Archives for September 2022

Friday, September 30, 2022

I’d hate to be a reporter covering a hurricane. Especially, if I had been doing it for several years and had drawn the “man at the beach” assignment.

“Look, it’s windy! And it’s raining. We expect a storm surge of many feet. Everyone is bracing for the brunt of this storm. (yawn) Well, what did you expect? Sunshine and biscuits?”

Now we have to get down to the reason this storm veered toward South Carolina. It’s simple. God is punishing Lindsay Graham for being a pussy. 

In other news it was announced the Queen died of old age. How nice.

Ginnie Thomas testified in front of the Jan 6th Committee. She’s nuts. Apparently, many inside the Beltway knew that. I guess her defense is “if you really believe” it’s okay. I hope we learn why she so likes the orange one.

Coolio died. Trevor Noah is leaving the Daily Show and was spotted kissing and holding hands with a famous actress. I forget who.

Tua Tagovailoa was carted off the football field with head and neck injuries. I hope he’s okay, and if the doctors tell him not to play anymore I hope he listens. The Bucs are playing Sunday in Tampa. Why not? Just a little rain and flooding.

A woman attacked and killed a man with a hemmer because he confronted her over passing bad checks.

Ron DeSantis had a three fold brochure made up to entice those immigrants to get on the plane. They also bribed them with MacDonald’s meals. Whoever the “artist” was that made up the brochure did a cut and paste of a flag that someone put out there bitching about the Massachusetts’s flag. Quality and class – I gotta say.

So much going on, and nothing.

Thursday, September 29, 2022

A quick scan of the news headlines revealed that there’s a hurricane that hit Florida and it’s bad. Who knew? Many of the weather folks were saying that the state hadn’t seen anything like this in one hundred years. Except that one forecaster who said it was just like Hurricane Charlie a few years ago. They then go one to mention the other hurricanes that hit Florida in the last decade or two.

DeSantis is apparently not being his usual dickish self as he now wants The President to help. Why doesn’t he ask Trump to help? Isn’t DeSantis one of those who claimed Trump is still president? No? Sorry. I know. Biden should make DeSantis grovel like Trump tried to make Zelenskyy promise to dig up stuff on Hunter Biden. I was thinking about that today. Imagine your Zelenskyy and you know what Russia is up to and you are trying to prepare your country to defend itself and you go to the White House and the guy in charge is asking you to do some ridiculous thing based on BS from right wing websites that you have no idea about.

Now, I’m not suggesting that Biden do anything like that with DeSantis. I think he ought to ask DeSantis to fly up in that migrant jet to DC and they can sit and watch “An Inconvenient Truth” together. When the movie gets to the part where the models (made by famed kite builder Tom Van Sant, btw) shows most of Florida underwater due to the ice melting in Greenland and the oceans rising. I think Biden should say something like, “Hey Ron, In a few years your shithole state will be mostly underwater. Is it really worth doing much with it now?” When Ronnie D starts to talk Joe should point out the Rush Limbaugh’s old crappy mansion and Donnie T’s Mar-a-Lago will both be underwater. Well, not the top floors.

While I was glancing at the news stories one of those annoying sidebars grabbed my attention with the headline “Look What States People Are Fleeing And Which They Are Moving To.” The map had states colored in red and blue. Where had I seen this map or one similar? Why the map of Republican and Democratic states. It seems people don’t want to live in states controlled by Republicans. Huh? Weird? Wonder why.

There are a lot of those elected Republicans that cheered the victory of a neo-fascist in Italy and they seem to like tough guys too, like Bolsonaro in Brazil. Funny thing (NOT), it turns out Jair is really bad for the people of the country. When Covid hit he said, “We’re all going to die.”  Nice. Pfizer tried to get his government to respond to getting people vaccinated. No dice (67 times!) They wouldn’t answer the requests.

Finally, the drug gangs stepped in. And when the vaccines became available they had 100% participation in major cities. Seems the people know a lot more than their leaders.

In other news Marjorie Taylor-Greene is being sued for divorce by her husband. After 27 years he’s had enough. “She’s a great mom.” He said. Glad to hear she’s good at something.

Wednesday, September 28, 2022

Yesterday at 2:20 pm I learned that my zoom class that I was teaching was not on Zoom, but in a classroom half an hour away. Shelby drove me as I was too frazzled, and she figured out the computer connection as I began to lecture. Today, I support her on her Zoom lecture and eye doctor appointment. So, today I am sitting back and reflecting.

The news of the neo-fascist party’s victory in Italy is in the news. This is being hailed on the American right by the likes of Ted Cruz, Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Tom Cotton and Steve Scalise.

This party is directly descended from Mussolini. It was Benito who overthrew the government of Italy by a threat of violence. A young man in Germany tried it and failed, went to prison, wrote a book, and came back to overthrow the government of Germany. It was Mussolini that first said, “Make America Great.” A phrase picked up by Reagan and then by Trump. In 2015 it was reported that Trump had a copy of Mussolini’s speeches in a book by his bedside. He admitted as much. How much he read of themI don’t know. to suggest he reads books is a bit of a scholastic stretch for me, but …

It got me to thinking, “what have any of the aforementioned people done to help their country or the world?”

My mother used to say, “Mussolini made the trains run on time.” Apparently, that was a problem. Trump manage to pour fresh concrete on Wolman Skating rink in NYC. What about the others? 

Mussolini and Hitler started WWII, which resulted in e deaths of 50 million people. Reagan destroyed the unions in our country, poo-pooed climate change and the middle class’s decline is shown to have started during his presidency and it has never recovered. What about Cruz, MJT, Cotton, and Scalise? Can you think of anything they have done to help? I can’t. I remember someone looking up all the bills that Jim Jordan had sponsored. Zero. No, wait, maybe he got a post office named – not sure.

What about the Republican Party writ-large? Can you think of anything they have done to help average people? John Boehner said that in the twenty five years he was in Congress he never saw a Republican health care plan. The current Republican party plan is to do away with Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid calling them “entitlements.” They are the party that came up with the scheme to force students to take loans at predatory interest rates and then not let those students renegotiate those loans.this after destroying the system of student loan and support that had been in place since the GI Bill was passed and led to one of the most successful generations of students the world had eve seen.

Fascism is on the rise in Europe, South America, and here. It’s core idea is to stay in power no mater what. Regardless of what they say they are going to do, what they end up doing is enriching themselves, corrupting the institutions of governance, and screwing over the general population. The tactics are always the same: blame someone else, promise to fix everything, beatup your opposition.

We are in sad and dangerous times.

Make sure you and everyone you know votes.

Tuesday, September 27, 2022

Ken Paxton – Texas AG ran from a process server.

– Why? What is he scared of?

– seven years under investigation for securities fraud

– spoke at Jan 6th Rally

– worked to pass abortion ban

– process server was presenting papers about this

– accused of taking bribes

Hurricane Ian bearing down on Florida – Why?

-God is punishing Ron DeSantis

-Can regular folks take those jets the migrants took up north to avoid the hurricane?

Ron Paxton is a bad guy and POS.

Simple.

Have Senator Scott and Senator Rubio packed their bags for Cancun?

So many questions.

Monday, September 26, 2022

Years ago when Malcolm Forbes was still running the magazine there was an article about somebody doing some inanely dumb financially. All he said was, “time for the boys in short pants.” In other words, children were running the place.

Peter Lynch who ran the Magellan Fund during its most successful period wrote that one should only invest in companies that an idiot could run because he reasoned eventually an idiot would run them.

Lawrence Peter wrote the Peter Principle which states “that everyone rises to their own level of incompetence.”

Ah yes. Well, here we are. Who knew that these principles applied to countries and political parties?

Then there’s religion. The universe has been around for how long? Eleven or thirteen billion years. And man has been around for what? – a few thousand. When did the concept of god evolve? Not that long ago.

Religions have three things needed: a sacred text, a leader, and something else – I forget. Cults only need the leader or so I am told. However, if we look at the ancient Egyptians they had cults, all sorts of cults. And gods, gods by the boatload. They prayed and held ceremonies for all sorts of gods and they venerated various animals and objects. Then the cults and religions went away. What happened to the world once they evaporated? Nothing. 

On to current events:

Michael Cohen mentioned one time Trump had a bunch of evangelicals in his office and he said to them all the right things. All the things they wanted to hear. As they left Donald said to Michael, “Can you believe that?” As if to say, the people who came to visit were stupid enough to believe him. Trump has been pulling the same con all his life.

In the most stunning revelation, and I know – it will be a thing we all kind  knew but … , Denver Riggleman has a book coming out tomorrow entitled “The Breach.” He has a background in CIA/NSA type data collection. He was also a Freedom Caucus member when he was a member of Congress . He got defeated by someone more to the right. Liz Chaney recruited him to work on the Jan 6th committee. He compiled millions of data messages and identified six centers of activity, which he says can show the movement of communications between the Trump Whitehouse and various organizing groups. He also has identified calls made between someone in the Capital on January 6th and someone in the White House. He has the messages between Ginnie Thomas and Mark Meadows. Her texts are wacky Qanon stuff. 

The thing that is really disturbing is how widespread and deep reaching this stuff is. The problem with political parties is that they are like religions. Or sports teams, I guess.

I’ve heard people say, “My party right or wrong.”

This is dangerous. Especially when your team is being lead by the nose ring of Qanon and Donald Trump.