Archives for July 2024

Saturday, July 20, 2024

Remember the movie Pretty Woman? Do you remember the business Richard Gere was in? He was in the business of buying a company whose stock was undervalued and whose assets were worth more than the price of buying the company. He would swoop in, sell off the assets, load the company up with debt and then leave it to rot. This is the same business as Mitt Romney was in at Bain Capital. They like to dress it up with fancy words and phrases but that’s what they were doing. This is the same thing that happened to Red Lobster, Dunkin’ Donuts too. DD is struggling to pay off the enormous debt that Peter Thiel’s buddies placed on it. I don’t see any difference between this and what happened on the Sopranos when someone asked for help with their restaurant. Tony ordered all kinds of stuff from the restaurant’s suppliers and sold it out the back door. Never paid their bills and eventually lit the place on fire. 

If you take an Econ course you are told that a business must have a product or service someone wants and is willing to pay for. If you go to business school you are taught to look for businesses that you can extract the most amount of money from in the least amount of time. A person with a MBA is not trying to make a business better. They are trying to bleed it dry or as near to dry as they can get it. Then they wash their hands and declare there is nothing that can be done.

The Republican Party is in the business of helping these people make as much money as they can. They do this in the form of tax cuts for corporations and the ultra rich. They load the country up with debt and then when a Democratic administration comes in they howl that there’s too much debt and the government needs to cut spending and programs. 

When Republican administrations are in power they try to get as many goodies as they can from the government. They try to get rights to drill on government lands and to cut tree too. They attempt to reduce regulations on medicines. 

I recently heard an article on about trench collapses. When a trench collapses people die. A way to prevent that is to put barriers on the edges of the trench. This costs money, therefore companies try to avoid doing it. The article interviewed parents and spouses of the people killed. Each time the workers asked, begged, for wall supports. They knew and understood the danger. The companies did nothing. The dirt walls collapsed and the workers died.

What about OSHA? Yeah, what about OSHA? Turns out they can’t shut a company down. They can post signs. They can ask. They can even issue a warning, but that’s it.

Welcome to capitalism in America.

Friday, July 19, 2024

There are any number of items to be addressed. First off I made a comment where I asked why Trump was wearing his ear patch on the wrong ear. Whether he was or not, I don’t know. I had it reported to me by a highly reliable source who said she read it on the internet or X. Maybe, it was a joke? Maybe, it was a reference to the fact that Mr. Trump got out of the draft because it was claimed he had bone spurs. Yet, he could not remember which foot had them. Some would say he dodged the draft by paying off a doctor to say he had bone spurs. This would be speculation and I withdraw the speculation. I think he should be honest with the American people and submit both feet for X-Ray examination. As far as I know bone spurs don’t go away unless you have surgery. If they find no bone spurs then Trump is a liar and a draft dodger. ( But we already knew he was a liar! – Shut up. Friggin’ whiners. )

Another item – when I went to find a factual source for what I had been told about the ear bandage I discovered lots of people at the Republican Convention sporting ear bandages. Big ones! Reporters say that these people are showing solidarity with their nominee. To which I say, “Poppycock. If they were really showing solidarity they’d graze their ear with an AR-15 shot and then bandage their ear.” I mean, come on. What kind of wimps are you? to be fair you should get a friend, neighbor or spouse to shot at the year from 140 yards away.

Now we get to the speeches of the RNC convention. After the shooting many known Republicans called for unity and toning down the rhetoric. Then they gave speeches that did just the opposite. It was said that Mr. Trump had torn away his speech and wrote on of a more conciliatory nature. From the reports I heard this morning (not from the wrong ear source I might add) his speech was slightly subdued but it was the same old stuff:

– Cut taxes

– Drill for oil

– Deport immigrants

I’d like some more honesty in these speeches. How about:

– I’m cutting taxes for my rich friends and you’ll get a few pennies too,

– Screw the environment. I’ll let oil and coal companies do what they want,

– Immigrant kids in cages! Yeah baby!

The most recent right wing stuff I’ve heard is – if we spend money on immigrants then there’s less spent on you. Immigrants are taking your money!

Why are so many people coming to this country? Because their countries suck. (How did donnie say it? Oh yeah, that’s right.) There is no mystery on how to really fix this problem. Make other countries suck less. Apparently, people don’t want to live where they are in fear for their lives. Weird huh? And they come to the land of mass shootings – really weird. However, that is preferable to being constantly under threat. The last Republican presidents to at least talk about the real problem were Nixon and Reagan. Nixon sent Kissinger to Central and South America. Henry reported back that we’d need to pour a lot of money into those countries to fix them. Nixon did not pour money into them. 

Then Reagan sent troops to Columbia to clean up the narcotics mess. Unfortunately, when you move an army, lots of people learn about it, thus giving ample time for the drug cartels to move out of danger.

Back to “Cut Taxes.” 

“A. It didn’t work before, let’s try it again. Go to A.”

This has been the mantra of the Republican Party since Reagan. It hasn’t worked. It’s increased the debt and folks are still struggling to get by. There have been tow huge economic transfers of wealth in this country: one) to the rich, and two) to the boomers.

Who has gotten screwed? The working poor, the middle class, Gen X, Y & Z.

In Donald’s speech last night it was reported that he promised the same old stuff without mentioning how he would do it. He also did explain how he was going to pay for any of the tax cuts, etc. Seeing as how last time he incurred the largest debt our nation has ever seen under one President, I’ll tell you how. – He won’t.

He’ll wait  until he’s out of office and then yell and scream about the debt.

As Bill Clinton said about Republicans, “Their only complaint is we don’t clean their mess up quick enough.”

Let’s recall, for example Afghanistan. What did he do there? he had the head of the Taliban released from jail. Told him when the U.S. was going to pull out. Then he drew the troop levels down so low just as he was leaving office that the incoming President had no choice but to pull out and it was a mess because their was no plan for how to do it. What did Trump do then? Complained that it was a mess. 

He also did this in Northern Syria, abandoning our allies and giving that region over to Putin and al-Assad.

He did this with Covid too. His team would not talk to the transition team about their plans for rolling out the Covid vaccine. It turns out there was a good reason for this. There was no plan.

Infrastructure? – same thing. No plan. Press conference? yes. Plan? No. Press conference? yes. Plan? No. Press conference? yes. Plan? No. Press conference? yes. Plan? No. Sorry I got stuck in a loop.

Where there were plans in place he destroyed them:

Iran Nuclear deal? Get out. Result – Iran is now free to build a bomb.

NATO – Get out. Fortunately he could do it. But he says he’ll do it this time.

And what about future plans?

Ukraine? Get out. (Why? well Zelensky didn’t find the dirt on Biden from that non-existent server. …)

Government organization? Get rid of civil service protection for the top levels of the civil service. Thus allowing him to appoint “his own people.” I mean who would you rather have running our epidemic disease department, Anthony Fauci or Ronnie Jackson or that witch doctor who Ron DeSantis appointed head of health services in Florida?

The Trump proposal via the Heritage Foundation is to get rid of top level civil servants and put in flunkies. This happened last time in places like the Commerce Department. A bunch of Jared’s buddies showed up, knew nothing, and went about throwing sand in the gears aimlessly. They did it aimlessly because they didn’t know any better. Imagine this time if they get someone in there who really knows how to screw things up?

Last time Trump appointed a guy to run the weather service who had a weather channel that competed with the weather service. What did this fellow want to co? Forbid the Weather Service from making public statements and give those statement to his channel that would in turn charge you to get their reports.. So only the folks who paid would know about the hurricanes and tornadoes. But then I’d imagine they’d replace the life long wether forecasters with their own team, and a team not necessarily knowledgeable about weather so, maybe no one would know?

BTW The Samurai Armor exhibit closed August 4th at VMFA. If you are in the area go see it. It is exquisite.

Thursday, July 18, 2024

I saw John Stewart interview Bill O’Reilly the other day. O’Reilly was saying the economic wasn’t so great because the price of gas and groceries has gone up under Biden. To which I say, “Duh.”

When asked why were prices going up O’Reilly said he didn’t know. Or maybe it was it the President’s fault. I forget which. 

Okay, time for some Econ 101 with a little nuance.

If you ask an economics professor why are prices going up he or he will say too much money chasing too few goods. I know this because I’ve asked them.

This is a simplified view of the world to be sure. If asked to give more details the Econ professor will say people have more money and they are therefore willing to pay more for the goods and services they want.

Again, this is a simplified view and it assumes a perfect economic world where the only forces working on prices is how much people are willing to pay for something. It ignores another important part of the economic picture and that is how much the suppliers are able to get away with raising prices. 

When does this happen? Well, if you have something and nobody else has it then you can charge whatever you want – as long as people really need what you’ve got. Let’s say it’s a medicine that keeps that person alive.

If you ask an Econ professor what can drive down prices setting they will say, Competition.

Ah ha, so if someone is selling widgets for $10 and everyone body needs one then a person could come in and sell a widget for $9, thus driving down the price. The fellow at $10 will have to lower his price to compete.

It turns out that competitors will check other people’s prices and adjust their prices accordingly. This is sometimes referred to as collusion, or price fixing. (I can hear the cries now, “No it’s not I just saw what the other person was charging.”)

As an example the price of insulin is high, even though the process is well known and free of patent or copyright. Why does the price keep going up? (I’m not talking about government capping, just the price without regulation.) It’s because there are only three makers of insulin in the U.S. I have heard professors of medicine knowledgeable about this topic say you need four to start seeing competition and the price start to come down. I don’t know if that’s the correct number but you need several competitors to get the price to start coming down and you can’t have them colluding.

So let’s return to Bill’s statements about the price of things being high. Why is that? He said he didn’t know what, or if, anything the President can do to change that.

Certainly, after Covid people had access to more money and prices went up. But that isn’t the only reason. If you’ve seen the charts showing that most of what consumers need, like food, meat, etc. is in the hands of a few large corporations. There isn’t enough competition to force these companies to reduce their prices.

What could the President do? What could Congress do? Well, let’s look at history. Teddy Roosevelt was faced with a lack of competition in many industries, notably coal and sugar. The coal workers went on strike. The companies wouldn’t negotiate with the union. Teddy told them to negotiate. They said no. He said negotiate or I’ll bring in the army and run your mines. They negotiated. That’s how this country got the 40 hour work week, and overtime.

In the case of Standard Oil, John Rockefeller would lower the price of gas until others went out of business, then he was the only game in town and could charge whatever he wanted. FDR and Congress forced them to break apart. That’s when Mobil and what became Exxon was born. Years later Republican administrations let Mobile and Exxon merge. Why is gas going up? Not enough competition between oil suppliers. 

What did President Biden do when the price was going up? He released millions of barrels of oil from the government reserves, thus forcing the price of gas to go down, It stabilized. That’s a fancy word for saying y it stopped going up. Otherwise we’d be paying $4.50 a gallon, like we were at one point under the previous President, who did nothing about oil and gas prices. Oh wait, maybe he held a press conference about it? That’s what he did for infrastructure. He held so many pressers about infrastructure that it was a running joke in Washington. He never grasped the idea that to do something in Congress you have to pass a law, called a bill. No one in the Trump White House seemed to work on that.

What could “WE” do now? Well, if Congress would pass some legislation to break up these big corporations   so they had to compete, prices would come down. That’s the side of this problem that the folks who bemoan the fact that prices are gong up seem to not mention.

Enough for now. 

Friday, July 12, 2024

I know there’s lots to be worried about, but there are issues that just can’t wait.

These are not them.

In the world of tacky I have discovered a new entrant. Are You The One? or some name like that for a new Hallmark Series. It’s a competition to pick the right guy for Christmas. Twelve men (is it twelve? I dunno.) who look handsome in a “I like to take walks on the beach or the park, love dogs (or cats) and am remarkably empathetic” are competing in a new Christmas classic. And like Top Chef after each episode one is sent home. Instead of “Please pack your knives and go,” it’s “Brad, you will not be going home for Christmas.” 

I have always advocated for more violence o TV in these circumstances. What I’d like to see is team of dwarves dressed up like Santa’s helpers come out of the woodwork and attack the loser with whips a flails screaming, “Loser! Get out of here!” But, alas, I fear it will be more milque toast. Bleech! We need the writers of South Park or The Simpsons to add some good olde American dreck to the proceedings. 

OMG, what is wrong with this nation? We are producing shows like The Real Housewives of … and none of them look like the women I see in the supermarket. Real? There’s nothing real about any of them. Fake eyelashes and all. They’ve got a spin-off called The Valley. Did they get this idea from watching Saturday Night Live? 

So, we’ve got big problems and this is what people are watching? Or trying to be enticed to watch?

Me? I admit, I get sucked into watching snatches of video on Facebook. I was watching one on my phone the other day from Britain’s Got Talent. A young woman came on and Simon asked her a question a she responded, “You’ve probably heard my voice, but never seen my voice.”

“Oh? Why is that?” asked Simon.

“Because I sang Never Enough from the musical movie and the actress lip synched to my singing.”

All the judges sat back and this young lady from Brooklynn blew the room away.

Okay, now remember I said I was watching on my phone and the show was Britain’s Got Talent.

I switched to my computer to watch it. I typed in the woman’s name (Loren Allred), found her on YouTube and as I watched Simon asked his question. She aswered. He stared in open mouth amazement and she blew the room away.

But in the middle of her performance I noticed she was wearing a different dress than in her appearance on my phone. This was odd as the audio track was the same. Or, at least, I think it was, then I realized I was watching America’s Got Talent. 

So I think Simon Cowell deserves an award for his performance on one of these two shows for being gobsmacked a second time. Either that or he’s seen so many performances he can’t keep them straight and forgets.

And the Olympics are coming up! In the ads, they show Simon Biles doing a dismount that is her normal crazy double twist double somersault whatever. How does she do that? What exactly is she doing anyway? I don’t care. It makes me giggle and gives me the shivers every time I see it. And she’s got a new thing she’s going to be doing. It’s a double pike something or other. No other woman has attempted this. Biles has done it once in competition in 2021. Less than half a dozen men do it. One of them said of Biles that she is performing on a lower table (I guess this is a vault, but I don’t know what else a table could be) and she gets higher than he does when she does this move. He asks, “do you know the kind of strength you need to get that far up?” Uh, no. No, I don’t, but I’m guessing a lot. The next time you see the picture of Simon flying through the air with one leg straight in front of her and another behind, look at the top of her thigh. I had never paid attention but OMG that muscle is incredible. 

In other news, we are being barraged with the fact that Biden is old, and a little bit that Trump not only lies constantly but he says really inane things. Sarah Cooper (bless her heart) is tirelessly working to lip synch the most inane ones. Here’s his now infamous one about sharks and batteries and boats:

Sarah Cooper is lip syncing Trump again
byu/nikamats inTikTokCringe

Yeah, but Biden’s old.

ARE YOU PEOPLE OUT OF YOUR MINDS? 

Why is this even close? One guy has a stutter, which he has worked on all his life to overcome. He’s old. He moves a bit slow. He has senior moments.

The other guy is inane on a level rarely seen in public. It might be fun to have him sit on a seat in a dunk tank or put him on a show like I dunno The Apprentice? And have a team of judges say, “You’re fired” or “Please pack you knives and go,” or “Sorry, you won’d be coming home for Christmas,” or “Four years in jail for fraud on 34 counts, and twenty five more for exposing national secrets.” 

Yeah, but …

Tuesday, July 9, 2024

Do you remember the Whitewater Scandal? The Clinton’s had been in a land deal with a guy. The deal went bust and years later that same fellow did some fraudulent stuff. The Republicans in Congress tried – endlessly – to tie that fellow’s illegal activities to the Clintons. Nevermind that the activities were years apart. This went on and on. Finally, news broke that Bill had an affair with a 21 year old staffer. It turned out he only had a few failed blow jobs, but close enough to go crazy over. And, let’s not forget the only reason he was even in contact with the young lady was due to a government shutdown engineered by the Republicans. I, BTW, doig my civic duty reported the breaking of law by a Republican Senator named Ted who trespassed on government property that was shutdown, stole government property and littered. He and a bunch of soon to be MAGA people took saw horses from a closed National Park and deposited them at the White House in protest over their closing the government.

So then we had to hear endlessly about Monica Lewinsky. It went on all summer. Longer than Debby Boone’s on hit, which was a nice enough song but after hearing it every time you’d turn on the radio. At least Taylor Swift has different songs. Many sound the same, but still.

So why am I bringing this up? Good question. Well back when Monica and Bill’s name were in the news for as long as Debby was lighting up our lives I asked a woman I knew, “why?” I figured she’d know because she was a producer for a major news organization. She explained that when you only have 20 or 30 seconds to do a news item it is easier to add on to an existing story than try and explain in any depth a new story. We already know the players and the basic story so all a news report has to do is introduce updates. You can do that in 20 seconds. Hence the story lasts for way longer than it should.

This is what is now happening with Biden and the question of whether he should stay in the race or not.

A few people in Congress are saying he should step aside. Multiple pundits are reporting this and rehashing his poor performance. The debate was seen by the smallest audience to see a debate in years.

But, it’s an easy story to keep adding on to.

Yesterday, I heard a guy on the radio going on and on about the fact that Biden is old and then suggesting that maybe he should step aside. This took up most of the interview. Near the end he was asked replace Biden with who? Well, he didn’t know and that would have to be worked out by the Democratic party. Blah blah blah.

There’s little reporting of the great job Biden has been doing and is still doing. Maybe he’s too old? Yeah, maybe, but the evidence does not suggest that. He’s led us back from the brinks of disaster after disaster to having the strongest economy in the world today.

Let’s run through a few of his hits:

Covid: When he took office the Trump team refused to give the transition team any clue as to their roll out plan for getting Covid vaccinations out to people. the reason became startling clear as soon as Biden’s folks got in office. There was no plan.

Yet, Biden turned that around and people were getting immunized rapidly. What were Trump’s people doing at that time? Hld rallies saying vaccines were no good.

Afganistan: Trump likes to saywhat a disaster the pullout from Afganistan was. Let’s remember who created the circumstances for that pullout. Trump got the head of the Taliban out of jail, told him exactly when the U.S. was leaving. He even invited the guy to Camp David. Then the week before Biden took office he had the troops in Afganistan reduced to a minimal level. There was no way that any pullout would not be chaos. However, Biden and our troops did a remarkable job of getting many out. What had Trump’s team done? Well, Steven Miller, known racist and conspiracy theorist, had made sure that any of our Afgan interpreters and agents were not given asylum here in the U.S. as they had been promised. He did this throughout the Trump presidency.

Economy: There are lots of ways to look at the economy but by any measure the economy now is so much better than it was under Trump. Trump wanted to put in tariffs. He still wants to do that. He does not understand that tariffs are a tax on the people of this country. We pay for the increased price not the exporters. 

Jobs is another way to look at things. The job growth is way up. Trump was the first president since Hoover to have negative job figures. One can point to Covid as the culprit, and it was. but Covid also drove down the demand for gas and so the price of gas was lower. However, now job growth is up. Gas prices went up for awhile, but then Biden did something really clever. He relaesed gas from the government storage and stopped the price rise. He has been credited with breaking Opec’s stranglehold by doing this. He then bought the gs back when the price was lower making over half a trillion dollars for the government. Talk about art of the deal!

Prices have been going up, but that has now slowed. There seem to be two reasons for the price increases: people have money and many corporations face little competition so they can charge whatever they want. (thank Republican administartions for the latter.) However, the inflation rate has pretty much stabilized. 

the stock markets are at all time highs, causing many to say equities are overvalued, and that the economy will crash. Remember awhile back that’s what all the econonomic pundits were saying? They finally stopped saying it because it didn’t happen. Even Fox Business went so far as to say of Biden’s economic numbers, “if I had those numbers I’d run on it tt.”

Don’t forget the huge crisis at the ports. Covid was coming to what? an end? a dribble? All kinds of goods were waiting to be unloaded. This right after Biden took office. What happened? The huge crisis went away. Why? Biden sent people to fix it, that’s why.

But he’s old. 

Yeah. When I was first working in the factory and I critizied someone the fellow in charge of getting the job done looked at me and said, “What’s your idea?”

He looked at me, waiting to hear my answer He genuinely wanted to know. 

I had nothing.

He softly snorted, closed his eyes briefly, and moved on.

To all those whosay Biden’s too old I ask, “What’s your answer?”

Yeah, I thought so.

You got nothing.

Shut up. Let’s get to work.

Suggestion: Let’s elect someone who knows what they are doing. Has done it, and proven he can do it.

Someone who has done that over and over again,

Who fits that bill?

Yeah, but he’s old. Go to Suggestion.