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On 29th March we remove ourselves from our local, and very successful, trading bloc, the EU.

I have been preoccupied making plans and making my objections known in a peaceful and democratic manner. I'm afraid that politics and worrying about the future has taken over.

I figured I should brush up on my French and I've made a stash of supplies so that we can eat after the borders close on 29th March. We import most of our food. And that food which we do grow is often picked by migrant workers who will no longer be welcome after Brexit.

We have oil and gas pipelines that cross continental Europe and we buy gas from that nice Mr Putin who only wants the best for his patriotic friends. We also import electricity directly from France via a 2GW cable under the English Channel. Obviously this gets more and more expensive as Sterling continues to lose its value.

Several prominent Brexit supporters, including Jacob Rees-Mogg decided it would be better to move their business to Ireland (in the EU) and the great patriot John Redwood advised his customers to pull their money out of the UK and invest in places like the EU in the light of Brexit.

There's still the unsolvable problem of the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Dinosaur-deniers the DUP are propping up a minority Tory government and staunchly preventing any progress because they don't want a "border" between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, despite the fact there's already a physical one in the form of the Irish Sea.

The Scottish Government brought a case to the European Court of Justice asking for a ruling on whether a country (eg the U) could unilaterally revoke Article 50 (the statement of intention to leave the EU). The UK Westminster government opposed the Scottish governments action, but was unsuccessful. The ECJ ruled that the UK can unilaterally revoke Article 50 without the agreement of the other 27 EU member states. All we need is a vote in the Westminster Parliament (which is sovereign). So it's not over yet!

The banks in the City of London have been making further preparations. About £700M of assets have moved to Frankfurt.

We also have to consider the extra delays at the borders for goods and raw materials coming in and out of the country. Much of our trade goes through Dover, in Kent. In Kent, they're preparing by creating another motorway-lorry-park, this time the M26. Industry will perhaps find it difficult to produce and to sell when things are held up in Kent.

Believe it or not, we have a Kipper in the family. He's also a Baptist. Goodness knows where he got that from. He was shown Father Ted when young but hey ho. I was treated to an entertaining conspiracy theory about Silicon Valley and the EU deliberately suppressing "right wing free speech." A long, convoluted "explanation" followed.

This conversation also confirmed a conclusion that I'd reached over the years regarding Kippers (UKIP members). They have a very naive and simplistic view of countries, nationalism, the modern world, "free speech," "hate speech," conservatism, economics, science, international relations, history (the World Wars and the Cold War, the rise of Nazism) and have precious little clue about "their own country" i.e. the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. They get it confused with England and are pretty ignorant about Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.

When mentioning that I was now in favour of Scottish Independence and that I didn't want to lose my right of Freedom of Movement, and that I hoped Scotland would join the EU, the classic Kipper ill-informed and patronising reply came back, "I can't understand why you'd want to regain your sovereignty only to give it away again to the EU." It's a trading bloc and it is democratic. It's more democratic that British First Past the Post Westminster Centralised "democracy."

My sister had the right idea. She settled in Germany years ago. The mayor of her town wrote to all British citizens inviting them to apply for German citizenship which she has done and will be sitting her citizenship exam in a couple of months time.

Finally, I asked why UKIP had appointed Stephen Yaxley-Lennon as its advisor for being mean to brown people. That didn't go down well. I got chapter and verse on what a nice man he really is and has brown friends etc.

And don't mention Trump. It'll just get blamed on Obama. And Mr Putin is a very nice man.

Game over UK. We have fallen to the fascists. Run while you can.

“But you said I can’t make it look like this is real,” I said. Okay, maybe I whined it. I was confused, as I almost always am talking to this guy.
        “It’s all right,” Rority replied. “Nobody will believe it, anyway. Well, except Noboty.”
        “Huh?”
        “My butler Noboty. He’s a robot made out of nobots.”
        “Oh yeah, you mentioned him...”
        “Yeah, you’ll write about it. You got it all wrong, but not bad for a protohuman.”
        “And you’re really taking me to the future?” I asked, incredulous.
        “Well,” he said, giving me a sly look... or what I interpreted as one. “Kind of. It’s nobotic.”
        “So it won’t be real?”
        Rority took a hit off of his stratodoober, laughed uproariously, and things got weird.

        As I write this, it’s February 2000. Five years ago I foresaw some really big problems, because they had designed all the world’s databases with only two characters in the date fields, as if it was going to be the twentieth century forever. Luckily, so did everybody else who knew how computers work, and governments and industry industriously got to work and fixed it.
        I got a huge raise a few years ago, and I understand the recession is over for everybody else, too, since Clinton was elected. We’re buying a house this year.
        I logged on to the internet to work on my web site, the Springfield Fragfest. The new 56K modem was screeching as Rority appeared, as weird as ever. It looks like smoke or fog assembling into him, and then becomes solid.
        Rority says I can’t let anyone see this until at least late 2018, which will be the Illinois bicentennial.
        I should mention what nobots are, I guess. Nobots are microscopic robots, each having a computer orders of magnitude more powerful than all the computing power that exists today, and they’re all networked together. They can assemble with other nobots to make solid things. Rority says that in his time, everything but food and drink is made of nobots.
        Rority is from ten million years in the future and looks like an Area 51 space alien. Most of what he does looks like magic to me, but I’ve read Clarke. Ten million years is a long time. But time travel, and going faster than light that he says are related, seem like impossibilities to me. But I’m really primitive to him. I think he sees me as a pet.
        “We need at least ten cubic meters of space to do this,” he said.
        “I know just the place,” I replied. “There’s a cornfield not too far from here, and they won’t be planting for a couple of months.”
        We got in my car and drove out there. I hopped the fence and Rority walked right through it like it wasn’t even there. About twenty yards in, Rority said “Okay, we’re far enough. Just a second while I... okay, here we go.”
        And I thought how he shows up and walks right through things is weird! Everything turned to fog, kind of the opposite of when Rority shows up.
        The fog solidified into a room. There was a desk with a computer on it, and the screen was really strange, only about an inch thick and perfectly flat. There were some strange, cylindrical light “bulbs” in the room’s lamps. Various little lights on the computer were blinking. It took a minute or so to take it all in.
        I finally noticed the desk had no phone on it, but didn’t say anything. I didn’t pay much attention to the framed, backlit poster on the wall, until the image started moving, talking, and making music.
        “How far into the future is this, anyway?” I asked. “Freakin’ Star Trek.”
        “It’s 2018.” Right then I realized that the poster was really a television, tuned to CNN. The announcer said something about the president; Donald Trump was on the screen in front of the White House.
        My jaw dropped. “Don’t tell me he’s president!”
        Rority grinned and shrugged. “Okay, I won’t. But ignorance won’t change reality.”
        “How in the hell...”
        Rority seemed to be really enjoying himself. “This fall, back in your time, George Bush will be elected president...”
        “Again? He could only serve one more term.”
        “No, his son George. Despite what Clinton had warned him about Al Queda, he let his guard down and the country was attacked.”
        “Who’s this Al Queda guy, some Mexican drug lord?”
        “It’s an Islamic terrorist organization based in Afghanistan. They flew two jet airliners into the Twin Towers in New York, one into the Pentagon, and tried to fly one into the capitol building, but that one crashed. Actually, I made it crash.”
        “What’s that got to do with Trump?”
        “I’m getting to it. Anyway, Bush started an undeclared war on Afghanistan, then attacked Iraq. Despite, or rather because of his two wars, he was re-elected.
        “Then toward the end of his second term, the economy crashed and crashed hard, starting what is called the ‘Great Recession’. Your historians say it was banking that caused it, but the real reason was that fuel prices more than quadrupled. It was either buy gas to get to work or pay the mortgage. The Republican, a war hero named John McCain, lost to Barack Obama, a black man.”
        “But how did Trump get to be president?”
        “I’m getting to it. Obama was a very good president who your historians say was history’s twelfth best. He managed to find and kill Osama Bin Laden...”
        “Is that some federal bill?”
        “No, he was the head of Al Queda and ordered the attack on the US. Obama also stopped the country from sliding into a full-blown depression (don’t tell anybody, but I had a hand in that, too) and managed to get a law passed that made sure everyone could get health care.”
        “And Trump?”
        “When Obama first ran, Trump cooked up a phony story about Obama being Muslim and not a citizen. The crazy racists bought it. Trump, the fraudster, huckster, and all around terrible protohuman kept it up. Obama ran for re-election against Mitt Romney and beat him handily; Obama was a popular president.
        “Then in the 2016 election, Trump bullied all the other Republicans out of the race, and the Democrats chose Clinton’s wife.”
        “Clinton’s wife?”
        “Yes, she’d served two terms as a New York senator, and Obama had appointed her as Secretary of State. There were a series of scandals right before the election, and she was never very popular anyway. None the less, she won the popular vote but lost in the electoral college. So Trump’s been President for almost two years. Racism was his ticket to the White House.”
        “Who’s this ‘Mueller’ guy, anyway?”
        “He’s investigating Trump for collusion with the Russians to steal the election, bribery, campaign finance crimes, witness intimidation...”
        “Sounds worse than Nixon.”
        “He is. Lets go outside so you can look around.”
        “Okay, but why?”
        “Because it’s necessary to keep you stupid protohumans from completely destroying your environment. If you don’t stop burning fossil fuels I’ll never be born. Not just you, everybody. And Trump seems to hate the environment.”
        “What makes you say that?”
        “He appointed a man who had sued the EPA many times as head of the EPA, they’re now dismantling everything the EPA has done in the last fifty years, and Trump took us out of the Paris agreement.”
        “Paris agreement?”
        “That was another big Obama success. He got together with all the world’s leaders to find a way to stop the global warming. Only one small, poor nation didn’t sign, and Trump pulled out of the agreement as soon as he took office. Come on, let’s go outside.” He opened the door and exited.
        I followed him out into the cold. There were a couple of inches of snow on the ground. “If Trump is such a danger to the future, why did you let him win?”
        “The math boys say if Clinton had won, destruction would have come even sooner.” He walked up to a really cool looking car and got in the driver’s seat. I got in the passenger seat.
        “Why? She had the experience.”
        “How much of your history do you know?”
        “What I learned in school, about the same as most people, I guess. Why?”
        “Because her government experience was a close parallel to James Buchanan’s. Buchanan was the one who started the civil war; he tried too hard to please everyone, just like Clinton. The math boys say had she won, there would have been a thermonuclear war resulting in a massive extinction event that would have dwarfed even the ‘Great Dying’.”
        The car started moving and didn’t make a sound. At least, not enough for me to hear. “So I take it that Trump and Clinton both need to be out of the picture? What happens to them?”
        “I can’t tell you, your knowledge would be dangerous. It will work out okay after the next recession.”
        “The next recession?”
        “There’s always a next recession, at least until we got past laboring for goods.”
        “When will it hit?”
        “I can’t tell you, you’d really screw things up for us.”
        A Harley thundered past us going the opposite way. “This is sure a quiet car. I don’t recognize the brand.”
        “It will be another three years before they even get started building a company. This is a Tesla Model S.”
        “They must have some breakthrough mufflers.”
        “It’s electric. It doesn’t need a muffler. In parts of the world, it would emit no pollution or carbon at all. The trouble is, and this is what I want you to tell people in 2018, is that here in Springfield this Tesla pollutes more than any vehicle on the road.
        “Well, maybe school buses are dirtier, those things really stink. But this Tesla runs on coal.”
        “Coal?”
        “Its batteries are charged from the local electric grid when the car’s parked. Springfield’s biggest and most used generator is coal-fired. So here, electric cars pollute more than even diesel.”
        We went as far as Ash street, and signs indicated that it was closed. Rority pointed to it. “They’re building a high-speed rail system through here. There won’t be any crossings, just underpasses. Ash will be open next Spring and they’ll close Laurel to construct its underpass.
        “I wanted you to see the progress.” He turned left on Ash and left again on 5th. We drove down to the university.
        “See that shiny wall?” he asked as we drove through the campus.
        “Yeah, what’s it for? It looks strange.”
        “It’s a solar panel. It generates electricity from sunlight.”
        “Yeah, I’ve heard of solar cells but have read that they’re way too expensive and inefficient to be practical.” By then he was heading south on I-55.
        “They were, twenty years ago. In fifty years there won’t be many traditional electric generators, except some old hydroelectric and nuclear plants. Most houses will have solar panels on the roof, and most skyscrapers will have windmills on top.”
        “You mean like in the old Dutch paintings?”
        “No, these look like... well, they probably will look like a prop from a science fiction movie to you. We’ll come up on one soon... oh, over there, look.”
        It kind of looked like a giant futuristic box fan mounted on a huge pole, only without the box. The blades turned slowly.
        “Not much wind today,” he said. “Now we’re going three hundred years in your future; your future if you keep burning coal and oil.” It suddenly got very foggy, and Rority pulled off of the road and stopped. We had been going through a wooded area, snow still on the ground.
        The fog lifted. I’d never seen it get so foggy so fast, or for it to lift so fast.
        The highway was so cracked and disused and full of potholes it was hard to recognize as a road, let alone a highway. The snow was gone, and the sunlight’s angle suggested a summer day rather than winter. The trees were mostly gone, and what was left was dead and broken. Rority did a U-turn and went back north, still in the southbound lanes. It worried me.
        “Aren’t you afraid of a head on crash?” I asked nervously.
        He shook his head. “There’s no other traffic.” We came up on an overpass, and I understood why he’d said that—the overpass had collapsed, blocking the road. He drove up the entrance and back down the exit.
        Farther down he exited on an entrance ramp and turned left on highway 104. “Where’ we goin’?” I asked.
        “Back to Springfield.”
        “Kind of the long way there, ain’t it?”
        “The bridge over Lake Springfield is out.”
        We passed through Auburn, or at least the town’s ruins. I wondered what had happened to the town? There were only a few structures still standing. There was evidence of a great many fires. He turned right on highway 4. I didn’t say anything until we reached Chatham, which was likewise in ruins.
        “What the hell happened?” I was both aghast and awe-struck.
        “I told you, global warming.” We crossed over a stream or something, the creaky old bridge miraculously still standing.
        “Just the rising temperatures caused all this?”
        “It started it. California and Florida were the worst hit in North America, but the rising seas and frequent, never before seen monster storms, destroyed most of the world’s coasts. Fires destroyed most of California. Crops failed worldwide from droughts.”
        He got on highway 72 and crossed the median; highway 4 had collapsed on the interstate. We were going east in the westbound lanes. “The wars did most of the damage.”
        “I thought you said it was global warming.”
        “It was. Hungry people fight for food.”
        When we reached the entrance from 5th street he moved onto 6th street at the entrance to a big Walmart, which wasn’t there in 2000 and now laid in ruins, like everything else. We continued north. The railroad overpass by Stanford Avenue was completely missing, with no debris on the road.
        Further north, the next railroad overpass was down, debris blocking three of the four lanes. Most of the houses were completely gone, with nothing left but charred rubble.
        I asked “Hungry people did all this?”
        “Hungry nations did all this. Wars were fought, more wars were fought, nuclear arms were unleashed, and this is the result. No more people, dogs, cats, birds... in fact, there’s very little still alive. Cockroaches, Tardigrades, very few other species.
        “The math boys say that in about another five hundred million years there would be new land species, even evolving to sentience later, but we’ll be gone. By the time the few surviving species become sentient, no trace of humanity will remain at all.”
        He turned left on Capitol, and there it was: the Illinois State Capitol building, charred and blackened, but still standing. He headed back to the cornfield.
        “So how am I supposed to stop all this?” I asked, frantic. This was about the worst thing I’d ever seen.
        “Your little web site?”
        “What about it?”
        “It’s going to get you started writing. You already wrote the art thing and the thing about the cat. By 2018 you’ll have written and published half a dozen books. When we get back, write this down, put it away, and post it on the internet no earlier than Halloween 2018.”
        By then we had reached the cornfield, now only dirt, and got out of the Tesla. There was no fence to hop. The fog rose and fell again, and the fence, snow and stalk stumps were back, the stumps flattened to the ground in a square, ten yards to a side.
        “I’ll see you,” he said. “Go on home and write this down. But do not under any circumstances let anyone see it or even hear about it until after Halloween 2018.”
        “But how will that stop the destruction?”
        “Look, I don’t have the math to explain it to you even if you could understand it. But you’ve heard of the ‘butterfly effect’, where the flapping of a butterfly’s wings affects the weather, haven’t you?”
        “Yes, but what does that have to do with this?”
        “You’re the butterfly that prevents the hurricane!”
        He hit his stratodoober again, laughed uproariously, and vanished in the now familiar cloud of smoke.
        I sure hope I’m flapping my wings right.

So, I bought a Kindle book a couple days ago. Tom Kratman, A Pillar of Fire by Night. Amazon most likely keeps tabs on your progress through your books. To the, it may appear that I'm out of reading material, because I've read everything I've bought from them. So, right on cue, they send me some recommendations. Michelle Obama? Seriously? There is pretty much NOTHING in my reading history that would suggest that I might read her book.

Runaway1956

6:45 AM (1 minute ago)

to Amazon.com
Why the HELL would your recommend Michelle Obama's book to me? Your algorithms are pretty screwed up sometimes. No, I don't want to read Michelle's book, nor Clinton's, nor any other liberal/progressive book. I MAY POSSIBLY read a Democrat's book, IF AND ONLY IF that Democrat is not part of the anti-American far-left progressive establishment.
    Clean up your act/algorithm. I know that your boss, What'sisName is a rabid leftie, and he probably ordered this idiot algorithm to push Obama's book, but it makes you all look stupid.

Runaway1956

No, I really don't mind insulting the rich and the powerful. If they forward my criticism to High Lord What'sisName, I'd be happy to say the same to his face.

This is not a disclaimer, just a reminder: in case you've already forgotten what you clicked on, this is a personal journal entry. Taking it as anything else will cause you to be mocked thoroughly.

Ever wonder why SoylentNews doesn't have a Patreon option? Have a read and if you still have any questions, I'll be happy to explain why I'm going to flatly refuse to write the necessary code even in the event that management decides it's a thing we should support.

These lines in particular annoy me:

But secondly as a membership platform, payment processing is one of the core value propositions that we have. Payment processing depends on our ability to use the global payment network, and they have rules for what they will process.

Bull fucking shit. We're a long damned way from Social Justice assclowns having enough stroke to get Visa and Mastercard to bend their knee to whatever their manufactured outrage of the moment is. If you're going to take a position that loses you money, that's your right. At least have the balls to own your position though.

I've had a lot of background checks, in my lifetime. In my teens, twenties, and early thirties, the Navy did a bunch of them. In my thirties and forties, employers did a number of them. I've never actually thought about them much, they're just part of life, ya know?

Now, guns. When I was fourteen, I bought my first gun - a private purchase from an individual, with no licensed firearms dealers involved. So, of course no background check, not even in today's world.

Second gun, I was fifteen. Walked into the sporting goods store, and told them I wanted a 30-30 for deer hunting. Guy took a Winchester model 94 off the shelf, showed it to me, I liked it, and handed over $75 + tax, and got a receipt for it. Manager asks me how old I am, I say fifteen, and he picks the rifle up, and says I have to have my dad approve of the sale before I can have my Winchester. Hell, I wasn't even sure my dad WOULD approve.

Got the old man to come in to town with me, and give my purchase his aproval. He asks, "Where in the hell did you get $75?" I told him "I earned it, what did you think I was mowing lawns for?" We walked into the store together, the manager says "Hi", dad asks, "Did my kid pay you for a rifle?" Manager says "Yes, paid cash for it." Dad says, "Well, let him have it." That was all the "background check" that it took to buy a rifle back then.

Today? Well, I don't need or want a nice gun. The kids would just haul it off, and I might see it sometimes. I walked into the store, and asked for their cheapest .22 rifle. Dude says he has an automatic for a hundred bucks. I ask "That's NEW, for a hundred bucks?" Yep. Savage Arms, model 62. Good enough - it may not be highly accurate, but as long as it doesn't blow up (I'm remembering a Japanese made .22 that blew up in my kid brother's face decades ago) it's good enough.

"You'll have to do a background check, Sir." "Well, Okay, how long does that take?" "About half an hour." "And then, I have to wait for five days?" "Only if the computer rejects your application is there any wait."

So, he sits me in front of a computer, and I start answering questions.
"Are you a felon?" "no"
"Are you loony toons?" "no"
"Have you killed anyone lately?" "no"
"Are you an illegal alien?" "no"
"If a veteran, were you dishonorably discharged?" "no"
"Please rate the following people's performance, on a percentage scale, and add a one or two sentence explantion to each rating"
"1. Bill Clinton" "55% - might have been a good president if he weren't a draft dodging crook."
"2. George W. Bush" "60% - just too damned dumb to be any better."
"3. Barrack H. Obama" "50% - he should have run for office in a Muslim country."
"4. Donald H. Trump" "56% - he's a slightly classier crook than Clinton, but not as intelligent, and he has good looking women around him."

I'm waiting for the results of my background check, when people started gathering around. I'm feeling conspicuous, like maybe I've not only failed, but they are waiting for the SWAT team to come get me. The manager finishes his entries on the computer, and turns to me, with a tear in his eye.

"Mister, we haven't had anyone pass this background check with such a high score. Your score is so high, we want to give you this gun."
Everyone applauded, I got my gun, and walked out of the store with it. It's just that painless!

It's just awesome, people. Now I wish I had asked about a nicer, more expensive rifle.

Thursday I posted a journal entry asking for serious discussion of an issue rather than trolling or shit flinging. I got about what I expected. One solitary AC willing to seriously discuss the issue and every other participant either unwilling or uninterested in engaging in such.

That's fucking sad, folks.

So, I'm sitting on my reading chair this morning, getting my daily dose of Uncle John and I come across a story about Tommy Douglas. He's a Canadian feller who arguably was the primary mover behind universal healthcare up there. It's an interesting story but that's not what I feel like talking about today. Today I want to get into one sentence out of the article:

Douglas came to believe that medical care was a basic human right and should be available to everyone.

That sentence annoys me. I dislike inaccurate or imprecise speech on important topics and that most certainly qualifies as such, so let's clarify first.

A right is something you refuse to surrender the ability to do (generally to be able to live around other people without too much strife). They have no need of justification. They need only your refusal to surrender them for whatever reason. Drawing a line in the sand on an unpopular one may get you disinvited from the Christmas party or thrown in prison but that is another matter entirely. Rights aren't very special.

A constitutional right is a right of yours that your nation has decided as a whole that the government shall not interfere with. Constitutional rights are a just an explicitly protected subset of rights in general. We in the US find that the ability to speak your mind is a good one to protect while the ability to shoot someone in the face without a good reason is not, for example. Protected rights are special.

An entitlement is something that you do not innately possess the ability to do, it must be given to you. Entitlements do require justification because they by definition are not something you have a right to. Generally they infringe upon the rights of others, though there are a small minority of situations where this is not the case. For this reason, societies must (hopefully carefully) debate among themselves what entitlements they want to create.

A Human Right is a bullshit term as it includes examples of all of the above and gets redefined all the fucking time.

There, important terms clearly defined.

Now that that's out of the way, it's extremely clear that free as-in-speech access to already existing medical care is most certainly a right but free as-in-beer access to medical care is an entitlement.

So, lets have a real discussion as to why my paying for someone I've never met's healthcare should be an entitlement. Without muddying the waters with imprecise, outright wrong, or just plain bullshit terminology.

Free as-in-beer healthcare infringes upon the rights of medical practitioners to charge what they feel is fair for their services. It also infringes upon the rights of everyone who is forced (which literally means threatened with the use of force in this context) to pay for services they neither requested nor received the benefits of. What justifications do you offer for the infringement of your fellow citizens' rights in such a manner?

I'm open to rational arguments here but bullshit rhetoric and tugs at my heartstrings are getting routed straight to /dev/null.

Chihuahuas aren't really dogs, of course. Dogs are pretty smart in general, and chihuahuas are just plain stupid.

Anyway, after reading that chihuahuas are good for people with asthma, I decided to get one for the wife, many years ago. The creatures aren't very durable, and the wife wore that one out. But, the presence of the chihuahua really does seem to help with her asthma. The always present inhaler has pretty much disappeared from her life. There's one laying around, but she almost never needs it, and when she does need it, she has to search for it.

But, back the the stupid creatures - I usually address the chihuahuas as "Stupid". "You want out, Stupid?" A normal dog will spring into springy mode immediately, bouncing up and down in front of the door, waiting for you to catch up to him. The chihuahua, instead, looks at you blankly, mulling the concept of "outside" for awhile. Sometime later, sometimes even on the same day, the creature decides, "Yes, outside!" then starts jumping up and down.

So, the wife heard me telling her pet, one more time, that he was dumb as a rock. "Why do you say he's stupid?" "Because he's dumber than a rock, of course." "Well, you're going to give the dog a complex!" "He already has a complexion - kinda black with a red tint, which is why you named him Cocoa." "Well, stop calling him stupid!"

Hmmmm. I snatched the animal up, walked through the door, attached his tie-out lead, and put him down. Then, I walked around the yard picking up several rocks. I didn't even pick and choose for smart looking rocks, I did my best to just pick them at random. I carried the rocks inside, and arranged them on the floor. The wife is looking at me weird, but she often does that, I paid her no mind. After awhile, I brought the animal back inside, and carried him to where the rocks sat in a semicircle. The wife followed me into the living room, and watched while I administered an intelligence test to the animal and the minerals.

Sample question found on Youtube for intelligence tests for rocks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH2P3qQYUFc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw1BmB5ALHo

The chihuahua scored behind six rocks, and ahead of four other rocks, "proving" that a chihuahua is truly "dumb as a box of rocks".

Be warned - testing the IQ's of rocks can be time consuming, and tedious. You must be prepared to wait for the rocks, and you must be able to "interpret" the rock's answers. Which is only fair, because you also have to "interpret" the chihuahua's answers. If you've ever been employed as an historical site "interpreter", you'll be well prepared for this endeavor.

I wish there were a real dog that were purported to be "good for asthma". Why not a border collie? Or, and Irish setter? *sigh*

Yes, I just assumed your species. Suck it, furries.

Look, guys, I know everyone likes telling me off but there's only so much time in the day and believe it or not I do have things I enjoy doing that don't involve schooling noobs. When you dump dozens of replies on me while I'm out, the chances of me reading them, much less replying to them all before bedtime, drastically decrease. Y'all do what you gotta do but don't go expecting me to spend my whiskey in front of the TV time explaining why you're a dumbass.

JUSTICE BREYER: So what is to happen if a state needing revenue says anyone who speeds has to forfeit the Bugatti, Mercedes, or a special Ferrari or even jalopy?

(Laughter.)

MR. FISHER: There -- no, there is no -- there is no excessive fines issue there. I -- what I will say and what I think is important to -- to remember is that there is a constitutional limit, which is the proof of instrumentality, the need to prove nexus.

JUSTICE BREYER: That isn't a problem because it was the Bugatti in which he was speeding. (Laughter.)

MR. FISHER: Right.

JUSTICE BREYER: So -- so there is all the nexus.

MR. FISHER: Historically -­

JUSTICE BREYER: Now I just wonder, what -- what is it? What is it? Is that just permissible under the Constitution?

MR. FISHER: To forfeit the Bugatti for speeding?

JUSTICE BREYER: Yeah, and, by the way, it was only five miles an hour -­

MR. FISHER: Yeah.

JUSTICE BREYER: -- above the speed limit.

MR. FISHER: Well, you know, the answer is yes. And I would call your attention to the -­

JUSTICE BREYER: Is it yes?

MR. FISHER: Yes, it's forfeitable.

I hope Indiana goes down in flames. It's about time we kill this beast.