It's All Part of the Plan

Our Clown-in-Chief said more stupid things last week, most of which occurred at his Big Texas Circle Jerk. One of the more terrifying tidbits was that he expects The War That Isn’t a War to end after the elections.

There are a couple of angles to this.

First off, you could say he knows he can’t end the war before then. So then, any other time will be, by definition, “after the war.” But that’s just the literal aspect.

The second point, the one that scares me, is that the means by which he intends to end the war will be so distasteful that he needs it to be after the elections, or else it will negatively affect the vote. As if there aren’t a dozen other atrocities that weigh on the scale right now.

The first thing that comes to mind is the use of nukes, which will roil the oil market and send gas prices into the stratosphere for decades, and probably dam up the Strait for good. After that, oil will seem like a quaint idea when we can’t get enough fertilizer to grow nation-sustaining crops.

And, of course, there is the horrific, massive loss of innocent life that happens any time a nuclear bomb is used. Of course, to this Administration, the fact that these will be brown people with weird names mitigates the damage.

Then there is the possibility of in-kind retaliation, either by a foreign state or an independent terrorist with a suitcase nuke. After a national tragedy like 9/11, the nation came together. If such an emergency happens again, I don’t think we’ll see such a unified front. The race to blame political opponents and exact revenge will short-circuit everything else. And it’s exactly the kind of thing TFG would use to declare martial law and assert power indefinitely.

It’s funny that in the best possible outcome, he’s just blowing his usual torrent of lies and exaggerations. But you never really know with this guy.

 

The other big item was his $5,000 bribe to vote Republican in November. The fact that he continually proposes handing out cash, without it ever happening, practically guarantees that zero cash will ever be forthcoming. No one is taking this “offer” seriously, except maybe a few MAGAs who are still waiting for their special NFTs to turn a profit, or their gold shoes to show up.

The national Republican apparatus was quick to cast doubt on the prospect, but they may not be in on the possible endgame.

Consider the fact that Republicans can be relied on to do two things:

·         Spike the deficit when they’re in power by slashing taxes for the rich.

·         Demand a balanced budget when the Democrats are in power.

It seems to be their most effective weapon, even though anyone who’s been paying attention for the last 45 years can see the pattern. We Americans have the national attention span of a flea.

So if this giveaway spikes the deficit even more, it only adds to the case Republicans are sure to bring in the future: that spending needs to be slashed because of the deficit. (Assuming we can ever actually remove the current occupant.)

What’s one of any future Democratic administration’s priorities? It had better be de-Trumpifying the government, via un-naming things he smeared his logo on or built in his own honor, restoring the governmental departments that have been gutted, and rehiring tens of thousands of government workers to staff them. That’s going to take a lot of money, and we won’t have it. And no matter how the Congressional makeup turns out, the fat cats will buy off just enough Democrats to guarantee that no substantial changes are made to the tax code that require that the rich kick in more.

So, spiraling the deficit is the Republicans’ insurance policy to keep the government the way they just made it: built by and for the Rich. Doing it via handout makes it seem like they’re trying to help the little guy.

But tell me, in what way is robbing every citizen of $10,000* and then giving them back $5,000 considered “help?”

*Or whatever the number comes to that we’ve overpaid for tariffed goods, medical services brought on by getting sick via our uninspected food or unvaccinated virus carriers.

They’re counting on us to forget about all that, just like we forget who contributes the most to the annual deficit. I vote that we remember this ploy in this and every November.

 

Blogging Note

If you have a blog using Blogger/Blogspot, have you noticed if your blogroll has stopped updating? As of today, mine has been stuck at what it showed five days ago. I’ve seen at least one other blog with the same problem, so I know it’s not just me. Any ideas as to the cause, or what to do about it?

Tariffs and Gold

It was kind of surprising to see the Supreme Court rule against the current Administration when it struck down the president’s unilateral tariffs. They haven’t voted against him very often and are seen to be in his pocket. But there’s subtlety at play here. The six conservative Supremes aren’t necessarily as loyal to the president as they are to the rich and Republican (with a sub-loyalty to religious wingnuts). When their interests align, they’re happy to overturn precedent and upset the apple cart.

But with the tariffs, the big-money crowd values a predictable and reliable economic atmosphere, and having a toddler throwing tariff tantrums when the mood hits him is unsettling. It shakes the stability that they need to milk the Market to the degree to which they’re accustomed.

Decision aside, we’re still in the same place because the Emperor is now pushing a 15% global tariff, as revenge for having been told “no.”

Talk immediately jumped to the prospect of refunding the tariffs paid, which is problematic. The payments should really go to the US citizens, not the vendors. The vendors who first paid the tariffs have already been reimbursed by us through raised prices. The Government paying them back would be double-dipping, unless the vendors were required to then reimburse those who bought their goods and services at the tariff-heightened prices.

Do you really think that’s going to happen? In fact, how would it even be possible? How would they know who to reimburse and for how much?

I imagine people who used a grocery store loyalty card might have left usable tracks. And there may be some help from credit card records. But those who paid cash or didn’t participate in store points programs would be SOL.

So, the alternative would be for the government to refund us directly. And because they would be just as limited in tracking individual purchases as retailers, the only fair way to do it is a universal check distribution. And that will never happen. This government will never part with cash money to be sent back to the unwashed masses.

And who knows where that money even is? It wouldn’t surprise me if all the tariff money was funneled to another offshore bank in Qatar, controlled by You Know Who. Maybe that’s why he’s so dead-set on imposing tariffs, despite presumably being told by everyone, from cabinet members to donors, that tariffs are direct taxes on US citizens and not a fund received from foreign countries. It’s another grift for his personal benefit. And that’s all we are to him: a source of revenue to be harvested upwards.

So I’m not holding my breath on the chance of seeing some money falling back down to the common citizens. If anything, the vendors will get a refund, which will then be used for bonuses and stock buy-backs, just like the tax windfalls of the past. Once again, the wealthy benefit, and the rest of us get screwed.

Going for the Gold

I enjoyed watching the Olympics again this year. As a retiree with my afternoons open, I was able to watch a lot of the live coverage during the day. Then I could pick and choose what to watch during the evening recaps.

 My newest T-shirt.

Watching yesterday’s gold medal hockey game between the US and Canada was thrilling. Just from a purely hockey perspective, the game was tremendous; everything a hockey fan would want out of a game. It was a fast-paced, hard-hitting, and hard-skating game that went down to the wire in overtime.

I was rooting for Team USA, but not as rabidly as I might have in the past. Part of me wants to express dissatisfaction with the state of things in the US, but the other part of me knows that it’s not the athletes who are to blame. I mainly root for the players who play for my favored NHL team, the Pittsburgh Penguins. If the Penguins’ Sidney Crosby had been playing for Canada (rather than having given up his spot due to injury), I might have drifted over to their side.

Who ended up in the US locker-room celebrating but FBI chief, Kash Patel, who apparently had nothing pressing to do this week? 

Waste of Kash.

Maybe he was looking for his girlfriend in there. That certainly justifies commandeering a government plane to fly to Italy on the taxpayer’s dime. I suppose he’s just emulating his boss, who also loves crashing sports teams’ celebrations that have nothing to do with him. It’s no wonder they need to bask in other people’s glory; they create so little of their own.

The women’s hockey finals were just as captivating, as they also went into overtime. The Canadians tied up a 1-0 game late, then the US won it in OT on a great inside dangle and a point-blank shot from the crease. (Sorry, that’s a lot of hockey lingo!) Although sadly without the name recognition, I found the women’s game just as captivating and well-played as the men’s final. It was a great week for hockey. The men should have supported them better when the president made light of them on his call to the team.

I’m always fascinated by the high-flying and high-speed sports like the ski-jumping and half-pipe acrobatics. It amazes me how people can learn how to do that without maiming themselves.

The skating was enjoyable as well. I felt terrible for our big men’s singles threat, Ilia Malinin, the “Quad God,” who, after all the hype, totally ate it on his long-routine performance. But I loved that our women’s contestant, Alysa Liu, won gold on a tremendous performance. She had such a positive attitude that it made it easy to root for her.

Short Track Speed Skating, singles or relays, is like a combination of skating fast and human bowling. It’s just chaos in motion, and every so often, there’s a huge crash, and people go flying.

I’ve always thought I’d like to take a ride on a bobsled because it looks like so much fun. Then I saw accounts from famous fans who tried, Jason Kelce and SNL’s Colin Jost. Both made clear how utterly terrifying and physically jarring their ride was. So maybe I’ll just leave it at watching from the sofa. I don’t need to start chiropractor treatments anytime soon.

I have to really hand it to those brave souls who do the luge (going feet-first down the bobsled track on an open sled), or skeleton (same thing, only head-first). I think “skeleton” is an apt name for that event. I bet there are dozens of them buried near the practice track.

I watched a little curling early on, but it seemed like the coverage never ended. CNBC was practically locked onto curling coverage, to the point that their “C” might as well have stood for “Curling.” Bocce on ice… got it.

I was watching the gorgeous Mikaela Shiffrin win a slalom event and noticed how much she looks like Kylie Kelce (podcasting wife of aforementioned Jason). A couple of days later, I see the two of them talking about that very thing on Kylie’s podcast. They may not be identical, but they sure look like sisters to me.

Hotness either way you go.

So, now that we’re done playing international games to demonstrate peace, cooperation, and sportsmanship, it’s time to start a war with Iran. Stay tuned.

Kirk Out

 I first saw the news on Facebook that Charlie Kirk was shot while I was at my first baseball game of the year. My first thought was, "If this were one of ours, there's going to be hell to pay." And that thought was confirmed within minutes as the threats and promises of retaliation against Democrats, Liberals, and Trans people (aka "them/they") came flooding out. It was almost as if they already had this stuff in the chamber, ready for the first provocation. 

Now, for the obligatory disclaimer, I'm neither celebrating nor calling for anyone to be killed. No Democrats are, really, outside of the delusions of the Right Wing bubble. Although I'll admit that many will not be too broken up if a certain orange charlatan takes one too many bites of well-done steak, a chunk of cholesterol breaks off and lodges in a cardiac artery. But no one is actually condoning violence, except the usual suspects, including the recently deceased. 

South Park really had this guy down in their second episode of the season. One of the subplots involved Cartman fighting with another student, whom he accused of "stealing my schtick" of being aggressively anti-gay, anti-minority, anti-trans, pro-gun, etc. They showed Cartman going to campuses and "debating" college students, where he would basically dismiss everything they said, change the subject to one where he could spout off one of his familiar talking points (one for which the student was neither prepared nor interested), and then claim victory over another stupid college student. I understand the network has since pulled the episode from streaming. I'm sure it was the network. Matt and Trey never would have considered it.

I'm not celebrating, I'm just saying that the world is better off without a guy who says stuff like that. Every single point up there is abhorrent. But for the outrage and vitriol spewed forth online, you'd think someone dropped a log on Rush Limbaugh's grave.

I saw a lot of posts hurling accusations at "Them," like, "They killed Charlie Kirk, wait until we start killing them." Remember that at that time, no one knew who the killer was. All the death threats and impending violence were predicated on an assumption, and you know what happens when you make an assumption... "You make an ass out of you, and umption." (Per Samuel L Jackson in The Long Kiss Goodnight.) In fact, every MAGA post from the time of the shooting to the time they identified the suspect was WRONG. Wrong in facts, wrong in tone, and wrong in morality. It was as if they were all just waiting for the right cover to start taking people out, rolling out the military, and declaring martial law.

The Democrats I know and saw were saying things like, "Let's see what happens, let's wait until we have a suspect, let's not jump to conclusions." But things like "waiting" and "facts" aren't really in the MAGA arsenal.

Let's get this straight. This is a brief record of violence coming from the Right. 

Just try to think of a notorious violent act perpetrated by someone on the Left, for political reasons. And I mean real things, not like the usual Fox "News" allegations that the Clintons had people murdered and unsubstantiated garbage like that. I can't think of a single one. Modern political violence is solely the province of the radical Right and the MAGAs.

So, then we had a couple of days of FBI announcements that proved to be untrue, from having a suspect in custody (they didn't) to claims of anti-trans messaging on the shell casings (it wasn't). Law enforcement went from withholding all available information to eventually pleading for help from the locals. It wasn't until a nearby resident and his minister convinced his son to turn himself in that federal and local law enforcement had any degree of success. 

It turned out that this killer was just like so many of his predecessors: Male, white, straight, Christian, Conservative, gun enthusiasts. How very cliche. 

It turned out that this guy was a follower of Nick Fuentes (whose devotees are known as "groypers"), as evidenced by the groyper catch-phrases etched on some of the bullet casings. Groypers apparently had beef with Kirk followers after Kirk called for the Epstein files to be released. One can only conclude that this whole episode is inter-family MAGA on MAGA violence.

Many people thought this would calm the Right Wing fury raging through the nation, as evidenced by these memes:.. 

But that would be wrong... Because the Right never admits when they're wrong, nor do they accept blame for anything, ever, they began looking for angles to keep the blame on the Left. 

One angle was that by alleging that the killer's trans-female roommate, for some reason, radicalized him. The even funnier angle was blaming his one semester at a Utah state university, several years ago, for brainwashing him into a Radical Left activist. That's right... one semester, at a Utah university. Totally a hotbed of liberalism. It was either that or the trade school he's been attending since then. 

This is what it's come to: relying on their own cloistered echo-chamber to drum up believable lies for their followers to latch onto. This is one of the reasons why they spend so much time denigrating higher education: it makes a great instant scapegoat and requires no nuance or detail. Just blame college.

I think this, too, will eventually die down, and we'll go back to watching in horror as the current occupant destroys another sector of the country, the way his ICE-holes just did down in Georgia, costing them a multi-billion dollar factory. You have to hand it to him: he fucks with his own people just as badly as his opponents. 

He set up an apparatus where it only took one "concerned citizen" to report that there were a bunch of foreigners hanging around this building. No one bothered to research what was going on there, or they might have found that a team of South Koreans (our allies) was there to train Americans on battery production for a fabulous new business. But no, they just sent in the Gestapo to round up the ferners and treat them like war criminals. They were bound, bent over, humiliated, deprived of daylight, let alone liberty, all without due (or any) process. And then the asshole wants to be surprised when they refuse to come back.

Jesus H. Christ, these people are idiots. I'm starting to think that the best thing that can happen is that the government does get shut down at the end of the month. At least that might limit the damage they're doing to the country.

Hitting Home

Sorry for the late post this week, I was crammed yesterday. Onward…

Last week, in Nan’s Notebook, she asked a good question about how the current Administration’s actions directly affect us. Not big-picture stuff like the end of the Nation as we know it, but tangible effects felt by real citizens. I was going to answer, but once I thought about it for a second, I realized there was enough for a full post. So, not wishing to carry on so long in someone else’s Comment section, I decided to bring it here.

Yes, there are several important ways TFG is screwing me, right now, aside from his failed (and never actually intended) promise to lower grocery costs.

·      The threat of losing Social Security and Medicare colors everything right now. Republicans have the opportunity to accomplish that for rich benefactors have been yearning for decades, which is killing or curtailing our social safety net. Without these things, personal savings vehicles become paramount.

·      To that end, the new economic uncertainty we see around us cost my 401k over $10,000 in just the last week and a half. I just finished moving the rest of my 401k investments around into safer but lower-yielding options. (And I had them in fairly conservative entities to start.) I had considered such moves before the 2008 Big Bank collapse but never pulled the trigger. Consequently I got my ass handed to me, financially. It took me years to recover from those losses.

·       Tariffs on steel and other construction goods will increase the cost of new cars. My job involves managing a fleet of cars for my company. Driving up the price of a new car will affect the efficiency of the operation. If the cost gets too high, the Powers That Be may end this particular program and fold up the fleet for good, rendering me unemployed.

So, to summarize, I could easily lose my job, Social Security, personal retirement savings, and affordable insurance. How’s that for tangible effects? I used to have a solid retirement plan that would be executed in the next couple of years, but now that plan is on hold—all because the richest men in America want more.

Other more speculative issues include:

·      The end of our democracy, leaving me and everyone else disenfranchised. I think we’ve seen our last clean presidential election, and I’m not even sure about the midterms. I believe that the reason all this chaos has been unleashed, including touching Social Security, the famed “Third Rail of Politics, is because they don’t plan on allowing the rest of us to weigh in again with our measly “voting rights” again. They paid a lot of money to get things the way they’re going now and they won’t let “the people” anywhere near the levers of power again. GOP Congressmen are condemning their own angry supporters at town halls as paid actors or just running away. They don’t seem to have any fear of reprisals. They’d rather rely on their faith that the newly rigged system will keep their place at the trough so that they don’t have to justify their behavior to the unwashed masses out of the need to con them into giving him their votes again.

·       This international belligerence may prod some wingnut, foreign or domestic, to set off a nuke in Washington DC. Living nearby in Baltimore, I’m in the danger zone, depending on the device involved.

·       I have to worry about wearing my new Ohio State/College Football Championship hat because it’s red and might get mistaken for a MAGA hat. That could get me shot while I’m sitting in the car at a red light.

And there’s more, there’s always more because we don’t know what atrocities this asshole is going to unleash next. It certainly won’t be anything that can quantifiably make our lives better. And we don’t even have to wait for the next shoe to drop; he’s got a big speech on TV tonight where I’m sure the next outrage will be revealed.

It’s not like I’ll be tuning in, though. I’d rather watch a monkey pleasure himself than listen to that guy give a speech, despite the conceptual similarities between the two. I’ll get the gist of it in tomorrow’s news and blogs.

I Long for Yesterday

I managed to avoid coverage, yesterday, of the beginning of the end of our democracy. From what I’ve heard, I didn’t miss anything but the groundwork being laid for an administration rife with misinformation, lies, greed, and callous disregard for public service. And sitting right up front were the filthy rich, without whose direct involvement, the average American might still have a chance.

Well, Red America, you got what you wanted. How’d you like that immediate raising of Medicare drug prices? At least it’s not eggs, right? (Yet.)

And today’s snowstorms on the Gulf Coast and other southern states? Get used to it. There will be no more attention paid to climate change, the results of which we’ve been getting hammered with for the last decade. Yes, I know your limited information leaves you wondering why global warming makes it cold, but that’s what happens when Arctic ice melts and airflow patterns change, pushing jet streams out of their usual places. But sure, pull out of the Paris climate accords, so we’re one of four countries not included (along with the climate geniuses in Yemen, Iran, and Libya). You and Fox “News” are right and the rest of the civilized and uncivilized world is wrong. You betcha.

And with the new bird flu on the horizon, our nation’s health will be handed over to some schmuck with zero medical experience and a lot of wrong ideas about medicine that has eradicated diseases from the modern world for a century.

We’ll need to bring in a mathematician to keep track of all the needless deaths from disease, medical neglect, and insurance logjams, that is, if there is anyone left who remembers how to math.

The thing I’m most distressed about is that there is no longer a mechanism for sounding the alarm about what the consequences will be when 47’s actions bear fruit. The news industry has given up investigation and reporting in favor of cheerleading because the big businesses that own all the networks and newspaper companies decided to abandon their journalistic obligations in lieu of currying favor with the once and current emperor. Social media CEOs have turned belly up as well, dashing the idea of fact-checking and preventing life-threatening disinformation from taking root on their platforms. The only people who want to get rid of fact-checking are habitual liars, who need their bullshit to spread unimpeded. But that’s who they’re throwing in with, to keep those ad dollars flooding in.

Once upon a time, journalists stood tall and firm, united against autocrats. There are still some out there too, if only their boardroom overlords would allow their voices to be heard. (Hi Jim Acosta! Hope you enjoy your new overnight shift at CNN!)

No, this new administration laid the groundwork with threats and clandestine meetings, to make sure that their own statements would be amplified, with any opposition reduced to lone voices, wailing in the distance. To disobey would mean an onslaught of federal lawsuits, IRS audits, and costly new regulations. Naturally, there wasn’t a strong backbone to be found amid the business world nor the political one, not even the Democrats. They seem to have accepted their servitude and oncoming irrelevance and disappeared into the woodwork. Nice going fellas… and be sure to keep sending those fundraising emails! Be sure to list all your “accomplishments,” too.

It won’t be long before they come for the bloggers too. The Imbecile in Chief will put pressure on the platform bosses and next thing you know, they’ll have moved “content management” from Facebook to Blogger, from Twitter to WordPress. Maybe we’ll have to resort to smoke signals. You know the EPA won’t step in… there will no longer BE an EPA. It’ll disappear right along with the Department of Education. That way, Americans not only get poisoned by the air and water, they won’t even know how to read the warnings. (You know, from bloggers’ smoke signals. It’s not like they’re going to hear about it on the news.)

And the worst part of all this? Even if, by some miracle, there IS a massive case of Buyer’s Remorse, come November 2028, we can’t expect that there will be an honest election. Guess who’s already working on putting more limits and restrictions on voting.

This 100% follows the Republican playbook wherein they create a prevailing atmosphere of suspicion around the voting process and then “fix” it in a way that plays to their advantage. (Like only having the upper crust vote.) By the time they’re done, the only way we get to place a vote will be with a secret code that they only give you upon completion of your MBA.

I think President Biden did the best job he could, under the circumstances. He left the country in good shape so that the blame for any tanking will fall on the new Administration, at least until Fox and friends can jerry-rig a way to call a spade a club and blame the Democrats anyway.

I’m glad he distributed pardons to Dr. Fauci, the 1/6 Committee, and his family. If the Republicans are going to use the Justice system to play offense, the least we can do is play some defense. There’s no doubt in my mind that they would follow through with these threatened prosecutions despite zero evidence of wrongdoing, even if it was just to make their adversaries pay out the nose for massive legal fees. That can set you up for a world of hurt… just ask Rudy. Although this is America, even after working day and night to overthrow a free election, he still gets to keep his World Series rings.

What a great time to be a white, male, Republican.

Lord of the Bobsled

 Happy Day/Week After Christmas. Ours was awesome; I hope yours was too. We hosted a Christmas breakfast/party for the first time in two years. We invite our families and any stray/single people with nothing else in particular to do. This has been Sweetpea’s tradition since long before I met her, but we had to cancel it the last two years, due to the ‘Rona.

Since I’m not really up to posting anything new today, I figured I’d dig out an old favorite from 2010, a little something funny and lightly blasphemous, to end the year with a bang.

***

I love it when a post idea bubbles up organically from real life. It’s so much easier to think up goofy crap when you’re bouncing it off of someone. I get a lot of ideas from email exchanges, but this was the first time I just posted one, pretty much in its entirety.

I was exchanging emails today with incendiary blogger Sally-Sal, who writes “You. Me. No Adult Supervision...” (which has sadly been dormant since 2017), and we had the following exchange. 

Sal:  In my town, I can always tell when the weather gets bad because they block off the hill on my street.  When it ices over, kids slide down it.  And I have to say, I’m not above that either.

Bluz:  I would totally do it.  My dad grew up in a neighborhood in Pittsburgh that had these steep hills, like you see in San Francisco, and they’d to the same thing… close the roads and let the kids sled.  If it weren’t for a pile of ashes at the bottom, they would end up flying over the railroad tracks and straight into the Ohio River.

When the roads weren’t closed, it was entertaining to watch out the window as the cars tried unsuccessfully to get up the hill and then go sliding back down.

Wait, they have hills in Oklahoma?

Sal:  A hill.  It’s the only one in Oklahoma and we have to share.

On Christmas, we had an ice storm so bad that pretty much everything closed here.

About midnight, I heard a bunch of boys sledding down the hill, so I went to check it out.  There were 3 or 4 of them, and they were in these camo coveralls, just having the time of their life.

So I got talking to them, and they let me sled down with them.  There were 4 of us packed on this one little sled and it was so much fun. 

I let them come into my house to warm up before we all slid down again.  I even broke out the Jackie D for a couple of shots.  Good times…

Bluz:  Sounds like a grand time… A fast moving Sally sandwich on ice!  With a JD kicker even!  The heck with “Silent Night”.

Sal:  It was as moving as Baby Jesus in the manger.

Bluz:  Which makes me wonder how fast Baby Jesus could go if pushed down an icy hill in Bethlehem.  Now picturing the Three Wise Men all pushing, then hopping in like it was a bobsled.

That sounds like it should be the subject of the next Christmas carol.  Beats Rudolph, anyway.

Sal:  Baby Jesus and the Wise Men would be the best bobsledding team ever.  Nobody could beat the Jesus.

Bluz:  And with the halo, they could bobsled at night.  I bet you could have used the Baby Jesus on your sled too.  He could have blessed the JD, but then you’d run the risk of turning it into wine.

You do realize that this is how I come up with blog postings… Random emails generate crazy visuals and next thing you know… it’s a post.

Sal:  He could turn the snow into wine.  Frozen, yes.  But when it thaws… wine.  A snowball that not only hurts, but gives you a nice buzz.  Win.

I think it’s a killer way to come up with posts.

Bluz:  Complete win!  I can see opening a snowball stand of wine snowballs.  (In Baltimore, they call Sno-Cones “Snowballs” and have stands all over town in the summer.)  This would kill at the Italian Festival in August.  Blessed Holy Wine Snowballs.  Just look for the halo over the stand.

Sal:  The specialty of the house would be a triple-decker snowball, aptly named “The Judas”.

Bluz:  All for the low price of 30 pieces of silver.  One bite and you’ll be feeling cross for the rest of the day.

Sal:  Now I want to taste The Judas.

Bluz:  By Ernest and Judas Gallo.

That was the end of the exchange.  But do you ever wonder if there was anyone ever named “Judas” after the famous one?  I bet it would be really hard to go through school with that name.  How hard must it have been to get a date for the prom?

Judas:  Excuse me Missy, but can I ask you something?

Missy:  Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!  Get away from me, narc!

Judas:  Is it I?

This is totally unrelated to the post, but I want to use it before it becomes any further out of date.

Ghost in the Graveyard

In the most “in-character” thing he could do, TFG had his first ex-wife buried on his New Jersey golf course. At first blush, you’d think, “OK, makes sense, I guess.” But then we hear that this burial now qualifies his golf course as a “cemetery” and is thus exempt from property, inheritance, income, and sales taxes.

Isn’t that the most Trumpian thing you’ve ever heard of? And of course hers is a sparse gravesite, with nothing but a simple plaque on the ground, bearing her name, and birth/death dates.

How long before he puts up a tee box on this site? Or an ATM?

I would bet that when he goes to plan his own gravesite, it will resemble a shoddily built Taj Mahal. Granted, that’s only if he can figure out a way to get someone else to pay for it. But looking at how he used Ivana’s death announcement to fundraise, I don’t suppose it will be that hard.

One might think that her offspring would have had some objections to such a muted display. I mean, I’m sure Ivanka could have dropped some of her recently made fortune for a more impressive memorial site. But is it really a surprise that they didn’t? I’m sure they’re just stoked about ducking the estate taxes on the land when their old man finally kicks.

I think the state of New Jersey should revisit its laws on the subject and establish that there be a minimum number of graves on site before bestowing such tax avoidance largesse. I’m sure this wasn’t what they had in mind when the law was written. I mean, hell, everyone could try doing this… just bury Grandma in the backyard and live tax-free for as long as they have the property. They should close this big loophole before it catches on.

I like what fellow blogger Vixen Strangely suggested in the comments of her recent post, in which she hopes Ivanka turns poltergeist.

I think a good haunting is exactly what that place needs and I know just how it should be done. The ghost of Ivana should haunt her ex-husband’s golf game. She could use her powers to push all his drives out of bounds and into the woods and all his putts run short. TFG takes so much pride in his golf game, she’ll ruin it for him for the rest of his life.

Or she can just make his balls disappear. You can take that any way you’d like.

Fascist Q and A

Did you see who’s speaking at CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) this week? Hungarian authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, that’s who. In a speech last weekend, he said he “wanted to prevent Hungary from becoming a ‘mixed-race’ country and that countries with racial mixing are no longer countries.”

How very Republican of him. Do you think they’re having him there to debate his views on race relations? Or to pick up some tips?

You know it’s the latter. He’s even given them a 12-Step plan on how to attach liberal democracy.

Republicans aren’t even hiding their intentions anymore. They’re just coming out in the open and trying to erase our democracy, right under our noses.

I don’t care how aggressive some Democrats get with getting hyper-woke and bending our language in knots, it’s not nearly as bad as depriving people of equal rights under the law. When Republican apologists among us try to alibi out of this, saying, “I don’t think they’re going to overturn rights to mixed marriage or ban contraception,” I immediately remember all the people having that same conversation about Roe, and we know what happened there. Yes, they will. They’re saying they will, they’re finding out how to do it, they’ve installed a Supreme Court who will bless it, and they will do it at the first opportunity. Why else would they invite a public paragon of racial purity to speak to their convention?  And why else would he go, if he didn’t know he’d be preaching to the choir?

In these upcoming mid-terms, we need to be very cognizant of what is truly important and what is the sideshow. This shit right here is important.

Don’t Get Comfortable

As I mentioned last week, Democrats in Congress are trying to pass bills to safeguard same-sex marriage, abortion, and contraception. I hope they do, if for nothing but to make it obvious who is for what. BUT, in no way should we think it would the fight be over at that point.

If any such law passes, conservatives will begin challenging the law in court before the ink is dry. It will eventually end up at the Supreme Court and I guarantee they will find a way to nullify it. No matter how carefully the bill is crafted, (and I seriously hope they’re making this thing legally fireproof), they will come up with some kind of rationale, however shaky, to kibosh the whole thing. They’re already pretending that a couple of amendments don’t exist to justify overturning Roe.

I mean, that’s why they’re there; exercise the GOP’s will. The Constitution? The Will of the People? They don’t care. If they weren’t willing to rule this way, they wouldn’t have been on the Federalist Society’s list, to begin with. Their votes are already locked and loaded.

A View from the Crowd

I haven’t been out in a crowd for a while but when I do go, some things never change.

Last week Sweetpea and I went to see ZZ Top in downtown Baltimore and decided to have a mini stay-cation, by staying overnight at the Marriott Waterfront, which is right beside the concert venue.

The big, white, tented area is the venue, as shot from our room at the Marriott.

And hey look… Marriott is in favor of keeping abortion legal. This was on the wallpaper near the ceiling…

…Although I could be misinterpreting.

Now, I have seen a LOT of concerts in my day, 108 to be exact, and I always seem to have the same problem. There’s always some jackass standing right in front of me.

Now, I don’t mean when everyone else is standing, that’s normal. I mean when there’s no one else in the area standing up, but there they are, directly between me and the object of my attention.

I call this out in the Book of Bluz, particularly Bluz 3:24, “Whether it's at a ballgame, a concert, or whatnot, if you're the only one standing up, you're an asshole.  A complete, self-centered, self-absorbed, inconsiderate, flaming asshole.  Everyone else who bought a ticket didn't pay to see your back all night.”

The last time I was here was to see Boston in 2014. And there she was, one lone figure planted between me and the stage.

This night, our seats were pretty good, in the middle of the pavilion, behind the soundboard, with about 4 empty rows in between. (Why these rows were empty, I have no idea. They weren’t available for purchase when I was ticket shopping, that’s for sure. So I thought we’d be golden.

But then there was this guy, part of the event staff, who spent about half the show standing behind the people working the soundboard. He wasn’t acting as Security, working the board, he wasn’t doing anything but standing there watching the show. Right in front of me.

Occasionally he would be joined by a security person, who when she wasn’t making people who stood behind the sound area move along, stood right there beside him.

Most of the time I was able to look around the blockade, but it was irritating, especially since they were staff. They should know better than to block the view of paying customers.

The show itself was fine, albeit short. They started their encore songs after an hour and the show was over in 78 minutes. I don’t expect every show to run as long as a Springsteen show, but Bruce’s first set used to run longer than this. With a band that’s been around since 1969 and a huge catalog, they could have played another hour easily, and the crowd would have still known every song.

But while they were playing, it was fine. The bass player filling in for the late Dusty Hill was OK, but he just didn’t seem to have that same synch with guitarist Billy Gibbons that his predecessor did. They used to move together like they were tied to the same string.

It just seemed like they were going through the motions. It was the 5^th time I’ve seen them, but the last time was 28 years ago. I guess we all slow down.

I was hoping to produce a couple of decent pictures but alas, when I read the fine print of the venue rules, they allow small cameras, but none with a lens that extends over an inch. Mine does, when it’s zoomed. While I considered bringing it in anyway, there was a risk. I didn’t really care to bring it back to the room, and I certainly didn’t want it confiscated. So that left my cellphone camera, which in the iPhone 8, just isn’t as good as the ones in the newer models. This was the best of the bunch:

By comparison, this is a shot I took of Boston’s guitarist and founder/genius Tom Scholtz, with my regular camera in the same venue:

I don’t know if they had this camera ban in 2014… maybe I just missed it and got lucky.

But anyway, it was a nice night out and something we haven’t been able to do in several years.

Maybe we’ll catch them again in another 28 years.

What Happened to Retail?

While going through Infidel753’s Sunday Link Roundup, I came across an interesting post about the declining future of brick-and-mortar retail. It posits that while COVID hasn’t done it any favors, the decline has been in effect for years now.

Anyone who lives near what used to be a mall can attest that physical stores are going away fast. The main culprit is, indeed, online shopping. COVID is just piling on.

While far from perfect, it’s hard to beat the vast selection of whatever you want, delivered to you within days, or sometimes even same-day (if you live in a market with an Amazon warehouse.)

When you look at what people want out of a retail outlet, it comes down to these main things:

·        Wide selection of items in stock

·        Helpful and available clerks

·        Low prices

These “wants” are why brick and mortar is fading. All three can no longer be had at the same time.

To have a wide selection you need room for it, or in other words, a large showroom. Retail real estate is expensive. You also have to front the money to buy the additional stock to sell.

To attract reliable, intelligent, personable clerks, you need to pay a living (or at least significantly above minimum) wage. You should also provide health insurance and benefits if you want serious, career-minded people. Multiply all that by the number of clerks you need.

Both of these two things raise costs considerably. To be able to turn a profit, prices have to rise accordingly, which is counter to charging low prices. Unless the owner is willing to take losses, (and what business owner would be?) you simply can’t have all three.*

*I suppose there could be a business where the product is dirt cheap to create and the demand is such that high prices are supported, but there aren’t many. How many iPhone stores can a market tolerate?

Add to that the convenience, low cost, and increasing reliability of online shopping and you see why it’s pulling people out of stores.

To run an online business, all the money goes into the nuts and bolts. You get your website set up, which is primarily a one-time outlay (aside from maintenance and security updates) you have your warehouse space, which is cheaper than retail space, buy your stock, and then have a minimal crew to stock the shelves and pack the boxes.

I, for one, leapt at the chance to avoid going out to shop and buy stuff from my computer in my jammies. I pretty much buy everything but groceries online and have since the mid-2000s. That probably has more to do with my own anti-social tendencies than anything, but it works for me.

To me, the real tragedy is that there’s a whole employment sector that was there when I was young that has since disappeared. Where are young people supposed to get jobs now, with a whole industry that relied on them is just gone? Grownups all say, “Get a job! Don’t be a slacker. Don’t take handouts,” etc. But where? Doing what? Malls are gone. Movie theaters are on life support. Restaurants are struggling. All carry risks of getting themselves sick with COVID or being abused by jerks who don’t care about anyone but themselves.

Frankly, I’m surprised there are any brick and mortar establishments left at all.

I spent 12 years in record/CD retail, video rental, and several more working in a grocery store and at a gas station. It wasn’t much but it allowed me to pay for my own college education. With the way tuition has skyrocketed (and wages haven’t) doing that is pretty much impossible today. The only way to get oneself a college education, (short of being independently wealthy or having parents pay your way), is to get student loans, which end up as a never-ending albatross around people’s necks for the rest of their lives.

As much as people have always complained about retail stores, we’re really going to miss them when they’re gone.

Book’em Danno

Regarding the book burnings in Texas, Tennessee, and other repressed places, I have only this to say:

Here endeth the lesson.

More Dad Stories

My dad used to be an altar boy so, in light of all the modern priest/altar boy scandals,  I asked him if a priest ever did anything untoward with him.

Dad said there was one certain very old priest with whom all the altar boys had a problem.  Seems that when they would help him up out of his genuflect, he was known to pass some gas on them.  He said when you saw those robes billow, you knew you were in trouble.  Anyway, the altar boys policed this themselves by assigning the altar boy with the least seniority to this honor.

Dating Across the Aisle

In early December, an article on AXIOS came out talking about a survey that said that, among other things, 71% of Democratic college students wouldn’t date someone who voted Republican.

That set off a firestorm of commentary that I meant to jump in on but got diverted by something shiny. Luckily I jotted down a reminder.

While the survey was aimed at young people, my old ass also agrees with them. I don’t see how I could be in a relationship with someone I disagreed with down to a molecular level. It wasn’t always that way.

In years past, I certainly would have considered dating a Republican, assuming she had other desirable traits and assets. (Make of that as you will.) I’d have just tried to avoid the subject of politics. That was a lot easier to do when I was a young man in the 80s and somewhat less-young man in the 90s. Maybe that was because I was heavily focused on my job and often had little time for much else. And I probably would have gotten with the Devil herself, if she was nice to me.

Back then, the parties had differences but it wasn’t to the point that it is now, where one party is trying to deal with reality and another is living in an authoritarian fantasyland.

I could not date or marry someone now if we weren’t politically aligned because the differences are so stark. It’s not a matter of views on budget planning or foreign affairs, but basic human values. Someone who supports Republican efforts in suppressing voting among their foes, demonizing anyone who didn’t have the good luck to be born here (and White), cheering on law enforcement abuses on people of color, forcing women to bear children against their will, kowtowing to the richest among us to the detriment of everyone else, and denying basic, proven, scientific principles of inoculation, social distancing, and mask-wearing in the midst of a modern-day Plague, would have such a vastly different set of values that I just couldn’t ignore them. What am I going to do, hold down the fort while she storms the Capitol in search of the Vice President?

I require a mate that is against racism and sexism, for basic human rights to live without persecution, for people being able to love whoever they please, for the choice to reproduce residing with the prospective mother, for a fair and democratic election process. Sure, a lot of Republicans would SAY they agree with some of those things, but they support a party that campaigns and governs in ways that say in the opposite.

Being friends with those of the other party is trickier. In my case, I do have some staunch Republican friends. The thing is, I’ve been friends with them for over 40 years, long before our political view ripened. We’re kind of stuck with each other now, so we usually agree not to talk politics. And when we stray that way, it gets ugly fast. Having some Republican friends does pay off for me, though, when they post their memes on Facebook that I can harvest and disassemble.

But now, if I was at some kind of stereotypical cocktail party full of strangers to me and there were guys or gals around that were identifiably Republican, you’d find me on the other side of the room. I’d keep myself occupied by examining the host’s music collection.

Unless, of course, it was full of rap and techno, in which case I’d have to just ease on out the door.

More Dad Stories

Dad passed away in September so I’ve been telling a few stories at the end of my posts. This is from a post from 2012:

Dad laid another great story on me, from back in his traveling days. He was out in Boston, taking in another baseball game at Fenway with his friend Frank “The Lob.”  They were sitting in the lower bowl, about halfway between first base and the outfield wall.

A big power-hitter named George Cooper was up at bat and smashed a screaming line drive right in Dad’s direction. With beer in hand, he quickly leaned over, in classic “kiss your ass goodbye” position, and the ball just grazed his back and landed under the seats behind him. Out of danger, Dad popped back up, un-spilled beer still firmly in hand, and received a nice round of applause from his section.

You know how you can drop a cat from any angle and it will land on its feet?  My family is like that with drinks. I think we are genetically programmed to do a front handspring and not spill a drop of our drink.

Evolution is a wonderful thing.

A Bit of Reflection

2021 was a really shitty year for my family and I. If you’ve been following along, I lost a cousin in March, my father in September, and my sister’s husband last month. I thought 2020 was bad but 2021 came along and said, “Hold my beer.” And there’s still chaos rolling around the House of Bluz over the last couple of weeks, so it’s not over yet. (This is why I couldn’t get a post out last night. My apologies, if you were looking for it.)

One thing I’ve been glad about is being able to write for you. It feels like I’ve been at it a long time. I’m just finishing up my 13^th year with this blog. I know there are others who have been at it longer, but damn… THIRTEEN YEARS. Sometimes I look at my “Archive” in wonderment. It seems like a lifetime ago that I wrote those first posts. It took me at least a year to settle on a consistent format or style. Trial and error, I guess.

And it’s funny because you can see several different stages, just from posting frequency.

2009: First year and hot right out of the block. I started posting in February but never told anyone about it for another month. I wanted to have some material to page through for early adopters. I needn’t have worried. It was a ghost town.

2010-2011: Started to learn what I was doing and then got hooked in with a Pittsburgh blogging community. I went to “Pittsburgh Podcamp” in September of 2010 and posted constantly, with great enthusiasm. We held a couple of blogger meetups over the next few years and I got to meet some wonderful people.

2012-2014: The pace started to get to me, so I slowed down to three posts per week, usually Tuesday, Thursday, and one on the weekend.

2015-present: I really started to feel the stress for subject material. I’d already told all my best stories and felt like everything else in the news had already been done to death. I’d expressed my views on all the major issues several times over and struggled for new angles. Nothing interesting was going on in my personal life to write about. Almost all the bloggers I first fell in with had closed up shop so I was left on my own. I ended up cutting down to one post per week and I‘ve been able to maintain that schedule consistently since then. I’ll tell you, the Trump years were great for subject material. There were so many opportunities to get pissed off!

In 2018, I made contact with Infidel 753’s blog and ended up benefiting greatly from his weekly link round-up. I had been seriously considering shuttering the site but then a new influx of readers helped me keep going. (Thanks, buddy!)

So thank you for hanging around and taking my bullshit into consideration. I hope to see you back throughout the year.