Archives for April 2023

Wednesday, April 26, 2023

Joe Biden is running for reelection and the attacks are piling up. Just one problem, no facts.

The folks who attack him say he’s old. Well, that’s a fact. I stand corrected. Polls say people are worried about his age. True that, another fact. The attackers call him a clown and that he has a terrible record, but they fail to specify what they mean by either. The only fact is that he is older than others who have been President. They attack his sometimes seeming to forget some little thing. Is it that or is it his stuttering that he overcame? 

There are these dire warnings of a coming recession and of the dollar not being worth anything. However, the dollar has been strong against other currencies and though the economic charts show we are okay the predictors keep saying, “Well, it’s okay now, but just wait.”

There’s a willingness to forget the terrible shape the previous guy put us in.

Ask yourself this, “If not Joe then who?” Well, the Dems have some good people. The Republicans do not. The Repubs don’t have one good candidate. Some folks are saying Tucker Carlson. Oh great. News is that OAN offered him $25 million. 

To all of the above I say – who knows, who cares?

Meanwhile, a transgender delegate stood up in the Montana state house and accused the Republicans who put up an anti-gay anti-trans law of having blood on their hands if this passes. Their response? Shutdown the Capital today, because of support for the trans person. And, said person needs to apologize to them for “causing an insurrection.” Yeah. Right. I think a long winded apology pointing out that she’s sorry for pointing out that said bill will kill people and that she sorry that said bill will take away peoples’ rights and freedoms would be great.

Apparently, the Republicans have a super majority in the Montana house so they can ram through all kinds of insane mean hurtful bills. Fortunately, they have someone in the flesh they can point to and pillory, one of their own – a trans state representative. This is a better situation than South Dakota found itself in when they passed anti-trans athletic laws. See, the problem was there were no trans athletes in South Dakota. But this didn’t stop their governor from making a big splash about it. To be fair they had had one a few years before, a wrestler. Had this law been passed she would have had to wrestle only girls. There were no other girl wrestlers. I think she was a state champion. Maybe South Dakota Republicans didn’t like the idea of a girl whooping the boys?

But let’s look at the big picture. When Republicans are in charge they cut taxes on the rich and markedly increase the country’s debt. The tax cutting for the rich according to Senator Whitehouse has cost us over one trillion dollars. Then there are the cuts for corporations, another nearly half trillion. Who’s going to pay for that? Well, the Republicans have a plan – slash food stamps, welfare, and health care. Of course, that would only save like $150B, but think of all the great pain and suffering?

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

Yeah, the Tuckster is out. What happened? (Apply your best Tucker befuddled face here.)

Other networks are playing some of Tucker’s greatest … what? Hits? Lies? There are so many egregious stupid lying things about him that you have to put them into categories: racist rants, Russian propaganda, election lies, sedition lies, economic lies, trans and queer lies, gun violence lies, woke lies…

It was never about the lies or the truth. 

What got Tucker fired was money. Fox having settled the Dominion lawsuit is now facing an even bigger lawsuit over the same stuff and that lawsuit centers more on Tucker. What to do? Fire the whiny bitch.

I hear that RT offered him a job. Don’t know if that’s true or not, but he should at least get the medal that Trump’s first Secretary of State and former Exxon boss got from Putin.,The medal of Russia or something like that. I mean he’s been a good comrade. Maybe, he can interview fat over the top ex tough guys hiding out in Russia. Well, there’s only one, maybe make a series out of it?

Someone suggested Tucker might run for President. Well, he’s better than any of the “deep bench”, as Lindsey Graham put it, of current candidates. The problem the Republicans have with any potential candidates that I see is they are whiny little you know whats and or they have no ethical or moral compass or they are corrupt and they certainly have no grasp on reality. By reality I mean they have no interest in actually addressing problems that we as a nation face. Instead they are led by the nose by a deeply financed rich group of folks who think they shouldn’t have to pay anything to keep this country running, and by a media collaboration that spouts hatred and divisiveness to make money. This was really on display last week when an 83 year old man shot a kid who rang his doorbell. The guy’s grandson said that his grandpa sat watching Fox all day and getting pissed off.

Hate pays. Tucker pedaled hate. As soon as it was going to cost Fox they fired him. Simple. They did it to O’Reilly. They’ll do it to the next one too. It’s their business model.

Anything else?

Sunday April 23, 2023

Supreme Court – Alito. He gave a dissenting opinion in the stay on the abortion pill that has been called by legal scholars “detached from reality” and “sounds like a Fox grandpa rant.” He doesn’t make much if any sense. He certainly doesn’t care if it harms or kills millions of women, but that is no surprise because he didn’t give a shit when he argued to strike down Roe. This comes as no surprise to me because I knew he was an unethical twit from the beginning. Let’s recall why W appointed him. It was argued by some that he was a bright legal scholar. (Yeah and Ron DeSantis graduated second in his class and Ted Cruz was on the debate team in college.) But he told W he didn’t have to follow the laws he was signing because there was a part of the Executive Signing that a President can do “that’s never been tested in court.” That was the reason he got appointed. For being a sniveling little legal twit. Now you can argue the fine points all you want, but you can’t argue that on the big issue – i.e. If you sign a law your intention should be to abide by it, not ignore or go against it – that he had any standing.

Then there’s the fact that he lied at his hearing, as did most of the conservative Supreme Court appointees. Maybe all. As did that judge in Texas, who by the way, should never have been appointed, because he lied, like the guy who was supposed to be appointed to that position but didn’t make it because he lied, and this Kacsmaryk lied too, and in the same way.

Then we get to a NewsWeek piece and it’s a fact check thing. A Congressman claimed that Biden has had the best monthly job numbers of any president. NewsWeek says, “Well…” And then lists a lot of reasons why that is only “partially true”:

– he hasn’t finished his term so we really don’t know

– we don’t have data on all the presidents so we really can’t tell

– yes, it’s true since FDR but what jobs are we counting?

– some presidents got hit with a recession or Covid, if that had happened to Biden it would have been different.

To which I say, in order, True, True, True, True. and lastly “So What?”

Biden’s job numbers are off the charts compared to any president since Reagan.

Who do you want leading the country in terms of job growth, Mr Minus 59,000 a month or Mr. Plus 485,000 a month?

Well Mr. -59,000 had the Covid thing, but in his defense he didn’t do crap to help people and caused a economic fight with China that wiped out our farm markets there and killed off our manufacturing.  

I call the above dishonest in its assessment.

Apparently Fani Willis has even more damning stuff on Donald than that phone call. Oh gee. Mr. -59,000 is in more trouble? 

Friday, April 21, 2023

There is now analysis that points out that the cost of the payout to Dominion by Fox is just the cost of doing business. Ironically, Fox can write off the payout while Dominion will have to pay taxes on it. Not only that but the kind of thing Fox does is known as the “firehose of falsity” method of propaganda. This is what the Russian and fascist models of propaganda are. Tell lies repeatedly, ignore reality. The sad thing is – it works. Why? People are busy (cognitively lazy is the term used.) They don’t take the time to determine a real news cast from a fake one, or a lie from the truth. Sad but true.

And then we get into a kind of Stockholm Syndrome with the broadcasters of lies and their audience. As the audience is faced with the truth it is dismissed with “I don’t believe it” or “Everybody does it” and “There two sides to every story.” The audience, being under assault will get more and more bound to their abusers, who are laughing at them and making fun of them (off the air.)

How would you feel if someone you trusted and believed in for years was revealed to be a fraud?

Well, that’s the choice Fox viewers have to make, but they won’t be confronted with it at Fox.

In the last week three or four incidences of people being shot for what used to be normal behaviors: ringing a doorbell, pulling into the wrong driveway, trying to get into a car that they thought was theirs, retrieving a basketball that went into a neighbor’s yard. Why is this happening? Fox and its spilling of fear, hate, and paranoia.

Thursday,  April 20, 2023

We saw the new Andrew Lloyd Weber musical “Bad Cinderella.” The theater was one quarter full. They moved us from our seats in the rear mezzanine to the front section of the balcony. Where was everybody? At intermission we read the New York Times review. Egads. The review reminded me of when the White Album by The Beatles came out and the college radio station got an early copy. The fat turd who was Mr. Radio Station on campus kept saying, “They’re going to have a hard time selling this one.” Yeah. Right.

Let me say this – It’s Andrew Lloyd Weber. What else do you need to know? The title is “Bad Cinderella.” The NYT says, “the title says it all.” Then goes on to complain that the costumes are too loud, as is the music, and the lights. What was he smoking? 

The show made me laugh. It brought me to tears, and it left me with a hummable tune when leaving the theater.

Was it the best Andrew Lloyd Weber play ever? Was Revolver better than Sergeant Peppers? Please.

Did you like “Joseph and The Amazing Colored Dream Coat”? If so you’ll like this musical. It’s witty, funny, has a twist or three. The plot doesn’t quite make sense, but do they ever? Aren’t we splitting hairs here? Yeah.

The singing is great, so is the acting, so are the costumes and the sets. Ignore the bad reviewers. I think they are jaded and over it. 

Have I had more memorable experiences at an ALW play? Yeah. Like the time the person in the cast of Evita forgot to turn off their mic and we could hear them talking off stage and flushing the toilet.

Is it as good as Phantom? I dunno. I found Phantom a bit maudlin and hard to understand, but okay. Or was that Les Mis? I forget. They were all good.

If I were Andrew I would do what Ed Winn did when his out of town reviews of a show got panned. He went to the box office and bought out the whole show for a month. He gave away tickets to anyone he knew from out of the city and told them his only conditions were to show up dressed to the nines and to not talk to anyone when leaving the show. The critics couldn’t even get in to see it. One month later everyone was clamoring for tickets and the show went on to be a smash.

To the cast of Bad Cinderella. You all are great. Keep giving knock out performances and wait for word of mouth to spread. It’s a really good musical.

Now on to Shucked, a musical about corn. Yeah. Kind of a weird topic. But a great musical too. If you likes State Fair you’ll like Shucked. We saw something about it on one of the morning shows and grabbed tickets at the last minute. It has Alex Nevin in the show. She played Mo in Zoey’s Amazing Playlist on TV. Let me tell you, she can sing! In fact, she had to hold back so as to not drown out others she was singing with, but when she got the solo – watch out, and hold on. I know you’ll find this amazing but the jokes are corny. Imagine that? The show is good and lots of fun.

And finally, Fox. Apparently, all the personalities on that network are ignoring the news about the settlement their boss made with Dominion. They had someone who said that the case was settled for 738.5 million and some flak released a statement saying it was a political case in search of a financial solution.  I guess none of them want to admit to being liars. Knowingly lying to their audience while admitting off the air that they didn’t believe any of what they were saying on screen. Is there anything worse? I don’t know. To so betray the public trust and to not only spout lies, but also give Russian propaganda points is to me unconscionable. Fox deserves to have its license pulled. And the whiny little Tucker Carlson and the self righteous Laura Ingraham, and the phony anger of Jeannie Pirro should all be sued for defamation, dishonesty, and betrayal.

Don’t talk to me about First Amendment rights. If you are in the news business or even the phony news business as Fox claims to be (sorry “entertainment”) that doesn’t allow you to chuck the public trust you were given.

You are disgusting despicable people and you deserve a lower ring in Hell. Dishonesty and deceit are your trademarks.