't think we have any betters.

Sorry for the long post, but my leftist Facebook friend's original post had a snarky tone to it and I'm kind of angry about that. He ridiculed those of us who have carefully chosen through research in medical studies, journal reports, our own observations and consultation with our physicians (each one of whom holds a doctorate and is a scientist in his or her own right). I find that more than a little condescending. 

 

And as I said, we don't much care for rule of our betters over us masses, peons, proletariat or whatever you want to call us regular ordinary schlubs! A whole lot of us would take umbrage if you came to our house, banged on my door and presumed to classify me a terrorist because I wouldn't mindlessly fall in line quietly and knuckle under to the latest attempt by Marxist progressive government bureaucrats to test to see just how much we'll tolerate and how quickly we can be bullied into submission to blatantly illegal and unconstitutional executive orders.

Not smart, Joe. We will not kneel to Moloch and his ilk.

Just sayin'.

© 2021 by Tom King