USS Oregon (BB-3) at anchor on the Williamette River in Portland Oregon during the 1930’s. From June 1925 to November 1942, she was on loan from US Navy to the State of Oregon to serve as a museum ship.
It’s good that the old gal is gone. The city would have been encouraging terrorists to attack it with paint and Molotov cocktails. She didn’t deserve desecration. Barrett’s Privateers Sea shanties from a previous era, when mayors ashore didn’t encourage destruction of everything. In a previous era, the crew would be put ashore with marines to effect regime change…but we’re too politically correct now.
“Now, we must all fear evil men. But there is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men.” – John Wick, the film.
Cuneiform tablet recording the daily beer rations for workers
(c. 3100 – 3000 BC)
This is some of the earliest writing in the world, using the cuneiform system. Beer is represented by an upright jar with a pointed base, and the symbol for rations is a human head eating from a porridge bowl. The round and semicircular impressions represent the measurements. All the signs were produced by a cut reed.
As Mesopotamian society became more complex, administrators used writing to keep an account of who had been paid and what had been traded. The earliest cuneiform tablets are almost all accounting records.
The record is evidence that beer mattered then (possibly more than black lives).
Illinois World Tour!
See it all without leaving the state.
Thoughts of She-who-would-be Queen (a memoir)
The first time that I met vice presidential (and presidential) aspirant, Kamala Harris was a Frank Fat’s in Sacramento, California. Willy Brown ‘held court’ at Frank Fats and sat at the front of the establishment in a stand-alone chair.
Frank Fat’s is a Chinese restaurant and the food is very good, but it’s an expensive spot for political power brokers. I was not brokering power, but was there on business. Kamala and a man later identified as Beau Biden (son of then-Senator Joe (Slow Joe) Biden), were there with Willie.
I don’t know if the rumors about Kamala having an affair with Creepy Joe’s married son are true or not, so I’m not spreading anything. The reputation that she has with a number of men has been denied with the exception of Willie Brown, thirty years her elder.
Speaker of the California Assembly, Willie Brown had been a named target in a corruption investigation undertaken by the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, Bureau of Investigation, Organized Crime/Grand Jury Unit and I knew Willie from that case. It ended with successful prosecution and adjudication of several targets. We never developed proof beyond reasonable doubt – to a moral certainty, that Willie Brown committed a felony, so he wasn’t charged.
Even today I am on speaking terms with people who are Willie’s friends. I e-mailed one of them when Kamala was named as Joe Biden’s running mate and asked him if his impression of her changed. He wrote back, “No, Willie says she was a good f%&k and so did everyone else. I never took a dip in that pool, so I can’t say.”
I met her at Frank Fats again, about 8 months later under similar circumstances. She was there with somebody at the bar, Willie sat in his chair and people lined up to kiss the ring. I said “hi” to her and spoke to her for a few minutes. She remembered me and asked me about federal legislation that Sen. Feinstein (D-CA) had proposed, that I’d weighed in on – favorably to both Feinstein and Harris. And that’s it. The legislation dealt with harsher sentences for documented gang members. I was a joint agency task force commander at the time, involved in a number of high profile issues that had widened to US, Canada and Mexico. We worked with Vancouver PD & RCMP in Canada and with Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional (
The marines ain’t going in (yet) and the Constitution precludes that, unless the governor requests.
What can a populace do when faced with no civil leadership, no police, rioters and no opportunity near term to replace the mayor and city council with someone sane?
A wealthy caped vigilante would be handy.
But he’d need an effective police chief to work with. If she was one, she quit.
The population is on its own until they can hold another election. In places like Oregon and Washington, it would seem that the population is content with its elected leaders promoting anarchy and destruction because it’s progressive.
The Seattle Chief (Best) quit because they reduced her salary and if she’d worked at that rate, it would have reduced her retirement benefits. THAT is why she quit.
A good chief would never have surrendered a police station – ever – without a fight. Remember the Alamo.
Interesting story about the VP candidate. Nothing there surprises me.
Good Wick quote. Though it’s rare these days, Hollywood has come up with decent quotes from characters in the past. A favorite mines was from the classic western Shane: A gun is a tool, Marian; no better or no worse than any other tool: an ax, a shovel or anything. A gun is as good or as bad as the man using it. Remember that.
Barrett’s Privateers is an old favorite of mine. The version you linked to is a good one. The one I’m most familiar with is the original performed by Canadian Stan Rogers who also wrote it. If you’ve never heard that version here it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQbh7UNCZdc
I never heard the version by Stan Rogers that you linked to. Very good!
I’m a fan of sea shanties and have a lot of them on my play list. I never get tired of them.
Saw a video of a combat veteran (h/t) and [now] struggling business owner dressing down a city council, telling them in no uncertain terms that their actions have destroyed livelihoods and [literally] lives in their “be safe” B.S. charade. Yet these smug self-appointed rulers sat there with their masks on. These clowns have no right to impose face coverings…have no right to close businesses…have no right to sequester people…have no right to force testing. They have no right to do this…and they were put on notice by this guy.
Did they listen? No. But as I told the local building department gal about their “no contact rules”, “How can you effectively do your imposed business this way then expect residents “to wait at your leisure for your permission to start building?”. Her comment…”We are following the Governor’s guidelines and have actually worked very hard to stay open due to COVID.” I about launched on her but managed to [mostly] hold my tongue. She sounded about 22 and was wearing a mask — while on the phone with me.
People have had it with this idiocy. Last night’s pander-fest is God allowing the grifter seditious Dem’s to hang themselves…they look as stupid as they are.
It’s about to get real.
Oh, was told 6 weeks for a lousy outbuilding permit (sb about 2)…told them at 6 weeks the digging starts, permit or not, and I’ll hire my own inspector.
I don’t/can’t encourage lawlessness on a blog — but that being said, I did un-permitted work on the last two properties that I owned and when I sold them, the purchaser signed off on disclaimers that they knew that said improvements were not permitted. Maybe you live in a place that is more particular.
I’m considering buying more land and throwing up a larger steel “hobby shop” on it. By larger, I’m saying something like 4500 square feet. In that case, it will be permitted. Where I live, I could likely skate on it, but if I do it, I’ll pull the paper.
Now, I haven’t dealt with the county since the plague struck, but it could be just as annoying as your county. And I don’t, for the life of me, know what negro lives or plague has to do with a county building department.
I once did an industrial construction project in the Frederick, Maryland area. It included, amongst many other things, an 8-foot diameter x 24-foot tall liquids storage tank for one of the processes. It was surrounded by taller structures on the site and could not be seen from the outside of the perimeter fence of the site. Birds and incoming flights to Washington National might possibly see it, however. Naturally it required permitting and I had to fly to Maryland to attend the final approval meeting of the planning commission, in case questions had to be answered, at which I was asked not a single thing. Much whining about parking and vehicular traffic, however, that was answered by the plant manager. The permit was issued and I flew home the next day. But I did get to hook up with an old high skool buddy who had become a homicide detective on the Washington Metropolitan PD, so the trip wasn’t a total loss. That was 30-odd years ago and I would presume things out there suck even worse now.
Subsequently, I got out of construction and every time it’s occurred to me to go back to it, I just whang myself in the nads with a hammer until the feeling passes.
I know what you mean, but about going back and the need to whang yourself to realize why you’re not doing it anymore.
I’m still in the game that I was in, however, more removed, and self-employed. Hopefully, I can finish things up once and for all. But at the moment, I’m back off the road and it feels very good to be home.
I play by the rules coupled with a healthy disdain for the permitting practice as defined by local government (but not building codes in general). Cash for my safety…always about the money (which is dwindling as they further shoot themselves in the foot by clamping businesses with their tyrannical motives).
Design and trades are my wheelhouse, whereas far too many males don’t even know which end of a hammer to use. Government always works to the lowest common denominator…the rest of us suffer as a result.
We could reach peak permit idiocy like they have in India – you sometimes read about entire suburbs that were built and lived in long before government officials even became aware that the suburb existed.
Camperfixer. It’s posted at my blog. Or on my youtube channel.
Like the GKC, prescient.
;^)
The events in Portland and Seattle I follow closely. My 49 year old autistic son lives in the Seattle Wallingford district. Between the “troubles” and Chinese Flu, his activities are severely restricted.
An aunt, several of her daughters and their spouses, run a shipping service company in Portland. They are very careful of the routes they take while doing their business. Seems the Pantifa idiots messed with the Longshoreman’s Hall, once!
Kamala Harris? A female Bill Clinton?
It might be good if your son could relocate closer to you. I’m not telling you or him what to do, but Seattle is circling the drain and if the voters don’t decide that it’s time for a change, it will only get worse.
My sister is a hospital administrator in Portland, great job, great sister. Her husband is retired Portland PD – retired last summer. They are looking for a way out even though she loves her job and doesn’t want to leave it. She picks her route to and from work carefully, and “might” be armed and able to take a number of Antifa thugs with her, but who wants to be in that situation? Her politics are right of mine… She loves (loved) Portland, the beauty of the area, and so forth, but the Democrats have trashed that completely. She’s waiting to see if there is a political shift. If not, she and husband will retire and leave Oregon.
Wishing good fortune for you sister and brother-in-law. PNW politics seem to go from one extreme to another. Washington had a one term governor in Dixie Lee Ray. The Seattle area has always been a radical hot spot going back to the Wobblies (International Workers of the World. Oregon has a similar history.
My son has built a life in Seattle that revolves around his church and his friends. His situation vexes me as I weigh options.
As with all of our children, they seem to have minds of their own.
Oregon wound up being desecrated anyway. At the beginning of WW2 the morons in the namesake State turned one of the more historically significant US vessels back over to the navy for “any military purpose”. The navy immediately hulked it as a storage barge, then scrapped it in the ’50s.
What a collection of ignorant assholes.
Is Frank Fat related to Wo Fat?
-Kle.
No. WoFat is a white guy, former spook, worked in Asia, now retired. Good friend of mine who lives in the South. He doesn’t go on-line anymore. Just said “fuck it”. We talk on the phone from time to time.
Frank Fat, a Chinese guy, owns the restaurant in Sacramento. I don’t know Frank Fat personally. I’ve been to his restaurant maybe half a dozen times over 40 years. Food is good. I like American Chinese food better than the ‘food’ that they serve in Beijing. I really like dim sum, but that’s Cantonese/Hong Kong style.
I have never met Harris but I did, on one occasion, meet His Honour Willie Brown. This was when he officiated at the nuptials of our good friend Bill C and his then beloved, a Chinese woman from Las Vegas. What Bill C’s relationship was with Willie Brown I do not know, but it was apparent they knew each other very well. They (Bill and his then beloved) had driven all night, from Las Vegas to San Francisco, to tie the knot. Well, Bill and his beloved did not do the driving. This was done by Bills then driver, a former SAVAK operative. The ceremony was in Willie B’s office at City Hall. In attendance were Bill and his soon to be wife, myself, M H, a Navy Reserve lawyer who was working as a Deputy Attorney General, two San Francisco police officers, one of whom had worked with our good friend, the late Tom Perdue (who was also a very good friend of Wofat, Bill C and the late CH)’, and a couple of other people who I cannot recall.
Those WERE the days, weren’t they? I advised Bill C. NOT to marry the Chinese woman. He lived to regret that marriage (I think his eighth or ninth). Bill had that driver on-call 24 hours a day.
Yes indeed, lively times, Mike W.
Fat Frank’s was good food, problem was too damn many politicians in there… sigh
You go there to see and to be seen if you have political aspirations in California.
There was a restaurant like that in Torrance. A lot of movers and shakers from the South Bay would hang out there. Very good food, but a bit pricey to keep out the riff-raff.
And there were a couple back in my old home town. One was for the Politicos, and the other for members of “The Family” who would come down from Chicago to meet with their local representatives…..
Fortunately I live in a rural southern state. The county seat has a building inspector for the city only. He is not a bad dude , actually tries to help. Keeps the gypsies from cheating the unaware.
Out where I live , I can build what I want. Since I have over 5 acres, I don’t even need a septic tank inspection. I just file a notice with the state regulator. It’s a federal requirement. My septic is up to snuff, I don’t Shiite in my own nest.
Jus say no to slojoe an de hoe.
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