Archives for July 2023

Monday, July 31, 2023

New charges were brought against former President Trump bringing the number to forty. The evidence sited, according to legal experts who have looked over the charging document, is stunning in its brazenness and hamhandedness (a technical legal term). According to one legal expert if Donald was found guilty and was a regular person he would be facing eighty years in jail. Seems fair.

There is more good economic news, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics June was the 30th month of consecutive job growth in the U.S. and wages beat expectations by 4.4%. Inflation is down, The Consumer Price Index grew 3%, down from 9% last summer.

So what are the Republicans in Congress doing? They are talking about bringing impeachment charges against the President for his family business dealings. Like their committee to investigate weaponizing the FBI the accusations are based on no evidence, but rather on right wing conspiracy theories. At some point don’t any normal Republicans ask, “What does Jim Jordan, MJT, Gosar, Boebert and the rest of the Freedom Caucus do that is related to legislating?” None of the people I just mentioned have ever brought forth a piece of legislation. So why are they still there? How have they helped the American people?

Moving on, who designed the air filter lid for the Toyota Rav4 cabin air? They should be relieved of their duties. OMG. First you can’t undo it, then you can’t put it back in place. 

Okay. That covers all the important stuff.

Carry on.

Wait. One more thing. The second half of the FIFA Women’s World Cup game between Columbia and German was a lesson in great defense. And a fabulous finish. It may still be around on replay. The first half? Not so much.

Saturday, July 29, 2023

There was a guy I worked with at Western Electric’s Baltimore factory. He was a well respected supervisor. We both passed the test to become Account Executives for AT&T Long Lines and went to training in Cincinnati Ohio. He was a nice guy friendly, smiling, but he had a chip on his shoulder. He used phrases like “What? He thinks his poop don’t stink?” and “We put our pants on the same way.”

I don’t think he had a college degree. I’ve found many folks who don’t seem to have this sort of attitude. The “I’m just as good as them” fixation. I have to ask myself, “If I you are (just as good as them) why do you have to keep bringing it up?” It seems the only person who doesn’t believe that they are just as good is the individual themselves. This is a long way of saying that it’s more about the person than whomever they are comparing themselves to. My friend quit the program and went back to being a supervisor.

This kind of behavior and speech seems to be a fixture on the right, any right wing party, here or abroad. It is  centered around the idea of a strong man. Someone who will come to power, take control and fix things. Make them right. Part of the strongman’s speech is always to blame “the other.” Someone else is to blame for their and your ills. It could be negroes, the Irish, immigrants, Jews, queers, protestants, Catholics, Muslims – doesn’t matter. Someone else is to blame for the current plight.

The right seems fixated on the left. They want to show the liberal elite, the woke mob, the anti-fascists, the people in the ivory towers. Why the fixation? Because if they didn’t have someone to blame they’d have to look at themselves. Or as Pogo said, “We have seen the enemy and them is us.” Whoa. No way! You’d have to swallow something (your pride?, your self righteousness? ) and face the situation. Better to avoid, and kick the can down the road.

I’ve been hearing this whining and blaming my whole life. It really hasn’t changed. They play a game of three card monte, except it’s more than three cards. It’s been compared to whack a mole. There’s the “What about?” phase. (“What about Hunter’s laptop?”, “What about Hillary’s server?”) Then there’s the blame and derision phase. (“Disgraceful,” “Lock her up!”) then there’s silence and a new topic. That is when confronted with the facts over and over again (maybe). What happens? Time to move on to a new (old) topic. 

There’s:

the left, Antifa, the Jews,

some proof of wrong doing (often pointed out to be false), the whistleblower (who was in fact a Chinese spy), The Dem’s server in Ukraine (non-existent), the child porn sex ring being run out of the basement of a pizza store in Washington DC (kind of hard to have a basement when your store is built on a concrete slab), the Coast Guard station on Long Island where a woman showed up with a high powered rifle to kill someone for some reason that Glenn Beck was yakking about, the crimes of the immigrants (they commit crime at half the rate of the citizen population), …

It’s never ending. 

The sad thing is when the shoe is on the other foot.

Never has it been more on display the last few days as more charges against Donald Trump have serviced. Quotes by him, outraged at the made up behavior of Hillary Clinton and what he would do to her; now he is faced with committing the same crimes.

And then there’s the plethora of Republican politicians – same schtick: outrage at the suggested behavior of the Dems, now they are faced with one of their own actually being accused in criminal indictment of doing what they were so outraged about before. The hypocrisy and cowardliness of thee people is plain for all to see.

But … But …

Shutup and eat your Cheerios.

Friday, July 28, 2023

Okay, before we get to who won the last stage of The Tour, let’s go over the overall winner. That is the person with the least amount of time, known as The General Category or GC winner, who gets awarded The Yellow Jersey. It’s important to understand this to understand what happened in this stage, before the end of the race.

In 2020 the old guard of The Tour de France was upset by a new comer, Tadej Pogaćar from Slovenia (pronounced “Taddy Po-gacha”). He was young. He dominated the race winning not only the yellow jersey, but The Best Young Rider. He won again in 2021. It seemed he was a shoo-in to win again. But then a young man from Denmark showed up – Jonas Vingegaard (“Yo-Nas Vinga-go”). He was slight of built, short, and seemed tireless. A year before he had been working in a fish factory shoveling ice. He was challenging Tadej There was a dual. They were only seconds apart until one mountain stage where Tadej “cracked” and Jonas got a slight advantage. That was all he needed.

By the way, “cracking” is a term applied to bike racers when their body has been working at too high an output and partially shuts down. You can watch a rider do really well going up a climb and then, all of a sudden, they can barely maintain any forward progress. This is what happened to Tadej in 2022.

In 2022 Tadej and Jonas were duking it out. One shadowing the other, not letting any distance get between them. Tadej was behind on time and needed something to get ahead. Then on a descent, near the bottom Tadej’s bike slipped out from under him. He went off the roadway into a grassy gully. He got up. Jumped on his bike. Jonas was just ahead, pedaling in circles, waiting for him. They fist bumped and continued their ride. Jonas won that year, and Tadej came in second.

That was 2022. Would 2023 be any different?

Nope. It soon emerged that it would be a battle between the two – again.

Jonas led Tadej by seven seconds, then ten. At one point in the middle of the race Tadej did something, I don’t remember what it was, but it made no sense tactically. Christian Vande Velde who was a commentator and had recently retired from bike racing wondered out loud why Tadej was doing whatever it was he was doing. The long time play by play announcer,  Phil Liggett, said, “because he’s Tadej Pogaćar,” simple enough.

By the time Stage 21 came around this year Tadej was over ten minutes behind Jonas. He was firmly in second place with no hopes of catching Jonas, and no one near him to challenge second. All he had to do was finish the stage.

As the riders circled up and down the Champs, all of a sudden Tadej broke out of the pack and led the race.

Why? You now know the answer. (“Because he’s Tadej Pogaćar.”) Tadej is one of the most beloved riders on the circuit. Always, courteous to others. He made a point to congratulate Jonas after every stage, and Jonas’ wife and baby. Tadej is constantly smiling. He’s just so positive.

He couldn’t hold the lead in that last stage, but he did for several times around the Champs. Eventually, the peleton caught up to him. He receded into the pack. And then on the last leg, in the lead out to the finish, here’s Tadej! What was he doing? It quickly became apparent that he was lead out riding for the sprinter on their team.

There were four teams racing for the finish. Jasper was certain to win. He was behind several riders but managed to break to one side and dash for the finish, as did the other three. It was ten, twenty seconds of madness. Jasper was on the right side of the course (left when the TV shot face on). The two middle teams were slightly behind, but who was this on the other side? The helicopter shot from above was useless because there was a banner above the finish line.

All four cyclists pushed their bikes forward to gain that little bit of distance at the finish. Who won? The fellow on the right side of the TV screen was looking to his left when they crossed the line. Jasper was to his right. He looked around and motioned, “Was it me? I don’t know?”

No one knew.

Here’s the photo finish. 

After 74 miles, eight laps, and it came down to this. Jasper (#106) is the bike closest to us. The far bike was ridden by Jordi Meeus. He had ridden in the Tour for six years, never won a stage. And today? He won the most coveted sprint in all of cycling on the biggest stage in the world, by what? The width of a tire?

Long Live The Tour!

ps Correction Jasper not Mads.

Thursday, July 27, 2023

Bike racing is a crazy sport. You pedal for 100 miles, up mountains and down. The descent at speeds that are terrifying. If you go off the road you will probably die, and every few years someone does. The race will end in a sprint or an exhausting up hill climb. You can’t win on your own; you need a team because you need to be in the slip stream of someone else. If you are in that slip stream your pedaling gets much easier. You can feel it. (I checked with someone who knows.) 

Races are done in stages: one day, one stage. Typically, a stage is one hundred miles, give or take thirty. If you are going for the least time overall (called GC – general category) you will be sheltered by your team for every stage for almost the whole way. Near the end of a climb you’ll break out ahead of the pack (called the peleton) and claw your way up a mountain and get a better time than anyone else, which will be the difference. You’ll have the fastest time of anyone else, provided that you kept up with everyone on every stage. 

To win a stage you have to go all out. If the stage ends in a flat approach then it’s a sprint. Sprinters are a special breed. They can accelerate faster than anyone else. Mark Cavendish, the fastest in the world was going 46 miles an hour in a sprint to the end of one stage in The Tour de France when his gear slipped and he lost by a length. He then “crashed out” in another stage. Actually, it seemed a moment of inattention when his front wheel hit the back wheel of a team mate and he went over the handlebars and broke his collar bone. This left the way open for the next fastest man in the world Jasper Philipsen to win all the sprint stages, including the one where Mark’s chain slipped. There was only one sprint left. Stage 21 on the Champs-Élysées, 71.4 miles with the final part being eight laps around the Arc de Triomphe to the les Tuileries and the Louvre.  

Typically, the GC (best time overall) is obvious who the winner will be by stage 21 and that team sits back and lets the sprinters have their final moment of glory.

Jasper Philipsen was the fastest sprinter left in the race, having every sprint stage so far, could he do it again? The commentators all picked him, with one exception.

In order to win a sprint you need a good lead out team and a great final lead out cyclist. Remember that slip stream thing? You need your team to pedal as hard as they can, and you the sprinter stay tucked in until the last moment. Each cyclist does what they can before pulling off and letting the next one go hard. Finally, you get down to the lead out man and the sprinter. The team is trying to make sure no one else can go as fast as they are going, and their sprinter is waiting for the right moment to break out and go for the finish. Go too soon and you run out of gas. Go too late and another team’s sprinter could beat you.

So here’s the finish, after 71 miles and eight laps. Jasper is on our left. Another cyclist is on our right with two in between. Who won?

Tune in tomorrow.

Earlier editions had Mads Peterson not Jasper – big mistake, bummer.

Monday, July 24, 2023

Picasso was known to make a lot of paintings with the same face from two perspectives: straight on and in profile. I never really liked them. It seemed a easy cop out to sell stuff, because it didn’t take much effort. Few mention that there’s a museum in Paris where African masks and art are displayed, which show this idea. And to quote the master, “Good artist steal.”

There have been several issues that I am of two minds: one is the economy. We have good numbers for jobs, and inflation. Yet, businesses are seeing a slow down. An inverted yield curve tells us that times are good now but not long term. Is that wrong this time? I don’t know.

Rachel Maddow has a six part podcast called “Deja News.” There’s a gopher sticking its head out of its hole as the image on the app’s icon. It took we a while to get it. (Bill Murray? “Groundhog Day”? Okay it’s not a gopher it’s a groundhog.)

Each segment of the podcast is thirty minutes long and each episode draws an example from history to make the point that what we are seeing in our politics and the politics around the world is not new. It’s been done before. Ron DeSantis shipping folks north to sock it to the Libs? Done in the 60s. Then it was black people sent to Hyannis Port to show JFK a thing or two. (He wasn’t there.) Stage a protest of right wing fascists that resulted in a government overthrow? Done and succeeded in France, Feb 6, 1934. That government went on to collaborate with the Nazis and shipped its own Jewish citizens off to death camps. I never understood why until now. They, Pétain and the Vichy government, hated Jews.

Those and four other examples are illuminating and reveal that what is going on now is nothing new. The question really is what will happen this time? The interesting thing is the tactics and the arguments are the same. Take power; change the rules, pack the courts, spread lies (sorry disinformation and conspiracy theories), blame “the others,” imprison/humiliate/intimidate “the others” and potential voters you don’t think will vote for your party etc. 

I had not realized that William Rehnquist had been active in voter intimidation of minorities when he wa a lawyer. He, like John Bolton, had been standing on voter lines telling certain people that they were not allowed to vote. Later, he became Chief Justice. He wasn’t able to repeal or gut the Voting Rights Act, that was left to his clerk who succeeded him, John Roberts.

So, like Picasso, and our economy, I’m of two minds about what is going on politically here and around the world.

One of the people who commented on one of the episodes said of the right wing folks, “Eventually, they will come for you.”

And lastly, I still don’t understand the motivation to ban abortions. Yes, I’ve heard it’s to disenfranchise women or to keep power over them. Maybe, it’s just the conspiracy theory that every life is precious. How can that be if they are happy to send “others” to certain or near certain death?

Well, I can’t solve everything today. Gotta leave something for tomorrow. But in the meantime let us remember the words of Marjorie Taylor-Greene who has unmasked the real thing the Biden, Harris, and the Dems are out to do:

“Joe Biden

had the largest public investment

in social infrastructure 

and environmental programs

that is actually finishing

what FDR started,

that LBJ expanded on,

and Joe Biden is

attempting to complete.

Programs to address 

education,

medical care,

urban problems,

rural poverty,

transportation,

Medicare,

Medicaid,

labor unions.

and he still is

working on it.” 

– Marjorie Taylor-Greene.