Before I start this week’s rant, I’d like to point out that this is episode 52 which means that I have been doing this for a year now. YaY! I intend to continue assaulting your sensibilities but keep in mind, I am one person doing all of this for free on a retirement check with no sponsors, no ads, no collection and sale or otherwise distribution of information and only a very kind and talented web designer who keeps my website within specs. Thank you, sweet lady, for your time and talent. I want to thank all of my readers, especially those who like and share my work as that is the only way my site will grow. Without you, I would just be a fart in the wind, and no one would have even a sniff of my work. Thank you! If you do want to support me, order one of my books. Both are good reads, and I will appreciate it greatly.

Now, we have to talk about P’Nut again, because P’Nut lives matter more than you can imagine. Just in case you’ve been locked in a cave somewhere or experiencing the horrors of TDS and haven’t had exposure to this story, P’Nut and his buddy Fred the Raccoon were the stars and breadwinners of videos that helped pay for an animal rescue operation. A complaint was filed against them for being an illegal pet. A search warrant was issued and 10-12 officers dispatched to search the place for 5 hours and confiscate the furry duo. Cuteness aside, they were put to death because they had to be tested for rabies. Why they weren’t just quarantined, I don’t know. Maybe the department didn’t have enough money for pet food.

That’s the story in a peanut shell. What have we learned from this tale of woe?

1. Police have more time to deal with an illegal pet than the rising wave of theft and violent crime in America.
2. It took ten or more police five hours to find and capture a squirrel and a raccoon living in a house.
3. It’s more important to deal with someone who is keeping illegal pets than to deal with the several million illegal aliens now in the US.

    I wasn’t going to write anything more about P’Nut, but just the other day a woman in Georgia was arrested for allowing her 10-year-old boy to walk unattended into town, ½ mile away. They threatened her with one year of jail and a $1,000 fine but a way out was offered. She could put a tracking device on his phone, buy the appropriate software, and hire someone to keep an eye on it when she was at work or otherwise not available. What a deal!

I don’t mean to be flippant about this, but I really don’t know whether to laugh or cry. The rules in this country are getting ridiculous. I say rules, because they are just that, rules made by agencies meant to protect the American people and not laws made by legislatures.

I, personally, have had to deal with some of these rules in trying to feed the homeless. Did you know you can’t just cook up some food and give it to a hungry person? The food has to be certified from an inspected source. The kitchen it is cooked in must be inspected and certified by the local health authority.

This all happened in Pendleton, OR. The homeless had meals all through the week, but no one was feeding them on Sunday except a small group of concerned citizens. There was a warming station nearby that we asked to use as it was in a building and had a kitchen where we could warm up food we had cooked at home.

“NO! You can’t do that,” the administrator of the warming station said. “We will be shut down for using food from an uninspected source.”

So, we fed the people in the park, even when the snow was on the ground and the wind was blowing. We did the best we could to keep warm dishes warm for those who were hungry. No, we weren’t arrested, but the police did make an appearance from time to time looking for fugitives which caused some people to not come and get a meal because of outstanding warrants.

I bring the incidents above to show you how regulated we are becoming. There is even talk of making our lives more regulated by chipping us and recording us wherever we go. How many cameras have they put up in public places in the last five years? These seemingly innocuous regulations and the advances in technology are leading us in this direction. Of course, it is supposed to make us all safe. AI will watch over us and nosey neighbors are encouraged to help keep us on the correct path. Of course, we then have the problem of who will determine the correct path and who will watch the watchers.

Where does the surveillance by AI, drones, cameras, microphones, and nosey neighbors lead us? I’m leaving that for you to figure out because I have confidence that many, if not most, of you are equipped to do that. In the meantime, let us give thanks to those two martyrs, P’Nut the squirrel and Fred the raccoon, who warned us where a life under complete control by others will lead.