Cold Cuts

We're feeling a bit under the weather here at ol' Chateau Bluz. I came down with a cold on Friday night and I'm still working my way through it. I took a COVID test on Sunday and that came up negative, so at least there's that. This seems to be the kind of nasty chest cold I used to get every year before I started working from home. It'll pass, but I'm not up to putting any coherent thoughts together this afternoon, so here's a funny story from the Bluz Archives (about ten years ago) about a rather alarming dream.

The Dream

Great. Flaming. Jesus. I had the most unbelievable and traumatic dream Sunday night. Check this out…

I was playing soccer and got tangled up with another player, and we both went down in a heap. When I got up, I realized that “Bluz Jr.” had been nearly sliced off and was hanging by a tiny strip of skin. In fact, the top half came right off in my hand.

And I remember thinking (within the dream), “Damn, that’s the good part.” No guy wants to live without the Angry Inch

You know how we guys are about our junk.  We’re highly protective of our little buddies. 

(Disclaimer: Not an actual willy.)

Though clearly unhappy about my schlong being reduced to a schlort, I was remarkably composed about the whole incident, which had been surprisingly painless. (That should have been my first clue that it was a dream.) The next thing I knew, I was sitting in a sort of “common room” that you might find in the main area of a frat house. It appeared to be a house full of medical students. Perhaps I was playing college intermural soccer.

Anyway, with the better half of Bluz Jr still in my hand, and the other half suffering from boneus interruptus, I asked the room if they might be able to find a way to put this thing back on because I was pretty sure I was going to need it. In fact, I had to pee right then. There seemed to be a murmur in the room, as they discussed my plight and I considered what it might be like to live without a wang.

And then… I was never as glad as I was right then, to wake up in my own bed.  An immediate examination determined that Bluz Jr was just fine. And all was well again in the land of Bluz.  Even if he didn’t have anywhere to go just yet, he still has potential.

So now: WTF????  Do any of you amateur Freuds out there want to take a shot at what that meant?

Freud and So-crates… the Dream Team

First of all, me? Playing soccer???  I haven’t played a competitive game of soccer since gym class in junior high, and that was a one-off.  Where in the hell did that come from?  Just because I was a Mia Hamm fan doesn’t mean I wanted my lunch meat sliced.

My first instinct is to tie it to my experience of my boomerang relationship that just bounced out of the apartment. Could that have been my brain processing the loss of autonomy that the relationship represented? But if so, why did I have the dream when it was over, rather than when it was still going on?

Maybe it was trying to make me consider a life without meat.

Or maybe it was a message for me to be less cocky.

Either way, you can bet your ass I’m never playing soccer again.

The Traveling Christmas Show

Happy Christmas, my friend. Hope you're happy and well as we dive headfirst into the big holiday week. Whatever it is you celebrate, I hope you have a joyous one.

All my life, Christmas was a happy but chaotic time of year.

The Traveling Christmas Show

Christmas was always such a busy time, growing up. When we were little and still living in Pittsburgh, it was such a flurry of activity having our own Christmas and then heading off to both grandparents’ places. I know it was all pretty hard on my parents but as kids, we loved it! Three Christmas extravaganzas of cookies, good food, presents and cookies! Lots of cousins to play with! And did I mention the cookies?

My grandpa on my Dad's side always took movies… the old 8mm silent kind and he always used a movie light; a big, brilliant, blinding, white light. It was so bright we could barely open our eyes wide enough to see what we were opening. Then when it was over, he’d turn it off and the room would seem positively cave-like and we’d spend the next 10 minutes walking into things until our eyes adjusted. Too bad the camera was off by then… this footage would have been much more entertaining.

In later years, my aunt had those movies knocked off onto VHS. It was funny then to see essentially the same movie over and over again but with the characters aging by a year each time.

Hey, there’s a bunch of blinded kids opening presents...

Oh, look at the baby surrounded by wrapping paper...

Look who's coming in the door... Say hi!

Now it’s dinner time… there’s the table. Look at all the food.

Everybody wave… annnnd CUT!

Now it’s the next Christmas… look at the same blinded kids, eww, what are they wearing?

There’s another baby…

It's them again, coming in the door...

And on it goes…

It was agonizing to see myself going through all the horrid fashions of the 1970’s.

Several years of plaid pants… Auuuugh!

The "Saturday Night Fever" year of silk shirt and necklace… Gack!

The "Urban Cowboy" year with a freakin’ cowboy hat with a wrap-around feather the size of a vulture’s ass! Who did I think I was, Charlie Daniels?

Nevertheless, it was cool seeing my cousins growing up right before my eyes. In fact, we only got to see the cousins in yearly increments anyway, once we left The Burgh. (I was 6.) As the first-born of two firstborns, I was the alpha cousin and in later years, it was up to me to maintain order among the kids. That is where my high school class ring came in very handy. I learned from my dad just how powerful a good backhand flick of the ring was. In fact, I think I still have an ornate, backward “D” on the top of my skull from his Duquesne ring.

Once we moved away from Pittsburgh, my siblings and I got to enjoy a new Christmas perk… Christmas a week early! The weekend before Christmas, we’d have our own celebration and do the stockings, presents and the whole sha-bang. Then we’d travel to Pittsburgh for the actual holiday and make the Grandparental rounds.

The trip was always hell, especially when we were coming from Chicago (the furthest from which we had to travel; three bored, punchy little kids, fighting their seat belts and each other, trying to listen to a scratchy AM radio. Mom still smoked back then so we had regular noxious gas intervals. She’d crack the window, thinking the smoke would go out. Unfortunately, it was mostly the freezing air rushing in to spread the carcinogens around.

But it was all worth it when we got to my grandparents’ place for the best meal of the year: The Christmas Eve Feast of the Seven Fishes. It’s an Italian thing. There would be fried smelts and shrimp, fish fillets, heaps of pasta, plus chicken, wedding soup, and Lord knows how much other savory stuff. I’d eat until I couldn't move.

Later in the evening, after the dishes were cleared and the olives, celery, and cookies were put out, Grandma would break out the Bingo game. They used to play Bingo in the old days to kill time before midnight mass, but by this time they weren't going to the late mass anymore. Grandma would save up change all year for us to use for Bingo and we’d have the big family Bingo showdown.

I always liked it because it was something that the kids and grownups played together. Although one year that led to some not-very-kid-friendly terminology getting thrown out after a long, tension-filled game:

Cousin: BINGO!!!

My mom: Oh HORSESHIT!!

God Rest Ye Merry Merchantmen
Years later when I was all grown up and managing a record store in Cleveland, the holidays were brutal. From the beginning of November through the middle of January, to quote retail legend Al Bundy, it was like “one long month… Helluary.”

As a store manager, I’d be working 12-16 hour days. The place would be mobbed… just accounting for all the money was practically a full-time job. (I do admit that it's quite a sight to see all that bundled cash sitting on the desk, awaiting deposit.) We would be so busy, I’d go home and collapse in bed and have dreams that I was still at work, tending the register and clearing customers. I’d wake up and be like, “Fuuuuck! I can’t even escape with sleep!)

I didn’t have any family in Cleveland. The closest kin I had were in Pittsburgh. So when we’d finally get permission to close up on Christmas Eve, usually around 5:30 or 6:00, I’d shut it all down, bolt for the car, and bust ass down the turnpike for Pittsburgh.

I’d get to Grandma and Grandpa’s house about 9:00 or so and Grandma would have soup on the stove and sandwich fixin’s ready. Grandpa would appear with a cold Iron City Light. After the meal, Grandma would tell me that when she heard I was coming, she got some Klondikes for me, which at the time, could only be obtained in Pittsburgh. They were always my favorite treat as a kid. 

I hope she knew how much those Christmas Eves meant to me. It was like an oasis of comfort in a sea of aggravation. After a month of retail chaos, it was great to be able to settle into a big easy chair, chat with my grandparents, and just… breathe…

It was home, sweet home.

Who Could Have Possibly Predicted?

It sure didn’t take long for TFG to backpedal on one of his biggest campaign promises.

It boggles my mind that anyone even believed this promise, let alone voted on it. Just those who weren’t paying attention to anything but Fox “News,” I guess. Obviously, there is no button a president can press that lowers prices. And this Administration wouldn’t, even if they could. Some of their biggest donors are the ones reaping the benefits of higher prices. There’s no way they were going to give campaign money to someone they knew was going to derail the gravy train. This was a bald-faced lie from the get-go.

And let me remind you again, about who kicked up a huge protest when VP Harris proposed an actual anti-price-gouging program. The Republicans threw a fit, calling it anti-capitalist, pro-Socialist, and un-American. And people really thought they were going to lower prices? His tariffs are going to make things even worse! Unreal.

There were more headlines last week that demonstrated whose side Republicans are on. (It ain’t ours.)

House Republicans are trying to halt free tax filing with the IRS.

They are doing the bidding of the for-profit tax filing businesses and e-programs like Turbo Tax. It’s ridiculous in concept that we have to pay extra to perform a task we’re required to do. And it’s not like it’s too difficult to set up. It’s nothing complicated, other than it threatens the interest of those who make money off of the basic act of filing tax returns.

It’s like this with lots of things. Maryland is one of three states that prevents grocery stores from selling beer and wine. Last week, our Governor proposed changing that, which I embrace with both arms and both legs. Naturally, the liquor store lobby is up in arms about it and has begun reapplying the pressure that’s kept this development from occurring all along.

I get it, some businesses lose money. But that’s the price of every advancement.  Carbon paper companies went out of business when copy machines were invented. Buggy makers lost out when Ford started their first assembly line. Is anyone still crying about cassette manufacturing plants going belly-up? It’s the natural order of things. When better ideas come along, lesser ones fade away and their purveyors adapt.

That’s progress, as embodied by progressive people. And we all know who opposes progressives at every turn, right? It’s the “populist” Republicans, who shoot down any idea that helps the average population because the rich are making too much to give up on the status quo.

They could shore up Social Security for the next century, merely by raising the maximum income cap. But no, they want to cut benefits to us instead. See how that’s better? They get to keep their yacht money and all we have to do is struggle to pay bills and outlandish medical costs during the “golden years” of retirement. That’s much better for them!

Just wait for the next big tax cut bill. You’ll see, once again, how the filthy rich get a massive tax cut and the rest of us get a few token crumbs. Even after all the bad publicity from the 2017 version, they’re all set to do it again. Our complaints are short-lived until we move on to the next outrage, but the money lingers on.

That’s always how you know who politicians really work for… just follow the money.

A Killer Insurance Policy

It looks like we’ve finally gotten around to having Death Panels in the healthcare industry, but it hasn’t turned out quite like the insurance execs imagined.

Last week the head guy at United Healthcare was gunned down on an NYC street in a targeted hit. Some young guy wearing a hoodie and medical mask came up behind the guy as he left his hotel, and put three bullets into him. Somehow, the assassin slipped off and has been on the run ever since.

You know, some stories just put a smile on a guy’s face. I don’t see the killer’s personal reasons yet, but I’m sure we will in due time. But it’s a good bet that United Healthcare gave someone in his family a run-around, possibly with fatal ramifications.

I’m not exactly tap-dancing over this story, but I’m not terribly bothered either. Let’s just say I’ll treat this story with the same amount of care and compassion that UHC exhibits when declining to pay for life-saving treatments for their customers.

It’s about time some of these blood-sucking CEOs get some skin in the game. They’ve become a little too comfortable screwing over their customers in pursuit of even more obscene corporate profits.

These leeches are used to being the guys at the controls of the peasant catapult. Maybe a ride or two in the bucket will change their ways.

I’d like to think that maybe some of these execs might realize the kind of pain their company policies inflict on the public, but I think it’s more likely that they’ll just raise premiums and get more security for the corner office guys.

The older I get and the more I have to interact with the medical insurance profession, the more convinced I become that the only civilized solution is single-payer/Medicare for all. We’re the only first-world country that has a for-profit medical system, so it’s not like it can’t be done. It just can’t be done HERE because the parties who are making billions of dollars in profit will never allow such a change to happen. So they buy presidents and senators to ensure that no such proposal ever sees the light of day. Maybe executions ARE the only way…

Late Addition: Welp, about 2 minutes after I posted, I saw that they caught the guy. So much for being timely. Please note that everything written above was before I learned the news.

“Missed it by THAT Much…”

There was an article in today’s Sinclair (Baltimore) Sun about how the DOGE brothers, Musk and Ramaswamy, want to bring federal workers back to the office as a cost-saving and debt reduction measure.

Yes, that’s how wrong these guys are about how to reduce expenses. They think a WFH force costs more money.

Out of all this poorly-written “Sinclair National Desk” gobbledygook, there is one semi-coherent statement and the article framers take it in the wrong direction.

Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said “Something I’ve been pushing on is getting the federal workers back into the offices or eliminating the buildings they occupy.”  

The correct answer is staring them right in the face. Sell the damned buildings! A staff that’s working from home is far cheaper than providing real estate and utilities. (They’re also happier and can be more productive.) And then you have the bottom line gravy of the sales proceeds.

And I’d even wager they might know of someone with a real estate background who might overpay for the property so he can put up a tacky hotel on the site.

The thing that bothers me is that they’re pushing a total logical fallacy. These buildings are on the books, period. Whether they're full of people or not is immaterial… they’re still being paid for.

The problem is psychological! They don’t feel they’re getting their money’s worth so they want butts in the seats. Regardless of where the butts are, they’re still paying for the buildings. So if they’re serious about cutting spending, the clear choice is to sell the office buildings and develop better WFH strategies.

There’s one thing to remember about all this fake “waste-cutting” the Republicans are pushing. It’s not to cut the deficit, it’s to pretend these cuts will pay for the massive tax cut for the 1% that they’re about to unleash. Republicans don’t give a shit about the deficit unless there’s a Democratic administration. That’s when they cry for austerity. But as soon as they’re in charge? Bring on the tax cuts for the rich and maybe, if you’re very good, a few bits might trickle down to the rest of us. When it explodes the deficit? They’ll propose cuts to Social Security and Medicare and the rest of the programs that benefit the general public, but they never liked because they can’t easily skim. Then they’ll worry about the rest of it once the next Democrat takes charge.

PS

Last week I posted about the infamous Hunter Biden Pardon, and how he should widen it to include everyone with whom he’s related associated.

“President Biden ought to leave one more pardon for the end of his term, covering his wife, his other kids and grandchildren, his maids, landscapers, chefs, doctors, trainers, valets, mail carriers, Uber drivers, pet groomers, pizza guys, soda fountain guys, milkmen, and the lot. Call it the Pardon Me but Go Eff Yourself Act. Tell’em to stick that up their transition.”

Now this week, there’s a movement coming to preemptively pardon some of the other players in TFG’s revenge fantasy, like Adam Schiff, Liz Cheney, and Dr. Fauci.

I agree with this course of action as well. These people have committed no crime other than daring to disagree with the new emperor. If the Republicans can proclaim that they want revenge trials of their political opponents, the least we can do is defend our own. Not that it’s being seen that way by the Republicans. Hoo-boy no. It’s the end of the justice system, to them. (As if their guy hasn’t done enough damage.)

But that’s what these people do… they loudly go on offense and then cry when their enemies play defense.

PPS

The week before that, I posted about shrinkflation and how everyday we’re getting less for our money. Over the weekend I saw this graphic that seemed apropos:

This is the old “olive jar” story living on. And I also noticed another example… bacon!

One pound used to be the default size for a bacon package. They still have some one-pound packages, but over the years, you more frequently see 12-ounce packages, that look very similar to the pounders. I think they space out the bacon a little more. The only way to tell at a glance is to check the net weight. And how often do we really do that?

“Pass the Turkey, Son.” “Pardon Me?”

Do you think that’s how it went?

I was going to write about something different today but then this blasted all over the news yesterday, starting with NBC breaking into football coverage with their “OMG It’s A Special Report! Batten Down the Hatches, Kiss Your Loved Ones Goodbye and Gather ‘Round the TV” news alert.

I was like, “Aw crap, what’s he done now?” assuming it would be about a new atrocity from TFG.

Then it turned out to be “Biden pardons his son,” and I thought, “Meh, whatever. It’s about time.”

Yes, despite prior declarations to the contrary, the President pardoned his long-suffering son from the phony-baloney gun and tax charges, and anything else the next Administration can pretend was a crime.

I thought Biden’s statement made perfect sense. He told it like it is, that his son didn’t deserve to get locked up for “crimes” that no one else who wasn’t named Biden would ever be. And with the next last administration openly declaring legal war on “enemies,” who knows what they’d twist into the next biggest criminal conspiracy?

I’d prefer that President Biden hadn’t spent the year saying he wasn’t going to pardon his son, just because it leaves another door open for Republicans to use for cover, like somehow it carried the same weight as the tens of thousands of Trumpian lies told since his political emergence.

But a man can change his mind, can’t he, like TFG does about abortion every time he speaks to a different group. Maybe it was only recently that he realized in his gut that the next four years are going to be perilous for himself and his family. (I predict that right now, Steve Bannon is looking for a way to tie the president’s wife, Dr. Jill, to Dr. Fauci and burn them both at the stake.)

What annoys me is the number of Democrats wringing their hands over this. Instead of clutching their pearls, they should be going, “It’s about damned time.” I’m sick of the Democrats having to follow rules that Republicans ignore. TFG was looking to pardon his own damned self! You know he’d pardon his kids too. (Well, Ivanka, anyway.)

I already see conservative friends on Facebook going, “Oh, what about ‘No one’s above the law?’”

It’s as if the power of the pardon only applies to one side. If they weren’t complaining about TFG pardoning son-in-law Jared’s old man for fraud and sex trafficking charges, and then nominating him for Ambassador to France, then STFU about pardons now.

Pardon power comes with the turf and every president uses it. TFG has already stated he intends to pardon all the January 6^th insurrectionists. What’s worse, ransacking the Capitol to prevent the legal transition of power, or messing up your taxes (and then fixing them) and fudging a gun ownership permit? One of these things is not like the other.

Republicans haven’t played nice in the past and we know they’re going to be worse in the future. It doesn’t matter what Democrats do, Republicans will oppose it out of reflex. When Biden pardoned the Thanksgiving turkey, I bet corners of the dark web accused him of being soft on poultry.

I’m done with the Dems being expected to do the “honorable” thing while the other side just laughs and does whatever it wants, usually to enrich themselves or provoke their opposition. It they’re going to pursue a policy that the president gets to do whatever he wants without fear of prosecution, then the same goes for the sitting president. Not that he’s even doing anything illegal; he’s doing exactly what every previous president has done, other than the part about the pardonee being family. But that’s really the inevitable result of pursuing purely political prosecutions. Hunter Biden has zero effect on anything in this country. The only reason they even looked at him was because they couldn’t find anything on his old man. Meanwhile, the crimes TFG was engaging in had huge monetary and national security repercussions, as well as physical harm done to others. No matter how people twist words, it’s just not the same.

President Biden ought to leave one more pardon for the end of his term, covering his wife, his other kids and grandchildren, his maids, landscapers, chefs, doctors, trainers, valets, mail carriers, Uber drivers, pet groomers, pizza guys, soda fountain guys, milkmen, and the lot. Call it the Pardon Me but Go Eff Yourself Act. Tell’em to stick that up their transition.

Less is Still Less

When I was a kid, I heard this “educational” story; I don’t know if it was part of school or just something that went around. But the gist of it was:

A struggling olive company was trying to figure out a way to save money. No one could come up with anything actionable until they asked an old hand from around the factory. He said, “Just put one less olive in each jar. It’s not enough that anyone will miss it, but over time it will add up to a lot of extra jars to see from the same amount of produce.” They did and the idea saved the company.

At the time, this seemed like some good old folksy wisdom. Unfortunately, the modern business culture has put that story on steroids and turned that into a core business principle: Always provide less than what people expect.

Earlier today, I looked at a bag of potato chips Sweetpea brought home from the store. It struck me that the bags used to be so much bigger. This was a standard bag, not the big “family-sized” version. I checked the net weight and it was about 7 ounces. I don’t remember the actual net weight from years gone by but I know it was a lot more than 7 ounces… 12 at least, maybe even a pound. But here we are, paying the same price (or higher) for half as much.

I also remember from my childhood when they first introduced “Fun-Sized” candy bars. I don’t know which evil executive at Nestle thought a tiny, two-bite version of what used to be a quality candy bar would be considered “fun.” As a kid, my idea of “fun-sized” would be a Snickers the size of my head. And they still shrunk the size of the regular candy bars to about half of what they were. I used to be able to get a righteous candy bar for a quarter and even then I thought it was a rip-off. (I preferred the 15-cent boxes of Spree, Lemonheads, or Sweet Tarts. You could really make those stretch for a while.) All the candy bars now are punier versions of their former selves and go for about a buck or more. They’ve taken so much value out of candy that Almond Joy might as well be called Almond Ennui.

It’s like that with everything now. The Powers That Be look at us as walking dollar signs; just one more commodity to be used up for every bit of currency they can wring out. They track our whereabouts and spending habits with internet browsers, phones, apps, credit cards, and reward cards; monetizing our very existence.

I went to KFC the other day and got a 3-piece box. The leg was the size of a wing-drum. Each thigh was about the size of a hockey puck. And the little round container of mashed potatoes that's smaller than the old cup they used to use? The bottom is concave, further reducing the size.

I went to the freezer to get some ice cream. We had a package about the size of the old half-gallon containers. Now, instead of 2 quarts of ice cream, there's only 1.44 quarts. And do you know how they do it? The packages have rounded ends rather than the old cubic rectangles. When they round off the corners, they reduce capacity. When was the last time anyone wanted less ice cream? The shrinkflation is out of hand!

They’ve turned air travel into an ordeal of finding out just how much discomfort and inconvenience we are willing to accept and still go through with it. Leg room and seat width are decreased until we’re jammed into the fuselage, cheek to cheek, without decent food and with minimal drinks. I think the only reason most airlines even offer beverage service is to distract us from how uncomfortable it is. Everything we used to get as a courtesy, food, blankets, pillows, are gone. If you’re lucky, some airlines offer to sell you these things. And then they want to complain that people are rude and cranky.

And we just lap it all up. We’re the proverbial “frog in the slowly heating pot of water,” too unconcerned with the big picture to change the trajectory of our doomed existence. They feed us celebrity bullshit listicles, and news factoids while we slowly become frog soup.

We’ve been dumbed down as a culture to the point where we just elected a president as a response to high prices, yet his only announced policies are guaranteed to make prices soar. And won’t these same people be surprised when 95% of the much-hyped next round of tax cuts goes to the super-rich and once again, the rest of us get the scraps?

It makes me want to go out and have some business cards made that say, “I fucking told you so.” I’ll give them out to anyone who voted for the new regime and then wonders whose fault it is when they can’t afford a cold 4-pack of beer. Or are in shock when the price of gas they see up on the sign is calibrated for quarts. Or someone turns BOGO into BOG0.

Yep, right after I post this I’m gonna order me a new 425-count box of cards. I heard they’re on sale for the holidays.

This has nothing to do with anything. It just makes me laugh and I need one.

Cabinetry for Dummies

So we’re a couple weeks out from the Big Reveal and I’m trying not to be bitter.

I said I’m trying… I didn’t say I was successful.

Now we’re at the “Holy Shit, He’s Really Gonna Do It” stage as he’s rolling out his cabinet nominees. Each one seems more heinous than the last. I mean, Gaetz for AG? That’s certainly putting the fox in the henhouse. I just hope there’s some way that the findings from the Congressional investigation into his sex abuse charges make their way public. Someone’s got to leak it. Dirt that good always finds the daylight, eventually.

RFK Jr in charge of  Health and Human Services? That’s like putting a Christian Scientist* in charge of the Food and Drug Administration. It’s not going to be pretty. In this case, people will likely die as a result of the new regime, especially if a new pathogen makes an appearance.

Elon Musk in charge of a new department dedicated to governmental efficiency? This guy forgot to keep some engineers on hand before decimating his Twitter staff.

I can’t wait to see what he throws MTG’s way… maybe she can be the head of NASA and build a defense system to use against those Jewish space lasers.

Perhaps he’ll name Lauren Boebert to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. She’s probably got all the research material she needs, right in her den.

These are all just preliminary nominations but I think they’re going to stick. There may be outside circumstances that do in one or another but it won’t come from Congress. After his big win, do you really think any Republican Senators are going to buck him? All TFG has to do is bark at them once and they’ll roll over and show him their bellies. They are not going to cross him, especially now when he’s got more power than ever and has free reign to legally torment anyone he chooses. These guys will be the rubberiest of rubber stamps.

I saw that President Biden met with him at the White House, a courtesy he never extended when the roles were reversed. I’ve seen people say that maybe he’ll learn something this time around for when it’s time for him to go.

First off, I don’t think he’ll ever just “go.” His nail marks will be on the door frames before he’s finally drug out of there unless it’s on a gurney. But more to the point, he won’t learn a damned thing because this is the way he thinks it’s supposed to be. People cater to him, he caters to no one. He sees such courtesies as a one-way street, always running in his direction.

The only solace I take from this sideshow is that so many of his nominees will be incompetent. His administration might as well be a homage to the Peter Principle, wherein everyone rises to their own level of incompetence. These fools won’t be able to get anything done because they’ll have fired all the people who knew how things worked.

Elon should feel right at home.

 Director’s DVD Commentary: I vacillated a bit on whether to include this explanation because I hate to explain jokes, but since these people aren’t in the headlines anymore, many may have forgotten about them or never knew.

The Christian Scientists were a slice of Christianity that didn’t believe in modern medicine. Whatever illness befell you was God’s will so the only remedy was prayer. Then if someone died, it was because they didn’t pray hard enough or were otherwise unworthy.

I first heard about them in a comedy bit by 60s satirist Tom Lehrer. When introducing a new song he mentioned that it’s been a nervous year and people were “beginning to feel like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis.”

90-Days to the Dark Ages

I still can’t get over how Muslims were moving over to voting Republican. This is even though TFG’s first move last time was to ban all immigration from Muslim countries. Well, except from Saudi Arabia. Even though they provided 19 of 20 9/11 attackers, he thought he could get a tower with his name on it built there. Money always wins out over prejudice with these guys.

Anyway, I was watching some more of those 90-Day shows last night when it all suddenly made sense.

Back in September, I wrote about getting hooked into the 90-Day Fiancé world. I even mentioned one storyline where a 41-year-old American woman was going to Jordan to marry her 22-year-old beau, who immediately began putting restrictions on her dress and behavior. (And somehow, despite the existence of the internet, she never saw coming.)

I’d only seen the first installment of their story when I wrote the post, but it’s continuing as one could foresee. The guy’s demands generate all kinds of conflict, while this woman who is old enough to be his mama is expected to do as he tells her and stop questioning him about it.

I told Sweetpea last night that they need to let me write her a speech to deliver. Something like, “Listen Anand, I was a 19-year-old woman on the day you were delivered screaming in your diapers and knew more about the world outside your insular little bubble than you’ll ever know. You did NOT gain superior wisdom by the mere happenstance of being born with a dick. Now treat me like a grown-ass modern woman or you can take that dick and find someone else for it to disappoint.”

Yes, I know she’s never say that, because she’s got “feelings” and shit about the guy, but I can dream.

There’s another storyline where a woman went to see her Arab boyfriend in South Africa for the first time but was so nervous about flying she brought her ex-boyfriend with her, which was an unbelievably stupid idea, guaranteed to cause a major fight. And it did, leading to the boyfriend storming off, shouting profanities, and wanting nothing further to do with her.

As it usually goes, they coaxed him back to talk with her, and they ironed out that little wrinkle with a heart-to-heart talk. But last night, she got to meet his friends, who immediately called her out for having bare arms and midriff and tattoos. They told her she’d be expected to become Muslim to continue to date the guy, which was not something that had previously been discussed. 

They always wait until they feel the woman is hooked before telling her about their primitive expectations.

So, now looping back to the election...

Last night it all made sense. This is why the Muslim vote is migrating to the Republicans. They’re not just a “socially conservative” society, but one that would gravitate to the kind of medieval society Republican bible-thumpers are pushing. They want women on their backs and failing that, in the kitchen. They want them docile, obedient, pliant, and unquestioning, like a pet retriever. One who lives to serve the man. They certainly weren’t going to vote for one for president.

I’m sure they also like the persecution of gays, heretics, and liberals as well; anything that cements the notion of male superiority. However, they probably underestimate the degree to which they will never fit in with the MAGAs. Even if they agree with all the policy points, they’ll never be anything more to MAGA than another raghead to deport.

“Thanks for the vote, though!”

Dark Times Ahead

Well, this one was a real kick in the sac. I think I’d rather have had the presidency stolen than accept that a majority of the country voted for a self-proclaimed Day One Dictator.

In 2016 I wrote this following that election:

November 8th, 2016 will go down in history as the day we stood up and declared that we are a small, fearful people, who would rather literally build walls than solve philosophical and economic problems.  It’s the day we rejected calm, well-reasoned decision-making for a carnival sideshow of bluster and bravado.

Why is it always the people who wrap themselves in the flag and venerate the Constitution are the ones who want to completely undo the very freedoms the Constitution provides?  They “love America,” but want to change her basic nature.

This time, it’s going to be worse because he will be surrounded by yes men, with nary a grownup to be seen in the room. There may be no stopping the damage he’s prepared to do to this country in pursuit of his own glorification and vengeance.

I know I had a bad feeling early on while watching the numbers come in. They kept saying to wait for more of the votes to be counted, but even where she was cruising, she always lagged behind Biden’s numbers. The longer it went on, the more dread amassed in my guts.

I kept waiting for that lifeline to appear, while all the peeps on my Twitter feed were saying, “Just wait, this is where we were last time and the late votes save us. But it never happened.

I went to bed around 12:30, right around the time they were saying that TFG’s lead in PA was more than they had votes left to count in Philly.

Director’s DVD Commentary: I guess I’m going to have to adopt a new non-name for “him.” For the moment, I’ll continue to use “TFG” only the F will mean something else.

Everyone’s asking the same thing, “How did this happen?” I know a lot has been written about this already, in the mere two days since Election Day. I intended to write my follow-up post on Wednesday, but I just didn’t have the heart to do it. Additionally, it doesn’t much matter now, does it? It’s done.

But here we are and I feel like I should put something out there, just to put an ending on it.

Here’s what I think happened.

The media delivered this victory to the GOP’s doorstep, by the constant sanitizing (or sane-washing) of TFG’s speeches and messaging. They never called a spade a spade and while propping up this maniac, demanded that his opponent be practically perfect, or at least cleave to the version of perfection they wanted.

Plus, the Right Wing Media outlets like Fox “News” were doing their thing to trumpet every perceived fault, blame everything bad on Democrats, and whitewash the bilge coming from their guy. These were military-grade persuasion techniques used on people who desperately wanted to believe their message. I spoke with people over the weekend, GOP supporters, who insisted that the economy was in the toilet and only TFG could fix it, all evidence to the contrary. Every argument he provided was straight off the Fox list of talking points.

They created the image of her as “Border Czar,” a position that never existed and a responsibility she never had, and spent her entire campaign attacking her for it.

They also worked hard to make people forget what a cluster-fuck his first term was, culminating in the deaths of over one million Americans due to his botched handling of COVID. By the time Fox was done, people actually believed those were the “good old days.”

Misplaced anger over the war in Gaza probably lost Michigan for the Dems, even though the next administration will be even worse for them. TFG doesn’t give a shit about people in Gaza. He’ll give the Israelis all the support they want.

Abortion wasn’t the factor we all hoped it would be and I called that out months ago, when the Red States were passing reproductive freedom guarantees. I said at the time, “There’s a big difference between voting for a single, stand-alone issue versus a name with a D beside it. You can vote for an issue without crossing a party line but not for a lousy Socialist Liberal Commie Democrat.” Modern team politics dictates that, as evidenced by seeing people pass abortion guarantees while electing the very people from whom those rights need protection.

I will never understand the women who just voted to reduce their own standing in society, giving up the right to determine the use of their own bodies.

Latino men moving en masse to TFG is incomprehensible to me. I see all the analysis about how they come from a socially conservative culture but you’d think self-preservation might weigh heavier when the guy they’re supporting wants mass deportations. Do they think voting Republican somehow spares them? They’d better have their documentation stapled to their underwear when the troops start rounding up all the brown guys. I don’t think they’ll be too particular about who they detain. I’m envisioning a “pick’em all up now and sort’em out later” kind of vibe. But this feeds what I think is the primary issue.

Too many people won’t vote for a woman for president, especially a woman of color. You can see it in the results. She kept coming in below Biden’s numbers. She was his GD vice president! They make up the same Administration. Sure there are some minor differences but considering the opponent, how important were they?

The biggest difference was that of gender and there are too many people for whom that’s a deal breaker. I’m sure that was a factor in the Latino shift. In addition to being socially conservative, the ethos is patriarchal, so I’m betting that a lot of these guys feel that voting for a woman would make them less of a man. Less of a caveman, anyway.

Like many others, I’m not sure what I will do with this space. This political intrigue and coverage over the last decade has been a grind. Maybe I’ll do like my pal Hackwhacker and lay low for a while. Or maybe I’ll find something else to write about. Like the rest of us, I will have to figure it out as we go. We’ve got two months of sanity remaining.

See you on the other side.

Apocalypse Eve?

Welp, here we are on another precipice. Tomorrow night we’ll get a good look at what our future may bring, if not certainty. We’ll get to see who’s been right all along and who’s full of shit. Are the polls right and this will be a photo-finish horse race? Will the Libs be correct that large pockets of undeclared Blue Voters have been keeping their leanings to themselves? Or will the MAGAs be right (shudder) and their guy wins in a landslide?

And if the Left is right, how far will TFG guy go to overturn the election, and can such an effort possibly be successful?

Last week, Martin Longman at Progress Pond wrote one of the scariest “What-ifs” I’ve seen to date, outlining the most likely chain of events that would lead to The Former Guy becoming The Returning Guy.

The basic idea is that the Republicans win the House and then with voter fraud accusations being thrown around (by themselves and their proxies) stall on electing a speaker. We KNOW they won’t have a problem with that, given how long it took them to come up with a Speaker under ordinary circumstances. If they can stall until January 20^th, when the current administration expires, there will be no president or vice president in office. Then they elect TFG as Speaker and the chain of succession elevates him to the presidency. (There are other sub-factors, like having to win some court battles, but that’s the gist of it.)

I find this scenario terrifying, not only because it follows established law, but the GOP would have no qualms about seizing power this way. The one giant snag here is that they have to win the House and that’s a big IF. I’d be surprised if the Dems hold the Senate, but the House seems attainable. Over the past two years the gap has narrowed so it won’t take that many flipped seats to change the control. And because every House seat is up for renewal every year, there can be big turnover when there’s a major change to the status quo, like the Dodd decision.

Suffice it to say that every seat is important in this election. Every win will be huge and every loss, devastating.

I don’t know what more there is to say about it; we just have to wait to see if sanity will reign or we’ll be plunged back into chaos.

I expect that I’ll have another post out on Wednesday or Thursday, depending on how and when things shake out. Although in fair warning, if TFG wins, my post won’t be anything more than withering profanity and guttural howling.

See you on the other side…

 

Final Arguments

Early voting is going strong, and we’re only eight days from Election Day (as of this writing), so we’re down to the nitty-gritty. Several weeks ago, I voted via drop-off box and have been notified that my vote has been counted. That’s how it works in a state where they want everyone to vote.

If you’re reading this now, you’re probably not in need of persuasion to vote a straight blue ticket, but it will make me feel better if I can provide some hardcore truths about this race. Maybe it will help if you convince someone you know who is undecided and uninformed.

·         TFG is a hypocrite who criticizes his opponents for things he does himself all the time.

·    The Republican candidate lies like it’s his job. They reported that he unleashed over 30,000 lies during his administration and probably 30,000 more in the following years. Some of them cost people their lives, during the COVID crisis and January 6th. Others are just his way of doing business.

·       TFG and his people have unleashed the most terrifying plan for the country since it began, one that will lead to the disenfranchisement of millions, separation of families, consolidation of power and capital under a small cluster of rich white men, and the effective end of the republic, and the plan is called Project 2025.

·       The orange phony is the least intelligent, least qualified, least curious person to ever seek or hold this office. It’s rich that he and his people call his opponent stupid. Listen to each of them speak for a minute or so and it’s clear who is smart and who is an ass-clown with the 4^th-grade vocabulary. Forty out of forty-four of his own former cabinet members plus his Vice President think he’s unqualified for the job and a danger to the country and have said so in public. That is unheard of in modern politics.

·       He intends to empower those who would devalue and enslave women, treating them as breeding property rather than sentient, self-determining beings, under the myth that they are preserving “life.” They preach “small government,” but their idea of government reaches into your bedroom and even your uterus. His people (and judges) are also coming for birth control, same-sex marriage, and possibly women’s suffrage.

·       Dolt 45 has no plan to bring down inflation. His two plans of action, levying wide tariffs and deporting immigrants would cause prices to soar. VP Harris supports a plan to fight price gouging and he and the rest of the Republicans went crazy fighting it, as they do any plan that helps average Americans. Big-moneyed Republican donors want high prices and low wages. That’s the best-case scenario for “them,” and not “us.”

·       TFG and his enablers are already planning on how to steal the election. He will claim victory on Election Night and set loose an army of lawyers and hooligans to intimidate election workers and state government officials. They’re not even trying to hide it anymore. Maryland’s lone GOP US Representative thinks they should award TFG some North Carolina Electoral College votes before the election because a hurricane might have made it hard for his supporters to vote.

·       He is in bed with the worst kind of people, white supremacists, Christian nationalists, racists, sexists, and many other “ists.” These are people interested in keeping governmental (and monetary control with wealthy, white, (pseudo)Christian, males. The racism isn’t even hidden anymore. Did you see his show at MSG? The racism was the marquee event.

·       TFG desperately wants the Religious Right’s votes but doesn’t give a fig about what they stand for. And now, neither do they. Republicans have managed to turn people who worship a man who preached about accepting foreigners, not throwing stones, giving money to the poor, and not judging, into supporting a party that practices the antithesis of every one of those points.

·       I would vote for a brick before this guy because a brick would do less damage to the nation. Luckily we can vote for a highly qualified, smart, tough, empathetic woman instead. She makes lucid points, speaks in complete sentences, has tangible plans for the country which are easy to locate, and that’s a very low bar that the other guy can’t even think of getting under. In any rational culture, she’d be polling at 90%. If you’re rich, racist, sexist, homophobic, evangelical, or nationalist, vote Republican. If not, there’s only one sane alternative.

Director’s DVD commentary: These are only the first points off the top of my head. There are dozens of other reasons why he shouldn’t be president, like sexual harassment and rape charges/convictions, hush money, business fraud, being a Russian operative/stooge, leaking security secrets, blackmailing other countries for personal gain, violating the Emoluments Clause, raking in taxpayer dollars by staying at his own properties and charging the government for his staff and security detail to stay there, and… well, it never ends. But this post has to.

Identifying a Hit Piece

Mainstream media is letting the country down in a big way, by abandoning their traditional roles of truth-tellers in favor of exhibiting favoritism. And I don’t mean leaning one way or another in editorials; I mean writing most stories (outside the sports page) with bias, either cheerleading or condemning as their side would have it.

The most obvious symptom is the sanewashing of TFG, whose daily ravings get reformatted by news editors into something that might make sense. Offensive or off-putting material is ignored or translated, leaving readers and viewers with a vastly different view from what was actually said.

Just over the weekend, TFG decided to make the late Arnie Palmer’s dick into headline news. Sure, we’ve all heard about it not, but not until after the New York Times posted about the appearance and cleaned up the reference, before indirectly mentioning the reference, before the leaked word of mouth eventually caused them to report on what was said. In other words, they had to be dragged into doing their jobs.

This is going on with multiple media outlets day after day. If any one of these word salad ramblings had come from the President or Vice President, it would have been the top story for several news cycles. But because A) they want a horserace and B) the ownership and publishers want their thumb on the scale for the Republicans (which benefits their massive corporate operations) they reshape the news to deprive independent and undecided people of information that may influence them to vote Democratic.

I have another example from the front page of Saturday’s Baltimore Sun. While it’s not focusing on the presidential race, it’s taking shots at the sitting Democratic governor, Wes Moore and it uses many of the same biased techniques we find in the presidential coverage.

You know it’s going to be a hit piece when Fox 45 appears in the byline. They’re a local Fox affiliate that specializes in ambush TV journalism, popping up out of nowhere to pepper local pols with questions while on their way to their cars and then running the most flustered responses.

The point of the article is that Governor Moore is out campaigning while juvenile crime happens.

This is a classic construction, “How can they do ‘this’ while ‘this other thing’ is happening? The details don’t matter, you can fill in the blanks. It’s like, “How can we send money to Ukraine while there are homeless veterans? or How can you talk about mass transit when housing prices are so high?” The answer is usually, “We can do two things at once,” but that seems to be beyond the reach of these “content providers.”

No public official actively works on a single problem 24/7/365. And solving “youth crime” is like solving homelessness or poverty. It ain’t happening by anyone any time soon. And it’s not like there wasn’t youth crime during the previous (Republican) administration. Youth crime doesn’t get solved until there are enough other ways to make enough money to compete with gang or drug life. These guys aren’t going to start working at Arby’s or picking crabs down on the shore, so any solution would need to be massive and grassroots, just like the kind of proposal Republicans always shoot down as too expensive. But that former governor is running for Senator so they want to dirty up his Democratic successor.

So it goes on to say that the Governor’s Administration “broke its silence” on the issue. Watch out for that phrase wherever you see it. That is almost always a false construction. Breaking one’s silence assumes there is an actual, willful silence to begin with, which is different than merely not having said anything yet. I’m just “breaking my silence” on youth crime today. Did I have a silence before? Nope, I just haven’t talked about it yet. If anyone would have asked earlier, I’d have been happy to discuss it. It’s hardly a groundbreaking event.

So, where is the Administration’s statement? We don’t know yet. Next, they go to some critic who wants to add his own two cents. This guy, they breathlessly point out, is a Democrat who wants to speak negatively on the subject. All the complaining and snide inferences are on the front page column. The Governor’s actual statement is buried on the last page of the front section, after the furniture ads.

This is what the media has come to. As a former J-school student, I’m pained by what passes for news coverage today. Unfortunately, I don’t see it improving in the near or distant future. Like almost every other commodity in the 2000s, the news is monetized to the max. There is no point if it doesn’t make money or accumulate power. And with the continued contraction of every industry into no more than several major players, all the news will be bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated to convince you that what’s best for the biggest corporations just happens to be the same as what’s best for you.

It’s just that they’ll be raking in the money and we won’t.

The Price of Admission

What amazes me about the MAGA movement is how they got 40% of the population to believe in verifiable nonsense. I mean, if you don’t tow the Company Line on whatever their leadership spouts off on a given day, you’re out of the club. Look what they make you believe:

Donald Trump won the 2020 election and the January 6^th gathering was a peaceful meeting of civic-minded citizens who merely wanted to support the president. Yes, despite 60 failed court cases, reams of evidence produced before Congress, and our own eyes that saw the violence and damage done live on TV, they still think that somehow evil Democrats skewed the election results across a dozen states including those run by Republicans, left no evidence, and didn’t bother to include Democratic Congressional or Gubernatorial races. No sane person can believe that, putting this article of faith on par with turning water into Jack Daniels.

Democrats can and do control the weather so that hurricanes are sent to red states. I never thought this would get picked up by the MAGAs and Q-tards (because it wasn’t TFG who said it) but there it was last week on my Facebook feed; a bunch of conspiracy drivel forwarded from a MAGA acquaintance, crowing about how this was just proven correct (and naturally all their other batshit theories were correct too). MT Greene needs to take a refresher high school science class before she is allowed back into the Capitol. Or to stand in front of a microphone.

Republicans only push for voter ID to safeguard elections. Yes, for themselves. This would only be plausible if they weren’t using what the North Carolina State Supreme Court described as “surgical precision” to limit acceptable forms of ID that their opponents were deemed least likely to have. But they were, as their internal emails to each other described in detail.

Republicans are better for the economy than Democrats. This is false now and has been since the 60s. Every spike in our economic numbers has come after a Democratic administration stepped in to fix a Recession left by Republicans. Right now, inflation is down, Wall Street is hitting record numbers every other week, joblessness is down, and wages are up. Unfortunately, price gouging is still up, given the recent record corporate profits. When the Dems proposed limits on price gouging, Republicans went nuts fighting against it. Why do you think that is? It’s because their benefactors are the ones doing the gouging. Letting them back in charge of the economy only guarantees that the gouging continues.

JD Vance had a chance recently to address the insane cost of child care by offering a Republican plan:

Republicans have no plan to reduce the cost of child care, housing, groceries, or anything else.

Immigrants are criminals. It doesn’t really matter to Republicans if immigrants are legal or not; they don’t want the brown ones around. So whenever an immigrant commits some terrible crime, it’s trumpeted all over the right-wing media echo chamber, while dozens of similar crimes committed by dumbass white men aren’t addressed at all. They’re all about demonizing immigrants even though statistics show that they are far less likely to commit crimes here than the natives. It’s like they’re fighting for our rights to only be killed by white American men.

They had a chance to address immigration in a real way but torpedoed that in favor of bitching about the status quo as a campaign issue. This daily comic from last week’s paper nailed it completely:

So does this one:

Democrats are controlled by billionaire George Soros, who they say bankrolls every group and social justice program they don’t like. Republicans have dozens, if not hundreds of Soroses bankrolling everything they do, from creating disinformation campaigns to buying Supreme Court judgeships. Those who fund the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society are far more threatening to the union than a single do-gooder whose money is spent on issues that may end up costing him money from his fortune. The difference is that he does it for the benefit of society and these other rich fucks do it to increase and safeguard their own fortunes. I saw this in the paper last week and included it here for one reason; the best F.U. I’ve seen in print in years.

This is another Baltimore Sun article provided by Fox 45/Sinclair Broadcasting. They’re trying to do a hit piece on Soros and whatever group he’s bankrolling here. I don’t really care about that, but look what the group’s spokesman told the reporter: “Sinclair is not a serious media organization…I am only choosing to engage you because I wanted you to know directly how little regard I have for you all professionally.”

Game, set, match.

The “liberal media” is still a thing. After all the mergers and takeovers left the nation’s media in the hands of only a few giant corporate entities, the notion that the media skews liberal is laughable. Just look at how TFG is covered. No one is even touching on the dangerous drivel that comes out of his pursed mouth. They call it sanewashing now, as in leaving out the more bizarre and threatening language and printing what they think he means. There are no doubt still some liberal reporters and writers, but the direction of newspapers and newsrooms is determined far above the reporter position, in the boardroom. They order the direction and it’s up to everyone else to make it so.

Democrats want to raise your taxes. No, Democrats want to raise taxes on the rich, which is something left out of every Republican anti-tax ad. Dems propose raising taxes on those making more than $400k. And the notion of taxing unrealized capital gains applies to an even smaller percentage:

Republicans don’t want to highlight that distinction, they’d rather make you think the liberals are coming for YOU, which is all the better for THEM.

Donald Trump cares about the working man. I would love to see an example of TFG doing something for the average citizen that doesn’t somehow benefit himself. To him, we’re all just commodities to be programmed to vote for him and feed his ego. Last week, Taylor Swift donated five million bucks for hurricane victim assistance. Dolly Parton donated two million.  Have you heard of any equitable donations from big Republican figures? Of course not… there’s nothing in it for them. They might not even get votes out of it if they can’t get their infrastructure together by Election Day. They’d much rather campaign on blaming Democrats for whatever modern problems arise. That’s all they’ve got.

That, and a full-speed sprint towards Fascism.