Got a new computer today.  Makes all the difference to posting.  My other one was bought in 2012, is slow as molasses and not conducive to posting.  Took 10 minutes to load up my blog page!  I've been silent for the past few years, constrained by my cancer recovery and other things.  But I just can sit out this 2020 election!  Time to get serious.

Renovations

The bar will be undergoing a renovation of sorts.  Hopefully, this is good news!

Now that I have learned to deal with cancer, I can get back to normal with my political blogging.  I had to take time off from being analytical, cynical, angry, etc.  All great things for blogging, but terrible if you are trying to beat cancer!

I thought the outdated blog template needed some sprucing up.  I have had the old template for over ten years now, and with a new day goes a new template.  I am open to feedback as I tweak the changes.

For those of you who are over 18, I have another personal blog that's been in the works for a while.  You can shoot over to Diary of an Old Broad and give it a read.

Change In Signature

I was watching "Life Below Zero" on television, and someone said this:  "I have accepted my life.  I am a food group."

That is my new signature!  I relate totally.  

What Washington D.C. Sees In Me

Sometimes when the government is checking out your blog, it's not what you think it is for!  Here the individual was actually looking up my Grundig Majestic stereo console post.  I get about two hits a day from individuals searching for information about Grundig.

35,000 Blog Hits

My post "Holy Shit, It's Christmas" appears to be the dominant post for me this month.  I got over 60 hits today alone just on that picture, and over 200 hits since I posted it on November 18, over a month ago.  However, I do have the wrong name for the musical artist.  It should be Red Peters and the New Christy Hamsters.

6 days until Christmas ...

Marvin & Johnny (doo wop) - Christmas Time

Happy Birthday To DJ Rix

Enjoy your day!

Happy 7th Blogaversary To Me

Seven years, now, I have been blogging. I came out of the barrel straight shooting at everything that I saw was tearing apart this country, from the War on Terror, the actual invasion of Iraq, the stealing of elections around this country by Republicans through the use of electronic voting machines, and the new trend of Republicans to be ugly, angry and lying Americans.

As I watched how quickly the corporate entities put gobs of money into the hands of politicians (both Dems and Repugs), and then saw them become shills for corporate interests over the people, watched this country go through Hurricane Katrina and saw the stupidity that has become known as the Bush era, my faith in this country as a leader waned. To see the “media” consistently be called out as having a “liberal bias” while simultaneously spewing out bile and lies on a daily basis made my stomach ache, and my head spin. Truth was, and now is, irrelevant in today’s politics, and it has spread to the “liberally biased” media (cough, cough) such that, as posted and reported a few months ago, those that watch NO TELEVISION news programs are smarter than those that watch Fox News or other news programs (by smarter, just that they are more aware of the world and American news, as a whole, than those that are actually attempting to get their information from the media). I stopped feeling the need to use my blog to pass along relevant commentary to inform my readers of the stupidity and lies that were being tossed around by media and politicians (both parties) alike, and started to open up and share personal stuff, like my music, my interest in sports and my take on other issues non-political.

Make no mistake, though. I am still a ferverent liberal, and nothing will change that. But with SOOOO many blogs covering the issues of the day, it feels a bit redundant to just cut and paste what they say and then add my personal two cents. When I first started out blogging there were not many (if any) multiple host blogs. We were generally all just one person taking on the world. In the intervening years, bloggers gave up their independent voices and joined together to make super blogs (like Daily Kos, Think Progress, and AMERICAblog), just to name a few, and that made my ability to get the lede out before them all that much harder, especially since I still had a day job to attend to, while these blogs started accepting donations and paying their bloggers to work full time. That was just not going to happen in my world, even if I wanted to blog full time, it was never going to pay my bills.

I have been on Blogger since day one. I spent a great deal of time using my knowledge of html language to take one of their standard templates and redefine it to make it my own and not a copycat that I would see over and over by other bloggers. When Google bought Blogger, the first thing they did was try to force us to change over to their new, uh how should I phrase this, blogging for dummies format. Just drop and drag here and there, and voila, you have instant blog! Fortunately, I was able to withstand that, and was never forced to utilize their new format at that time. However, the other blogs that I created and manage, like my grandson’s and the one for my uncle, were subjected to the new format, and there was really nothing I could do, although I was able to still use html to tweak things to my liking.

But, this new forced change is horrendous. The posting options remind me of old school email choices. The layout sucks, most of the options do not work, such as the ability to look at older posts ... click, click, click ... goes nowhere. Try to upload a video or a picture and click, click, click ... nothing appears. Heck, for the past couple of years, most people come to my blog just FOR the videos and pictures !!!! If I can’t even get that stuff up with the new Blogger, what is the point?

At any rate, this is my blogversary, as they say, seven years and counting. I am still not sure what I will do with Carrie’s Bar & Grill. I am tempted to just leave it hear as it is, and make up a new place, still owned by Carrie, but just not a Bar & Grill, so to speak. Maybe take on a new persona for the blog, where it will be less political and more personal. And then find a new host and hopefully, like the posting options and features better than Blogger.

As an aside, during the time my blog was offline, one person was able to find a Goggle cache of the blog which I had no idea you could access. From 4/20 through 4/25, there were no posts, and when you tried to go to my blog, you got a page that told you the blog was no longer there. Except on 4/23, someone read like 6 pages and spent about 15 minutes on my blog, and when I clicked on the referral link, I was taken to a place that stated by Google it was the last known “cache” of my blog, and you could actually pull the entire thing up as if it was still working. Very interesting, to say the least.

Anyway, in closing, between yesterday and today, I see Blogger has begun to “fix” some of their problems, such as the label category (which when I tried to pull up the list of labels I have created it went nowhere, click, click, click) and I see that I can now access my prior posts. Let’s see if later on, over the weekend, I can pull up some pictures and videos. Not saying that would make me stay here, but at least until I find out what I want to do next, I can work within the new parameters I have been forced to accept.

Ahhhhh, America ... oops, I mean Corporatopia, the land of the enslaved and oppressed peoples, where we are all assimilated by the Borg.

UPDATE: 4/29/12: There was a link in this new Blogger that was entitled "old format" and when I clicked on it, voila, the old format came back, although at the top it says "this format will be disable in the future." We shall see. For now, I have the old Blogger options and page, so I'll keep on keeping on, as they say!

I Passed 30,000 Hits!

Pretty decent milestone for this simple blog! Of course, it would be THIS post that hit the 30,000 mark! Puff, puff!

"Old Photograph" By Warren Wiebe

From a commenter:

Well, if truth be told, for years I thought Christopher Cross was the guy singing at the end of "Voices That Care" and for some reason I must have been looking at that video on youtube where his name was mentioned somewhere in the uploaders comments or something and I was immediately on the move to find more stuff by him. This is when I learned of his death, the history and some of the artists he performed for and with. This happened about a year and a half ago. Believe it or not, I have 77 songs (some live performance stuff included) that he has done. I know there is more out there and my quest continues. I am envious of you having been able to see him perform live...how cool!! I feel a sense of loss and somehow robbed of him in that there will be no more music from him. He was truly a gifted vocalit and it's like I almost fall in love with him when I hear him sing. Kinda weird, but it's honestly how I feel.

I know lots of people that have confused Warren with Christopher over the years. But like you said, I was blessed to know his voice in a particular fashion having heard him night after night at the Forum in Inglewood for years and years. Also, being raised in a musical family, I CAN distinguish between say, Jack Jones and Steve Lawrence (laughing). So I do know the difference in sound between Warren and Christopher, just from my own life in music.

But, like I posted and commented, that year, when he wasn't in his regular season seat for the first few games, and he didn't sing the opening song before the games, the rumors started ... "he died" and then morphed into "he killed himself" and man, oh man, the sadness that enveloped the Forum that October was intense.

I like the website they have maintained for him, but I am bummed that they will not allow embedding of videos. I also do not have nearly as many songs as you.

My favorite is this -- "Old Photograph." Hope you enjoy.

UC Prez Checking Out My Site! Is That Cool ... Or Not?

Ok, not the clearest screen capture, but hey, what is someone from the "office of the president" of the "University of California" doing looking at my blog?

Yeah, Rix, call me paranoid? Not.

The Bar Is Open Again

I did my part!

More Posts To Come Soon, I Promise!

I have not posted much politically during this holiday season, despite the plethora of comical (as in Republican debates, etc.) and interesting (as in new laws in effect as of 1/1/12) and stupid (as in Republican debates, etc. -- oops, does that count twice?) to actually post on.

However, now that the holidays are over, tree ready to be tossed this weekend, Christmas decorations ready to be put away and regular stuff put back into place, I will resume my regular posting.

One funny thing that happened over the holidays, though, was this ad site (that was real, trust me) singling out my blog and offering to pay me for the right to put some advertisements on. Now I have already seen this company's work with placement of ads on some really big blogs, so to say I was somewhat impressed they thought enough of my content to want to place adverts on my site and pay me per advert is an understatement! However, as we discussed further, and I indicated I did not use Pay Pal for payments (and never would), that I did not have a bank account, and that I hated WalMart so if they put a WalMart ad on my site, I might have to make fun of it ... suddenly NO MORE contact from the company.

Ha, ha. Well ... it's not like I was going to get rich off of this, what with my 25 regular readers (although I sometimes get more hits from the googlebot that still has not finished hashing my blog).

Anyway, it's FOOTBALL playoff time. So, tell me who you think is going forward after Sunday, and/or who is going all the way?

My Google Page Ranking Went Up A Notch!

I first learned about the Googlebot in March of this year. I posted about it here. I was getting an unusually high number of hits (based on a reading from SiteMeter) from Mountain View, California. I didn't pay attention to the Goggle ISP reference or the "Googlebot" identity, until I actually Googled Googlebot (LOL).

While SiteMeter is an easy way to find information as to who is viewing your pages, it has become apparent to me that the algorithm used by Googlebot has a fascination for my site, since it spends hours every day on my page where it caches my posts. This helps when anyone Googles a subject that I've written about, because if it is cached by Google, then it will show up in their search engine. And since I have over 2,000 posts, I am sure it will take a while to cache all of them.

I like SiteMeter better for understanding who REALLY is reading my site, because unlike StatCounter, SiteMeter recognizes the bots and so it does not count them in the evaluation of who is reading the blog. Consequently in some ways, the StatCounter artificially inflates my "hits" because it is "counted" whereas SiteMeter gives me more detailed information. SiteMeter tells me the ISP address, how many times that address has visited my site (and trust me, some are in the 100's of times visiting my site), what pages they view, how long they are on my site and a whole host of other interesting news about the viewer, including the referring URL, the search request, and sometimes even the name of the website that the viewer is using, which I can then backclick on. Quite fascinating information to me.

Anyway, back to Google page rankings. They go from 1 to 10, 10 being the highest. My little blog is now up to a 4 in the rankings, which if you consider the millions of blogs that are up and running, to even get a ranking, let alone a fucking 4, is awesome! On SiteMeter, it actually gives me, on some hits that were part of a Google search, how that particular page ranked. Overall, my blog ranks at 4, but some of my posts have ranked as high as an 8. Damn!!!!!!

Not too shabby, even if I do say so myself!

A Message To John Aravosis, You Suck

You know what John, you are sometimes really an ass when you pontificate your preferred opinion on your blog. I know it's your blog, so it's your platform, but just because some Occupy the port information didn't pan out to be true, doesn't mean you are the god of all that is left wing liberalism internalized.

The Occupy Seattle team is claiming that the union employees at the port didn't lose their pay. In fact, according to the Stranger, they did.

[snip]

Some folks got upset when I wrote yesterday that this port action was giving me pause. It seems I had a point. Fancy that.

Yeah, fancy your ass, that. Let me give you a lollipop to shove up your ass. You missed the total point of that port shutdown, and you continually (lately) miss the total point of the Occupy movement. Perhaps you should just concentrate on your little pictures of your dog, and the like.

You are becoming quite a disappointment to me and many of my ilk.

How The Joneses (Or Randy) Does The Keeping Up Of Appearances

This is funny! Link to Randy's site, here. Click on the link under the heading to get to the picture.

Have A Holly, Jolly Christmas!

Gutsy Move By Anonymous

UPDATE: 11/5/11

According to New York Daily News:

The hacktavist collective Anonymous has cancelled Operation Cartel after a member that was allegedly abducted by a Mexican drug cartel was released Thursday, the group's longtime public face announced in an online post.

WOW ... that's some fucking power!
- - - - - - - -

"You made a huge mistake by taking one of us. Release him," says a masked man in a video posted online on behalf of the group, Anonymous.

"We cannot defend ourselves with a weapon … but we can do this with their cars, homes, bars, brothels and everything else in their possession," says the man, who is wearing a suit and tie.

"It won't be difficult; we all know who they are and where they are located," says the man, who underlines the group's international ties by speaking Spanish with the accent of a Spaniard while using Mexican slang.

Apparently, Anonymous is not taking the kidnapping of one of their own lying down.

Earlier today, [Barrett] Brown tweeted: "Just hours into gathering secondary intel, we have the name of a U.S. DA and evidence of his involvement." That was followed by "Requesting the assistance of any journalist who is willing to look into a DA with potential ties to organized crime."

From CNET.

I'M BACK!!!

Boy, do I have a shitload of archived articles to sift through for commentary -- even if some of it is old and already beaten to death. Don't worry, I have nothing to say about Casey Anthony (LOL).

I finally filed document(s) that will set the ball rolling to bring home my grandson. I can now concentrate on other things, like my blog! I wish I could comment on the proceedings, but my daughter has asked me to not put this matter out on the internet, so, for the few of you that actually know me and want to know what's going on, feel free to e-mail me.

Now, off to my doctor for my regular five week check up (blood pressure medicine, prescription for valium, etc.) and when I get back, time to work on what I've been missing this past month (or months).

Offline For A While ...

as if no one noticed! LOL. I've been working on the filings that will be the nexus of the argument to bring "you know who" back to "you know where." Sorry that I haven't been more attuned, blog-wise, as to the happenings politically of recent. But know, I do have an archive ... just not sure when I am able to break free of this time sensitive procedure re "you know who" such that my comments on the political arena for the past month will actually make a difference!
[(sad face :( ]

Happy 6th Blogversary To Me!

It's been six years of blogging. My very first post here, which I cross-posted at MyDD. Hard to believe that post garnered me my one and only blogosphere Koufax award nomination by MyDD for best post of the year. Hey, I didn't win, but as they say after the Oscars, I was just happy to be nominated (right?)

One Year, 705 Posts, 4,800 Hits

Six Years, 2,450 Posts, 23,225 Hits

I Do Believe Ezra Klein Has It Right About Obama

First off, I have to say that next to Glenn Greenwald at Salon, my favorite blogger/writer/poster is Gaius Publius (I believe that's a pseudonym for blogger Gabriel Arana at AMERICAblog). He is spot on with much of his analysis of the economy, the presidency, the political climate of the country, etc.

His most recent post, entitled "Ezra Klein: Obama is 'a moderate Republican of the early 1990s'" contains some interesting quotes by Ezra, as well as some funny commentary of his own.

Ezra Klein has an interesting (and well structured) piece about all the things that President Obama isn't (Muslim, socialist, birthless), and the one thing he is — a Republican. Mr. Klein (my emphasis throughout):

A reality-television star who can’t persuade anyone that his hair is real is alleging that the president of the United States was born in Kenya.

Perhaps this is just the logical endpoint of two years spent arguing over what Barack Obama is — or isn’t. Muslim. Socialist. Marxist. Anti-colonialist. Racial healer. We’ve obsessed over every answer except the right one: President Obama, if you look closely at his positions, is a moderate Republican of the early 1990s. And the Republican Party he’s facing has abandoned many of its best ideas in its effort to oppose him.

He does save his best comment for the end of the post, though.

And if I may be so bold, I don't think it's a given that radical Republicanism, 2010-style, is just anti-Obamaism, as Klein asserts. Republicans have been moving the goalposts into the next county for most of our lives.

It's what they do. They're not going to stop until it's 1880 again, an era in which those nasty immigrants were, at the very least, appropriately hued. The next Democratic president could be to the left of Chairman Mao, and those Republican goalposts would still be to the right of the Atlantic seaboard.

(Stifling a guffaw).