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Monday, September 18, 2023

Lauren Boebert – oh my. Well, she got kicked out of a theater for vaping, taking selfies in the middle of the performance, and disturbing people around her by singing. At least, that’s what the theater initially said. Boebert was outraged, of course. She said she got kicked out for laughing and dancing. She said the vaping was from a smoke machine – not her. Then they showed the tape – the security footage. There was Lauren blowing smoke from a vaping device. 

She also played the, “Do you know who I am?” card. I have done that too. It always gets the same result, except once. “No.” The exception being when I gave my card to someone who studied it for some thirty seconds and said, “I’ve heard of you.” My instantaneous reactive thought was, “No, you haven’t!” But I kept my mouth shut.

Apparently, the reasons above weren’t the real reason she was booted. Maybe, it contributed, but the real reason was Boebert and her “date” were groping each other. There was nothing subtle about it. So aside from the vaping, the loud singing, the flashing camera light, they were trying to have hand sex – I guess that’s what you’d call it. Groping? Egads, get a room you two. Oh yes the theater released some more security footage showing their “acitivity”. So the theater tried to give her an excuse. She wasn’t bright enough to understand so they said, “Okay. Take a look at this.”

Then Lauren made a “I’m really sorry” boo-hoo, that’s not the person I am and the voters deserve better statement. 

In other news Kristen Welker had her first weekend at the desk of Meet the Press. She had an interview with Donald Trump. She tried to keep him focused on her question. She tried. He wandered around verbally. Same old stuff. Several times he said Democrats want to kill babies after they are born. Welker had enough and replied, “No Democrat says that.” For a few instances Trump actually stopped. Temporarily rocked back on his heels. He kind of shrugged. Then it was right back to one complaint or another, or an outlandish lie. Things like how great his presidency was. How he could solve the Ukraine war in a day. 

His solution to everything was to get all the pricipals in a room and “negotiate.”

Vague ovrblown promises and pronouncements, nothing concrete. I wouldn’t call it trying to nail jello to the wall, but rather having the jello solution thrown in liquid form and running down the wall.

Update from Tuesday Sept 20 (I didn’t finish Monday’s screed until Tuesday)

Janet Yellin was on a morning show. She was asked what about this? And what about that? All dealing with the economy. She is brief, specific and to the point. While the Wall Street folks and the Repubicans are going on and on about recession she clamly points to the data. Could it be better? Yeah, of course, but it’s pretty good right now. Especially, when you compare it to other times it’s really damn good.

Last night, Peter Hotez was on talking about his new book, “The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science.” He pointed to the rise of anti-vaccine rhetoric. This was not random he points out. It was planned and orchestrated. It started at CPAC 2021. They had a number of anti-vac folks speak. The theme being that the government was going to force you to get the vaccine, and then they’d come for your bibles and your guns. This idea was picked up by Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Ron Johnson, and Rand Paul in Congress and it was amplied every night on Fox by Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and others.

The result said Hotez was that 200,000 people died that didn’t have to. They were mainly in conservative states and many in the south.

Other than drug dealers pushing fentanyl, who else kills willfully their own people? The Republican party and anti-vaccers.

Not only are people being told lies about the vaccines, but the politicians like Greene are targeting the very scientists trying to save us, calling them names and saying they are employing brown-shirt fascist tactics. WTF?

People like Trump, Greene, Boebert, Hannity, and Ingraham are dangerous, because they not only willing lie, they have no soul.

Joe the Plumber died, pancreatic cancer. He wasn’t really a plumber. He didn’t have his own license, He kind of worked under someone else who had a license, and that wasn’t really legal. But hey so what? Right? Freedom. Hopefully, your toilet won’t leak but maybe he wtched a good YouTube videio and kinda knows what to do?

No rules. Except abortion, then we gotta get in there and F with people. Time has an article about the 13 year old girl in Mississippi who had a baby. The girl starts 7th grade. She was raped. Way to go Mississippi. What an opportunity.

OMG. I didn’t think it could get any stupider, but I was wrong. Boebert has broken off with her date at the theater. She checked his party affiliation and he’s a democrat. That’s the problem. Democrats are known fondler – is that it? OMG.

Sunday, September 17, 2023

The idea behind our democracy and those of the states is that people elected to office are good people who will do the right thing. This is often not true. In general, they will do whatever they have to to save their own political career regardless of what is right.

In Texas the Attorney General, Ken Paxton, was brought up on 16 charges of abusing his office. This came about because people who worked in that office were so concerned they blew the whistle on him. He fired those people. They sued and won a 3.5 million dollar case. He wanted the State if Texas to pay the fine. That’s what finally got his republican colleagues to bring impeachment charges. There are 30 state senators: 18 Republican and 12 Democrat. To impeach you need a 2/3 vote. That means the vote would have to be twenty to impeach and therefore 8 Republicans would have to “do the right thing.”

Two were willing to do so on a few of the 16 counts. They weren’t up for re-election. A rich right wing conservative political pac had promised to primary any senator who voted to impeach. Why that isn’t illegal I don’t know.

I wonder if Paxton felt like the guys who killed Emmett Till – guilty as sin but who cares?

While watching Virginia Tech’s football team lose to Rutgers I was shown three different Republican ads for candidates for President. The worst, and by worst I mean most poorly done was Donald Trump’s. It appeared to be done by a 7th grader as their first attempt at creating an ad for media class. But okay, what were the messages?

Donald Trump is going to stand up to the drug cartels. He’s going to build (or has built) the wall. He’s going to convict drug sellers and the cartels. Wait? Didn’t he promise to do that last time? Other than saying he was going to do it did he? Well,Steve Bannon started a build the wall fund after Don couldn’t get Mexico to pay. But he never used the money to build a wall. He got arrested on a Chinese billionaire’s yacht in Long Island Sound. The only reason he isn’t in jail is Don pardoned him. The worst part of the ad was Donald’s personal statement. He seemed to be reading queue cards and had never practiced reading what they said. Or maybe he just can’t read very well. Sounded like a second grader who was hauled up in front of the class to read out loud.

Then there was Nikki Haley. She’s going to stop China from making fentanyl and shipping it into this country. Okay, so Nikki is going after the makers and Donnie’s going after the distributors. Great. Question: why is the U.S. the only country with this problem? Ya know Europe has regulated this drug successfully, why can they do it and we can’t seem to do it? Oh wait. There’s a super rich family that got away with pushing this drug for years and stopping it from being more tightly regulated. Oh no. How did that happen?

Then there’s the Tim Scott ad. I forget what he’s going to do. Oh yes – values. Blah blah blah. That’s a hard case to make against Joe Biden, but he’s trying.

Meanwhile, the autoworkers are starting to strike. Their case is simple. The car manufacturers are back – big time. The bosses got 40% raises. The workers gave up a lot to save the industry and they want to have the life that their parents or grandparents had when they worked for the auto-industry.

It’s a slightly different case than what the writers in Hollywood are making. But essentially the big game being played here is “If we can just make the workers desperate enough they’ll have to work for whatever scraps we give them.” Some have even said as much.

I think it was Eugene Debs when he was negotiating with the bosses that would draw a circle – a pie. He’d show slices of the pie: some for labor some for manufacturers. He say the pie had gotten larger and all he wanted was his fair slice for the workers. Not a hard concept.

There’s a Facebook meme going around: GM made $22 billion last year, if they gave each of their 50,000 workers $80,000 they have only made $18 billion. Hum. Good point.

Saturday, September 16, 2023

Frequently, I have heard commentators refer to the real world as Earth 1 and the world of climate, election, and vacine deniers as Earth 2. But I posit that there is another world – Earth 3, and possibly a forth – Hyper Earth.

Let’s deal with Hyper Earth first because it is easier to do. Hyper Earth is when Earth 2 comes into contact with Earth 1. Take for instance Ron DeSantis appointing a witch doctor (what else would you call him – a doctor? Come on.) as head of Florida’s health services. That guy (the head of Florida’s health services) has railed against Covid vaccines and is doing so again with the new version of it. How many people are going to die or get really sick because they listened to him?

Okay, that’s Hyper Earth. And we could argue that when the Jan 6th folks get sentenced to jail time that is Hyper Earth – maybe???

But I suggest there is yet another Earth – Earth 3. It is the strangest world of all.

Sorry, I interupt this screed to bitch about something else. I just read this:

John Hughes is a marketing director at Merck in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and is best known for being the husband of Kristen Welker. He reportedly obtained the position in 2015 but had been working for the firm since 2006.

What? Wait? He obtained the position as Kristen Welker’s husband in 2015? Bad relative pronouning…

BTW He’s been Kristen Welker’s husband since 2017.

Where was I? Oh yes. Earth 3. Let’s examine the evidence and related phenomena. I have seen a few clips of Kristen Welker’s interview with Donald Trump. Also, clips from the Megyn Kelly interview with him. You’ll be surprised to hear that I heard somethings come out of is mouth that I found well – worth noting. Let’s put it that way.

Trump said that the charges against him were all fake, and that he had a right to all the documents he took because of The Presidential Records Act. (Is he really unaware that that act was written to prevent, or should I say make clear, that a President on leaving office is not entitled to every paper he held and that some belong to the people (ie the government)?) This is akin to the former governor of Virginia’s wife swiping the silverware from the mansion upon leaving.

Let’s stop right there. It wasn’t only that he said those statements, but the way he said them. It seemed to me that he has said this stuff so many times that he now believes it.

We may have talked about people “living in an echo chamber.” That is saying stuff and listening to others of the same mindset reapeat whatever it is that they all collectively come to believe it. But here I present a new case – seemingly unique, but upon further inspection not. That is the case of Donald Trump talking to himself and convincing himself of his own lies – that is Earth 3.

We’ve seen it before, but never so publicly. I think we will see what happens to this world if and when Donald is sentenced to prison. I remember when the Duke lacrosse rape case DA got sentenced. He stood there listening to the sentence and seemed to not be there; to not understand what was happening to him in that moment. We saw it too when the assistant coach for Penn State got sentenced. He seemed out of it, not understanding. And so I predict it will be with Donald Trump when Earth 1 collides and crashes into his own little earth that he has created for himself – Earth 3. He will stand there unknowingly and oblivious.

Wednesday, September 13, 2023

I just watched an interview with Matt Gaetz. He’s a weird guy. He wants to bring impeachment charges against the President. That or he wants an investigation into Hunter Biden and ties with his dad concerning Burisma. Gaetz claims that Joe sat down with Burisma on multiple occasions. He kept referring to these meetings as Joe meeting with Hunter’s bribe masters.

Okay, let’s break this down. When Joe was VP he spent a lot of time trying to stop Burisma being used by Putin as a cash register. Essentially, before the Russian propped up Ukrainian head was deposed Putin put a guy in a job at Burisma to skim money off the top of any and all gas being sold by Burisma. Burisma tried to clean up their image and hired Hunter to help with that. Now, were they trying to get close to Joe? Yeah, probably. This by the way is something that companies try all the time, and Washington is littered with relatives being hired by companies trying to shine up their image. Republicans do this all the time.

There is no evidence that Joe and Hunter ever discussed Burisma. 

Additionally, Gaetz referred to Kevin McCarthy and a deal he had with him. He said McCarthy isn’t living up to the deal. The deal is written down – he says. However, he doesn’t have his copy. Someone else has it, and if you want to see his copy of the deal you’d have to ask that person for it. But, Gaetz says, he can tell you what’s in the deal, and McCarthy is lying about something – I forget what.

Now I can see someone going to the other person and asking to see the deal and that person saying, “Oh I can’t show you that because it’s Matt’s paper.”

As to Joe, well Burisma was corrupt for years when Putin’s guy was head of Ukraine. Biden met with folks in Ukraine during that time. Hunter was hired by Burisma. Whether it was during that time or after I don’t remember. But Gaetz’s claim is like saying someone is a commie if they met with a Communist, or that you had to have been bribed because you met with a person who bribed someone else.

Then there’s this “Kevin broke his promise, but I can’t show you the promise” is just weird.

So Gaetz is threatening the Speaker of the House over a deal he won’t show us, and he’s threatening the President by association, but has no proof. Not even a smidgen of a problem.

The dual things both stink and Gaetz is just weird.

Tuesday, September 12, 2023

I remembered. September 11th. Twenty two years ago. For probably half the population this is history, not experience. One commentator yesterday spoke of the sense of we-are-all-in-this-together spirit that prevailed, not only in this country, but around the world. And then we blew it. I see the image of Dick Cheney. What ever happened to those six safes in his VP office? What was in them? Never mind.

We had Mr. Mayor uniting the city and the nation. We had a nice guy – sort of – as President. Not terribly bright who stood on a pile of rubble with a bull horn. Then? They went about the business of using 9/11 as an excuse to start not one but two wars, and we went back to business as usual.

Another commentator said when 9/11 happened Al Qaeda was three or four hundred guys. Now, it’s 30 to 40 thousand. But our biggest terrorist threat comes from inside our country. 

We saw the shining beacon on the hill and we turned back. The great wave built and dissolved.

In other realizations. I realized that Tayor Swift makes more in fifteen minutes than I will make in a lifetime. ($13 million a show at 3 1/2 hours per show – you do the math. Okay maybe 30 minutes.) I saw Michael Bloomberg on the Sunday Morning Show. He was in New York at The World Trade Center’s new performing arts center. What a cool place. They can literally change the configuration of the auditorium at the press of a button. Stage with rows of seats? No problem. Theater in the round? Bingo. The show mentioned he was worth 94 billion. I remember during his brief run for president that he was reputably worth 34 or 39 billion. What did he do to make fifty billion more?

And finally, a little FB tag that I saw mentioned that GM made 22 billion last year. If they gave each of their 50,000 employees $80 grand  that would be 4 billion and they would have made 18 billion. 

Morocco – earthquake, Haiti – humanitarian crisis, devastating hurricanes: east, west, the Pacific.

There is still talk about Burning Man by people who have never been and a few by those who have. The people who actually know what they are talking about are getting drowned out by the know-nothings.

I heard an interesting discussion about insurrection the other day. Two takes on Jan 6th: 1) the people at the Capital did not think they were participating in an insurrection. 2) Regardless, of whether you think those people were participating in an insurrection, they were there to stop Congress from carrying out one of its Constitutional duties. The question then becomes whether the instigators of what happened at the Capital that day should be held to account, not for insurrection but interfering with a Constitutionally mandated action of Congress.

Meanwhile, Trump leads all other Republican candidates. The problem for the Republicans is they have embraced a way of thinking that is not trying to address real problems and their candidates are all unlikeable. I just listened to Asa Hutchinson who is being touted as one of the more sane candidates. It a three way supposed sanity race between him, Chris Christie, and Nikki Haley. 

Asa was asked about crime and what he would do to combat it. He said we need to enforce the law. Great. And if a city is not willing to do that then take away their funding. What? Let’s make a few wild assumptions: 1 – Jurisdictions want to enforce the law. 2 – If they don’t, maybe it’s because they don’t have the resources. Wouldn’t it make more sense to see if they need funding? Okay, there is the possibility that an AG doesn’t want to prosecute people for possession of marijuana or put a child in jail for having an abortion, but that isn’t the issue here. It’s violent crime.

Most of the time the thing that reduces crime is enforcement but also providing alternate opportunities to a life of crime. This would require compassion and innovation, something the current GOP sadly lacks.

Fig production is slowing. I crossed the 80 pound mark. But now a report from the pumpkin patch! Houston, we have a pumpkin! 

Hope. Has sprung again.