Archives for April 2023

Wednesday, April 19, 2023

We’re in New York City. I was watching the local Fox TV channel this morning. It’s hysterical. It’s all New Yawk women in front of the cameras. Think, The Real Housewives of wherever, and you got the idea. They look good, but a little off. One of them looks like Janet Pirrino’s sista. “Lady Liberty is waving at you. How ya doin’?”

They had someone report the huge settlement Fox did with Dominion. A guy came on, said the case was settled and listed the amount. Then read a quote from Fox, that it was a political thing in search of a financial settlement. Nothing about how Fox knowingly and purposefully lied to their viewers.

We also watched the Daily Show with Jordan Klepper who went to a gun show in Oklahoma. Eleven acres of guns. And he reported on child grooming. Yeah. Where’s Marjorie Taylor Greene’s outrage? The gun industry is marketing an AR15 to kids. It’s called the Junior AR. They have cartoons with kids with this weapon – the perfect starter assault weapon. They showed ads of teens in t-shirts, cargo pants, and ball caps on backwards standing up to protestors. Hum. Just like Kyle Rittenhouse was dressed when he shot an killed a protestor.

On to Broadway and Funny Girl – the revival. It’s a great show. Great singing and great tap dancing. The star Lea Michelle is good but she doesn’t have the voice of Barbra Streisand. Still she’s good and so is the show. There’s a lot I kind of knew about the show, but not really. It’s about Fannie Brice who was the star of numerous Zigfield Follies shows. She did one TV appearance in 1951 and died about that time. So when Barbra starred in the show in 1963 there would have been a lot of people who must have known the original.

We’re going to see Shucks this afternoon, a show about corn. Yeah. Corn. There’s a big black woman in the cast. We saw something about the show on Good Morning America. Shelby said, “She looks familiar.” she looked her up and exclaimed, “She’s Mo!” I looked at her blankly. “Mo. Mo.” She repeated and then I saw it.

“Mo,” I said, “from … from …”

“Zoey’s Amazing Playlist,” said Shelby.

“Yeah. That’s it.”

Ah ha. And there you have it.

Thursday, April 13, 2023

This morning I watched a recap of an interview the orange one gave on the Russian propaganda news outlet in the U.S. otherwise known as Fox. He describes to Tucker Carlson, who wrote he loathes this man, that people were apologizing about booking him, In fact, they were crying, he said.

It takes a lot of hutzpah to make such a claim. It kind of reminds me of George Santos’ claim that he got robbed on Fifth Avenue, which seem preposterous, but George couldn’t stop himself. He went on to describe what they took and he threw in not only his wallet and his watch but his shoes. “They took your shoes?” Now he must have realized in that instant that he was naming items that might be on his person, but it was too late. He had to go with it. “Yes, they took my shoes.”

“People were apologizing.” “Really?” “And crying.” “Crying?” I think Santos for a brief moment knew he had gone too far, but Donald? Naw. He’s pulled this crying one so often it doesn’t even phase him. The show I was watching played at least half a dozen clips of him claiming people were crying for him and whatever terrible thing had befallen him with a soundtrack of violins mournfully playing in the background.

Poor Donald.

The commentators went on to say what a bunch of crybabies the Trumpers were. Lots of bravado. But when push comes to shove. They cry, “It’s so unfair.”

Then there’s the New York indictment. He’s innocent! I swear to god. Okay, then if he’s innocent, all he’s got to do is go to trial and prove it. But … but. Listen, you know he’s guilty as stink and all this is more wailing and crying .

Moving on to the economy. I saw a bunch of charts this morning that showed that things are pretty good.

Then they throw in “Right Now… but…”

But what? “Well, you know…”

It seems the business people and the banks want to say there’s a coming recession and therefore we will probably have one just so these people can say, “told ya so.”

Of course there’s a coming recession, because economies run in cycles. Eventually, they’ll be right.

But I keep seeing charts and graphs that show the lives of people is getting better and things for them is okay.

The Daily Show had a great little piece on college. For profit or institute of higher learning, it didn’t matter. You get saddled with lots of debt and no prospects for a good job. So why go? Is the question. Many aren’t going. Some elders are bitching that people don’t want to work anymore. I don’t think that’s true. They don’t want to work if the money they get is so low they can’t pay their bills. The elders forget all the help governments used to do to assist folks. Things legislatures have systematically cut over the last 40 to 50 years.

Monday, April 10, 2023

Last Friday a commentator was reviewing the week:

Monday – something awful, I forget,

Tuesday – an iindictment

Wednesday – Was that the day the Tennessee legislature threw out the two black legislators and kept the white woman?

Thursday – Was that the day the right wing judge in Texas declared a drug couldn’t be used anymore?

Then this weekend I was listening to Jann Wenner’s book. He co-founded Rolling Stone, but he’s its heart and soul.

Some have criticized the book as being nothing more than name dropping and the like. Yeah? What did you expect? It’s kind of like the person I heard on the radio years ago comparing Terminator to Terminator III and saying that the plot … He was stopped right there by the DJ. Plot? If you are going to see Terminator for the plot you missed the point. Arnold shoots: Arnold kills – end of plot.

Wenner’s asides are – well – leaving you wanting more. Explain! What? Who? Please.

His description of Reagan being elected president “the first movie TV ..” was spot on.

And Trump? “We awoke to learn we had elected a moron.”

He also pointed out that W won Ohio and it was odd in that the head of his campaign there was also the head of the election and certain sites in particular counties had numbers that Wenner described as “surgical precision.” 

He described how David Stockman, Reagan’s whizkid economist had admitted the supply side economics was merely a ruse to cut taxes on the rich.

If you think about the time from Reagan to Trump you can see how the middle class was screwed: first under Ronnie and killed off under Donnie. From Ronnie to Donnie. In between we had the lost in woods Papa Bush and the empty headed W. Hey, W only started two wars neither of which we needed to be in, but so what? They all ran up the debt. But so did the Dems you say? Right. But the Dems are pikers compared to what the Republicans do.(Well, wait you say look at the first year or two of a Democrat after a Republican has been in office. Those Dems spend a lot. Yeah, they have to in order to pull the economy out of the hole left by the previous administration.)

Trump asked, “what have you got to lose?” We are now seeing the answer to that question.

The question for most of us, “Is it too late?”, “Can we reclaim our democracy?” or to paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson “will the swine …?”

Right now. The swine are winning.

I’ve thought a lot about how things have changed. Folks on the right like to say, “People don’t want to work anymore.” I point out that it used to be you could get a minimum wage job, work your ass off, go to college and come out debt free or be able to pay off your loans within a few years. Now? Kids are talking about their loans being forgiven after twenty years, if they are lucky. What? 

After WWII a man could work a forty hour a week job, have a house, the wife stayed home and raised the kids. They could take a trip to Europe. Now? Both have to work and they barely can keep a roof over their heads.

What happened?

The GI Bill got replaced with student loans. Loans that if the government wasn’t behind them they’d be brought up on usury charges. Minimum wage is what? In Virginia as of the start of this year it’s $12.00. A so-so college can cost $32K a year. It doesn’t matter if it’s a for-profit college or a high felutin private or state institution of learning. It’s damn expensive and kids have also learned it’s not preparing them to get a job that pays much. So why go? Why pay all that money to end up in debt? Might as well stay home and play video games and watch tik-tok.

Become a social influencer and take pictures of yourself in your bathroom. 

What’s wrong with kids today?

Nothing.

What’s wrong with the adults in the room?

Let’s see. We allow any idiot to have a gun that can so destroy a person to the point that their body can’t be recognized. We rig voting so that people either can’t vote or their vote is inconsequential. We deny people health care and basic rights. We tell women what they can and can not do with their bodies. We keep voting to enrich the rich and deny the poor and the middle class (what’s left of it). We allow hate filled speech and lies to be the norm. We allow other countries and the very rich to disseminate lies that influence people’s decisions about their lives, their health, and their economic well being.

We’ve allowed our courts and many of our state governments to be taken over by minority opinionated people with radical views out of step with common sense and the common good. The town square has been made a place for sly individuals and organizations to carve donuts with fast spinning jive while pointing to somewhere else and exclaiming “not our fault. It’s all legal!” No moral compass. No sense of the common good.

When Mr. Smith went to Washington he started a movement that the people, the regular people, the common people, the vast silent majority came to his aid in droves. Will that happen now? Or will it come down to a French Revolution? Something that country is still dealing with. Or Iran? Or Mexico? All had revolutions. Did it help its people or did they trade in one form of oppression for another and call it progress?

Revolutions like that often bring worse conditions. Our country has had a unique run, but most democracies are seen as times of transition and last about two hundred years. Has our time run out?

The fundamental conditions that our country depends on to function are in serious jeopardy. When eight or ten states that collectively have less population than one county in California, that’s a problem. What’s the likelihood that will change? The only way I see that changing is a Kansas style population move to those states.  ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas )

Will that happen? I dunno. Maybe, we can move all those kids sitting on their parents’ couches to those states. Let them watch tik-tok there and go vote. Yikes. Hallelujah, I have a solution.

Wyoming was won by Trump by 120,000 votes. Move that many tik-tokers to there? Sure. You could move that many out of LA County alone and that county would never know they were gone. (LA County is 9.83 million. The state of Wyoming is 578,000.) Okay, so here’s what we do. Fill up the Rose Bowl with applicants and bus them to Wyoming where they will get free housing and pizza delivered to their couch. All they have to do is vote for a sane candidate to keep their couch. College loans will be forgiven and they will get a job. 

The job will be delivering pizzas, or making them, or creating content for the apps that everyone is watching while sitting on their couches.

Where will we get the money to pay for all this? From Mexico. Mexico will pay for it. Trust me.

Or .. I’m guessing that the good citizens of Wyoming won’t like this and will figure out a way to screw the newbies out of a vote. No problem. The newbies will go to the local gun shops and …

Maybe, I need to rethink some of this.

Thursday, April 6, 2023

Some folks are saying that the indictment of Trump is political, that it’s the Democrats wanting revenge. Trump is calling for the DOJ and the FBI to be defunded. Marjorie Taylor Greene said on 60 Minutes that she wants to defund the FBI. No explanation. No reason given.

Some are trying to pin “Defund the Police” on the Dems, but they didn’t do it. It was a rally cry. Now we have Republicans wanting to defund the FBI and the DOJ. Anything instead? Silence.

MJT thinks NYC is disgusting and repulsive because regular New Yorkers wouldn’t put up with her repusive and disgusting behavior. Aw, so sorry. Nothing like having someone in a Bronx accent yell, “Fuck You” at the top of their lungs. Kind of like getting hit in the mouth. Why didn’t you bring that huge gun with you MJT?

But now onto important topics – like indictment partying. What to serve? Whom to invite? Party hats, what type? Decorations? What does an indictment dance look like? So many questions.

Should one serve crow at the party? Emily Post? How say you?

Well, let me clear up a few things. If Trump is innocent, as he claims to be, and this is all a witch hunt, then he’ll be found innocent in no time. So why is he attacking the judge, the judge’s family, and why is Don Jr. singling out the judge’s daughter? Why the attacks? Pops is innocent, right? Now to be fair I must present a few opinions from the other side. Every prosecutor I’ve heard talk about this case has said this is the Manhattan DA’s office’s “bread and butter.” In the time Bragg has been in office, only two years, he’s brought over one hundred of these cases. To quote another prosecutor – any DA should be able to get a conviction with one arm tied behind thier back, because this case is a slam dunk. It doesn’t depend on witnesses, only paperwork.

Isn’t this true of almost all of Donald’s cases? I mean what makes these cases so easy is that The Donald commits the crimes, typically, right out in the open. Oftentimes they are ham fisted and stupidly done. They all seem to have one thing in common – lying and cheating. Oh yes, they take different forms but – lying and cheating.

Some say, “What about Hillary?” and “Lock her up.” Yeah, the chants were for supposed misdemeanors. Like keeping an announcement of a head of state visit marked “C” on her private email server. But Trump? His are felonies. But he’s innocent, right? So no problem then.

What I want to know is:

– What was discussed in those secret meetings with Putin?

– What about Jared and Bibi? Was he working for Israel?

– Why did Jared get $2B from the Saudis?

– Did Trump use the IRS, FBI, DOJ, and State Dept to carry out personal and political tasks and hits? If so is there nothing that can be done to punish him?

– If Trump goes to jail why should the Secret Service be allowed in? Shouldn’t they have to wait in their cars outside like anyone else?

– If Trump goes to jail will he become someone’s … nevermind. He will.

Wednesday, April 5, 2023

How did you complete that headline? The full sentence would be “Trump still Sucks the air out of the room and the media.”

Yesterday, whenever I turned on the TV there was coverage of him: 

There’s his plane,

There’s his place in Florida,

There’s his building in NYC,

Here’s the courtroom,

Here’s his motorcade in Florida,

Here’s his plane taking off,

Here’s his plane landing,

Here’s his motorcade in New York,

Here he is getting out of his car,

Here he is waving for 2 seconds.

Here’s a picture of him in the courtroom ..

OMG.

Then we have to reverse the whole thing and follow him back to Florida.

What a Kardashian wouldn’t do to get that kind of coverage.

Couldn’t we just have seen the pic of him in the courtroom and a headline “34 Count Inditement”?

We watched a little of Fox’s Tucker show last night. We caught the clip of the “violent protests” outside the courtroom.

Then we listened to Lawrence O’Donnell’s description of walking among the folks assembled. He guessed 100, maybe 120 were there to support the orange one. Only one person recognized Lawrence, and as O’Donnell said that fellow followed him and yelled at him about Lawrence’s vagina. (I am assuming that what said person was yelling was the word “Pussy!” You’re welcome for this in depth analysis.)

Lawrence also pointed out that the people there were not there to cause trouble. It was a pretty muted affair.

But Tucker managed to get some “riot” footage somehow. I wonder if he pulled from the Sean Hannity playbook of posting video and/or pictures from a different event and later claiming it was “an honest mistake”?

Then there was the giant Marjorie Taylor Green protest. It lasted ten minutes before she fled the scene. Apparently, she doesn’t like people shouting her down. Hey, she had the bull horn. the people yelled at her, “liar.” How rude. Just like she was to the President.

But what I really want to talk about is women’s college basketball.

We were robbed.

The championship college game was upended by odd and sporadic foul calling by the refs. It would be one thing if they called the fouls tough all the time, or lax, but they didn’t. They called things foul that on replay showed they weren’t. They ignored other flagrant fouls and this led to both teams having players with a high number of fouls early in the game. This pulled Iowa out of its game, for sure. I don’t know about LSU. The SEC teams seem to be much more aggressive. While I’m not sure what constitutes a foul in many cases I would say that shoving another player to the ground and out of bounds is a foul (Georgia agains Iowa, Louisville against Virginia Tech and again with another team). 

Then to call a 4th foul on Caitlin Clark when she threw or slapped or underhanded a ball to the out of bounds  line while she was walking to huddle with her teammates was not helpful. The ref explained afterwards that she had been warned. Yeah? So what? Did the coach of LSU get called or warned for walking on the court, screaming at the refs, and grabbing them? No.

I would also say that South Carolina, LSU, and Georgia; all SEC teams, have a propensity to stay under the basket for longer than three seconds (not allowed unless you are guarding someone. Definitely not allowed for offensive players) and they tend to collapse on an opposing player and grab that player. There are at least two and oftentimes three players attacking one. Fouls are rarely called in that situation. I don’t know why. Then when an opposing team has grabbed the ball the refs let the play go on until the SEC team has people with hands on the ball and then they call a jump ball. They don’t call the mugging. Am I bitching? Yup.

Speaking of bitching (or is it whining?) … Angel Reese. the star LSU player. Many people commented on her gesturing at the end of the game: pointing to her ring finger repeatedly and her “you don’t see me” hand gesture, both done over and over again to Caitlin Clark. Some said it showed a lack of class. Angel’s response was that she used to people saying things like that about her even though she does the same thing that say Caitlin Clark does. 

Well, nice try Angel, but it’s not the same thing. The sad thing is she doesn’t seem to know, or understand, the difference. That’s sad.

LSU players showed a lack of class at the end of the game. It began in the closing minutes with Reese taunting Clark repeatedly (no foul? Naw.) Then when the game was over the LSU players couldn’t be bothered with getting in the line to shake the other players hands. They were too busy flouncing around congratulating themselves. Compare that to how Virginia Tech acted when they lost to LSU. The Tech players smiled and were gracious in their congratulations. When LSU won they couldn’t be bothered. Who do I blame for that lack of etiquette? (You want to call it class? Okay.) The coach. Period. She seems to have a lack of … restraint.

What did Caitlin Clark say about Reese and Reese’s behavior?

– No one should dis Reese,

– Everyone trash talks. it’s part of the game. It makes it more entertaining.

– She greatly respects and likes Reese.

Now that’s class.