Dirty Pool

I’ve got vacation coming up next week for our annual trip to the shore. We don’t take a lot of trips, and this is our one time a year to do something nice. Sweetpea and I have stayed at one particular hotel for the last five years because it has exactly what we want: a central location, free breakfast, an on-site tiki bar, a nice pool, and a balcony for watching the sunset over the water.

A sunset from last year.

Every year, it’s a big song and dance to arrange our departure; I make reservations in January and file for my time off, Sweetpea has to finish with school (teaching), and make dog-sitting arrangements.

Last Tuesday, I got an email from Hilton, confirming my reservation. But there was a little note included that dropped the bottom out of my stomach. It said that the pool would be closed during the entire month of June.

This, I knew, would not go over well. Sweetpea is a “pool” fanatic. If it were solely up to her, we’d have a pool in our tiny L-shaped backyard. She is all about vacationing at a site with a pool.

And I was right, this news went over like Al Sharpton at a MAGA rally. Sweetpea was ready to chuck the whole vacation if we couldn’t get a place with a pool. Sure, the beach is right there, but that’s more of a “stay for a couple of hours, then go” kind of thing. Plus, it’s a pain to schlep all the stuff with us… umbrella, chairs, blankets, towels, drinks, etc. The pool is the hub for our vacation life, whether we’re reading a book in front of it or floating around in it. And it’s right out the back door; no schlepping required.

I’ve already paid for an upfront, non-refundable reservation, so I’m not eating that without a fight. I knew I’d have to call the hotel in the morning to see what relief they might provide. I know the cost was non-refundable, but they moved the cheese! The pool was front and center on the hotel website when I booked it in January. I hoped our loyalty over the last 5 years would count for something. Last year, we had a small squabble over our room. (I say I booked one size, they said otherwise.) They mentioned that if I’d have booked through their website, as opposed to the banking and travel site I used, they would have some wiggle room. Lesson learned, I booked this year on their site, so I was expecting some of that wiggle room they dangled in front of us before.

I needed to call and see if they could either (in order of preference) find us a comparable place with one of their sister properties (there were 5 more in the area, but only two had an outdoor pool and one was sold out), refund our money so I could look elsewhere, or reschedule our reservations to later in the summer.

I was awake for 20 minutes in bed that night, trying to get straight in my head what I wanted to say. I was dreading the call, afraid I’d get too pissy with them. And it was a legit concern because I’m totally pissed off that a well-regarded property like this, in a well-known vacation site, would close their pool during prime season! It’s not like this is a pass-through like some Motel 6 in Peoria. This is a destination site in a resort town. The pool is a major component.

It’s always been my nature to respond to a fire by throwing gas on it, but I hoped I could remain calm and tactful. Being a dick never helps a high-emotion situation.

I didn’t want to talk to their main booking site; I needed someone in that building. Luckily, I still had the front desk number in my phone, after an incident from two years ago, when Sweetpea and I got locked out on the balcony. All the numbers I could Google from the balcony turned up the main reservations line; it took some digging to find the front desk, so I put it in my contacts list. (Yes, they got into the room and let us back in, with minimal embarrassment. But that was a close call. Our drinks were empty out there.)

So, once I had a break in my morning schedule, I called the front desk and told them I had reservations for next week but there’s a problem: my confirmation email said the pool was closed, and asked if that true?

She said, “Well, yes… the INDOOR pool…”

[Weight of the world lifts off shoulders]

“Well then,” I said, “I guess we don’t have a problem after all! KThankyoubye…”

We don’t give two shits about the indoor pool, that’s where all the screaming kids tend to congregate.

So now we’re back in business. We don’t have to rearrange our schedules or get used to a new venue, and I don’t have to boycott their chain for the rest of my life.

Wish us luck. Sorry you can’t come along. Please try to keep the world from burning down until we get back!

The BUTTS Will Crack the Country

Looks like the “One Big Beautiful Bill” is halfway home, now that the House has passed its version. What it should be called is the Big Ugly Trump Tax Shift, or BUTTS Act. The tax cuts for the rich get the most publicity, but the Republicans stuffed a lot more in there to cement in their dream of a top-down economic system, meaning the top gets whatever they want and throw the scraps down to the rest of us.

We should be greatly alarmed at this turn of events. But not so alarmed as to make shit up. I almost lost my mind when I saw this meme floating around this weekend:

The thing that set me off was that first bullet, that the president can delay or cancel any election. That’s the big red button… the tool that sets them up for life, AND, the one I’ve been predicting they’ll use. And they may, but it’s not in the bill. I did a little digging and didn’t find any reference to canceling elections. (And I surfed through the bill itself, looking for the word “election.”) It’s not there, so that’s one bullet dodged, for now.

Also, there isn’t anything in there about identifying protesters, although there is a lot of material about the use of AI. The part I found galling is that there is language to prevent states from regulating the use of AI in advertisements. The Republicans are 100% against that because, obviously, AI makes their go-to tactic of disinformation that much more convincing. They’re literally enshrining their right to lie to us more effectively, for personal gain.

But there is plenty to scare you in this bill. This graphic does a good job of illuminating the heinous infiltration and dissolution of our current government:

Everything in here is designed to benefit those who have the most, and keep it that way. So far, all the GOP resistance has come from those who don’t think the denuding of the government has gone far enough. That’s why we have to bring pressure to bear on those few Republicans left who pretend to be moderate. We need the Lisa Murkowskis, Susan Collinses, and the like to step up and declare that they’re either representing their constituents or shilling for the rich.

Further, we need to make sure there are no Democratic turncoats… no Sinemas or Manchins to sabotage their own people. I’m not foolish enough to think that the Fat Cats haven’t bought themselves some Democrats, just in case.

But again, the thing that worries me is that the Republicans are acting like they don’t need to worry about any more elections. They’re rolling out this giant turd in public and telling easily disprovable lies about what it all means.

We do have some facts that favor the continuation of free elections. After all, the president only has limited power over the election process:

- Election Timing: The Constitution grants Congress the authority to set the timing of federal elections, meaning the President cannot unilaterally postpone or cancel an election.

- Election Oversight: Elections are primarily managed at the state level, with each state responsible for organizing and conducting its own elections.

- Emergency Powers: While the President has emergency powers, they do not extend to altering election dates without congressional approval.

- Influence on Election Laws: The President can advocate for changes to election laws, but actual changes require congressional action.

- Appointment Powers: The President appoints members of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), which oversees campaign finance laws.

That would all be fine, but it assumes that things are going to continue in a lawful manner. The way this administration has established itself, it has its own police force, direct control of the Justice Department, doesn’t follow judicial rules it doesn’t like, has the media playing cheerleader and whitewashing the ugly parts, so it is therefore answerable to no one. There’s nothing to stop them from rigging, nullifying, or indefinitely postponing meaningful elections.

Great Moments in Advertising

Now, so I don’t leave you ready to fling yourself out of a high-rise window (aka taking Putin’s Staircase), have a look at this shot I took from the TV yesterday from the Orioles/Cardinals game.

I want to know who green-lit the name of that tire company for use in America. Shouldn’t there have been someone in the room, some dude who knows American idiom, to go, ”Hey guys? I don’t think you realize how this is going to play to a bunch of drunks sitting on their couches.”

Sure, maybe the founder is a Kumho. And he probably comes from a long line of Kumhoes. And maybe this would work if they were selling rubbers and not tires.

If they insist on keeping the name, they should at least lean into it. Make some commercials that say,

“You’ll feel safe and secure on some Kumhoes.”

“Nothing gives you a smooth ride like Kumhoes.”

“Kumhoes will keep you in the driver’s seat all night long!”

I mean, how long until they roll out the advertising for their sister company, Stankyho?

Director's DVD Commentary: I probably shouldn't have cropped that picture so closely on the right because it looks like I clipped off some of the name. Rest assured that I did not. That is one righteous Kumho and not the creation of some fanciful editing.

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.

"90-Days" of Conflict

 Even with its current pervasiveness, I’ve never been a big watcher of reality TV. For 20 years, I only watched the Big Three: Survivor, Big Brother, and The Amazing Race, all of which I picked up in their respective first seasons. By 2024, I picked up a couple more, “Bar Rescue” and “Naked and Afraid,” which I may post about some other time. And there’s one other.

Now, my wife, Sweetpea, predominantly watches what she calls, “murder shows.” You know, the true crime series like First 48, Forensic Files, Dateline, and the like. I’m ok with them once in a while, but I prefer more escapist fare. Because we don’t have many shows that we both like, it’s hard to find things to watch together. Because she gets up insanely early and goes to work before I’m out of bed, she also goes to bed early, so we don’t have a lot of downtime together. After dinner, she’ll usually put on a murder show and promptly fall asleep. When she can’t find a murder show she hasn’t seen, she’ll opt for MTV’s Catfish or TLC’s 90-Day Fiancé.

I figured I could tolerate those so I began recording them with the DVR, so we can watch together at our leisure. Catfish is straightforward enough. It’s like a true crime show where the hosts investigate people who get into relationships with other people via dating sites but refuse to meet or ever be seen on camera.

But the 90-Day stuff? Wow. What a mess of humanity… that I can’t stop watching. It’s basically nationally televised voyeurism.

There are several 90-Days brands. The original is 90-Day Fiancé, which centers on couples who date internationally. One will bring the other to the US via a K-1 visa, and will then have 90 days to get married or the visitor has to go back. That’s always the focal question: Will they get married or will it all blow up?

Another variation is Before the 90-Days, which focuses on the lead-up to the travel to America, as they begin exploring an international relationship. There’s also 90-Days – Happily Ever After? which shows the lives of some of the couples after they’ve gotten married and are going about their lives. Then there’s the Bizarro World version, 90-Days – The Other Way, which is where an American goes abroad to marry and live in a vastly different culture.

And if all that isn’t enough, there’s a parasite series called Pillow Talk, which runs right after each of the other shows, featuring several pairs of former 90-Day participants who watch the show and provide commentary.

The whole organization is its own self-contained world, like an Earthbound Marvel Universe, whose occupants have staged adventures and bitch at each other.

I had no idea what I was getting into when I started. I fully admit that this is crap TV and I’m probably dumber for having watched it. It’s just that you get sucked into these people’s lives. There are some you love but many more that you love to hate. And there are some real pieces of work on these shows.

The reason I’m bringing this whole thing up is that I find there are a lot of the same themes that flow through each of these series and most of the dating pairs. There are three main categories of conflict:

·         Money

·         Jealousy/Insecurity

·         Religion

Money? That’s obvious and applies universally. As British comic Spike Milligan once said,

Everyone wants/needs more money. Some lie about it, some cheat to get it, and some think it’s owed to them.

To me, the biggest thing keeping these couples apart is jealousy (and the insecurity that leads to jealousy). Women go ape-shit any time their man talks to, texts with, bumps into, or acknowledges the existence of another woman.

Director’s DVD Commentary: I’m not being sexist; it goes both ways. I just don’t care to bother with the verbal gymnastics of keeping all terms unisexual.

One woman doesn’t want her fitness instructor boyfriend to have women as clients, even though they make up over 90% of his business. Another guy is crucified for “cheating” by receiving sexy videos from women he’s never met. Men flip out any time they find themselves near their women’s previous boyfriends, with whom they are still friendly. One girl got upset because her guy went to church, and there were women there. She also didn’t want him to hang out with his sisters, because they might have friends around. And on it goes…

If I were on that show, my stories would be as dull as dishwater. Most of my friends are women. Anyone I was dating would have to understand that, and if they flip out about it, I’m out. It’s non-negotiable. I will be friends with women. And my mate is free to be friends with men. I’d never be a hypocrite about it. I’m fully trusting until I have a reason not to be. (And I’m quite fortunate that Sweetpea is fine with this.)

I think these “cast members” would ease a lot of their own misery if they just decided to trust their partner and assume the best rather than the worst. And if they do stray, for real, cut them the eff loose and move on. (Those who do bugger off invariably find a line-up of men (or women) who want to go out with them, after having seen them on TV.)

The last obstacle is religion and it’s almost always bout Middle-Eastern or African men wanting to control American women. They never seem to tell their prospective wives all the details of what their lives together might look like, or what she might look like after she’s covered head to toe. They know that if they let on they expect a life of obedience, servitude, and child-bearing at the outset, the American dating pool is likely to dry up

One Egyptian guy was coming to live with his American wife in California, and they had a fight that led to their breakup because she was wearing a dress that, while it went up to her neck, down past her knees, and had long sleeves, it bared a couple square inches of her back. He couldn’t live with such a tawdry display of wantonness. Because of religion.

There is a couple this season, where the 40ish American woman is going to Jordan to marry her 22–year–old guy on the very day she arrives because his religion won’t permit them to be alone together in a room. This story is just getting underway and she has no idea what he’s going to expect of her. This is basically a “boy” who told the cameras he wants her to obey his wishes at all times and not question him as the man of the house. And he needs her to cover up with loose clothing

I think she ought to spank his 22-year-old ass and send him to his room without dinner. These stories always seem to end up the same way, with the American women taking a powder either before or shortly after the wedding.

I don’t see how they didn’t research the culture the second they made contact with their foreign beaus. It would have saved them a lot of heartache and a pile of cash.

Or maybe they just reeeeeally wanted to be on TV.

But that’s the worst part. I can’t even comprehend allowing TV cameras to film every part of my life, every argument, every mistake, every emotional moment, and broadcast it nationwide. And when these fights happen, everything is in play, from bathroom habits to sexual inadequacies to masturbatory quirks. Nothing is off-limits.

And I make room for the fact that producers are egging them on or providing angles to assert to keep the fights going. You can see by their casting choices that they’re counting on the conflict, the louder and more warped the better.  That’s too bad because I’m sure there are viewers like Sweetpea and me who really enjoy seeing decent people overcome international obstacles and go on to live happily ever after. (These people tend to end up on the Pillow Talk series.)

At the end of every season, they stage a multi-episode “Tell All,” where all the cast members get together in New York to answer questions from a moderator and each other. They all get to know one another; some become real-life friends, others bitter enemies. This helps build the 90-Day ecosystem

It’s hard to watch sometimes because they poke and prod for every bit of controversy and conflict, even those that have already been resolved. They ought to call these episodes, “Pulling at Scabs.” It’s seldom pretty.

The bigger point is that we, as a people, are being conditioned to become our ugliest forms of ourselves. We’re guided to be vain, jealous, insecure, snarky, mean, over-reactive, and without empathy. Is this the public influencing the media or the media influencing the public?

Either way, we’re a mess and we don’t seem to be getting any better.

Maybe the next iteration ought to be “90 Days – Incel.” That’s where they take some anti-social, obnoxious misfit out of his parents’ basement, send him on a date with a real woman, and film the inevitable disaster. They just need to make sure the crew has tasers ready. They’ll need to be able to guarantee the woman’s safety.

So yeah, I’m up here on my soapbox, but I’ll still be watching Sunday nights. Damn it.

Mid-Year Meme Dump!

I’m preparing this ahead of time because, by the time you see this, I’ll be sitting on a beach earning 20% on vacation. So what better opportunity than this for a MEME DUMP!

Now I can finally do something with a bunch of pictures, cartoons, and memes that have been collecting digital dust in the Bluz Vault while I figure out how and when to use them. Let’s start with:

Current Events

From the Baltimore Sun, quite some time ago:

Still true.

Republican use of Voter ID is 100% attempted voter suppression. No matter how they dress it up, likely Democratic voters get the shaft.

Another persistent lie. The 1% have been dying for access to Social Security money for generations but will do backflips to avoid paying into it any more than the pittance that they do.

And because it’s Stanley Cup Finals season…

The Cup can be won or lost tonight (as of this typing.)

Hannibal Shyster

“Put the secret documents in the fuckin’ basket!”

Religion

It’s a wonder anyone takes this thing seriously.

It’s like going along with adults who have “deeply held beliefs” in the Easter Bunny. (I was going to say Santa Claus, but we know that at the root of it, there was a St Nicholas who actually existed.)

It’s unanimous.

Goofy Shit

From 1984 to about 2005, (before I knew anything about the effects of sodium on the aging body) I had a package of Ramen noodle soup every morning for breakfast. This could have happened to me.

This one just made me laugh.

From Bluz Sister. In my case, that fridge would be in a beachside cabana somewhere.

Courtesy of Bluz Uncle Joe. My only nit to pick is that on the Classic Rock example, the drum solo only comes with the live show.

I’ll be seeing quite a lot of these over the next week, I expect.

See you all on the flip side!

Beat the Clock – SCOTUS Edition

It looks like we’re going to have to swallow hard this summer when the Supreme Court eventually hands down its ruling on whether TFG is immune from prosecution for anything he did during his term in office. Given the nature of their questions and complete disinterest in the facts of the case, it’s clear that they’re getting their proverbial fig leaves straight so they can hide behind them at decision time.

The disconnect is so vast here that it’s mind-boggling to comprehend. This is essentially what they’re saying they’re worried about: Future presidents being dogged by court battles once their terms end, by partisan, unscrupulous, prosecutors. They worry that such a Chief Executive may start a coup to remain in power to avoid later prosecution.

[Blink]

[Blink blink]

Gee, fellas, you mean JUST LIKE THE LAST ONE DID, AS DETAILED IN THE CASE BEFORE YOU THAT YOU REFUSE TO ACKNOWLEDGE???

God damn. What greater evidence do we need to conclude that the current SCOTUS is 100% in the bag for Republicans? No serious jurist can possibly find that the president has carte blanche while in office. There is literally nothing to support this in the Constitution, which is supposedly the guidepost by which the “originalists” on the bench navigate the law. Obviously, that’s only when it serves to benefit Republicans and their business people, or their religious biases.

Furthermore, Clarence freakin’ Thomas was on the bench that heard the case, one in which his wife was boobs-deep. By not recusing himself on such a case, it makes a mockery of anyone being recused for anything. THIS is what recusal is designed for.

The real tapdance will be to formulate a decision that only helps the last Republican and no subsequent Democrats. There’s no way they want to give a president untouchable status until there’s a Republican in office.

To do so, they could do like some other pundits are predicting and wait as long as they can to boot the case back to the lower courts, so we can do this all again much later, long after the November election. That way, they’ll have allowed TFG to use the traditional GOP vote-suppressing flimflammery they’ve been honing over the last four years and weapons-grade disinformation to flood the field with confusion and apathy, to get himself re-elected.

If that happens, I think we’ll have seen our last practical election.

Speaking of court cases, TFG’s campaign finance trial has its first week in the books. The National Enquirer’s publisher, David Pecker, testified that he and The Donald were in bed with a catch-and-kill scheme used to keep bad news out of the press, so to avoid torpedoing his 2016 campaign.

We must remember that it’s not a crime to buy people’s silence, but accounting for it improperly has legal consequences. Campaign finance laws have some teeth and it appears the Trump campaign used as much care with that accounting as they did with the rest of his business empire, which is to say, they cut corners and fudged the books at every opportunity.

Meantime, the Right Wing echo chamber was working overtime to redirect the nation’s attention, with stories like this:

I don’t know what makes me angrier, the presumption that TFG sitting on his ass all day is an exception, or that he is not obligated to follow the same standards that bind everyone else in the country. And to use his golf game as evidence of an active lifestyle? If he were walking 18 holes every day, there might be a point. But you know he’s chauffeured right up to his ball all day long. What walking is there really? To and from the cart, that’s it.

If he’s “too active” to sit still for a day in court, how can he sit still in the Oval Office day after day?

All they’re doing is trying to move attention away from his intermittent dips into sleepy time. Misdirection from embarrassing issues is a staple in the Republican Playbook. Don’t cover the story, cover the sideshow.

“Don’t look at the sleeping man behind the curtain! Look at how he’s being illegally prevented from witness tampering, like an average mob boss!”

***

There was some good news last week… I think. I’m still not sure if this is good or bad.

I love the idea that the airlines will be required to give us refunds when flights get canceled or suffer lengthy delays. But will that absolve them of getting us where we need to go?

As it is, they hold our money if a flight is canceled, but they are obligated to get us on the next available flight, whether it’s on their own network, or outside it. What if you’re stranded in BFE and they’re like, “Well, we’re sorry. You’ll see a refund in seven business days. Good luck and safe travels. NEXT…”

All I’m saying is that I’m waiting to see the details. I think most of us would rather they keep the money and get us where we need to go rather than refund us but leave us stranded far from home. Even if you’re starting from home, you get your canceled flight refunded, but you still may be out for the cost of your cruise, resort, or hotel stay.

I’d rather see regulations improve so that fewer flights are cancelled, and cut the need for refunds at the outset.

Every time the airlines get a break on regulations, they always seem to find a way to skimp even harder, charge for more, and provide less. At this point, they might as well just stack us up like logs.

***

Did you hear that sound over the weekend? The sound of a dying career? It sounded just like the “BLAM BLAM” of SD Governor Kristi Noem executing her pet dog and goat. I’m sure she thought she was firming up her MAGA bona fides by featuring her ruthlessness, but unlike TFG, I’d wager a lot of her MAGA followers love dogs and could come up with various other ways to deal with an undisciplined pet than a double-tap to the brain.

If she really wanted to firm up her MAGA cred, she could have shot a Mexican and a burro, instead. Then they’d be putting up statues of her along the border.

And in pure Republican fashion, she wouldn't admit it was a mistake and doubled down on the butchery.

She didn’t really break any new ground though. She can’t avoid that she took the easy way out rather than doing (or hiring someone to do) the work. This will probably play well in South Dakota and the other vast states with more livestock than people than in the rest of the country.

I’d say a great many Americans don’t view their pets as disposable, regardless of party. I think this will make her toxic, nationally, when it comes to when TFG picks a running mate.

Hell, he’s probably pissed that she just showed herself to be even more callous than HE is. Can’t have that, can he? “Mushroom-dick” Trump and Kristi “Dog Killer” Noem? He won’t like the imbalance. All she has to do now is quit her job and she’ll be the Sarah Palin of the 2020s.

***

And now, just because I’m a hockey fan and I thought this was hilarious:

Say hello to your 2024-25 Ice Mormons!

Trials and Errors

Here we go, time for the Trial of the Century, at least until the next case in which TFG sits at the defendant’s table. TFG and the Republicans must have decided that given the preponderance of evidence that’s already public, their most effective strategy will have to be jury tampering.

He’s already holding court outside every day to smear the judge, jurors, their families, their pets, and anyone who owes them money, all the while claiming the trial is rigged, he’s being unfairly prosecuted, the judge is biased, and any other piece of poo he can throw at the wall. He knows this won’t help, but the goal is to get traction for his excuses ahead of time.

It’s the same thing he did in each presidential election. If he wins, the people have spoken. If he loses, it’s rigged. Heads I win, tails you lose. It’s the Republican way.

His minions in the media are going all in as well. Jesse Watters is trying to ID the jurors on Fox “News,” so they can get started with the smears and threats. And you may have seen this as well:

This schmo is openly asking for jurors to break the law and hold onto the foregone conclusion that Trump’s innocent no matter what the evidence shows, and create a hung jury.

This is what worries me the most because, despite prosecutors’ best efforts, they only get so many juror DQs. A quiet MAGA without anything incendiary on his social media could easily get on the jury. It only takes one to kibosh the whole thing. 12-0 is a tough ask under the best of circumstances and much tougher with emotions running so high. I just have to hope that any Trumpist who would tank such a case probably didn’t have the temperament to keep his feelings muted on Facebook or Twitter. It’s like all the insurrection idiots who posted their 1/6 whereabouts online. They’re too proud of it to STFU.

I hope the prosecution is ready for such an outcome and is prepared to refile the case immediately.

***

Last week I commented on another blog about how EmptyG isn’t even hiding her ties to Russia now and at this point, she couldn’t signal her allegiance to Putin any more clearly if she rode into Congress shirtless on a horse. Now I’m seeing several outlets nicknaming Moscow Marj. Let’s just remember that this isn’t exactly original. Moscow Mitch had the title first. Are we just going to keep handing it down to M-named Republicans as others wash out? Looks like Moscow Matt Gaetz would be next.

Granted, “Minsk Marj” just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Maybe Leningrad Lindsey. Tsar Ted? We definitely need to branch out.

***

I have an update to my post last week about my eyeball surgery in which I had “floaters” removed from my right eye, and was dealing with an air bubble left inside, meant to protect the retina and dissipate over time. When I wrote the post, the bubble occupied the lower third of my vision in that eye. I could see perfectly above the line but had red-tinted “Walleye Vision” below. And of course, the eye looked like something out of a horror movie (and I will spare you the pictures.)

The bubble continued to dissipate throughout last week so that by Friday, it was about the size of a quarter, by Saturday, the size of a dime, and by Sunday, it was down to the size of the head of a thumbtack before it disappeared completely that evening. And there was much rejoicing throughout the land!

The eye redness has also cleared up, leaving only a small dark pinkish patch. I think it should be gone by the end of this week.

So, all in all, a good experience. While there are still some free-floating fragments, my vision is vastly better than it was. I’m anxious to get on with having the other eye done but I can’t even make the appointment for another 3 weeks.

How to Win the November Elections

I was talking with a business colleague the other day, about how I prefer a smaller cell phone size, so it fits in my pocket easier, without fear of bending or breaking it. I said it helps to have deeper pockets though, but because they’re men’s pants, they do, tacitly acknowledging the longstanding beef so many women have with clothing manufacturers, regarding a significant lack of pockets in apparel for women.

Then I said, “What will it take to get more pockets into women’s clothes, an act of Congress?

I was joking, of course, but later I was thinking, what if there WAS some kind of legislation directing pocket equality between the sexes? And the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced it could be the key to winning in November. Here’s how I see that going:

First, we get some Democratic Congress-people to create the Pocket Equality for Women, or “PEW” Act, into which they write a mandate to include at least two pockets in every woman’s top, vest, skirt, and pants. Pockets need to be real and not merely for decoration, deep enough to be useful… at minimum, the length of an average woman’s hand. I bet Nancy Pelosi would be down with it. 

Naturally, the PEW Act will set off alarms within the purse lobby. Big Purse will be like, “Good God, man! If women can carry their cash, license, credit cards, and cell phones in pockets, we’ll never sell another clutch. We have to kill this thing in its sleep!”

With that, the lobbying from CoachPAC grows fierce on Capitol Hill, as they lean on the Congress-people they’ve bought… I mean, “Those to whom they’ve donated campaign funds, trips, and sample bags.”

They’ll find some willing listeners, I’m sure. But the problem, like with everything else that’s been lobbied out of existence, they can’t come out and say they’ve been bought off. They’ll need to find some other angle that they can tout in public, to use to kill the bill. Now why would anyone be against pockets? This stymies them for a few days. But then, the Alabama delegation has a breakthrough:

“People can smuggle things in pockets… contraceptives, frozen embryos, very small fetuses… We must protect against Real Live Human Baby trafficking!”

Huzzah! They now have a platform from which they can kill the PEW Act. With all the MAGA talking heads hitting Fox "News" and the Right-Wing Media circuit, they revive their old “Selling Baby Parts” accusations to include transporting. Now, no matter what the Senate does, the bill will die in the House, with Speaker Johnson vowing never to bring it to the floor for a vote.

Hopes are dashed in the short term, but the Democrats seize the chance to bring the case to The People. At every campaign stop, the candidates charge up the crowd:

Pol: What do you want?

Crowd: POCKETS!

Pol: Where do you want’em?

Crowd: EVERYWHERE! [Breaking out the finger guns] PEW PEW PEW!

"YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO... YOU JUST HAVE TO PASS THE PEW!"

At campaign stops, debates, and in political ads, Democrats tout the PEW Act and demand Pocket Equality. President Biden assures the nation that he will never "pocket veto" the PEW Act. The nation’s women, envisioning a life in which they never have to worry about leaving their purses behind, or getting them stolen by someone coming up from behind them, turn out to elect Democrats up and down the ticket. And there is rejoicing across the land.

So, do the women actually get pockets? Eh, probably not. Maybe. Conflicts in working out the specifics and arguing about what constitutes a blouse versus a shirt cause delay after delay to the implementation date and keep kicking the can down the road.

But, with the right to be fully enfranchised human beings restored, as opposed to the current state of being treated as private property/incubators, the momentum carries over into other issues. The new Democratic House, along with the expanded Senate majority and the Presidency, pass bills reconstituting the protections from Roe and Griswald, creating a national guarantee of reproductive rights and healthcare. They also pass a new law requiring that dry cleaning charges for women’s clothing be no higher than the cost for that of men. And for good measure, they add some more Supreme Court members so that the current six religious and Big Business shills are outnumbered and kept from interfering with the will of The People.

Yes, it’s all there for the taking, right in our back pocket, if you will.

 

Director’s DVD Commentary: I apologize if you came here all amped up about a new campaign strategy, and instead, you encountered my absurdist tendencies run amok. But take heart; I’m still confident that a full-throated push for reproductive rights will be a winner, come November. We just have to lay out the facts and turn out in greater numbers than the Religious Wingnuts.

SOTU vs STFU

 SOTU

I enjoyed President Biden’s State of the Union address last week. It was good to see him get all fired up again. Content aside, he should have put to rest any doubts about his stamina and vitality. He sure didn’t look like a doddering, senile old man, as he’s painted to be by the Right-Wing Echo Chamber and even some mainstream media. And he certainly didn’t look like he needed a mental acuity test, like some of the corrupt opposition suggest.

Of course, Republicans can’t admit that so now they say he was hopped up on goofballs and pick-em-up pills. Jesus. They might as well put “Heads I win, Tails you lose,” right there on their bumper stickers. It may as well be their motto. Whatever a Dem does is not good enough and even when it is, they invent another reason why it’s not.

Plus, given the newly revealed, hyper-pharmaceutical culture of the previous administration, it’s probably just more deflection and projection of their own issues.

To all the yayhoos drawing ominous conclusions about his occasional stutters or stumbles, I’d like to see YOU try to read from a script for 69 minutes straight, on national television, with the occasional dipshit yelling at you from the peanut gallery. It’s not easy to do for the heartiest of people. These “critics” are like the armchair quarterbacks who think they could lead the team down the field at crunch time, but in reality, would lose containment just stepping onto a field in front of 65,000 people. Try it sometime, before throwing stones, Gomer.

Content considered, I thought there was a lot to like. I don’t know how he’s going to actually do most of the things he said he’s going to do, but that’s a problem for another term, one in which I’m sure he hopes can work with a Democratic Congress. Otherwise, he’ll be looking at Four More Years of doing little of substance. In which case, sometimes just keeping the wheels on is the best you can hope for.

STFU

I also caught the MTG sideshow, wherein she apparently thought she was on a reconstituted version of You Bet Your Life, where her task was to make President Biden say the magic words “Laken Riley,” and then when he did, it was like she was waiting for the giant duck to come down out of the rafters. Yes, he said the name (of a woman who was killed by an undocumented alien, one of the microscopically few, statistically, who have killed someone in this country). You know the deal… tens of thousands a year killed by domestically bred Americans and they don’t give it a second thought. But this is the outrage. We can add THAT to the Republican Platform, right after More Tax Cuts for the Rich… the Right to be Murdered by an American! Accept nothing less!

So did MTG win something for her Big Get? Were they playing GOP BINGO back there? I don’t get the big deal. Once again, we have a Republican acting like the dog who finally caught the car she’s been chasing and yapping at and has no idea what to do next. I’m sure that she’s just had a whole pile of free time open up now that she can’t go on Fox and yell about how “Biden won’t say the name.”

I have no clue how a vacant pea-brained self-promoter like her gets elected to national office. What happened, did they airdrop lead paint all over her district 30 years ago? Not that they would stoop to using someone’s pain and tragedy to score political points, like some common Democrat, would they?

I didn’t bother to stay up and watch the GOP response, but I understand it was a trip. “The Stepford Fundamentalist,” if you would. So the speech was full of fabrications, misrepresentations, and stories that happened a long, long time ago, in a place far, far away.

So Sen. Britt has been taking her lumps about that, and as well she should. However, let’s not put the blame solely on her and her doll’s eyes.

Do you think there’s any chance the Powers That Be would let some first freshman senator write and present their party’s nationally televised rebuttal to the President, all by herself? I know she didn’t sit there in her perfect kitchen, which probably hasn’t seen a white person wash a dish in it since it was built, and scratch out that speech in a spiral notebook? Or even on a Chromebook? Not without the supervision of the party bosses, she didn’t. In fact, I’d bet they had a whole team working on that thing.

They KNEW it was essentially fact-free. They KNEW their big story took place in another decade, with an entirely different cast of characters running things. And they put it in there anyway, because they don’t care if a story is true, as long as it works. I’m sure they were counting on the audience for that speech, the MAGA faithful, to embrace whatever fairy tale they spin out. And they will because they’ve been conditioned to filter out any sources of contradictory information and believe only what their own people tell them. Fox “News” has them well-trained and obedient.

An Irrelevant Thought

I love it when Sweetpea buys her margarita mix in 8-oz cans…

…I get to walk around and pretend I’m Andre the Giant.

The Art of Moving the Cheese

Last week, Congressional Republicans showed their butts to the country as they refused to take up the border bill they asked for, which contained just about everything they wanted. Their Orange Idol decreed that it would be better to leave to next year the “crisis” they all decry as an existential threat to the nation, so he could spend the year fear-mongering on the issue. Well done, guys. How very noble of you.

Democrats gave them things I’m sure they never expected, which blew up one of their talking points, the long-lasting mischaracterization that Dems want an “open border.”

They made it clear that they have no intention of solving a problem when they can use it to gather and maintain power for themselves. It’s like moving the goalposts has become a plank in the Republican platform, you know, if they’d ever bother to create one (besides “Do whatever TFG says. And own the Libs.”)

Moving the goalposts is so ingrained in them now, that it must have made the negotiations on the border bill an ordeal worthy of Sisyphus. I can just imagine how it went:

GOP: We want a border fence that’s 25 feet high.

DEMs: OK.

GOP: I mean, we want a fence that’s 50 feet high, made out of Vibranium.

DEMs: We’re good on the 50, but isn’t Vibranium the stuff Captain America’s shield is made of in the Marvel comics?

GOP: You have a problem with Captain America? Now we want the wall 75 feet tall.

DEMs: OK, we can live with the 75-foot Vibranium wall.

GOP: We want it eleventy feet tall and made of eels.

DEMs: [looking dejectedly at each other] Sure, OK. Now what about the river?

GOP: We want it filled with alligators.

DEMs: OK.

GOP: I mean, crocodiles. We want it filled with crocodiles.

DEMs: But crocodiles aren’t native to North America, alligators are found in…

GOP: We want crocodiles… electrified crocodiles with suits made from razor wire.

DEMs: But…

GOP:  Loch Ness Monsters. We want 4 dozen Loch Ness Monsters patrolling the river.

DEMs: OK, whatevs… You source them, we’ll put’em in the river.

GOP: And the river has to be acid, like from Alien blood.

DEMs: Wouldn’t Alien blood acid kill the Loch Ness Monsters?

GOP: [Huddles to discuss] The acid goes in a second river, like a moat. We want an acid moat.

DEMS: OK, we agree, if you guys quality test it first.

GOP: Um, won’t we get burned?

DEMs: Take a Tums antacid first, you’ll be fine.

GOP: Deal! Suckers…

Sometimes I have a disturbing imagination.

And Now This:

Just a quick callback to last week’s post about GOP moderate Larry Hogan running for the upcoming Senate seat from Maryland…

This article appeared in the Baltimore Sun:

Someone needs to let Hogan know that his party’s attempts to govern the uteri of American women ensure that codifying such rights is completely necessary. It doesn’t matter if he is personally reasonable on the issue, if he votes with the rest of the wingnuts, and we have no reason to think he won’t, reproductive rights will disappear all the same.

If Not Medium, Then an Extra-Large

As you may have noticed, if you’ve been reading me long or have ever noticed the name of this blog, I’m mainly reliant on science and measurable data to guide my views on life.

But that’s not totally the case. I’ve had some pretty weird shit happen to me that keeps the door open a crack, to all kinds of mystical hoo-doo. Let me just tell you the story…

Have you ever had “dream flashes?” Maybe you call it déjà vu, but I know them as dream flashes. They are those little snippets of life that hit you all of a sudden and you know you’ve dreamed them before.

I used to get them maybe 2-3 times a year (now, maybe once every other year) and they’re usually when I’m doing something completely inconsequential, like sitting on the couch watching a game and eating a ham sandwich. 

Then, POW! For a second or two, up to maybe five, I know I’ve seen this view before. For a few seconds, everything is exactly as I’ve seen it; from where I’m sitting, to where I’m looking, to the taste of the sandwich, to the announcer’s call on TV, and even what I’m thinking. I always try to go with it and see how far I can stretch it. Then real life takes over quickly and on I go as usual.

As superpowers go, it’s not exactly awe-inspiring. I’ve had zero luck in predicting which things I’ve dreamed about will come to be. And believe me, there are a few that would make me very happy to see come to pass… But so far, Tina Fey still won’t return my calls.

Déjà Bluz

OK, so I was in 9^th grade back in the 70s. We were living in Columbus, OH, and had just learned that we would be moving upstate to Toledo at the end of the school year. Again, I would be leaving my friends and starting all over again in a new school.

One night, that spring, I dreamed I was at my new school. I was in some weird class that started with “P” and everyone was sitting at these black tables. There were none of the usual school desks, to which I was accustomed. And a girl was passing out M&Ms to everyone in the class.

I woke up thinking, “WTF?”

When I went downstairs to breakfast, I told my mom about the dream. Neither of us knew what to make of it, and that was that. I never gave it another thought.

Half a year later, while firmly entrenched in my new school and new life, I was in Physiology class.  Mary, another student, was having a birthday and for the occasion, she brought in a bag of M&Ms that she began to pass out to the class.

Next thing you know, POW! Full-barrel dream flash. Everything was exactly how it was in my dream.  From my perspective in the room to the black lab tables, to the exact same girl in the same place with the M&Ms, it was just like I’d seen it. The scene played out for maybe 5 seconds while I sat there with my mouth hanging open.

I realized at the time that this was all quite impossible. When I’d had the dream, I’d never been to Toledo, let alone to that school. I’d never heard of Physiology. I’d never seen black lab tables like that.  OK, I’d seen M&Ms before, but that was it. There was no way I could have been able to “see” everything I’d just seen.

Except that I did.

After class, I staggered up to tell the teacher what had just happened. I don’t really remember her reaction other than maybe a slight bemusement. She probably just marked down in her little class book that she should keep an eye on this one, who was obviously a troublemaker and not much of a scientist.

Through the next few years, I did a little research on the phenomenon but was never able to find anything that adequately explained how these dream flashes happen. 

What I took out of the whole thing is that one can never say what is or isn’t possible. If I can take a peek into the future, who’s to say if someone else can see spirits, or predict what’s going to happen next? That doesn’t mean I buy into every crackpot that says they have powers… there are too many con men running around trying to separate people from their cash in exchange for mystical services rendered. A healthy skepticism is necessary to get along these days.

But right before I dismiss some whack-a-loon that claims to be able to “see”, I’m forced to think, “what if?” 

Sometimes, “seeing” is believing. And I saw for myself that there are things in this world that cannot be explained.

Director's DVD Commentary: I wanted to take a break from politics. so this is a reworking of a post I did 14 years ago. And I still don't know what it all means.

It's Just Not Funny Anymore

 Just as the national economy is rounding into shape, the Village Idiot, aka TFG, wants to come in and “fix” it. Naturally, his “fix” will undo all the progress made since COVID shut things down, and provide another zillion-dollar care package for the rich.

Worst of all, he can do much of this on his own, without Congress, which is like giving a kid the keys to the candy store. He plans to raise tariffs on all foreign goods by 10%, be even more aggressive in deporting undocumented aliens, and roll out another round of tax cuts. This is so “out there,” even the conservative economists think it’s crazy.”

It all makes sense, through the lens of TFG. He still thinks raising tariffs on imports sounds good, like he’s sticking it to the foreigners, where in fact, he’s sticking it to the Americans who buy the goods, which often aren’t available as domestically produced merchandise. Or maybe he does know better, and he and his inner circle have a great laugh at his MAGA fan club who eats this shit up, only to lose a bigger chunk of their family dollars. They know it will just get blamed on the Democrats anyway.

It also sounds good to his racist band to get tough on illegal immigrants, even though they are a vital force in keeping prices down. Those salad fixins’ aren’t going to pick themselves, nor will the hotel beds be made without the maids. If Republicans really wanted to do something about illegal immigration, they could go after businesses that hire them. When was the last time you heard a proposition like that from Republicans? That’s the last thing they’ll ever do. It’s much more fun for them to round up the brown people and try to best each other over who can be more cruel.

Republicans don’t want to solve the “border crisis,” they just want to use it as a campaign issue they can use to scare Middle America into voting Red. Didn’t they just refuse to vote for a $13 billion border package to add agents on the ground and ramp up processing capability? That alone tells you they’d rather yell about immigration than address it.

Lastly, anyone telling you that cutting taxes on the rich will eventually help everyone else is lying to your face. It never happens. It’s been tried throughout the last several decades and not once has it helped anyone but those who directly received the governmental largesse. I can’t believe they even try to push that bullshit anymore, but here they are again, pretending that the Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts didn’t single-handedly wreck economies of their times. That’s probably another thing they laugh about over drinks in the Inner Sanctum.

If The Former Guy becomes The Current Guy again, he’s not going to tolerate a bunch of career politicians foisted on him who will act like a brake on his deluded agenda, like he did before. This time around, it’s Yes Men all the way. No more sanity checks before the executive orders are signed. And if the judiciary finds them unconstitutional, he’ll just find some new judges. So if we’re stupid enough to elect him again, there will be no stopping the damage he’s prepared to do, all in the name of feeding his ego and owning the libs. He’ll be like Fat Rambo, coming to destroy your town, your state, and your nation.

But that won’t matter to the MAGAs; they’ll be in hog heaven.