Let them in the debates: “Our third parties are fielding credible candidates as Democratic and Republican parties give us shady characters.”
“Shady characters” is being kind.
House Renovation Blues (Part 2)
Here’s a weird one. After the fridge thing, I decided to put in a shut-off valve for the fridge line only, so if it ever happened again, to either me (I hope not) or the new owner, I could shut just that off and still have cold faucet and filtered water in the kitchen sink. Shortly thereafter, the garbage disposal (which I’d installed about a decade ago, when we remodeled the kitchen, along with all the appliances) quit working. There is no action when the switch is flipped. I checked the breaker, and it’s not tripped. I can turn it freely with an allen wrench from below, so it’s not jammed, and there’s no hum. However, the armored cable to it from the switch is broken at the interface to the machine, and I can see a black wire-nutted wire sticking out the side, though it seems to be connected, at least from visual inspection.
OK, here’s the weird part. I went to Home Depot to pick up a non-contact voltage detector and a multi-meter to trouble shoot. When I bring the detector near the cable at the interface, I get a voltage signal. But only when the switch is off. When the switch is on, it disappears. When I kill the breaker, I get nothing either way. WTF?
Anyway, I was hoping to avoid pulling (and even worse purchasing a replacement). But it looks like I won’t figure it out without doing so. On the upside, if I do pull the device, it will make it easier to get at the new shutoff valve behind it, which is dripping…
[Tuesday-morning update]
On further inspection, the neutral wire is clearly broken going into the disposal, so off it comes to repair it. I must have done it when I was installing the shut-off valve. That’s why it was sensing voltage on the hot line.
ISIS Uses Human Shields
Blatantly. Daringly.
You know, this is much more of a war crime than anything that Israel or the US are routinely accused of, and yet you hardly hear of it from the usual suspects at Turtle Bay.
Huh.
The IRS
A federal court has ruled that it’s probably still targeting conservatives (my phrasing, but it’s the way to bet). Well, why wouldn’t they continue? No one has suffered any adverse consequences from it.
[Late-evening update]
Thoughts from Walter Olson.
House Renovation Blues
The bad news: We discovered a water leak behind the refrigerator in the last couple days.
The worse news: We pulled the fridge out, and it’s not leaking from there.
The even-worse news. It’s leaking from the copper supply line inside the wall.
The even-worse news than that. The supply line runs down the wall to the fridge, through the attic, from up another wall from the cold-water supply below the kitchen sink. So I get to go up into the attic to cut and pull copper and new attached PVC line through two walls. In south Florida. In August.
[Friday-morning update]
Huzzah! It’s not inside the wall. We just saw the water leaking from the back of the fridge when the icemaker valve opened. I just changed the inlet valves a couple months ago; the joint must have come loose. It just went from a major PITA to a minor repair.
[Update a while later]
OK, as noted in comments, I disconnected the leaking tube from the icemaker line, cut it off square, and reinserted. No joy. It appears to be leaking from the side of the fitting itself, which is integral to the valve, which costs fifty bucks (and I just replaced it less than three months ago). Sigh…
Hillary, Exonerated
I really don’t know if she really believes this, or if it’s the usual lies and spin. But no, “lack of sufficient evidence to prosecute is not “declared innocent.” I’ve been railing about this lying tactic of Clinton defenders for years, and as recently as last year.
[Thursday-morning update]
The ultimate media priviege: Hillary’s lies and corruption versus Trump’s mouth.
Frank Sietzen
Rest in peace among the stars.
I hadn’t talked to him in years, and am a little surprised that he was still alive; he had life-threatening health problems for a long time (liver, if I recall correctly). I’m glad he got as long as he did. He was a great historian and advocate for space and human spaceflight.
[Update a few minutes later]
Sigh. Doug O’Handley, too.
MUOS Failure
So we have a perfectly good military communications satellite stranded in the wrong orbit. If we were a truly space-faring nation, we’d send something up to give it a tow. In a few years, with things like ACES, we’ll be able to.
Hillary’s America
I haven’t seen the movie, and I’m glad that it exposes young people who’ve been taught a false history (or little history at all) of the Clinton crime syndicate, and the vile racist nature of the Democrat Party, going back to its founding and continuing through today. But the Republicans have their own issues, and the notion that it’s unpatriotic to not be one is nonsense.
“Unfit To Be President”
Barrack Obama says Donald Trump is. Howie Carr says it takes one to know one:
Brave talk from a guy who thinks there are 57 states, that they speak Austrian in Austria, that they speak Arabic in Afghanistan, who pronounced the state he lived in for three years as “Mass-a-tu-setts,” who pronounced corpsman as “corpseman.” Who thinks the Transcontinental Railroad was “intercontinental.”
He described Eric Holder’s wife, a physician, as a “nationally renowned ohbee-gynee.” He misspelled “Syracus” on his NCAA brackets sheet. He is utterly tongue-tied without a teleprompter. He makes “recess” appointments when the Senate is not in recess.
If he had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin. His grandmother was a typical white person. The Cambridge Police Department acted stupidly.
It never ends with this buffoon. Yesterday, in Singapore, he mangled the name of the country’s founding father. He can’t be bothered acting like an adult. He chews gum in public. Remember how he took selfies of himself with the Danish hottie at Nelson Mandela’s funeral?
The media were all over Trump like white on rice yesterday because he was goofing around with a baby at a rally. But Obama gets a base on balls on absolutely everything. If his middle name weren’t “Hussein,” it would be “Entitlement.”
Indeed.