Bag of Randomness for Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Is Mexico also paying for that new wall around the White House?

Presidential trivia – An only child has never been president of the United States.

After the last presidential election, I don’t trust any polling data. Supposedly, a lot of people who vote for Trump just don’t like to admit or showcase it.

When you are the President of the United States and have the resources of the FBI, CIA, NSA, and everything else, there’s no need to tweet about conspiracy theories.

Fort Hood is one of the largest military bases in the world but I didn’t have any idea it was named after a Confederate general, John Bell Hood. That’s absurd. Insanely absurd. Think about it, everyone who joins the U.S. military has one thing in common, they swear-in by an oath to honor and protect it. Hood would have said the following:

“I, _____, appointed a _____ in the Army of the United States, do solemnly swear, or affirm, that I will bear true allegiance to the United States of America, and that I will serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies or opposers whatsoever, and observe and obey the orders of the President of the United States, and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the rules and articles for the government of the Armies of the United States.”

So, even though he swore an oath to the U.S. and betrayed his country by going to war against it, the U.S. Army is going to honor him by naming a military base after him? I’m trying to wrap my head around how absurd that is. Soldiers are now stationed at a fort named in honor after a traitor, a traitor who led troops to kill men who actually defended the oath he shat on.

On a related now, I keep thinking about that six-hour Ulysses S. Grant documentary on the History channel. I think about how interesting it would be to listen to a conversation between him and Washington. One man led an army of rebels to start a country, the other led an army against rebels to keep the country together. One man presided over a new nation, the other presided during that nation’s reconstruction. Also, while I can’t prove it, I bet Robert E. Lee has been honored more (statues, schools, etc.) than the man he surrendered to, who later served two terms as president and led its reconstruction.

Hell’s four-day forecast has a chance of frost and maybe even snow – Jerry Falwell Jr. apologizes for tweet with racist photo after black students and alumni denounced him

‘What I saw was just absolutely wrong’: National Guardsmen struggle with their role in controlling protests – POLITICO spoke to 10 National Guardsmen who have taken part in the protest response across the country since the killing of George Floyd while in police custody.

Eric Money is the only player in NBA history to officially score for two teams (76ers and Nets) in the same game. That game was also Phil Jackson’s first as head coach. He was an assistant coach for the Nets and became the head coach after two coaches were ejected.

‘Miss Hitler’ pageant entrant and her partner jailed for belonging to neo-Nazi group – A former “Miss Hitler” pageant entrant and her partner have been jailed in the UK for belonging to the extreme right-wing neo-Nazi group National Action.

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Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, June 9, 2020

You’re not fully clean unless you are Zest-fully clean.

DaughterGeeding asked for a new bed (she ain’t getting one) and when we asked her what size, she said “jack”. WifeGeeding and I were left confused and asked her what size that would be, and she said the one just beneath queen. We politely informed her that’s referred to as a full-sized mattress and she explained that doesn’t make sense since in a deck of cards it goes king, queen, and then jack.

Bad childhood memory – Grass stickers I didn’t know were on my shoelaces and poking them as I grabbed my laces.

Here’s how Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri answer the question, ‘Do black lives matter?’ – They can also answer ‘do all lives matter?’

These martial arts fight scene recreations are most impressive.

Remember in The Fugitive the first time Tommy Lee Jone’s character and Harrison Ford’s character interact with each other.

That’s what I thought about when I skimmed through this video by an intrepid explorer. Towards the end you get to see several waterfalls, though nothing as grand as what’s in the move.

CNN has a copy of their Challenger launch broadcast footage. It’s available on CNN’s own YouTube channel, and it understandably has millions of views. CNN’s upload is a 360p video whose content is similar to what you see here — with three major differences: (1) this version is of substantially higher quality, (2) this version doesn’t have any CNN branding, and (3) this version continues NASA’s feed longer than CNN showed on air. This is a direct copy of NASA’s broadcast feed. It was saved by NASA, and at some point a copy was transferred to the United States Geological Survey on a VHS tape. This video is a digitization of that tape; as far as I know, this is the first time it is being shown publicly.

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Bag of Randomness for Monday, June 8, 2020

I’m amazed about the protests happening across the globe – London, Berlin, Paris, Sydney, Madrid, etc. It’s one thing for an event to happen here and see local protests, another thing when protests go national, but it’s simply amazing to see a lot of the world unified in a cause. Heck, in this article, you’ll see how even places like India, Syria, Argentina, and other places got involved. I’m curious to know the thoughts of that now jailed police officer who was kneeling on George Floyd’s neck on the global impact of his actions.

Taking a cue from America, the Brits are wanting to take down certain statues that deal with slavery. Here they are taking down Slave trader Edward Colston’s statue and dumping it in the river.

I’ll go ahead and tip my toe in the scalding hot water of this issue as it pertains to statues honoring Confederates. Move any public statue to museums and private property. Bottom line, they were traitors. We should honor American heroes, not traitors. It’s not that anyone is trying to erase history, books and documentaries include them in great detail, it’s who we are trying to honor, and traitors shouldn’t be honored.

I tweeted this on Saturday.

@bagofnothing – It shall be shameful for any pastor to not address what has transpired this week in tomorrow’s Sunday sermon. If you’re a pastor and it’s still not in your draft, you still have time to change that.

Also on Saturday, I told WifeGeeding that if it was solely my decision on where to attend church, that if my pastor did not devote any part of his or her sermon to the events that transpired last week, I would leave that church. One of the things which bug me about church is when a pastor is so dedicated to a sermon series and refuses to deviate from it as if that chosen topic is more important than anything else which can transpire. I’m not saying a preacher should tell us what side of an issue to take, but I think it’s vitally important to teach or remind us what the Word says about hope, how to deal, how to heal, and the only constant. If seven days of national protests during a pandemic that caused an economic collapse aren’t enough for a pastor to commit a few minutes of a sermon, I’m not sure what would meet his or her criteria.

My pastor has been going over the book of  “One” Peter, and yesterday he covered chapter three, the “wives and husbands” lesson. If you’ve been in the church for a while, you’ve heard this one a hundred or more times already (though I do like hearing a take on it from a non-Baptist preacher). I’m not saying that’s not important to go over, but it’s not timely and can be pushed back a week. Priorities, yo. Put your flock needs over your own. Right now I plan on writing an email to him about this but in a much friendlier and respectful tone.

This has been a story I’ve long been interested in, it had a D.B. Cooper appear to it.

A treasure chest hidden in the Rocky Mountains for a decade has finally been found

  • Forrest Fenn, the 89-year-old art and antiquities collector who created the treasure hunt, made the announcement Sunday on his website. “It was under a canopy of stars in the lush, forested vegetation of the Rocky Mountains and had not moved from the spot where I hid it more than 10 years ago,” Fenn wrote in his announcement. “I do not know the person who found it, but the poem in my book led him to the precise spot.”
  • The treasure was found a few days ago by a man who did not want to be named, Fenn told the Santa Fe New Mexican. He noted, however, that the man was from “back East” and that he confirmed his discovery by sending Fenn a photograph of his newfound riches.
  • The treasure, estimated to be worth over $1 million, was a way for Fenn to inspire people to explore nature and give hope to people affected by the Great Recession, he said.

Here’s the Director of the United States National Economic Council.

Powers Boothe had a cool name.

I’ve heard Bono describe America plenty of times and love how he never loses his enthusiasm.

 

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Bag of Randomness for Friday, June 5, 2020

 

This proves the Civil War wasn’t that long ago, and she almost lived to see a second.

She was the last American to collect a Civil War pension —$73.13 a month. She just died.

  • The jaw-dropping fact that someone in the year 2020 was still earning a Civil War pension was the result of two factors: First, Triplett suffered cognitive impairments, qualifying her for the lifelong pension as a helpless adult child of a veteran. Second, her father, Mose Triplett, who’d served as a private in the Confederate Army before defecting to the Union, was on his second marriage when she was born in 1930. He was just a few weeks away from turning 84.

  • Many more widows and children of other long-ago soldiers are still alive. According to VA, there are 33 surviving spouses and 18 children receiving pension benefits related to the 1898 Spanish-American War.

Dyson shelved its Tesla-killer. Why is it showing it off now? – What could’ve been a Tesla troubler will now have to settle for being the most expensive car never made.

How to secure your phone before attending a protest

I would just buy one from Jimmy McGill.

I hope the trend continues as long as they embrace leaders like Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, and Jerry Falwell Jr.

Southern Baptists see historic drop in membership

The Southern Baptist Convention said it had 14.5 million members in 2019, down about 287,655 from the previous year. Membership dropped 2 percent, the largest single-year drop in more than 100 years, according to a survey from LifeWay Christian Resources, the denomination’s publishing and research arm.

Pastor Rick Warren used to be a hot commodity, I haven’t heard a thing about him in ages. At one time, if The Purpose Driven Life wasn’t displayed prominently in your home you weren’t considered to be a true Christian, and I’m half-joking about this.

Maybe the next one will be flying upside down.

The world’s largest American flag has been ripped into shreds by a thunderstorm

https://twitter.com/tmj4/status/1268026368601870337?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1268026368601870337&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsweek.com%2Flargest-tallest-american-flag-us-acuity-torn-apart-thunderstorms-wisconsin-1508347

I thought the wall was going up at the border we share with Mexico, not in front of the White House. Yeah, I get it, it’s a fence, but it’s still Trump’s America.

As coronavirus hits Texas, the state’s top health official is spending 30 hours a week on a second job — that pays $600,000

Acting Executive Commissioner Phil Wilson chose not to accept salary and benefits for a temporary position leading one of Texas’ largest and most high-profile agencies. Instead, he continues to earn $636,694 from the Lower Colorado River Authority, more than double what the previous health commissioner made.

Language warning. Here’s part one if you missed it, which is better than this sequel.

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