Rantings 15 : Facebook Rants Someday Facebook will be gone, or at least they will have deleted my account at some point in the future, so I thought I would put these rants along with the rest even though much of it is redundantly full of redundant redundancies (at the risk of being redundant). Nov 6, 2012: I had a restraining order put on myself a while back not to be closer than 50 yards of Facebook if I had the urge to respond to its political cyber-arena. However, Illinois' 21 electors are carved in stone, so for us here the presidential election is over, and has been over for quite some time. There was never any real possibility it would go "red". And since electoral votes cannot be split, all Romney votes will be discarded. Maybe we'll get to play next time, and at least those wasted votes make a silent statement that people are so fed up they will support pretty much anyone, qualified or not, in the hope of affecting change. And I think it's great when people stand behind a cause, real or imagined. Without a cause, there can be no hope. However, to me this election is just a media extravaganza like the Superbowl. Only difference, you already know what teams are playing before the season even starts. And worse, they're the same team. We like to think there is a huge divide in political idealisms between parties, but at best they all might engage in some lively bantor over drinks about abortion or gay rights, but not before they all pat each other on the backs for a job well done. They all play in the same sandbox, and any perceived differences are just a convenient illusion of contrast. The status quo will not be shaken or even stirred regardless of today's outcome. Perhaps we should be voting out our lobbyists instead of the politicians they solicit and simply put all legislative votes on ebay. I hate to be cynical (love it actually), but at my age it no longer makes sense to try and take back our country by supporting either of the two parties that took it away from us. Feb 4, 2013: Mark Twain said, "It's better sometimes to be silent and thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt". Here I will attempt to remove all doubt. I've stayed clear of the big media-fueled gun control debate, but the more I read on both sides, the more I see everyone ignoring the elephant in the room. Here is my opinion on why both left & right may be missing the bigger issue: First, I admit that if forced to choose a side, I will always agree that the Federal Government needs to BUTT OUT of our personal lives. Stick with your Constitutional mandates and quit meddling in state & local affairs, because you suck at it. As for the subject at hand, the 2nd Amendment calls for the "Right to bear arms", so end of discussion, right? Problem being, at least with Liberals, is the broader definition of "arms". Does this include UZIs? How about grenade launchers? Infrasonic cannons? Laser weapons? Do we need to add an amendment that says you actually have to have common sense and not be a jackass to participate in all previous amendments? It's a valid point that there are too many people who abuse this basic right for malicious intent, but no one wants to take that 1st step on the slippery slope because we are simply not capable of doing anything in moderation. Once it starts, it snowballs. Opposing this bandwagon mentality, conservatives are warning of a hostile government takeover ending in a tyrannical slave nation, which is more bandwagon mentality that becomes so kooky that any truth regarding such a possibility is lost under layers of paranoid conspiracy mongering. On the other side, it's all about "saving the children", which for the most part is a sincere and genuine motivation, but lost under layers of self-righteous nanny-state protectionism doomed to a legislative domino effect. My opinion is that there is an underlying "windfall" in all this that neither side or the media have speculated on, hence the aforementioned "elephant in the room". Currently, China owns about 21% of our $16 trillion debt, or about $11,000 for every household in the entire United States. Japan comes in a close 2nd, but I suspect we have no intention of paying them back any more than they intend on paying us back for similar debts accrued since WW2. China, however, wants a return on their investment, and the grand plan over the next decade or so, according to "insiders", is to exchange dormant federally owned properties nationwide to offset this debt. China could use these properties for anything from manufacturing to research facilities, farming, drilling & oil processing, etc., which seems like a win-win for all concerned. China's problem with this arrangement is sending its civilians and soldiers here (their military is involved in EVERYTHING), because they see us as a wild-west anarchist society of homicidal barbarians. And why wouldn't they? We proudly broadcast our sociopathic behaviors to the rest of the world in all manner of media, and until we can at least get a small measure of control on our own population, they are reluctant to put droves of civilian and military personnel in harms way. However, although this seems to be the perfect equitable solution to our inevitable generational bankruptcy, many people (myself included) DO NOT WANT THEM HERE, period. Talk about your slippery slope. As they employ more & more Americans right here on American soil along with their own associates, how long will it be before they are fully integrated into our economic and political systems? Maybe I'm the one being all paranoid now, but I'm not alone in the fear that our grandkids may one day be assimilated into their military-industrial collective, and paranoid or not, that's NOT what our forefathers suffered, fought and died for. Adding the "windfall" of civilian disarmament would certainly civilize this process, and I can't help but think that this whole left-right "2nd Amendment" vs."Save the Children" media storm has been nurtured and perpetuated by the mainstream to distract us all from what will surely be a very unpopular economic occupation until, if ever, it is quietly implemented. I cite no references to the scope, intent, or progress of these debt negotiations, but it's reasonable to assume that these negotiations exist, and their absence from the mainstream is the primary basis of my suspicions. What we don't talk about scares me a lot more than what we can't stop talking about, and if the "selling out" of America has anything at all to do with the disarming of its citizens, we have much bigger issues than simply Bubba Ray keeping his guns or a fly by night messianic president and his socialist cronies who will soon be nothing more than names in a history book. Not saying I'm always right, just saying it would be really nice if everyone thought I was. Sept. 5, 2013: My how time flies. Hard to believe it's time again for a rant, and the huge controversial story is Miley's butt dance. Just kidding. Of course the big story is Syria (although sending Miley & Robin to Damascus does have a certain appeal). This rant however, will be difficult to be minimalistic or objective about, or even play Devil's Advocate to exaggerate that minimalistic view, because the cut & dried fact here is that once again the American government does NOT represent the will of the American people. The Kerrys & Grahams of Capitol Hill insist that we the people do not have enough information to decide what should be done. So...enlighten us. "No, that information is sensitive to national security". Really? How does a foreign civil war qualify as a domestic security issue? "Well...it's complex. You wouldn't understand. The US. can't show weakness. If you back down from a bully, that bully will just pick on you more". Sorry guys, I'm not buying it. That analogy works only if you're in junior high. I see this as the same mistake we make over & over again. History has shown that every time we overthrow a government we don't like, and install some guy we found doing dinner theater in Morocco as their new leader, that puppet president ALWAYS turns against us. And, as in the past, our justification for this intervention is "humanitarian" concerns. I mean, we can't stand by while a government poisons their own people with dangerous chemicals can we? That's clearly something that should be left to professionals like the U.S. Department of Monsanto. And if we were just concerned about people killing each other we would invade Detroit. I truly believe that every so-called intervention since Korea has been perpetuated by corporate special interests, whether it be oil or heroin, or simply the military industrial infrastructures that are sustained by these interventions. So go ahead, invade Syria, but do NOT use OUR money or OUR kids to do it. Send in your special U.N. forces that will presumably be funded by the companies who are best poised to profit from it. And stop being hypocritical about it, pretending like the US. has never seen collateral damage in our decades of meddling, because I'm sure that's how the Syrian government sees it, as the unfortunate blowback of having to break a few eggs to make an omelet. So does the Syrian regime need to be replaced? Of course it does (as does ours). Are we the right ones to do it? Of course not. We cannot afford it, the American people don't want it, it's none of our business, these limited strikes are just going to piss them off even more, and we would be giving China yet one more reason to consider taking us out once and for all. And if you believe they can't, you've fallen under the same illusion of invincibility that gets us into these situations in the first place. We still have the greatest military in history, but we're broke, overwhelmingly outnumbered by our enemies, and led by career politicians who couldn't agree on a pizza topping without digging their partisan heels into the sand for months. If I seem a bit harsh, it's because this wretched flu-bug has killed my sense of humor. Oct. 8, 2013: Time for the monthly rant, and I suppose the phony baloney government "shutdown" is as good a place as any to start. I call it phony baloney because we have yet to see a SINGLE layoff amongst the 535 lobby whores that started this. Seems cowardly to me to mandate sacrifices then exclude yourself, placing the burden on people who have absolutely nothing to do with this. It's like I said about Syria. If Congress wants to invade Syria, then let Congress invade Syria. Just leave us and our kids out of it. We'll pay for their training and expenses, and I think I speak for most Americans by saying that we'll all chip in an extra 50 bucks a piece on our tax returns for them to stay there. Permanently. Same with the "shutdown". If Congress wants to chop heads, by all means do so, starting with Congress. For every member of Congress laid off we could save ten park rangers, and at least they know how to put out a fire. But no, this is not about saving money, and in many cases you're seeing these cuts actually costing more to sustain than the offset of lost wages, it's about childish tantrums, political grand-standing, and trying to convince us that we need government regulations to save all the important services that would still be functioning if not for government regulations (as per the U.S. Department of Redundancy Department). Both sides are blaming the other, but as far as I'm concerned they are ALL impotent and need to be replaced. As I've said before, it no longer makes sense trying to take back our country by supporting either of the two parties that took it away from us, so let's dissolve both parties and start fresh with people who serve their constituents and their own conscience instead of some partisan members-only cheerleading camp posing as a noble platform of doctrinistic ideology and competitive moral pretense. With that being said, let's look at the reason/excuse for this ridiculous power play, that being Obamacare funding, or "How to come up with imaginary money to pay for everything we didn't have money to pay for before". Now, although I could possibly benefit from this program given my age and current financial dilemma, I have to say I'm not in favor of it, not because I don't believe it's possible that nationalized/socialized health care can actually work the same as state/city socialized infrastructures like your Police, Fire Department, Highways, etc. I'm also opposed because we've squandered our monetary and military resources for decades feeding interventionist business interests around the globe and can't afford it right now, and because this plan has not been worked out well, only argued about incessantly by partisan grand-standers, and because, generally speaking, any time the federal government gets involved in business, it becomes a quagmire of bureaucratic inefficiencies incapable of being competitive in real world commerce. However, even though I'm opposed to American socialized health care at this time, in spite of the fact that we all created the need for it by letting the medical, pharmaceutical and insurance industry destroy corporate sponsored and private health care, I have to concede that the argument that Obamacare is unconstitutional is a bit hypocritical since they (Congress) voted it in over 3 years ago, and are now bending that same Constitution by trying to "un-pass" bills that are already laws. Yes I understand that it's not about the law itself but about the allocation of pretend money to pretend pay for it, but they've all had several years to figure this out, and it's not the American people's fault they wasted all that time crying about it instead of doing something about it. So again, leave us out of it. Either fix it or trash it, and sadly it looks like the only possible "shutdown" that will accomplish either is a furlough without pay of all administration and congressional personnel until they can actually EARN that pay by taking responsibility for the problems they created. Next month's topic: The Jenner split : Ratings ploy or Seventh Sign of the Apocalypse? Nov. 12, 2013: Political correctness offends me. Actually, I just like this oxymoronic play on words. However, in past monthly rants it occurs to me that I haven't really offended anyone at all, except maybe politicians, and they seriously need to be offended. This rant should address that oversight, so I apologize in advance. The two motivating articles here are one that explains why, in the past, people caught masturbating were institutionalized or imprisoned, the other explaining the rationale (or lack thereof) of Islamic dog slaughtering. The connection? Masturbation used to be (and still is in many countries today) considered a form of mental illness, because it undermines one's morality and self worth. The irony is that the reason it causes guilt and low self-esteem is because we are taught that it causes guilt and low self-esteem. Same deal with dog slaughtering. They believe dogs are evil because they have been taught that dogs are evil, which makes the dogs not like them which reinforces the belief that dogs are evil. The reality is, they're just dogs. Stop being afraid of them and so mean to them and they will like you better. When we adopt ideas that we think are our own but are actually made up by someone else, we are unable to modify these brittle ideas because we didn't think them up in the first place, and they become absolute regardless of how foolish. We want to learn, but once you truly believe you have all the answers, you stop asking questions. The convenience of this is not coincidental. In the Capitalist world, we use media to tell our kids what clothes, music, movies and games they like, to create the perfect consumer. In the Jihadist world, they keep their young men in an agonizing state of adolescent sexual frustration with the promise of a lust-fulfilling afterlife reward if they avenge their God, to create the perfect disposable soldier. Maybe that's why they hate dogs. A dog sees his Master as the creator of all things, but I doubt even a dog is dumb enough to think that in the afterlife his Master will be waiting with Porterhouse steaks and a line of poodles in heat. This "Be a good boy, get a treat" discipline keeps us in line, often exploiting our fear of the unknown. The mysterious question of what happens when we die has become an enigmatic taboo, the answers available only through the ambiguous writings of people who thought the Earth was flat and the Sun revolved around it. Most likely, like everything else, we just haven't figured out death yet until we learn how to measure and verify these processes, with the outcomes eventually ending up in school books somewhere in between "what makes electricity" and "how an eclipse works". Not that these ancient writings weren't inspired and profound, but the literalism forced on these beautiful poetic stories has buried the life lessons they teach us, leaving an archaic science and moral dogma comprised of rewards and punishments that demote God to an entity predisposed to human ambitions and failures. I partially blame language, or more-so the inadequacies of translations. I mean, we don't even have a pronoun for the word "God". The pronoun "IT" sounds so impersonal, "SHE" is totally out of the question, so we're stuck with "HE" (His will, to serve Him, etc), which subconsciously suggests that God has a penis (and a rather large one I'm sure). Attached to this is a whole host of bio-chemical neural attributes that make us think "HE" has the same emotional framework as us mammals. But just because I make fun of the popular "Grouchy Santa" notion of God as an old white-bearded guy in Heaven with nothing to do except keep up his naughty-and-nice list, that doesn't mean I'm an Atheist. It just means that I think we have about as much chance of understanding God as a white blood cell has of understanding the much larger entity that created it, and which it serves as it goes about its mundane routine in total darkness through our veins. Very little enhancement of this perception can be found in the extrapolated moralities and prophetic consequences that are superimposed on our beliefs to maintain the collective obedience of those who, as said, truly believe they have all the answers and stop asking questions. So I surrender to the fact that it all simply cannot be conceptualized, and joyously surrender to my own insignificance, our life being just a microscopic nano-second in time. You can believe the Big Bang created the Universe, you can believe God created the Universe, or you can just say God created the Big Bang. You can say God created man, or that evolution created man, or just say that God is evolving. For me it doesn't matter, because I choose to believe that God IS the Universe, alive in a way that cannot be defined, in the spaces between atoms, to the spaces between galaxies, the invisible canvas of a holographic temporal stereogram, and what we call reality is the Universe manifesting itself to perceive itself, perhaps because like the proverbial tree that falls and no one is there to hear it, the Universe as a single and complete entity no longer has a separate point of reference to acknowledge its existence, and therefore does not exist. So it perceives itself through fragmentation seeking defragmentation, from Big Bang to Big Crunch and presumably back again, with all things big and small made up of "just dots" in this exponentially pixilated jigsaw puzzle, including us. We are made of the same exact atoms that make up all the stars and planets in all the Universe, past, present and future. This simple unbreakable fact alone suggests that everything is connected and recycled, every particle an integral component, not just a creation. Any argument of "my God can beat up your God" is only a team mentality that obscures that connection and is often used to make us root for the home team and overcome adversaries that have been predefined for us. The best advice from any ancient story probably comes from the New Testament where Jesus said, "Thou shalt stop being assholes to one another" (really it's in there, I saw it). That advice alone is all we truly need, and the rest we can only understand HOW it all works but never understand WHY it all works. The very most we can hope for is to embrace and celebrate the poetry in motion that LETS it all work. You can call it God or Ra or Allah or Tao or Carl or anything you like. The name is for your convenience only and yours to keep and use as often as you like absolutely free. amen. Jan. 16, 2014: Monthly rant: The Internet. Not really a rant, just observations and speculation, and this will be rather long and boring. I'm often asked why law enforcement doesn't do something about virus distribution and scareware extortion of money. I tell them it's because they have bigger fish to fry, like people flying planes into buildings, or smoking in public. You know, big things. While it's true that the FBI has no interest in your stolen maxed-out credit card number or pitiful life savings that you mistakenly assumed would still be worth something nowadays, I've always had the feeling that there is a little more than apathy to their "look the other way" attitude and the deliberate omission of information about cyber-crime by the news media that allows people to be more easily duped by these global extortion cartels simply by keeping us ignorant to the threats. Seems like instead of "let's look the other way" it's more like "let's sit back and see what happens", kinda like 911, where no, I'm not saying it was staged (like many still insist), but the 4 hour lack of response makes me wonder if the decision was made to let it play out. Pretty convenient that the now called "Patriot Act" was 90% complete BEFORE 911, but not implemented until after, in a record 45 days. The justification kinda fell right into their lap, already wrapped up with a big red bow on top. As for the current precarious state of the free internet, it's possible that by sitting back and allowing millions of people every single day to be exploited by these virus cartels, sooner or later there will be a cyber-911 take place that will justify taking control of it. The FCC and the U.N. are currently at odds about who should be the big boss, while ISPs like Comcast & Verizon are very close to their own takeover by way of extortionary "throttle fees" for businesses. Websites may have to out-bid their competitors for bandwidth, but that's another story. The question here is, "Why control the internet?". Three requirements to sustain any Utopian hive society are that its worker bees consume, obey, and be happy. The 3rd one is important because discontent leads to dissidence. The Patriot Act ushered in a new era of "safety" from enemies both real and fabricated. However, for full assurance that our government is truly "saving us from ourselves" we need to trust that government. The mainstream news media does a pretty good job of keeping the really, really bad stuff from us other than the disaster/scandal/celebrity/fuzzy story of the day (which is good for ratings), so we are entertained in ways both heart-warming and shocking. Printed news and radio do not come close in terms of reach, so the only alternative to our sanitized and blatantly partisan TV fluff news is the ballyhoo of raw uncited information online. A lot of it is also biased, a lot of it is reckless presumption, and a lot of it is pure trolling to the point of making you wonder how much of it is just to rally anger and how much might be "Blue Book" style disinformation to be debunked and damage the credibility of actual facts. No matter, it's a big world and an infinite internet, and our only hope of uncovering those network news omissions that might erode our collective contented obedience. In Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (as in WW2 Germany) the solution was to destroy all the books. In the virtual realm, all we have are stupid Trojan Horse regulations like SOPA and PIPA that are deficient in achieving anything other than cutting down on a few isolated copyright infringements, simply due to lack of support. China has attempted to censor its internet for decades with very minimal success. The FCC has repeatedly failed in gaining financial support for expanding their regulatory infrastructure. The United Nations can't even rally support for their "watchdog treaties". That's why I think it will take a catastrophic meltdown, some super-duper virus or cyber-terrorist attack that takes down power grids, banks, military systems and so on, before the world gets on board with this plan to create and actively enforce a centralized system of compliance guidelines and violations. As with the Patriot Act, this system is somewhat in place already with the NSA technologies. Again, it's a matter of "let's sit back and see what happens". Then we open the real can-of-worms, detailing what those guidelines are and to what extent to enforce them. As always, it's not possible for us to do anything in moderation. It's either non-existent or full tilt overkill. It's been said of war that history is written by the victors. It's possible that future generations will be much more accepting of the Utopian hive they serve based solely on the information or lack of information available to them. In the meantime, we'll have to fend for ourselves against the barrage of virus technologies widely distributed by organized crime groups that, for now, have a free pass into the homes of nearly every Windows user on the planet. April 13, 2014: Monthly rant: Global warming and climate change. Like just about everything else, the subject of climate change has somehow become a partisan issue. Liberals insist it's real, it's our fault, and they need to create a solutions infrastructure that will save us from ourselves. Conservatives insist it's not real, it's all fabricated by Liberals, and they want to create a solutions infrastructure to save us from ourselves. Is climate change real? The climate is changing all the time. Just come to the Midwest where you can have a tornado watch and a winter storm warning in the same day. Now, I understand that seasonal climate shifts are not relevant to global climate shift other than the relationship between severe seasonal occurrences contingent on the ocean conveyors, and the root cause of those conveyor changes. Is global warming real? Actually, the Earth has been in a global warming period for thousands of years because we are slowly coming to the end of the last ice age. That's just the way it works. Ice age, then meltdown, then a period of stability until the next ice age. In the last 300 years however, this has accelerated. So I guess the real question is, are we as humans accelerating this meltdown, and if so, does this help reach that period of stability sooner or could it trigger the next ice age prematurely? We have no way of knowing whether or not this accelerated meltdown is naturally occurring or aggravated by an out of control human infestation. It's probably a bit of both, but it is very easy to assume that mankind's undoing will be mankind itself given our destructive nature. However, of the "5 Great Extinctions" (and numerous others), none were caused by any one species or as a direct result of an ice age. They were the result of long term chronic global conditions collapsed by a short term shock event, the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back". A chronic condition could be any gradual changes in the sea or air that would affect photosynthesis, such as changes in CO2 levels or oceanic sulfide emissions caused by low sea levels, extended cooling/warming, methane geysers, reality TV, etc. The plants die off, then the plant eaters, then the meat eaters. A short term shock event could be a solar flare, super volcano, asteroid impact, gamma burst, etc. Then add the complication of these things happening on a planet that has been knocked off its rotational axis (which is likely a primary factor in these chronic conditions in the first place), and it's easy to understand the periodic mass extinction domino effect. The Earth is incredibly resilient and does survive, but at a high cost. Best estimates are that since the beginning, 99.7 to 99.9 percent of all species have become extinct, as will us humans be eventually unless we propagate beyond our solar system. Maybe that's the real lesson behind Noah's Ark, that if we become complacent in our survival, and arrogant in our dominance, sooner or later we will go the way of the dinosaur. In the story "The Day the Earth Stood Still", they asked the alien "Why have you come to our planet?" to which he responded with a puzzled look "Your planet?". They said "Yes, why are you here?", and he said "To save the Earth". Soon after, he begins destroying everything and everyone, and when confronted with "You said you were here to save the Earth", his response was "Yes I am", and it was then that they realized he was saving the Earth from US. Kind of an "Interstellar Orkin Man". In reality, intervention is not necessary. Okay, we've been bad tenants (and certainly won't get our deposit back), but whatever damage we do, the planet will undo through the natural cycle of mass extinctions and the imperceptible erosive effects of time. Once we're gone, in a few hundred thousand years this will all have crumbled and be buried for some future archeologist to dig up and spend his days trying to figure out what a Thigh-Master was used for. However, the Noah's Ark lesson goes beyond our own extinction, because even if we can't kill the planet, and it dodges every possible collision or catastrophe, it WILL die when the Sun dies. This is an inescapable fact with no debate other than when it will happen. My hope is that someday humanity will stop squandering its resources and start planning for the day our lease finally runs out. Hopefully, when we do load the animals 2 by 2, Russell Crowe won't be there with his rock monsters. May 20, 2014: Monthly rant: Morality & Mortality. This month's topic is inspired by one of my favorite people, the omnipotently translucent Greg Meyers, who had quite the thread going a while back about the "outrage" by many over the less-than-humane botched execution of a monster. It seemed unanimous that he didn't suffer enough rather than too much. While the Hollywood liberals and bleeding heart ACLU insist 2 wrongs don't make a right, most of us NEED a sense of justice through retribution in order to find any closure in heinous crimes committed against innocent people. We also want to make sure our monsters don't get a 2nd chance at these crimes. But even more so is the anger we feel towards these societal rejects. The pain and suffering they cause is wrong and simply will not be tolerated. But why is it wrong? It's easy to play Devil's Advocate and say that our idea of right & wrong is just an illusion of contrast created by our rational thought processes based solely on our bio-chemical emotional framework. However, these processes and frameworks differ from person to person, so we need laws and/or religious doctrines to regulate guidelines on how these polar contrasts are defined. The irony with both law and religion is that they are constructed and maintained by a very small chosen few, so instead of moderating our diverse perceptions of morality, it merely compromises them by forcing the narrow definitions of those chosen few on everyone else. For the most part that's okay, at least regarding the important things, because almost all of us can agree that malevolent behavior damages the human race to its genetic core, and that our existing moral definitions, no matter how narrow, are correct in their condemnations. Seems pretty obvious from an evolutionary standpoint that if we're here to be better than what we were, hurting each other is not the way to go about it. Proponents of selective extinction like Aryan purists would disagree, but that's a separate rant for another time. Back to who decides what's right and what's wrong, we don't need church and state to show us the difference. Now, NOT playing Devil's Advocate, it's easy to say yes, we know basic morality, but need guidance in moral behavior. When it comes to everyday social compliance, we need our preachers & politicians to show us the way. Without their guidelines we would be having sex with farm animals or even worse, smoking in public. So, like so many rants before, it comes down to our leaders "saving us from ourselves"... again. Could it be that this is why we have monsters in the first place? Because we are so easily trained in our behavioral patterns that we no longer have the ability to mature those patterns naturally? Use it or lose it. Maybe our monsters are seemingly unfixable because they have rejected their trained morality but are no longer capable of creating their own. Maybe they're just broken. I'm not excusing them. I believe sometimes a sick animal just has to be put out of its misery. Often with humans you need to put them out of our misery as well. Now some would say that the death penalty is barbaric and anyone who supports it should be shot, but in this country you have to be one sick puppy to warrant a death sentence, so what else can be done with them other than pay their hotel bill until they finally check-out, and often that's many, many years. Must be the prison health care us uninsured folks pay for. Anyway, although the technology doesn't yet exist (but I'm sure it will soon), I do wonder what the implications are of taking the most unfixable of our violent societal rejects, and wiping their memories completely clean, then sending them to a Monastery to learn how to help others, never knowing the real past. Kinda like nuking a hard drive and downgrading the OS from Win7 to XP. Does this absolve them of their crimes? Is there some latent genetic dysfunction that could make them revert to the way they were? Is there some Karmic justice that remains unfulfilled? I truly don't know. Something about it seems wrong to me, but that may be because of my moral behavioral training. In the meantime, my only suggestion is to leave well enough alone for now. We can't re-program our sociopaths, we can't let them loose on society, and it seems ridiculous to spend tens of thousands of dollars to take care of them, so I suppose an eye for an eye is our only working solution. And if it seems cruel that sometimes they suffer, think of it as maybe a good practice run for what Hell is going to be like. Or, for the more Karmic minded, think of it as paying off a small portion of some reincarnational debt so it won't be quite as bad next time around. After all, that bright light we see when we die just might be us being pushed out of a vagina into our new life. The last time I went through it I was so traumatized I couldn't walk or even speak for over a year, so I think I'll be careful of the baggage I leave behind at check-out time, just in case it's tagged with a forwarding address. July 7, 2014: Monthly rant: Morality & Mortality part. 2 - The Afterlife. Last month wrestled with the dilemma of what to do with our incurable sociopaths and what, if any, karmic debt remains after death. It ended with the notion that the bright light we see when we die could be us being pushed out of a vagina into our new life (and perhaps those glorious near-death experiences are just abortions). I admit I've always had a soft spot in my head for the concept of reincarnation, although not so much in the linear sense of one person having many lives, but rather an exponential sense of one life having many persons. Linear or not, I still resist this concept because, just like everyone else, I want to believe in an afterlife where our memories and personality remain intact and live forever in a celestial suite reserved for the righteous. My suite will probably be an old refrigerator box, but that's still more desirable than the idea of a perpetual evolutionary reboot that doesn't exactly put us at the top of the food chain where we like to be. It does make more sense though, that as the Universe perceives itself, a life-to-life reboot is required to subliminally store evolutionary learning experiences to compensate for the limited memory capacity of those individual biological life forms. One could argue that this process of ongoing generational streamlining is simply the result of genetically stored information passed on through procreation, but that doesn't explain how most species (even us mammals) have evolved oceans apart from identical species that share not only the inherent adaptive tendencies of their genetic framework, but also share extremely specific behavioral and personality traits despite having no ancestral lineage physically connecting them to one another. Carl Jung attributed these detailed commonalities over great distances to the "collective consciousness" of the individual species, but was unable to define the scope of those "collectives". Is there a separate collective for Wood Ducks and Mallard Ducks, or is it "Just Ducks", or even "Just Birds"? Linear reincarnation is flawed in that it suggests a "ranking" for all species that the Universe follows to manifest itself in an ordered sequence. Exponentially, this order may exist, but not to us since we exist in linear time. A bit of a paradox (or in this case a "Pair-a-Ducks") unless you keep in mind that, however fragmented the evolutionary process appears to us, it's still the result of that singular event when 2 particles moving at light speed got together to form the first Hydrogen atom and stopped moving long enough to be observed. Atoms form molecules, molecules form matter, matter becomes self-aware, and reality exists because it can perceive itself, which doesn't help OUR perception of life one little bit. In fact, the idea that everything is recycled, including us, makes me cling even more to the dream of an eternal heavenly afterlife where we get to meet the Big Guy with the white beard who keeps up his naughty & nice list (except on December 24th... Coincidence? I think not). Now, I've always said that since no one really knows, you can believe anything you like, just believe in something worthwhile. Faith based on fear, hate, or blind obedience to some cookie cutter ideology is simply a waste of time and not good for the kids. So, to soften the cold hard reality of our seemingly disposable existence in a grander evolutionary process, while retaining some of the unique beauty of that existence, I toy with the idea that Heaven is indeed eternal, but only for a little while. What I mean by this goofy oxymoron is the possibility of a state of being after death where we remember everything and understand the consequences of all our actions in a moment of crystal clarity outside the limitations of our linear-thinking minds. However, nothing is "forever", so this would more likely be a transitional state between death and re-birth. What validates the oxymoron is that if we remember every moment with the same vividness as any moment experienced in the "now", then time has no meaning since all moments exist for us simultaneously with equal clarity, and in this way is "eternal" because the perpetual moment that continually demands our perception of time does not apply outside our biological existence. A sort of "temporal nexus", or more metaphorically, like an autumn leaf broken free from the tree, falling weightless and seemingly suspended in time until it reaches the ground to be re-absorbed so the tree can continue to grow. In one way it's depressing to think we're doomed to participate in this cycle over and over again, but I do take comfort in knowing that we move it along one step closer to completion, and I take comfort in believing we may experience all our lives & loves one last time to attain closure on this chapter and joyfully start another. Yes, I know this is a silly notion, but we are ALL just making this up as we go anyway, right? Still better than the popular concept of a Sado-God who intentionally creates a flawed being for the sole purpose of punishing it for its flaws, which is like saying we have no choice but free will. Another stupid oxymoron. And still better than the likelihood that we live, we die, the end. Rather pointless, at least from a human perspective, unless you think of us as merely micro-organisms part of an imperceptibly larger living entity. So I'll just entertain my quaint delusions for now knowing that, if nothing else, if I never believe I have all the answers that means I will never stop asking questions. Maybe that's the purpose of reincarnationary evolution in the first place, to collect knowledge through cumulative experiences thereby improving and enhancing each generation's capabilities and understanding of a much larger universal process, surrendering to our own insignificance to become more significant in that process. It's the "dream stuff is made of", and will certainly make you stop and think. My problem is, I stop to think and forget to start again. July 31, 2014: Monthly rant: A brief return to exoterica. The other day I joked about the "Butterfly Effect" and concluded that, if it's true that even the most subtle flapping of a butterfly's wings can impact a tornado's path, then we need to get rid of them because tornados suck. Of course I don't really hate butterflies, in fact they are one of the few bugs I can stand, especially this time of year when they take over your yard. I know there are millions of insect species, but I think they all pretty much fall into 3 categories: At the bottom of the evolutionary bug chain you have your parasites; flies, gnats, mosquitoes etc. They don't build nests and will lay their eggs in any old rotten garbage or carcass. I appreciate that they are the bottom feeders of life that lick the algae off the aquarium glass so to speak, but I hate that they have no respect for personal boundaries. I've made it clear to them that they can have my back yard, my front yard, even the park North of me or all the woods West of me clear to the river. But no, they insist on being wherever I happen to be. I even tried to get a restraining order but the oddly nervous girl at the courthouse was unable to help. As a result I have no compassion for them, and if just one bites me I declare war on the entire species. Second, you have your builders; ants, bees, wasps, etc. who care nothing about other creatures as long as you let them be. They're on a tight schedule and need to get their nests built and their eggs laid before it's time to perish. I respect that, but wasps in particular make me nervous because they sting and they're not very bright. A hundred trips a day back & forth and they still often can't find the entrance to their nest, becoming clearly agitated, and the last thing I want to do is get in their way. And if one gets in the house, well it's war on the species once again. Third, we have predators, which is pretty much all spiders. Outside, they are fascinating to observe. Inside, they are the most evil of all insects, lurking in the shadows, watching your every move, waiting to trap a moth, beetle, or small child. And if you try to kill one and miss, you can be sure they retreat to their lair only long enough to plot their revenge. I am at least thankful that they have not yet evolved to dog-size and have not yet developed wings. As for other insects, I don't know where they fall in these categories because they mind their own business and I don't really know what that business is. Grasshoppers for example seem to have no purpose other than to eat and jump around. At least crickets have a sport named after them. And centipedes are what? A metric version of the inchworm? And of course, we can't leave out the butterflies, who I imagine are regarded by their plain-jane cousins in the moth family as painted-up floosies who shamelessly flutter about like Las Vegas showgirls. The conservative part of me stands by our less-colorful winged friends, but one thing butterflies have over moths is that even though they are gussied-up tornado causing pollen whores, at least they're not dumb enough to fly into a bug zapper. So...in conclusion, 2 things: I don't care much for insects. They remind me too much of humans with their Borg-like hive mentality and malevolent collective behavior. Second: I obviously have nothing to talk about this month. I do actually, but I like to attack more relevant subject matter with a bit of dry cynical humor, and in the last month the world has seen more than its fair share of human suffering, so for now I am disengaged from any political or religious satire because my opinions seem petty and meaningless in the wake of recent events. These wakes will be rippling for generations, so all those driving the boats will probably be the subject of criticism in next month's rant. Did I mention that I don't like bugs? Aug. 18, 2014: Okay, Facebook is supposed to be fun, so I try to limit my opinions to once a month, but I can't stand it. Someone PLEASE explain to me all this nonsense in Ferguson or at least explain why after nearly 2 weeks this is still news. In Canada this would be news but here in the US where the murder rate is among the highest in the world and the percentage of population behind bars IS the highest in the world, why has this story continued beyond the shelf life of the American attention span? Is it just because the media keeps fanning the embers of an expired story because it's getting good ratings? I feel bad for the families involved and feel bad for the kid who will never have a chance to escape the urban gang mentality, but again, this aint Canada. This sort of thing happens every day, and it sucks, but it's not news any more than Trayvon was news. Two guys got in a fight. One died. Damn shame. The end. In this case, one was a cop, and where I come from if you pick a fight with a cop he WILL shoot you, especially if you're Mongo from Blazing Saddles who "if you shoot him you'll just make him mad". But here's the other thing I don't get. No one will just SAY what happened. Broad daylight and not a single credible witness, just people either saying he was gunned down in cold blood or that he attacked the officer. Come on guys, I can see getting the color of his socks wrong but how can these accounts be that far off from one another? It's as if EVERYONE is lying so this can be a race issue, which has nothing to do with anything. 2 guys got in a fight, one was green and one was purple. Not relevant. The only thing relevant is whether the officer snapped out or was defending himself against a more powerful adversary. The police know. The eyewitnesses know. Probably the dashcams know. This is less a race issue and more of an obstruction of justice on both sides. Stop lying, stop looting, stop protesting, stop grandstanding, stop covering up, stop letting the media turn this into a ratings competition. Just say what happened and let the courts deal with it. Regardless, my heart goes out to the kid's parents. No parent should outlive their child, no matter what. Nov. 17, 2014: Monthly rant: Global warming part 2. In part one I commented that the complexity of climate change has been reduced to a partisan issue where opinion on the subject is entirely mandated by political allegiance as an ideology required to keep your membership card in either club. Both doctrines have become over zealous to the point where proving the other side wrong is all that matters. With sub zero temps throughout the Northern hemisphere and 4 months until the 1st day of Spring, it would seem the environmental alarmist camp has been debunked, at least in terms of the Greenhouse Effect. But not entirely, if you regard this effect as not a root cause, but a piece of the puzzle along with the factors previously touched upon as to why much of this planet is uninhabitable. Those being, the Earth has been in a warming period since the end of the last Ice Age. Second, the Earth's rotational axis has been damaged since before even microbial life forms existed. Third, CO2 emissions introduced into the O2 layer do indeed trap heat, like a greenhouse. So if we're in a post-Ice Age and the Ozone layer is trapping heat, then why is it so damn cold? There is a fourth factor just recently being considered and chronologically mapped historically, at least as far back as the records go, that factor being the Sun itself. As we've been hearing a lot about lately, sunspot activity has been at a peak for several years, and Earth has dodged the bullet (literally) by missing a direct impact from these Coronal Mass Ejections. As the Sun goes into remission, referred to as "Solar Minimum", you would think that's a good thing since the fewer the flares, the less chance of being fried by one. However, new studies suggest that during these remissions, the Sun is actually "less hot" than during peak CMEs, and mankind's folly of contributing to the greenhouse effect might actually help to retain some of the Sun's diminished irradiance through this 10-20 year cycle. Early correlations of these cycles do match up with some of the coldest decades in history, but the records just don't go back far enough for a conclusive pattern. If that's the case we can expect our Northern winters to be increasingly brutal until the mid 2020s when the Sun starts to become active again. Myself, I think it's a case of "all-of-the-above", making weather cycles nearly impossible to predict from year to year. Rotational tilt is still at the heart of it, though. This tilt makes it difficult for the Earth's polar regions to receive direct sunlight much of the year. It's why we have seasons and why much of the Northern & Southern hemispheres are a dead tundra incapable of growing food. If you disregard these frozen areas and lifeless deserts, as well as the amount of Earth covered by water, you end up with over 6 billion people inhabiting roughly 9% of the planet, flocking to dense urban areas that become impoverished from over-crowding. The most likely cause of this tilt and wobble is a collision with another planet, moon, asteroid, or "BAR" (which is the technical acronym for "Big Ass Rock", sometimes referred to in NASA-speak as a "BFR"). However, I do intend on going to Washington sometime soon with my plan to restore the Earth's natural parallel-to-orbit spin. All I need are a thousand space shuttles retrofitted with harpoon launchers, and a whole bunch of rope. We'll straighten that puppy right up. In the meantime, bundle up, be thankful to be among the first humans in 200 million years that possess the technology needed to survive, and be sure to forward your heating bills to the following address: Al Gore 02 Greenhouse Circle Montecito, Calif 93108 Oct. 2, 2014: The 3Ps: Procedure, Process, & Protocol. Working in QA at Glenayre I learned lots about the 3Ps, and anyone who has spent their life in manufacturing in any capacity knows that if a product doesn't meet specs, change the specs. Anyone who insists that procedure cannot be broken is either too busy or too lazy to deal with it or they have fallen prey to the political correctness that chokes not just our social communications, but the flexibility of our business verbiage. Procedures have to be followed in order for them to be perfect, but they are only as perfect as their ability to compensate for their imperfections. Processes are modified, added, or eliminated that rely on the adaptability of the procedures that define them, which is where protocol comes in to define when these deviations are reasonable and how these adjustments are implemented. If it's "against company policy", then change the policy. You guys wrote it, right? Easier said than done, more so these days, as those at the bottom of the company ladder have less importance in protocol and those at the bottom of the consumer ladder have less importance to those at the top of the company ladder. Today's corporate hierarchy assumes that as your pay grade increases, so does your IQ, so it's easy to believe your own infallibility and alienate yourself from such mundane details. But whether it be retail, wholesale, manufacturing, administration or services, as businesses and companies consolidate and grow, they rely more on their own red tape to hold them together, and the bigger they get, the more brittle and less flexible that red tape becomes. The result is often an ivory-tower management with weak delegation skills and poor follow-up. So...everyone just follows the letter of the law, and without the 3rd "P", the others become outdated and irrelevant to employees and consumers alike. The only way to hang on to either is to create a monopoly on your product, service or employ to force them to either participate or do without. The over-adherence to our stagnant guidelines may not be a major factor in the demise of our economic prowess, but it certainly makes everything cost more, makes customer service issues extremely challenging, and creates obstacles in trying to build the most talented work force possible. It also reflects what we've become as a society. As we petrify our rigid rules of behavioral perfection, we lose the required protocol that allows for the imperfections of those rules. Whether it be business, government, religion or our routine social compliances, Procedure defines what needs to be done, Process defines the necessary actions, and Protocol defines the governing influences over the first two. Protocol becomes stigmatic when there's no one left that fits the requirements of "governing influence", causing the procedures & processes to take on a static, iconic and inviolable life of its own. So, does that mean if something doesn't meet specs, or is against policy, or outside the "rules", you can't really change those rules? Of course you can. Just not me, not you, and sometimes not anyone else either. The remaining stigma is the foundation of Arcadian dystopia, an unchangeable bureaucracy creating a blurry line between the futility of not getting credit for the 12 hours your cable was out, to the obligatory enforcement of rules, laws & beliefs that no longer have protocol because their creators have been dead for generations. Sometimes this enforcement can be quite brutal, but for the most part it's just people saying "hey, I don't make the rules, just doin' my job here". However, if the rules attached to that job need to be fixed, get someone who can fix it. In the meantime, not my problem. can't help. don't care. just fix it. Nothing is carved in stone. Unless well, it's actually carved in a stone. However, if it's just the word "nothing" that's carved in the stone, the statement is still essentially correct, and all you need is a waiver signed by your supervisor. Jan. 21, 2015: Monthly rant: More from the Department of Redundancy Department. Yeah I know it's been way more than a month, but I'm to the point of recycling metaphors because the human race keeps recycling its mistakes. Whether the topic is corporate greed, partisan cheerleading, religious arrogance, cry-baby political correctness, race baiting, or just the general complacent dulling of our rationale from having our opinions spoon-fed to us, the root cause is always that bandwagon mentality that divides us into groups possessed by some collective cookie cutter ideology, many of which carry about the same motivational inspiration as the lyrics to "We're not gonna take it" by Twisted Sister. All we need is a vague commonality to pretend these beliefs are our own simply because we agree with them. It's why entire armies follow cruel megalomaniacs, and why people "flock" to protests, riots & rallies (pun intended) to flaunt their generic zeal like porn stars at a nudist colony. It's also why we see endless news stories of horrific executions of occupied civilians whose only crime was not jumping on the bandwagon. However, these genocidal atrocities, such as we see in Iraq and Nigeria, are so conveniently Draconian that I call BS on their claims of jihadist prophecy and noble Islamic crusade. Their zealous bandwagon is fake, driven less by manifest destiny and more by simple old fashioned revenge and greed. As with Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, they are manipulated by corrupt governments who use that thirst for vengeance and power along with the paranoia of superstition to perpetuate an "industry of fear" similar to the infrastructure created in the U.S. after 911. Terrorism stimulates the economy, adds tremendous wealth to the already wealthy, and keeps the masses in complete submission by that desperate need for protection from the "evil-doers" as George W. would say. Many believe these attacks, as well as domestic attacks like school shootings, are staged to further tighten the grip on society by saving us from ourselves, but that's assuming there's an air-tight multi-layered super intelligent maniacal conspiracy at work here. But, I don't see any brilliant masterminds, just political thugs who stand to gain from acts of terror by simply doing nothing, or intervening in such a collaterally inefficient way that it just creates more terrorists by dragging more people into the vicious circle of revenge as uninvolved families are unintentionally destroyed. As for ISIS, Boko, and other groups that brutally murder their own people, they can spout Sharia Law and scripture all day, but to me it's nothing more than the 10 commandments of Orwell's Animal Farm, twisted and perverted to create an omnipotent ruling class that controls its workers through fear and entitlements contingent on submission. As for those few who actually believe in a divine manifest destiny, and that bad things have to happen for a reason, they should consider that the reason bad things happen is because the Universe has a cruel indifference about it, not by design or intent, but by the sheer enormity and magnitude of it. The world is microscopic in the grand scheme of things, and more transitory than can be imagined. Anything that can happen, somewhere sometime probably will or has happened. You can't take it personal. And for those who view God as an invisible wizard or a "Mean Santa" who knows when you've been bad or good so be good for goodness sake, how about we just grow up a little and try to expand on those perceptions beyond the simplicity of a children's fable. They say if you haven't grown up in 200 million years, you're probably not going to, but I don't believe that, simply because we've spent the last 199 million years just figuring out how not to be extinct. Our existence is still slippery at best, but we have learned how to survive on this rough old icy rock we call Earth, and now it's time to take evolution to the next level. I don't know what that level is, but as I've said in previous rants, the capacity for love, compassion & empathy seems to be exclusive to us mammals, which makes me feel that it must be an important part of that evolution. How's about we just try it for awhile and see what happens. The worst that can happen is that we might live happy peaceful lives, and like Bill Cosby sez, "and if you're not careful you might learn something". Probably not the best quote considering that it seems we've recently learned that Bill actually does love pudding. Pudding his penis where it don't belong. I digress. Point being, it doesn't matter who you are, just stop being stupid and mean, regardless of your religious beliefs, political views, what movies you like or what music you listen to. Although, if you listen to Kanye or Nicki you might need to be stoned to death. Or you might just need to be stoned. You never know, it may very well not only evolve your taste in music, but evolve your ability to embrace our humanity and understand the connection between all living things that is in itself a long glorious journey far more encompassing than our perceived realities. Or you might just get the munchies. Me, I'm still obsessing over whether or not the word "Draconian" needs to be capitalized when used as an adjective. Feb. 2, 2015: Well, the groundhog saw his shadow today and ran back to his hole, signifying another 6 weeks of winter. Conservatives are blaming the media for shadow fear mongering, Liberals claim they will protect groundhogs from their shadows regardless of the cost, and Al Sharpton is calling for all groundhogs to unite and destroy the Sun so their children can live in world free of shadows. In a Fox News interview, Punxsutawney Phil denied any coercion on the shadow's part, claiming it was simply "too damn cold". July 7, 2015: Monthly rant: Anger is all the rage. Yeah I know it's actually been several months, but I have nothing to say that I haven't already said, so rather than a specific subject, I'll just synopsize all the previous and current "hot topics": ISIS: Go home. You're drunk. The news media is becoming bored with you and without their support you cannot force your prophecy into reality. You're like the boy who cried wolf just to get attention, and when the world comes to ignore you, you'll desperately pull a 911 and be wiped off the face of the Earth, which ironically is a key piece of your prophecy. However, Muhammad & Jesus won't be swooping down in a silver chariot to restore the Ottoman Empire afterwards. It'll just be another tragic chapter in history filled with cruelty and bloodshed that served no purpose whatsoever. CHRISTIANS: Learn from your doomed Islamic counterparts. I'll say it again, prophecy happens for 3 reasons: 1) It was the most likely outcome of a predictable series of events. 2) Enough people believe in it to force its manifestation. 3) It was a fucking coincidence. No one traveled to the future and back, and any vision of the future is one of an infinite number of possible futures. Time is fluid and everything affects everything else all the time. Stop being over-zealous and stop abusing scripture to validate that zeal. The Bible is fine, I have no problem with the authors, just the editors. Two thousand years of pious aristocrats translating & abridging it to fit the times that has turned commitment to literalism into blind obedience to the gross inadequacies and manipulations of human language. Don't make the same sanctimonious mistakes as your Jihadist evil-twins. Screw the Apocalypse. Simply have love & compassion and the world will either join you or burn without you. POLITICIANS: Retire. Now. We will find new ones that maybe, just maybe, won't suck. The 2-party illusion of choice is nothing more than team-mentality bandwagon media hype that has turned our electoral process into a Superbowl event where you already know which teams are playing but join the cheerleaders anyway. They can argue guns, gays & abortion all day but they all play in the same sandbox, and we will NEVER take back our country by supporting either of the 2 parties that took it away from us in the first place. THE CONFEDERATE FLAG: Enough already. More news media fluff. Like Ferguson, the fabrication and perpetuation of a high-yield story to offset the expensive 20 second pieces that cannot be recycled. The sad reality is that nine people were brutally murdered in their own church. America's response? Ban the Dukes of Hazzard. And we wonder why the rest of the world thinks we're stark raving stupid. The Civil War was less about slavery & racism and more about rebelling against an intrusive, oppressive federal government that had overstepped its bounds. The flag means whatever you want it to mean. Too many soldiers, white & black, died under it, but to hide our mistakes from future generations only dooms them to repeat those mistakes. MARRIAGE EQUALITY: Gay people have a right to be as miserable as the rest of us, right? Not gay so can't say, although I probably could be if it wasn't for that whole weird sex thing. Never understood why it was illegal in the first place, and I'm not worried that now livestock weddings are going to be pandemic, but as with Southern succession, this shows how 12 people out of 330 million can arbitrarily override the governments of 50 states without contest or even the option to express contention. Symptomatic again of an intrusive federal government overstepping its bounds. Still, congrats to all the gay couples out there, and since we're banning flags can we also get rid of that rainbow thing? It looks kinda queer to me. OBAMACARE: Fix it or scrap it. Just stop using it as a hole in a partisan punch-card that gets you another free term in office when you get 12 punches. I'm all for national health care, but Socialism only seems to work on a local level; your roads, fire, police, etc., and whenever the federal government tries to compete in real-world commerce, it fails because it's too bloated and top-heavy to be efficient. For now it might be best to postpone Obamacare and instead fix the corrupted health care industry that created the need for it in the first place. GUNS: The old corny 70's bumper sticker still says it best by saying "If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns". However, many believe it's worth sacrificing some of our protection against these modern day "outlaws" (now lovingly referred to as "thugs")in an attempt to keep guns out of the hands of all the Prozac-ridden crazies that always get their 15 minutes of fame by way of quantity vs. quality. Perhaps a more proactive approach would be to research better treatments for the mentally ill than all the nasty designer anti-depressants that seem to be the one commonality in all these mass shootings. The larger argument is that as a society we are incapable of moderation (like the stupid flag deal), and that any new gun control will snowball into total disarmament. The full blown conspiracy argument is that disarmament is the actual goal, to create a fascist utopian society that is productive, obedient & happy. China would especially welcome this dystopic vision of the future since they are reluctant to occupy our vast dormant federal properties in exchange for debt owed until we get a handle on our "savage wild-west mentality". I think we should leave well enough alone. American gun owners are quite responsible, most of our current gun laws can be easily fixed rather than radically replaced, and if we make China nervous, that's ok too. Maybe that will motivate both sides to come up with a better way to pay them back other than setting up shop here. NSA: After 911 the NSA began monitoring every call & email here in the US and elsewhere. This was never a big secret and in the 11 years prior to Edward Snowden there have been countless articles and documentaries that detailed this enormous infrastructure. The media ignored it until it became "whistle-blower news worthy" and even people in Congress pretended to be shocked. If these politicians were that far out of touch and never read a single NSA report given to them, they should be fired. If they were lying for the sake of grand-standing, they should be fired. This was part of the deceptively misnamed "Patriot Act" and we all knew what a Pandora's Box it would be so stop with the fake outrage. GLOBAL WARMING (oops, I mean "Climate Change"): When a planet is coming out of an Ice Age, it gets warmer. The climate is changing all the time, but if there are things we're doing to make it worse, figure out what they are and stop doing them. Again, quit making it a partisan issue just to keep your punchcard. To say it's all our fault and we need more laws is incorrect. To say it's a hoax just to make more laws is also incorrect. Both sides are extrapolating from this complex process only the information convenient to their own dogmatic agenda. Truth is, we're clueless as to what will happen and what to do about it other than stop polluting our home, which should be a given regardless. Even a dog won't crap in his own doghouse. THE ECONOMY: So long as the Federal Reserve keeps diluting our currency with Monopoly money, that currency will continue to buy less regardless of wages. Stimulus bubbles, designed to promote borrowing, only benefit the banking systems and Wall Street high-rollers in the long term. In the short term, the bubbles burst and the consumer is back to square one. Lost equities are absorbed by the lenders themselves and by the high-rollers already wealthy enough to take advantage of the resulting windfall stock buyouts, further diminishing a working middle class already on the brink of credit card bankruptcy. More credit equals more fake money that further devalues our currency in the global market and our exchange ranking with the IMF. Sadly, this domino effect may not be stoppable. POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: Just say what you want to say. I promise I won't cry. Stop walking on eggshells. Argue. Get mad. Yell & scream. Duke it out if you have to. Just stop thinking that being polite and considerate to the point of wussification is going to solve any of our social problems. THE UNIVERSE: If I seem harsh or even arrogant in my comments, it's only because to condense an adequate assessment of these topics in single paragraphs, one needs to be blunt. There are other points of view with equal or greater validity on these matters, and some that are just plain stupid. However, that's one of the beautiful things about humanity, our perceptual diversity that great ideas are born from, taking on a life of their own beyond their individual components. It's from these rich perspectives that my grandiose hope for humanity is that we can someday, somehow learn to peacefully coexist and put these resources to bigger evolutionary goals and higher spiritual revelations. Whatever pronoun you attach to him/her/it, God IS the Universe manifest, and we are all made of the same exact atoms that make up all the stars & planets in ALL the Universe. If everything is truly connected in this cosmic self-realization, then even the smallest of things have their unique place in this connection and any imagined significance or lack thereof is irrelevant because it's all recycled on a molecular level. Every particle an integral component, not just a creation. Our transitory existence is the Universe perceiving itself one microscopic nanosecond at a time. Slowly we're beginning to understand HOW it all works but not WHY it all works, however we can embrace and celebrate the poetry in motion that LETS it all work. Time is defined as the "interval between moments", so cherish every moment because without time, everything would happen all at once and we would miss it. This is the last monthly rant. Moving forward I will try to limit my posts to Willy Wonka memes and pictures of food. July 28, 2015: I was sharing my findings on Social Security with one of my oldest & dearest friends today (with heavy emphasis on the word "oldest") and decided to post it in lieu of the dreaded monthly rant that I have surrendered to hiatus for the moment. Some view SS as a bloated socialist program that is collapsing and needs to be dismantled, but it has a noble purpose and is failing only because (in my opinion) they have ignored the increasing life expectancy of Americans over the years and allowed other government agencies to dip into the slush fund created by early death and benefit abandonment that covers longer-living retirees who have out-lived their benefit allocations. A case of borrowing from the cookie jar while still leaving enough for everybody until all of a sudden there are more people at the party than you expected. That slush fund (or "reserve") should have been untouchable and easily managed by continually adjusting the benefit formulas according to life expectancy statistics to allow that reserve to always be abundant & fluid. Personally, this is not among the reasons I am cashing in at 62 instead of 66 but something to consider since on the SS website they do state that the system is slated for dismantlement in 2021 unless an impotent Congress can make changes before then. Otherwise at that time they will likely liquidate the individual accounts in lump sums and either pro-rate the reserve as formulated cash settlements or absorb that reserve to pay for the administration of these liquidations. My guess is the latter. The important thing is that we get what we & our employers have paid in, because this is not an entitlement, it's more of a 401K that never pays interest, and although they should have made money by holding it (just like banks do), the principals themselves do not belong to them and have a fixed value. I'm not worried about getting ripped off, but I suppose anything can happen. Bigger concerns regarding 62 vs 66 apply to individual circumstances, the biggest being the difference in your check every month, which is 33%. The following applies to anyone who turns 62 in 2015: At 62, your benefits check will likely be about half what you make now assuming you've been in the same job for many years with a consistent income not contaminated with excessive overtime or excessive downtime. You gain 33% by waiting 4 years, which means in 2031 you reach the "break-even" point (4 years of zero SS re-acquired at 33% per year starting in 2019). So, in 16 years you reap the full benefits of waiting, but keep in mind that even though you have zero benefits between 2015 and 2019, you still have your normal working income (and that income creeps up your benefit amount). Mine is $1020/month at 62 or $1360/month at 66 (33% or a $340 difference). Being ok with this or not all boils down to 5 questions: 1: How long do you expect to live beyond 2031? Any estimate on this is a wild guess, and health issues past & present, lifestyle, ancestry (genetics), environment, and basic optimism vs pessimism are all you can go by. 2: Can you do without insurance till Medicare kicks in? Many jobs these days can no longer offer health insurance, and if you're married and work full time, Obamacare is probably too expensive at a low deductible for someone your age not qualified for assistance. A decent health care plan is crucial in this decision. A crappy plan (or no insurance at all) might make retirement a means to expand your options through the "Affordable Healthcare Act". Get professional advise on this because right now it's a confusing mess. 3: Do you love your job? Seems like a stupid question but it is important. Believe it or not, there are people who enjoy their work. If you're one of those rare few, you might want to wait, or like me try to just cut your hours down. At 62 you can still you can still make $15,720/year without any cut in benefits. For me that is around 20 hours/week. After that, they deduct $1 for every $2 over that limit, and your continued contributions eventually are used to increase your monthly benefit, same as late retirement. 4: What supplemental income besides pension will you have? As mentioned, at 62 you can make as much as your benefit (ball-park), and at 66 there is no limit. So, if you don't especially love your job and the insurance sucks, a part time job and/or self-employment along with your SS at 62 might actually increase your overall yearly income, and as also mentioned, open up Obamacare options currently unavailable to you. 5: Can your 401K withstand inflation for 4 more years? You can cash in your pension and forego SS till 66, but one thing many retirees did not foresee was that their pensions would no longer buy what it could 30 years ago. The almighty dollar has been shrinking pretty much our entire lives and I expect it will continue to devalue at a higher yearly percentage than your average 401K safe-mode return on interest. Your SS relatively diminishes in the same way. Also, your pension will be hit by a large tax unless you roll it over into an IRA to be drawn from over time to stay in the lower tax brackets. Still a no-win since the tax dollars you save long term continue to be diluted by inflation. Not sure how Annuities work. Summary: Whether or not to cash in now is a gamble either way and every situation is different. In my case, I'll still be working 20 hours/week plus probably 15-20 a week as self-employed exempt while still getting my $1020/month, so I can't really turn down the extra income for 4 years on a gamble. This is something everyone has to really analyze, and explore every possible future scenario before making a decision. This info is very basic and incomplete. I'm no expert for sure, but hopefully it will serve as food for thought for anyone already planning for their "Golden Years". November 8, 2015: As mentioned, the "monthly rant" has been discontinued after its 2 year run. From this point forward they will be known as "PSAs" (Public Service Announcements) to create the illusion that I have valuable information to provide free of charge. November 8, 2015: PSA#1: Okay, not really a PSA, not really a rant. Just an observation. People have been asking me the past month or so "how's retirement treatin' ya?" and the generic answer is that it's the best job ever but the pay sucks. The odd truth is that once you're done with the relentless obligatory 40-50 hour week, things come into a true perspective very, very quickly. Like everyone else, I assumed my "bucket list" would consist of many things, whether it be buying a Winnebago and traveling the countryside, fishing, joining a country club, restoring a classic car, planting a big garden, whatever, it turns out my list actually only has 3 things on it that mean anything at all other than the obvious commitment to my wife, which has never changed, work or not. They are, in no particular order: 1st: Refurbish this dilapidated old house. Not just for the next young couple who will inherit it as they start their new family and life, but for me to enjoy because it contains so many memories and deserves to cared for. It may be an OCD thing, but my gut tells me there are reasons I have yet to understand and probably will not in my lifetime, like planting a tree at age 60 knowing full well you will never enjoy its shade. 2nd: I still have lots of musical projects, live & studio, that have been saved & re-saved in my brain and need to be realized. Challenge being, I am not capable of playing what I hear in my head. I have all the hardware now but may need the help of those much more talented than myself to bring it to life. However compromised, I'm confident that it will end up being something I can be proud of. 3rd (and most importantly): I need to live long enough to see my granddaughter Evies' high school graduation. Not that I care about the graduation itself. I just need to be around at least that long to be a positive 3rd party influence on her life as she passes that milestone in her ascension into adulthood. As parents, we try to raise our children to be like us. As a grandparent, we offer a unique perspective on life that a parent cannot, which is important because believe it or not, our kids have to find their own way beyond their parent's best intentions and can benefit from input based on a more conventional wisdom and old fashioned common sense. So...I guess what I've taken away from this new found leisure is that when you spend your life creating goals for the future, it's just human nature to overlook your goals for the present, and in my case they actually turned out to be exactly the same. Next month's PSA: How a lack of imagination can save you from being immobilized by imaginary fears. August 9, 2016: PSA #2: Many out there believe that this presidential election is rigged. I can't speak for the primaries because it's hard telling what all went on behind that circus that somehow left us with the two most undesirable candidates imaginable, but the election itself is not "rigged", just a little misleading and not exactly a true democracy. The United States Electoral College is the institution that elects the President and Vice President of the United States every four years. Citizens of the United States do not directly elect the president or the vice president; instead they elect representatives called "electors", who usually pledge to vote for their respective candidates. The number of electors in each state is equal to the number of members of Congress to which the state is entitled. Therefore, there are currently 538 electors, corresponding to the 435 Representatives and 100 Senators, plus three additional electors from the District of Columbia. Electors are elected on a "winner-take-all" basis by state. They are pledged to the presidential candidate who wins the majority, regardless of how slim, and all other votes are discarded. Although no elector is required by federal law to honor a pledge, there have been very few occasions when an elector voted contrary to a pledge. The candidate who receives an absolute majority of electoral votes (currently 270) is elected. On four occasions, most recently in 2000, the Electoral College system has resulted in the election of a candidate who did not receive the most actual votes in the election. To make matters worse, the number of electors vary state to state from 3 to 55 (based on the number of state representatives), making it possible to win an election by securing these 11 states even if it's by just one vote each: California (55 votes) Texas (38 votes) Florida (29 votes) New York (29 votes) Illinois (20 votes) Pennsylvania (20 votes) Ohio (18 votes) Georgia (16 votes) Michigan (16 votes) North Carolina (15 votes) New Jersey (14 votes) =270 electoral votes, voiding every other vote in the rest of the US. Of course this is highly unlikely since the only "swing" states here are Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The remaining states will overwhelmingly stay "red" or "blue" as they have for decades. So, when someone asserts that a 3rd party vote is a vote for Hillary, that may be true in Illinois, but in Missouri a 3rd party vote would be a vote for Trump. For that matter, ANY vote in a non-swing state contrary to that state's majority designation ends up overturned because, as mentioned, electors are elected on a "winner-take-all" basis. I've never been a fan of the Electoral College, but I understand that in a TRUE democracy, it's like having 5 coyotes and 4 rabbits voting on what's for dinner. November 11, 2016: I've read some wonderful (and some not-so-wonderful) comments the last few days regarding the election, and wasn't going to chime in, but one point that keeps getting side-stepped is that the vast majority of Trump voters didn't actually vote for Trump, they voted against Clinton. Same can be said for the majority of Clinton voters. They were voting against Trump rather than voting for Hillary, which makes both of them and their rhetoric somewhat irrelevant in this election. This election was more of a wrench thrown in the machine, a forced repair of a system in dire need of a reboot, a system that gave us the two most undesirable candidates imaginable in hopes of maintaining the status quo of a lazy and impotent government. Regardless of party, our representatives all play in the same sandbox, but now they have to get off their asses and do the job we have been paying them to do for generations. Democrat or Republican, we the people did not create this mess, and we the people have thrown it back to either undo the damage or let it go down in flames. It's time to start earning those paychecks boys & girls. June 7, 2017: PSA #3: Just play the damn song: I live to serve & to entertain, and I understand that my political opinions are neither required or desired, something our big-name entertainers will not even consider. But here goes: As mentioned back in November, this election was more of a wrench thrown in the machine, a forced repair of a system in dire need of a reboot, a system that had hopes of maintaining the status quo of a lazy and impotent government. Now both parties need to repair the damage or let it go down in flames, right? Sadly, no. So far it's still business as usual, still the same partisan grand-standing, still the same old smoke & mirrors, still the same media distractions like Putin and Kathy Griffin that keep us bleating at each other through the fences so we remain oblivious to our own intellectual confinement. However unlikable and repugnant, President Trump is not the real problem and is being treated unfairly. He is clearly outside his element here. He's used to being the big boss, the lobby pimp who was always able to buy whatever legislation was needed to further his business interests, just like other big bosses. Now he has do what he's told like any other President and I'm sure it's tough for his ego to adjust to such compromises. Like any other President I imagine he showed up at the White House door with a ton of ideological baggage, and when he protested that he couldn't bring that baggage in with him, three simple letters, J...F...K, convinced him to leave it all on the front porch to be disposed of properly. He is not the omnipotent being we think he is, or what he thought he would be in his delusions of grandeur. On his recent trip to Saudi Arabia there was much fluff about Melania not covering her head and little concern that he sold 150 BILLION dollars in arms to the largest sponsor of global terrorism in the world. Why? Because this deal was an unfinished part of the previous administration and one of many reasons Hillary was supposed to win. No one on either side would risk making their party look bad by questioning it, even though we all assume that at some point in the future some of these weapons will be used against Western targets. The Saudis had a very large investment in Hillary, not that they were influencing the election or anything, yeah that was the Russians. In the end the deal went through, regardless of Mr. Trump's opinion of it one way or the other, uncontested by either party to save face and maintain the aforementioned status quo. My guess is that few of President Trump's big decisions, even pulling out of the Paris accord, were arbitrary. His greatest power might well be that of a spokesperson, a diplomat, a voice to represent the American people to the rest of the world. In that regard he has fallen a bit short. It would be better for him to not talk, not tweet, let the speech writers do their job, and maybe learn some old fashioned good manners. Whenever he goes off-script it comes off as petty and arrogant. Even if he feels like his hands are tied, he can take a page from the Reagan playbook and be a reassuring patriarch that exemplifies the goodness and decency of the people you serve. Just do your job sir, just play the damn song. Like your celebrity adversaries, you look small and weak when you play the bleating sheep. As for the rest of us? We should do the same. Stop pointing fingers and start shaking hands. There is no Left or Right, they all play in the same sandbox. period. As mentioned, the only way to get off the band-wagon is to accept that we cannot take our country back by supporting either of the two parties that took it away from us in the first place. July 27, 2017: PSA #4: "Ha Ha I just pretended to throw the tennis ball and had it behind my back the whole time. Good boy". That's the conclusion I've come to regarding this phony baloney Trump no-transgender soldiers troll-storm. The President, even as Commander-In-Chief, can't really make this decision arbitrarily, but he KNEW his tweets would split social media right down the middle, which would distract all of us for weeks. So I have to wonder, "distract us from what"? What is it we are not supposed to be paying attention to? Can't be the healthcare thing, can't be the Russia thing, possibly something brewing with Korea but unlikely. In any event, this is looking more & more like diversionary trolling at its finest. As for the transgender argument itself, I'm not qualified to have an opinion since I was not chosen for military service by the Viet Nam lottery of '71. It would seem to me however that being trans would not in itself be cause for rejection, but like hundreds of other criteria and prerequisite requirements, might factor into what capacity in which they would serve. The military infrastructure is much larger than just troops & hardware. It requires accountants, purchasing agents, mechanics, engineers, inventory personnel, forklift drivers, shippers, receivers, and so on. If they have no openings that match your skill set you're put on the back burner unless you meet the demanding requirements needed to be a ground-pounder. It's not like '71 where they would take pretty much anybody. You have to be qualified, and even then you can still be rejected based on ambiguous evaluation. Cry intolerance all you want, this is not summer camp and there is no room for misplacements based on condescension to political correctness. Still, the President can't really just ban entire demographics on a whim. Surely he knows this and surely he knew what a media storm this would generate, all the sheep scurrying back to their respective corrals to bleat at each other through the fences, oblivious to their own confinement. How convenient. Maybe Mr. Trump is crazy, or maybe he's crazy like a fox. However, even our metaphorical "Good boy" eventually figures out that you didn't really throw the tennis ball. March 18, 2018: PSA #5: When people say "we don't want to ban ALL full semi-automatic firearms, just the military-style, scary looking ones", this is somewhat of an oxymoron since ALL firearms except bolt-action & pump-style shotguns are semi-automatic. The casing ejects or you do it manually between shots. There is no such thing as "full semi-automatic", it either is or it isn't, and automatic firearms are illegal. So, unless it's been modified to that extreme, which is a felony (and what insane cold-blooded murderer in his right mind would risk going to prison just to slaughter a bunch of kids?), a semi-automatic rifle is just a semi-automatic rifle, same as your off the shelf handgun. One pull = one shot. Period. So what sets the AR-15 apart from any other rifle is that it's big, black and scary (sounds racist to me, but whatever). Bottom line is that if you ban the AR-15 you also have to ban every other firearm like it, which is EVERY firearm except bolt-action or pump. A revolver might be exempt because even though it's semi-automatic it does not eject the casing. Still, the vast majority of firearms use a magazine which makes them identical to the AR-15 other than aesthetics & cosmetics. ADDENDUM 1: Sorry to beat a dead horse here, but I need to correct myself. Yes it's still true that a rifle is a rifle aside from aesthetics, prosthetics & cosmetics, and that painting it pink or even a nice pastel periwinkle is NOT going to save lives. However I spoke too definitively by saying that full-auto firearms are illegal. There are many YouTube videos that demonstrate the power of M16/AR15 style hybrids leading people to believe these were the firearms used in recent mass shootings. Not true. Full-autos are not, as CBS said, "easy to buy as a cup of coffee". Anything after 1986 is illegal, period. Post-86 replacement parts, also illegal. As a result these weapons are rare and can cost tens of thousands of dollars, and the permit process is also expensive and heavily regulated, taking 4 months to a year to complete, with extensive background checks, fingerprinting, ATF inspections, FBI involvement, mental health profiling, compliance to State laws, requirement of personal endorsement by local law enforcement officials, and on & on. Yes there are people who LEGALLY own a full-auto, but only the cream of the crop professionals that make their living in the business. The notion that you can buy them at a gun store or gun show using a FOID card is simply not true. ADDENDUM 2: Yeah I know I'm preaching to the choir here (or maybe singing to the preacher) because most all my friends enjoy hunting or firearms as just an educational hobby, or don't care anything about guns but believe the Constitution should not be manipulated like the 10 commandments of Orwell's Animal Farm. For my friends out there in FB land seeking more regulation, believe it or not I sympathize. I wish I knew how to stop crime too, but personally I see it as less of a gun problem and more of an idiot problem. Just my opinion and I try to respect opposing views, but when you use made-up media terms like "assault rifle", "full-semi", or "military style" it makes you look whiney and uninformed. To the rest of us these words just mean "big black & scary-looking" because a rifle is just a rifle. 1 pull = 1 shot. Period. The notion that if you paint them a nice pastel color they will be less dangerous and the notion that you can buy full-autos at Cabela's does nothing for your credibility and weakens what may otherwise be valid arguments and concerns. PLEASE at least know the basics and stop hating something just because your TV tells you to. The Deerfield ban on black rifles and big mags does NOTHING to help save lives and is actually hurting your cause by creating a false sense of accomplishment resulting in complacency to more important issues. Although very much opposed to the idea, if it was me I would go after things like bump-stocks or hollow points rather than aesthetics. I've attached this to a post from a few weeks ago, but if you don't want to read it start with these 5 basics: 1) Full-autos have been illegal since 1939. 2) However pimped-out, a rifle is a rifle. They all work the same and take standard ammo. 3) Banning big mags just means carry extra mags. 4) ALL guns are semi-auto except bolt-action rifles or shotguns. Banning the black ones does nothing. 5) Criminals don't obey laws. Even if you repeal the 2nd Amendment they will find a way to do harm. Good luck in your cause, and I hope this info helps this movement to be taken seriously, because right now it's not. June 14, 2018: PSA #6: A quick clarification on the so-called "Bible-Ban" bill, which is inching its way towards ratification in California. I was misled by this myself and thankfully I resisted the urge to chime in. This is more of a "slippery slope" rather than a mandate, and as usual the right has come unglued and embellished it beyond recognition. The problem with the left is they have been unglued since the 2016 election when they didn't get their way and continue to hope for the pilot to fail even though they are also on the plane. Anyway, Bill 2943 does NOT ban sales of Bibles or any other reading materials, but would restrict the use of these materials in Gay Conversion Therapy where you try to make someone "un-gay" by any means necessary, including Christian indoctrination. There are already restrictions on therapists trying to "de-gay" anyone under 18 years of age, and this bill merely extends those restrictions to all ages. The slippery slope here is that even though it may be true that the majority of gays are just "born that way", there are many young people who are so confused by endless mass media bombardment they don't know what to believe about anything, so they choose to believe in nothing and have no idea about anything, including their sexual orientation. For therapists to be restricted in their use of doctrinistic support material is suggesting to them that if someone thinks they're gay, tell 'em to go for it. You might like it. This countermands what they're trained for and what they're getting paid to do, which is help the client figure it out, by any means necessary. As always, this is just another example of politicians needing to stay out of things they know very little about and let the professionals do their job. June 19, 2018: PSA #7: Sarcastic metaphors abound: A year or 2 ago I compared media diversionary trolling to the fake tennis ball throw you use to trick your dog and keep him busy, difference being that a dog eventually figures out that you didn't really throw the ball. Us humans won't figure this out so long as the color of the ball keeps changing (maybe because dogs see in black & white?). Our TVs & electronic devices give us something different to hate each month so we forget what we were mad about last month. However, it seems that the subconscious architects of this "Punch-N-Judy" show are simply not trying anymore. Where are the good reality skits like David Hogg or the evil Russian spy gag? I would think after the Stormy Daniels bit tanked in the Nielsens they would step up their game. But no, now we're supposed to be angry that President Trump did NOTHING to stop the immigration policies of the Clinton administration, which basically asserted that if you break the law there will no monthly weekend jail cell sleepovers with your kids. Whether you agree with Clinton policies or not, one huge hole in this story arc is the fact that in the late 90s Mr. Trump had no vested interest in it whatsoever. At that time he was a lobby pimp, buying votes from Congressional leaders to further his business interests (most of these people still have their seats in Congress. Probably why they are afraid of him). The other plot hole is that Clinton and Trump are on opposite sides of the aisle, making it difficult for Liberals to disagree with these policies without looking like a disloyal Democrat. A moral dilemma to be sure, but luckily hypocritical subjectivity is down to a science these days. Still, this is bad scripting void of imagination and clearly not thought out all the way through. C'mon guys, we buy all your products like we're supposed to so we deserve the brightly colored fake tennis balls, and lately they have been drab, gray and washed out. If you're not careful, Bob Iger will fire the lot of you and we'll end up with an entire nation of people who have no idea what they're pissed off about, and they will eventually stop chasing the imaginary ball altogether. Without the veil of "Us vs. Them", the puppet show is exposed and the bleating sheep will escape from their intellectual confinements. However, come to think of it, THAT'S a story line I could actually get behind. Hmmm... June 20, 2018: PSA #8: (One more and I get my FOID card back). I was watching the NBC feed on the immigration press conference earlier and trying to read the comments popping in at 50 per minute and am completely blown away by the rabid hatred of our president. I've never seen anything like it in my 64 years. I feel like I need to minimalize all the hype-N-fluff surrounding the base issue with these observations: 1) Trump was not president in 1997. I have no sense of time but I'm quite sure of this. 2) Doc Brown's DeLorean was destroyed by a train in 1985 at Eastwood Ravine. All they can do now is fix the mistakes of the past 3 administrations. 3) Maybe I'm overthinking this, but sending little boys & little girls to a prison or detention center with hundreds of adult male inmates just so they can be with their daddy seems like a really, really, REALLY bad idea. 4) Amnesty for illegals with kids will only promote child smuggling. 5) President Trump's overuse of the phrase "Witch Hunt" may not be as paranoid as I thought. 90% of the comments I read blame him for Clinton's policies, and pretty much everything else left behind by previous administrations. 6) People generally embrace hating whatever their televisions and other devices tell them to hate, without reserve or ponderance so long as it fits their narrative. As an American I am very disappointed and ashamed of what we've become. Too many praying for the pilot to crash the plane even though they are also passengers. Too many who pretend to care about the issues but really only care about their vendettas. Too many eagerly embracing a mob mentality because they have been convinced they are "victims". Too much hate, period. People, please, just stop. June 29. 2018: PSA #9: One more and I'm off the county litter gang. I've said it before and will say it again, there is no left and there is no right. These are ideologies fabricated by ambiguous arguments that conveniently fit the narratives of both sides. Once a month or so, when our collective attention spans decay into apathy, there's a new, equally ambiguous "hot topic" to argue about. I don't believe the timing or polarity of these arguments are a bizarre coincidence. From the flaccid cheerleading of Sean Hannity to the unbridled hate of act.tv's FB page, these topics are designed not to create new ideas born from debate, but to keep us safely divided in our intellectual bunkers. In generations past, it was about the censorship of information. Today, quite the opposite. We have a new generation bombarded with so much information they don't know what to believe, and consequently find it hard to believe in anything, forcing them to choose a side and adopt a cookie cutter dogma void of pragmatic constructivism. We are ALL being played, and although the actors in Washington DC do an adequate job playing their parts, they all still play in the same sandbox. They can banter after work over drinks about guns, gays, abortion or immigration, but not before they all pat each other on the backs for a job well done. We will NEVER rebuild our Constitutional Republic by supporting either of the two parties that desecrated it in the first place. I have no solution, but I believe the best place to start is at the beginning: Stop with the name calling, grand standing, band wagonning, and outright hate. Stop letting TV and social media define and dictate your anger. Stop with the comic book "good vs. evil" precept. Leave that for the movies. Also important, stop voting these career politicians back in decade after decade based on the animated partisan costumes they wear only to rally voter demographics that will guarantee their re-election. And MOST important, we need to remember our humanity. I know it's still in there somewhere, however buried under layers of rhetorical platitudes and defensive pride. These layers are super-imposed and easily peeled away. Underneath, we might find that we are decent human beings after all. Have a joyous & glorious weekend my friends. Too hot for yard work, so I'm off to Hy-Vee Wine & Spirits to stock up for the weekend. July 10, 2018: PSA #10: I've always liked the old saying "If you're 20 and not a Liberal, you got no heart. If you're 40 and not a Conservative, you got no sense". Churchill is usually credited with this but I don't think anyone really knows where it came from. It's a great jab to both sides though, because it suggests that if you're conservative you've surrendered to the stoic, cold & bureaucratic reality of a monolithic autocracy, and suggests that if you're a liberal you are blinded by your own passion and cannot see the ineffectiveness of idealism in that aforementioned oligarchy. I love the irony that the one thing both sides of the imaginary fence have in common is their own unyielding zeal. However, from polarized views, antiquated or radical, come NEW ideas. It's an important part of how humans sustain an ordered society without resorting to a monarchical dictatorship. The part I don't love is how this amalgam of ideologies has become an excuse for us to hate rather than debate. There's another old saying, "Pride cometh before a fall", and if we don't all stop with the fake outrage we will become prisoners of our own arrogant tenacity. Stay cool & hydrated everyone and enjoy your evening. August 21, 2018: PSA #11: "Loose Lips Sinks Ships, but a whiter smile can win the war!" Okay I made that last part up, but I can so imagine a WW2 Pepsodent ad with a "Brushing for Victory" tagline. Anyway, a not-so-brief editorial on media censorship: The US. Department of Censorship was dismantled in 1945 at the end of WW2. After that, the film, radio, news & TV industries were left to arbitrarily manage content through their various Code of Ethics departments, with minimal oversight by the FCC. That eventually became over-zealous and downright petty, especially for television, where silly things were taboo such as the word "pregnant", or showing a toilet, or showing Rob & Laura Petrie in separate beds even though they had a son, or Fonzie's youth-corrupting leather jacket (which he eventually wore anyway because the show was too popular to be bullied), and so on. It was ridiculous and the FCC ultimately had to expand its oversight. By 1970 the post-war Utopian Bubble was gone. In 2010, the Daniel Pearl Act was signed by President Obama, allowing the State Department to oversee foreign press releases forbidden in countries that were retaliating by brutally murdering journalists, including Daniel Pearl. Later, that was expanded to include Intelligence oversight of sensitive and classified intel that could put Americans in danger if leaked to the press. All in all, it's worked well with little overstepping by the appointed watchdogs. At least until now. Presumably fueled by a rabid and unbridled hatred of President Trump, many who voted for the Daniel Pearl Act (it was unanimous in the House & Senate except for 12 votes) now seem to oppose its mandate of protecting classified intel, based solely on the President's decision to revoke the security clearance of ex-CIA Director Brennan and other ex-government employees-turned cable news pundits. The same people who wanted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's head on a platter for leaking intel that potentially jeopardized not just intelligence operatives but the public as well. The same people who supported the Obama administration regarding these policies. Some have gone so far as to say these revocations are the act of a dictatorship. Ironic, since if this were a real dictatorship, you would not even be allowed to make such statements in the first place. If Trump is a dictator, he's clearly not very good at it. The cut & dried answer is that if you're no longer employed at a job, you shouldn't have continued access to their proprietary information, same as if I quit my job as an R&D guy at Gates-Air and go to Motorola, I shouldn't have access to Gates' new product specs and designs (for the record, I am retired and was never a Gates R&D guy). I will concede that in many cases it's of great benefit to extend security clearances, particularly for former officials that are still held in high esteem for their advice and counsel. Some still serve on special commissions and need to be up to speed so they can contribute effectively on the issues. In the case of an ex-Intelligence official who becomes a talking head for cable news, broadcasting worldwide to our friends & enemies alike, and especially if they CLEARLY have a political agenda that might make them reveal information that could compromise an ongoing investigation or worse, expose internal weaknesses compromising national security, then YES, cut them off as soon as possible. The Obama administration was correct in protecting the free press and the free Western world by curtailing the exposure of sensitive information to our enemies, both foreign and domestic. The fact that there are those who would turn their back on their party and their constituents for the sake of pure vindictiveness and political vendetta is both self-serving and irresponsible. Up next, my review of the new Fox reality show "Celebrity Apprentice DC" starring Sean Hannity as Donald Trump, Robert DeNiro as Robert Mueller and Stormy Daniels as Nancy Pelosi. Spoiler alert: Everyone gets fired. November 5, 2018: PSA #12: One more and I get my EBT card back. At the risk of being redundantly full of redundant redundancies (and I've said over & over that I will NOT repeat myself), I feel the urge again to satirize media politics in light of tomorrow's election. In my younger days I paid little attention to politics and likely was a "JFK Democrat" even though I had no preferential affiliation to either party. Let the best man win. Period. Sadly, it's now all identity tribalist politics where we are ALL forced to choose a side. The age-old concept that government works better with a balance of power between parties no longer works because they just yell and point fingers at each other from their ivory towers and NOTHING gets done. Because of this, for the first time ever I will have to vote straight red. Not because I'm a Trump fan, although I do support him. He needs to be watch-dogged, but if we try to balance the power in DC, this time around anyway, the ivory tower finger pointing will escalate to an unsustainable level that will make them all even more impotent than they already are, dividing us more and more until our society collapses under its own ideological weight. For the Dems to take a pasting right now hopefully will help them get back to their JFK roots, abandon their globalist/socialist fantasies, stop thinking that importing voters will preserve their power, stop with all the victim-hood group identity indoctrination, stop with the saboteur tactics, stop assuming that if we don't have white guilt we're automatically racist, and reinvent the party in preparation for 2020. I'll likely still vote red again in 2020, but it's important that new ideas are born from opposing ideas. Without them we will end up with a one-party oligarchy that will be a bloated status-quo version of the Republican party doomed to failure by its own flaccid complacency. Not a fan of the 2-party system. Without a viable 3rd party, the "illusion of choice" is just "us vs. them", but for now we're stuck with it at least until the Zombie Apocalypse, so both sides need to take some of that partisan allegiance and redirect it to the actual people who hire them and pay them to be our representatives. Right now they are all just kicking & screaming in the sand box over who gets to play with the big plastic pail and shovel. However, the proverbial sand box has become more of a litter box, and that big plastic shovel will be useless if we the people bring in a backhoe to clean it out. So, for the next 24 months at least, I'm willing to give the "Grand Old Party" the benefit of the doubt. If they fail I'm changing my voter registration to "Agrarian Porcupine Whig". November 16, 2018: PSA #13: No more PSAs for a while. Yes I've said that before, and I still enjoy poking fun at the "illusion of diametrics" that polarizes our current political mindscape, but sadly it's just not funny anymore. I find it increasingly difficult to satirize social media politics in that oxymoronic, Dennis Miller-esque style of wordplay, lampooning and bad puns. My observations have gradually become more serious, and without humor what's the point? If you can't make fun of it, and more importantly, make fun of yourself in the process, any political editorials just fuel the fire and make the proverbial sheep, in their respective corrals, bleat at each other through the fences even more, distracting them from their own intellectual confinement even more. So, for now on Facebook I am resigning myself to Forrest Gump & Dos Equis memes, with perhaps an enticing dinner recipe every now and again. You'd be surprised what you can do with a box of Rice-a-Roni. Happy Friday everyone! December 18, 2018: PSA #14: (Whoops, I said no more PSAs till after the new year. Let's just call this an "Addendum to previous PSAs"). Anyway, a quick observation about the supposed Democratic Socialist Movement. I say "supposed" because I don't think it has the momentum that Left/Right cable pundits would like you to believe. I do believe that bureaucracy worship has become more attractive to young people for an obvious reason. Even though they make triple what our generation did at that age, they are getting married, buying a home, and starting a family much later in life than we did, not because of life-expectancy, but simply because that $15 an hour (if you're lucky) ends up being $8 an hour at best because it is taxed to death. Federal income tax, state tax, property tax, sales tax, road tax, local tax, etc. all on top of student loans, credit card interest, "virtual services" that didn't even exist 30 years ago, inflation, this list could go on & on. I can understand the desire to bow down to big government and let them take it all so they can "save us from ourselves". Unfortunately, it's not possible to lower taxes by adding new taxes, and the idea that Congress will force all the rich people to pay for all these attractive social programs (like Mexico is paying for the wall, right?) will not happen because Congress is already bought & sold by these same wealthy, powerful entities. So pass a ban on Congressional lobbying right? And who would pass that ban? Oh yeah. Congress. Not going to happen. No matter, even in a perfect dystopian society where we are rewarded with a perfect life in exchange for our total submission to an omnipotent bureaucratic God, wouldn't we end up like zoo animals who have lost their ability to survive on their own? I think the ultimate price is much greater than the obvious advantages of an Orwellian culture. Keep in mind that Socialism actually can and does work, but only on a local level. For example, you won't see me out on Walker Street filling in potholes right? And do I have a fire truck parked in my driveway? Of course not. Even health care can be socialized, but not on a federal level. The idea of taking health care out of the private sector by adding a federal administrative layer that puts it back into the private sector because the government can only regulate and cannot compete in real-world commerce is just adding cost and again, adding more taxes that will NOT improve anyone's take-home pay, which is the problem in the first place. It's the proverbial "Vicious Circle" that can never be restrained by expanding the circle itself. Communalist ideas can only be sustained by first creating a strong, healthy and stable economy. We are not there yet, and prematurely kneeling to a purely legislative demagoguery has the potential to create a poverty of which none of us have ever lived through. Beware of the dangling carrot. February 25, 2019: PSA#35: Echo chamber or feedback loop? Einstein's definition of insanity is doing the same thing over & over expecting a different result each time. If that's true I must be goofy as a pet coon, because these rants do not change anyone's opinion. I either get an accepting nod or am blown off as a stubborn old white conservative unable to change with the times. Nothing is gained and yet here I am again. I suppose we all like to think we're in an echo chamber, our words bouncing back with re-affirming plate resonance, but inevitably they degrade to an annoying squeal caused by our own redundant self-amplification, AKA an "FB loop". These loops deafeningly saturate all forms of media, epitomizing Einstein's definition. For example: This year we swore in JB Pritzker as Governor of Illinois, partially because nobody liked Bruce Rauner, but also because he promised higher taxes and new taxes that would fix our economy and fund big city social programs, under our assumption that these taxes only apply to "everyone who makes more money than me". But it doesn't work that way. The idea that all the rich people will pay for everything won't happen so long as those same elites are involved in the lawmaking processes that determine those taxes, contingent on their lobbying efforts to improve profitability for their respective industries and the politicians they lobby. Prosperity through increased taxation is a feedback loop. Also, JB signed the $15/hour minimum wage law, which, fair or not to long term employees, will help a lot of people. But not really. It works the same way it always has: Higher wages ALWAYS force companies to raise their prices, and higher prices ALWAYS force companies to increase wages. Rinse & repeat, another feedback loop. Another example: We all love to yelp into the echo chamber about racism and social injustice right? Just another FB loop. Children know nothing of racism until bombarded with it by overweening adults who perpetuate it by "raising awareness" of it. Once one dog in the neighborhood starts barking they all start barking. Why? Because the other dogs are barking. Believe it or not, racism has little to do with skin color anymore and more to do with identity victimhood status. It's about the self-perceived moral superiority of the yelpers who want it to be about skin color, thereby preserving the ethical perpetuity of this tribalistic "us & them" feedback loop. Immigration? Well, first many of us need to learn the dictionary definitions of "legal" and "illegal". Similar spelling, opposite meaning. We are for the most part a welcoming people, and embrace those who come here seeking a better life for their family. However, please use the front door. If you crawl through the bedroom window at 3am we might have a problem. The feedback loop here is that in our zeal to save the world, we ignore our own problems. Once we fix those, then sure, go save the world. Until then, the more generous we are in our immigration policies, the more we suppress the lives of immigrants already here. Until we get America straightened out, this moral high ground of reckless pomposity is hurting, NOT helping immigrants, or anyone else for that matter, except maybe those few Dems hoping to create an impoverished voting base that can ensure their re-elections through the same taxpayer-funded social programs that keep this base in poverty in the first place. Yet another loop. Democratic Socialism vs. Capitalism? Paul Harvey said, "Inflation is where the price of everything makes the price of everything else go up". When the cost of goods and services continue to rise, prosperity through taxation becomes impossible. The Federal Reserve uses "stimulus bubbles" that release baseless Monopoly money into the currency, eventually diluting that currency until inflation exceeds the original stimulus. Social programs often fail because no matter who pays for it, rich or poor, the money becomes insufficient because it ends up buying a fraction of what it used to. Unemployment rises, and everyone who paid for these social programs end up relying on them to live. Those programs buckle under the additional financial weight and loss of revenue, and you end up with no middle class whatsoever, just the wealthy and the destitute. Another feedback loop. But enough of that. You get the idea. There are lots of issues on both sides that no longer have that warm reverberation of re-assurance, but the abrasive howl of over-repeated rhetoric drowned in its own amplified cyclic oscillation. A horrific noise to be sure, and a direct result of Einstein's insanity analogy. And yet here I am doing the same thing, except in my case "FB loop" is less FeedBack loop and more "FaceBook loop". And even though I try to inject as much humor as possible into these rants, it's beyond the point of satire. I have a genuine concern that our kids & grandkids are growing up in a vociferous world that hates one another based on their super-imposed ideologies that serve only to keep us safely corralled and distracted from our confinement by the deafening sound of our OWN feedback loops, or what I like to call the "white noise of bleating sheep". Just like in music, the only way to cure the squeal is to tone it down a notch. Once you do, the feedback instantly disappears and the song immediately becomes pristine and intelligible again. Einstein's loop is the same. Even the slightest change in action can indeed produce a different result, thus ending the loop. Even if the result is not what you were looking for, at least you can get off the reiterative merry-go-round long enough to pick a different horse. As always, not sayin' I'm right, just sayin' it would be really nice if everyone thought I was. Next PSA will be shorter as I explore the possibility of a Beano-Purina merger that could forever solve AOC's "cow-fart problem". Enjoy your evening. March 9, 2019: PSA#36: Freaky Friday. First of all, a happy freaky Friday to all you freaks, although the title of this rant is more in reference to the 1976 Disney film where a mother & daughter switch bodies. Our 2-party system seems to have done just that. I find myself in all this as a "JFK Conservative with Libertarian economics". Talk about a contradiction in terms. But here we are, in a time when Democrats lean towards elitism and the Republicans are stuck with the working class. Not a role the GOP is comfortable with, especially those intransigent career Republicans who still identify as "Corporate Republicans" who use trickle-down fiscal policies to validate their corporate servitude. Most of them have no desire to represent the working class, but that's their voting base now since the Democratic party also regards the middle class as the ones who just "pay for everything". Class-based voter demographics have dramatically shifted over the past 5 years or so, partly because the middle class has embraced free market Capitalism over fears that Socialist economics only take more in taxes until consumer sales drop from reduced income, resulting in layoffs. The unemployed end up relying on the social programs they paid in to, and those programs collapse from increased participation and decreased funding (the aforementioned "feedback loop"). So...lots of ex-hippie Liberals switching sides. Some would say because they are hypocrites, others would say they simply "grew up", but I would say they have not abandoned their anti-establishment ideologies, but are simply leaning towards the lesser of two evils. However, we all understand that the lesser of two evils is still evil, and the working middle class on both sides of the aisle are fed up with ALL politicians and are merely biding their time until those politicians are stripped of their colorful partisan costumes, revealing who they really are underneath their cookie-cutter dogmatic identities. Most likely we will find that once they get to DC, few of them actually care about the districts they are paid to represent, so they can "switch bodies" all they want. It's just a label change, less "Freaky Friday" and more "Jekyll & Hyde". Our two parties aren't changing brains or bodies, they simply have self-induced schizophrenia based on whatever persona gets them re-elected. So...no Freaky Friday here after all, however I do have to wonder if Barbara Harris' character was lesbian while in Jody Foster's body. Hmmm...something to fantasize over (whoops! I mean PONDER over) this weekend, which I hope is awesome for everyone. Snow should be gone by tomorrow and temps are looking good (so far). Enjoy! March 15, 2019: PSA#37: Climate change part 3: As with previous editorials on the subject, I admit I don't know enough about climate change to have an opinion, so it would be foolish for me to argue that it's not "real", and equally foolish to argue that it is indeed real and the fault of all the gasoline junkie flatulent cow huggers who refuse to give up their plastic straws. Instead, a bit about climate shift itself from geo-historical accounts. We all know that seasonal shift is the result of the Earth's collision with a sister planet, rogue planet, or BAR (NASA for BigAssRock). This same event that created the Moon also knocked Earth off its rotational axis, slowed its days down to 24 hours, and caused its residual "wobble", all creating annual and period extremes in global temperatures. I used to think that if not for that single event, the Earth would be a "Risa-like" planet where it's 60 to 80 degrees all year long and mass extinctions don't happen. I understand now that if not for climate shift, advanced life forms would have never evolved here in the first place. Where annual shifts allow existing life to evolve through the global exchange and distribution of atmospheric and oceanic organic compounds, periodic extinctions help thin out the dominant species of the day, allowing other species to emerge and evolve. If the dinosaurs had not perished, humans would not exist, even though that particular climate shift was caused by a collision event. Most extinctions are "naturally occurring", often the result of carbon dioxide and methane released into the oceans and the atmosphere, and not because the dominant species of the day consumed all the planet's resources. Like a dog shaking off fleas, the Earth will not even notice and will continue on until it encounters an unrecoverable event like a super-nova. Mother Earth is the Queen of all life forms, even the annoying ones, but the Universe is the King in deciding which worlds live and which worlds die. Our pretentious little species is likely contributing to a climate shift set to happen even if we did not exist, or it's possible that we are actually postponing the event by our own reckless folly of consumption and pollution. We pretend to be reasonably sure that terra-forming the global economy and retro-fitting the global infrastructure will prevent the Earth from performing its own regularly scheduled maintenance. However, I question the term "reasonably sure" as a validation for the greatest undertaking in history short of colonizing the stars. If we're wrong, it would be a tragic irony that we put all our eggs in one basket to stop the inevitable instead of preparing for it. We all want clean air & water for future generations, but it would be wise to do our homework regarding geo-history and all the much larger factors that drive the ice ages and mass extinctions before blindly jumping on the AOC bandwagon. That wagon might be teamed with flatulent horses that will only add to the problem, not to mention all the hot air coming from the lady coachman. Enjoy your weekend everyone! p.s. Please do not mistake evolutionary science for atheist anti-Creationism. If you repeatedly dropped a handful of watch parts onto a hard surface in the hope it would randomly fall together into a working timepiece, you would be doing it for eternity without success. The intricacies of life are infinitely more complex than a watch, and to think it exists accidentally is as foolish as the notion that it appeared by the wave of a magic wand. We know HOW things work but until we understand WHY things work, our comprehension of God is limited to the wonderment of this poetry in motion we're a part of. And so it should be. March 22, 2019: PSA#38: We live in troubled times, but better days are coming. Those days are called "Saturday" and "Sunday". Enjoy your weekend everyone! April 5, 2019: PSA#39: Idiocracy the Sequel: It's got electrolytes! "Idiocracy" was a wonderful 2006 movie where an average guy wakes up in a future where he's the smart guy because everyone else became stupid. I thought it was just another stoner flick like "Dude, where's my car", and at the time had no idea it was actually a documentary. Originally I was going to comment on things like the Smollette case or the Mueller Report, but after watching several hours of Flat-Earth videos on YouTube this week, I've concluded it's ALL connected to the so-called "dumbing-down of the human race". Studies show our collective IQs are dropping, but I don't really buy into IQ testing because it confuses ignorance with stupidity. I don't think people are stupid, and ignorance is simply not having access to all the facts. Ignorance is just a lack of knowledge. No shame in that. None of us have all the answers. The problem is with the "apathetic smugness" that concludes such knowledge has little value in the age of Wikipedia where we get our facts when it's convenient or necessary, and rely on group-think for our opinions. There are lots of reasons for this apathetic smugness and our lack of desire to learn. Here are three: 1) The education system: Fear of losing federal funding has coerced states to adopt federal education criteria, which shape family values that support political ideology in the classrooms. This is not a huge deal until you factor in the minimization of academia itself. The courses are not as demanding as they were, and so long as you can take college-credit courses like "Harry Potter" and "Lady Gaga" (not making those up), you will have a deficiency in basic science, history and literary knowledge. Students do poorly in math and vocabulary, and have an incomplete and inaccurate understanding of history. Federal intervention coupled with the devaluation of prerequisite learning is creating a generation lost in a modern world with no idea what led up to that modern world. In Orwell's book 1984, he states "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past". Put simply, those unaware of their own history are doomed to repeat it. To keep that from happening we need more education and less indoctrination. 2) Electronic media: When the conveyance of cogent knowledge is replaced with rumor, posturing, and half truths, the mindsets of intellectually fragile groups within a society are easily persuaded, leading to social and political convolutions that keep people in socialist bondage in lieu of any incentive to sift through the noise and garbage. In Bradbury's book "Fahrenheit 451", books were considered a form of toxic intellectual dissension and destroyed, leaving a centralized source of information easily kept in check. Video media has become just that, an "Us vs. Them / Punch & Judy Show", void of individual objectivity. Social media, kinda the same deal, but in more of an impersonal attention-craving fashion. Instead of taking time to formulate a thoughtful response to a friend's post, users click an Emoji, fire off a brief comment meant to convey little more than an acknowledgment, or they retreat to their respective corrals and yell through the fences, where accuracy is sacrificed for expedient pomposity, leaving little room for an informed dialogue. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts. 3) Unintentional complicity: As with just about everything these days, it's all about money. Not saying it's all some elusive group of elites desperate to maintain their power by controlling the masses, as suggested by the Orwell & Bradbury references. It's EVERYBODY, a casual and universal "blind eye" that has taken on a life of its own for the prosperity of us all. We send our kids to college so they can make more money. The schools compromise their criteria for funding so they can make more money. The media promotes incendiary diversity for advertising revenues so they can make more money. Politicians rally their indoctrinated flock to get elected, so they can make more money. New employees, less "educated" and more "trained to memorize and obey", are more easily acclimated to their jobs, so those businesses can make more money, and so on. Economics. To make these economics work, It would seem we need to be smart, but not TOO smart. However, as in the movie "Idiocracy", this may be a slippery slope. It is in our nature to learn, so stagnation is not an evolutionary option. We either get smarter or we get dumber. One in fifteen young people think the Sun revolves around the Earth. One in ten think Judge Judy is on the Supreme Court. We're a hop, skip & a jump away from a generation irrigating their crops with Brawndo (aka Gatorade). Surely we will never be as dumb as the characters in Idiocracy, but with 10 million Flat-Earthers, 40 million Moon-Hoaxers, and 60 million people who thought Michael Avenatti would've made a great President, maybe we should rethink the concept of paying total strangers tens of thousands of dollars to teach our kids that everything we told them was wrong. Happy Friday everyone! Next PSA: An in-depth look into the painstaking process of finding a word in the dictionary spelled incorrectly. Spoiler alert: I found one. It was the word "incorrectly". You feel smarter already don't you? Enjoy your weekend! April 25, 2019: PSA#40: Flat-Earthers & Moon-Hoaxers. No, I'm not going to use 6th grade science to debunk either group. That would be, as they say, "like shooting fish in a barrel" and no sport whatsoever. Their feedback loop of pretzel logic is summed up by the scene in the aforementioned film "Idiocracy" regarding Brawndo (aka Gatorade): Why would you spray your crops with Brawndo? Because it's what plants crave. Why would they? Because Brawndo has Electrolytes. Do you even know what an Electrolyte is? Of course we do, it's what plants crave. As relevant as that gag still is, the Flat-Earthers have had to actually re-write basic science to support each & every previous claim to the point where we all live in the Matrix, and reality is just a digitally generated temporal stereogram. The Moon-Hoaxers are less about stupid answers and more about stupid questions like "Why can't you see stars in any of the landing site photographs?" to where I ask "Why would you see stars in the daytime?" Again, shooting fish in a barrel, so instead just a short comment about the sad and somewhat tragic aspect of these mentalities. All my life I have been in awe of the amazing achievements and discoveries brought about by the age of technology and reason, where every answer opens up an exponential set of new questions. Millions of people dedicating their lives to the exploration and discovery that inspires millions more to improve upon. If I believed it was all fake, I would likely see life in general as shallow and pointless, and live in a paranoid vacuum void of trust or even purpose. I would be missing out on the celebration of humanity's triumphs. I would be missing out on the inspiration of our intellectual, emotional, and spiritual evolution. I would be missing out on being a part of something larger than myself. I would be isolated from the human race and retreat to those small groups of other isolated individuals who share each other's conspiracy fantasies only to still find themselves totally alone in the world. Rod Serling once said, "Existence is slippery at best", and trust is equally slippery and quite fragile. Today with so much misinformation, disinformation and outright lies, it's easier to not believe in anything and align oneself with those who only seek to validate their fears based on group census. Not Rod Serling to be sure, but in Sting's song "The River Flowed", his closing line is "Men go crazy in congregations, they only get better one by one". Group census validation is based on sheer numbers. The larger the group, the easier it is to have a vicariously collective confirmation of the group's ideology or lack thereof. This is true not just in science, but in religion, politics, and just about everything else as well. It's a shame so many young people will be cheated out of the human experience of failures and the great accomplishments born from those failures. In my own lifetime, we have learned more of the Universe and our place in it than in all previous history combined. I put my trust in that, which allows me to scrutinize everything else to my heart's content. Point being, it's okay to question things, to be suspicious of people with too much power, to take all the yelpers on cable news with a grain of salt, to doubt the motives of any status quo identity, to hold accountable those who would lie to further an agenda. But do it based on fact, not the idea that facts are merely opinions that can be modified to turn a theory into fact. That kind of circular reasoning always ends up an intellectual "Whack-A-Mole" mindset that leads to a lonely eternity of endless revolving skepticism, like the Flat-Earthers & Moon-Hoaxers. Oh, and by the way, Elvis is dead. Next PSA: Three conspiracy theorists walk into a bar. Coincidence? I think not... May 17, 2019: PSA#41: Intolerance will not be tolerated. Happy Friday everyone! Just a couple quick observations about racial hypocrisy. These days if you're not obsessed with skin color that makes you a racist. This seems to me the epitome of, as they say, "the kettle calling the pot black", or in this case the "kettle calling the pot white". A few examples: 1) Voter IDs are racist because they target minorities that are incapable of acquiring such IDs, like a driver's license. Really? To me it's condescending and even insulting to assume blacks and other minorities are too stupid to drive a car, and that as the superior race it is our obligation to bend the rules for those at a disadvantage because of their skin color. Seems like a case of the kettle calling the pot white to me. 2) Reparations for slavery: This also seems very patronizing, and specifically towards African Americans. After a century & a half, and countless achievements in civil rights and equality, black Americans are still inferior and need a handout from their white privileged overlords? Dr. King must be rolling in his grave. And forget about the expensive logistical nightmare of mapping the ancestry of every single American to figure out who were the slaves and who were the slave owners to pro-rate those handouts. Reparation proponents will not have that conversation. They would rather just give everyone 150 bucks and tell them to stock up on Tanqueray & Colt 45 to feel better about themselves, while those proponents retain their sweet spot on the moral high ground. Another kettle-n-pot. 3) It's racist to target Illegals. "Illegals" are not a race or ethnicity. There's no such country as Illegalstan or Illegalslovakia. The word is used to describe ANYONE who violates the law. To again assume we need to bend those laws because immigrants are too dumb to understand or follow them is a slap in the face to everyone who patiently pursued and conquered the due diligence required for citizenship. Most of them have a better understanding of American history than those born here. Another kettle-n-pot. 4) If you support Israel you are Islamaphobic because Jews are racist. Again, this is a little backwards. The purge of Christianity throughout the Middle East, Africa, and now to some degree starting in Western Europe has left Israel surrounded by its enemies. Just in my lifetime they have been attacked from all sides three times and survived, not over land, or trade, or politics, but because the Jewish state MUST be destroyed according to God's will. To say Jews are Nazi bigots is the kettle calling the pot white and indicates a clear misunderstanding of WW2 socialist Germany and of Islamic prophecy. 5) Pro-lifers are sexist against women's rights. The kettle-n-pot thing once again. It's the rights of the child, a SEPARATE human being, and has little to do with the mother's rights and more to do with the mother's assumption that she created it so she can kill it. SHE didn't create anything, and her only contribution in this process was failing to keep it from happening. An abortion should always be the last option, and there are many reasons it can come down to that option. However, just because you don't like the baby's gender, or skin color, or because it interferes with your "career", is racist against the child, their children, their grandkids & great grandkids, all of who will never exist because of one baby who was "inconvenient". I also have to wonder, if 90% of all abortions happen to black girls, isn't it racist to promote black genocide? Asking for a friend. There are many other examples of racial hypocrisy, these are just the most obvious. The biggest kettle-n-pot of all is that children know absolutely nothing of race, ethnicity, or religion. They learn it from the adults who are obsessed with skin color and "social justice". Those who believe that if you don't accept your own victimhood you will end up living a life of servitude and exploitation. Those who regard cultural heritage as societal baggage to be used against you in a eugenics war that will be lost unless you overcome your superimposed genetic limitations. Assuming those limitations is in itself inherently racist, and promotes the illusion of moral and ethnic superiority. I live in the whitest, most redneck part of the Midwest you can imagine, and from what I see, racism is dead. We no longer care about such things and regard each other as Americans over any other attributes. The kettle can call the pot black, or call it white, or anything else. To me they are both just "kitchenware" (although the skillet seems a little shady to me). Bottom line, united we stand, divided we fall. If we remain blinded by our diversity, we remain vulnerable by way of diversion. Next PSA: The skillet saga resolved: See how it all pans out (my apologizes. have a great weekend!). May 26, 2019: PSA#42: What if they gave a war and nobody came? That oddly worded phrase was a bumper sticker/ t-shirt/ blacklight poster, and was coined by Mickey Dolenz in the Monkees' 1968 song "Zor & Zam", about two petty kings who called for a great battle at dawn only to find that everyone called in sick that day. We all hate war, right? Then why do we have them? Often because it's necessary, but often because it's lucrative. In the 1972 Viet Nam lottery my number was 362 out of 366, so you could say I literally dodged a bullet on that one, and I couldn't see myself volunteering for such a God-awful tour of duty fighting an un-winable war based on the perpetuation of defense contracts. But since that time I've learned that it was much more than lining the pockets of Bell & McDonnell-Douglas shareholders. The endless possible consequences of a war's outcome also drive military, political, geographic, and economic motivations that at the time were far too complex for my young, naïve liberal mind to comprehend. However, one thing I want to make crystal clear is that the liberals of that time were NOT the unhinged spoiled brats we think of today, spitting on soldiers and yelling "baby burners" as they returned home. We didn't hate soldiers. We all had brothers, friends, and neighbors who went, some never to return, and we all prayed for their safety. We didn't hate soldiers, we hated pointless wars. The microscopic lunatic fringe got all the attention after the My-Lai massacre of 1968 by the news media who profited from its outrage (sounds familiar doesn't it? The word Ferguson immediately comes to mind). Yeah I guess some things never change, but I can't stress enough on this Memorial Day weekend that regardless of how much you hate Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other perpetual war, it is very, very important to remember, honor, and respect all who served and made the ultimate sacrifice. I regret not serving myself but make no apology for it. I still consider myself a patriot, and as part of the world's largest private militia would fight and die to protect my family, friends and neighbors against all threats, foreign and domestic. I don't wear the uniform but I am certainly humbled by it, and am forever grateful to all that wore it. Enjoy your day, and if you can dodge the raindrops, by all means fire up the grill and have a few cold ones with family & friends. Those who died to preserve such simple pleasures would like that very much indeed. Next PSA: Back to politics as we explore the possibility of making Missouri a sanctuary state for conservatives. May 31, 2019: PSA#43: I hate parasites and I'm gnat kidding. I've been bitten by Buffalo Gnats before, but on top of everything else going awry in the Midwest, it seems we now have "Mutant Gnats" (or maybe "X-Gnats"?). Unlike eye-gnats, that don't bite, and unlike mosquitoes with their syringe-snouts, these gnats have "blades" that slice the skin and peel it back so they can lap up the blood after injecting an anti-coagulant into your bloodstream. Like mosquitoes however, only the female bites. They will fly 10 miles or more in search of blood and are attracted to the carbon dioxide exhaled by people and animals, and also to perspiration, fragrances, and dark objects (unlike myself who am often mesmerized by shiny objects). They are most active just after sunrise and before sunset, and from what I've read are actually attracted to Vanilla and "Buggins" type repellents. I got nailed about 40 minutes ago, and now have a welt the size of a quarter. It bled for a short time leaving a lesion twice the size of the gnat, whose miserable life I ended, but not soon enough. The bite was a very sharp pain, it itches like crazy, and there is a red streak about 3 inches long coming from the bite. It'll heal in a couple days, and is only a concern if you're allergic to the chemical they inject, but it does infuriate me that we finally get some rare nice days and are held hostage in our own homes by something the size of a pin head. After sunset they shouldn't be a problem, just mosquitoes to deal with, so fire up the bug-zappers, fire up the fire pit, fire up some tunes, and enjoy a cold beverage. Next PSA: The Illinois House and Senate. Not really, it's just the first thing that comes to mind when talking about parasites. Happy weekend everyone! June 4, 2019: PSA#44: If you take out the space in "THE IRS" it becomes "THEIRS". I am not going to belabor JB's devastating tax plans, as we all know the effects they will have on downstate Illinois. He was elected because he promised more taxes and new taxes, and he is doing just that. But what happened to all the money from previous "new taxes"? (Lottery tickets, slot machines, etc.) I hope this short story will analogize the somewhat vague process & procedure of state subcontracting: State representative John Smith calls for a meeting with three contractors outside the old capitol building in Springfield to bid on the repair of its dilapidated fence out front. He asks Jimbo from Peoria how much to repair the fence, and Jimbo gets his tape measure, smartphone, and calculator out, and in a few minutes pulls Mr. Smith aside and says " I can fix that fence for $500." Next, he asks Frank from Decatur, and Frank does the same; measuring, checking materials and labor, and pulls the representative aside to declare "I can repair that fence for $900." Lastly, he asks Bob from Joliet for his bid, and Bob immediately blurts out "$2500." Taken aback, representative Smith pulls him aside and asks "how did you come up with that figure so quickly", to which Bob replied "$1000 for you, $1000 for me, and we pay Jimbo from Peoria $500 to fix the damn fence." Guess who got the contract? It's all about subcontracting. The federal government spent over a million taxpayer dollars to invent the first airplane, and failed miserably, only to have the Wright Brothers succeed using only $2000 of their OWN money. Why? The statement answers itself. It's much easier to spend someone else's money than your own, because the risks are negligible since the capital required can always be replenished. Throw more money at it and raise taxes. It's government's answer for everything and one reason socialist programs always fail to compete in real-world commerce. The tax burden becomes overwhelming, jobs are lost, and those who paid for those social programs end up dependant on them, eventually collapsing those programs by increased participation coupled with decreased revenue to fund them. The people of Illinois voted for more taxes under the assumption those taxes would apply to those who make more money, but everyone makes more than someone else, and everyone makes less than someone else. At least Bob from Joliet can pay his taxes with the money he got from us paying our taxes. (another aforementioned "feedback loop"?) Unfortunately, our dwindling working class are like golfers. They drive hard to get to the green only to wind up in the hole. Next PSA: The Mueller Report: We cannot prove UFOs exist, however we cannot prove that they don't exist. So.......UFOs definitely exist then, right? June 13, 2019: PSA#45: Invasion of the Body Snatchers: I usually try to have a dry humor, but as a grandparent this is not funny to me. We know the global population continues to increase, but Americans are actually declining in population and workforce. Why? Lots of reasons: Since 1973, out of 390 million people, 60 million have died from abortions. Also, more Americans die every year of opioid overdoses than in all the years of VietNam combined. Plus, the average lifespan of Americans has decreased because of homelessness, lack of medical care, and poor lifestyle choices driven by consumerism. Also, kids are waiting longer to have kids and are having fewer kids. On top of all that we live in a country where less than half of our population has a job. The majority are either too young, too old, disabled, or don't want to work and would rather game the system. With the economy flourishing, how can we meet the need for workers? We all know the answer to that; import them. Here legally or not. I'm actually happy for them if they are here to embrace our culture. Unfortunately, they are encouraged not to even embrace our language, which binds us in our exchange of ideas and common ethics. They are encouraged by political hacks, who seek votes and moral high-ground, to terra-form this nation into what they fled from, based on some superimposed allegiance to race over culture. It's easy to go all tin-foil hat here, but no, it's not some government Cabal pulling the strings that has somehow been kept secret all these years. Trust me, they are not that smart. This has taken on a life of its own as an evolution rather than an agenda, and if blacks & whites can't come together and see through all the fake race-baiting and victimhood status promoted by the media, both races will find themselves systematically replaced in a single generation, and go the way of the dinosaur as irrelevant and obsolete. America could very well become a homogenized nation of dis-educated, dis-informed, dis-armed drones, likely by then under a Communist China economic surrogacy. And as smart, dedicated & patriotic as our Asian citizens are, even they would not be able to stand against such authoritarianism. Many tried before. It's why they came here in the first place, not to terra-form but to assimilate into a society free of such a totalitarian hive mentality. Perhaps I should have referenced the Borg here instead of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I admit Carolyn Jones was brilliant in that film, but I think I liked her better as Morticia Addams, and the story of the Borg collective has an Orwellian relevance here that makes me realize that the real reason they were so scary is because WE are the Borg. "Resistance is futile"? Never. Next PSA: If Michael Avenatti took Viagra, how much taller would he be? Happy Thursday everyone and congrats St. Louis Blues! June 20, 2019: PSA#46: If you're in Facebook Jail be sure not to drop the soap: After my last PSA, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", which made some references to abortion, illegal immigration, race over culture, and all the other usual observations regarding humanity's decline into a hive mentality, my news feed began to change. When I sorted by "most recent" it would only go back a couple hours. After that, it's old random posts and ads, which eventually bottoms out, like the "top stories" sort option. I hoped this was just a glitch, and that they have "top men" working on it as in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but this seemed deliberate, as if I were being punished for being too blunt in my comments. Monday I was limited to 2 hours, Tuesday it was down to 1 hour, last night I was down to 30 minutes. I felt like Marty McFly being erased from time at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance. I understand that Facebook prefers that you use the default "top stories" sort because your sessions are a lot longer, which means you are exposed to more ads. That's how they make their money. I thought, that's fine, but if you're going to force us to do so, why not just remove the sort option altogether? Maybe because users would bail like rats off the Titanic. Then, like the time I couldn't figure out why the baseball kept getting bigger, it hit me. This new behavior is a compromise. You're allowed to see recent posts based on the time of your last session. If it was 8 hours ago, you see posts from the last 8 hours. If it was an hour ago, you see posts from the last hour. Then it goes to ad-filled random mode. I suppose I can get used to this, but I see it as a problem for those who play FB games for hours at a time. Once they log out, any unseen posts during their gaming time will be lost when they log in again. Also, it makes it difficult to follow threads that you don't chime in on but are interested in. I'm sure there are other issues as well, and it would seem that if we are to be test subjects for such changes, wouldn't it be helpful for them as well as their clients to get user input instead of being all sneaky about it? Now I know what a Rhesus monkey feels like. For the record, I love Facebook. It's free and if I didn't like it I simply wouldn't use it. My concern is that they see themselves as an invincible monopoly that could never be betrayed by their users. Apparently they have completely forgotten about MySpace. Next PSA: Law & Order: SBU. In the Facebook justice system, meme based offenses are especially heinous. In the social network, the people who investigate these heinous memes are members of an elite squad known as the Special Butthurt Unit. These are their stories: (cue the ominous "CHUNG CHUNG" sound) July 8, 2019: PSA#47: I'd give my left arm to be ambidextrous. Just so everyone knows, I'm not being rude if I don't respond to posts. It's because my right arm has a radial nerve tear and, being totally right-handed, it will take a while learning to be left-handed, assuming that's even possible. I should get my wrist back in a month or two and fingers back a couple months after, with full recovery in 12-18 months. I'm getting used to the mouse buttons but can't control the cursor yet, however I can peck on the keyboard like a piano playing chicken. My apologizes to those who rely on my graphics and web work, and to my musician friends. I'm definitely out of commission for awhile. Next PSA: Military priorities: Why is Trump squandering military resources on the border invasion when he could use them in the Midwest to fight the invasion of gnats, flies & mosquitoes? They are far more annoying than immigrants, plus I'm pretty sure the Japanese beetles are here illegally. July 9, 2019: PSA#48: Look away Dixie land. As mentioned, It'll be awhile before I can use a mouse again, but I can one-finger this keyboard like a woodpecker on meth. So, in lieu of getting any actual work done, here is another profoundly insightful look into the fragile emotional framework of our collective sociological psyche: As you may know, the country band Confederate Railroad has been banned from playing the Illinois State Fair this year because of the offensive word contained in their name. Of course that word is "railroad", but before you dismiss this as a whiny and thin-skinned over-reaction, consider a few reasons why this word is so triggering: 1) Germany used railways to transport hundreds of thousands of people to Nazi prison camps. The use of the word "railroad" is offensive to the Jewish community by condoning anti-semitism, and that's just not Kosher. 2) The British created the first modern railway system in the late 1700s-early 1800s. This is insensitive to all the brave American soldiers who died fighting those toothless tea-sipping Limeys in the Revolutionary War. It's no coincidence this ban was announced on 4th of July weekend. 3) Locomotives run on diesel fuel, which pollutes the atmosphere. According to one of the most brilliant climate scientists of our time, Dr. Alexandria Cortez, we only have 12 years left. Only the Government can save us, and only if we turn over the entire U.S. economy to them. Just thinking about this makes me go to my safe space, which in my case is the refrigerator or the liquor cabinet. 4) And talk about triggered! What could be worse than running late for work and seeing those alternating red lights and hearing that horrendous bell as you helplessly watch in despair as the barrier slowly comes down. I peed a little just from the memory of it. 5) And finally, Blazing Saddles. Need I say more? Perhaps the easiest fix for this is to simply change the name of the band. Maybe "Confederate Expressway", or "Confederate Airways", or "Confederate Carpool Lane", or the ultimate PC name, "Confederate Bike Route". Hopefully, the Dixie Chicks won't be booking a fair gig any time soon. We all know how offensive the word "chicks" is. Next PSA: More political correctness as Apple pulls its line of children's devices after realizing "iTouch Kids" is probably not a good name. Happy Tuesday everyone! July 16, 2019: Happy Tuesday everyone! Not a PSA, just something that needs clarification. By now just about everyone has heard the innuendous comments inferring that the Jews came to Auschwitz and similar camps of their own accord because of the "wonderful things" they heard about it, only to find it was nothing like the travelogue implied, and that even though they were free to go back to where they came from at any time, they chose to stay because they had no place else to go. Rest assured, this is not true. Not ONE Jewish person came to those camps of their own free will to escape persecution or economic hardship, and not ONE tried to sneak their family in. They were taken there BY FORCE, and the vast majority died a horrific death. I don't get offended by much of anything, but using the Holocaust as a metaphor for the immigration nightmare at our Southern border is repugnant, disrespectful, and disgusting. Please stop. Thank you. August 2, 2019: PSA#49: The elephant in the room. A metaphor for over-looking the obvious, but in this case it's the "red elephant" in the room (or perhaps the "orange elephant" in the room). The office of POTUS is the highest office in the land, possibly the world. But honestly, I never gave it the omnipotence usually attached to it. It's an 8-year gig max. In contrast, Pelosi & Shumer were there 30 years ago blaming Reagan for the country's problems, and they are part of the group that actually make the laws. Career lawmakers and their lobby pimps have always been a bigger concern for me than the transitory role of President. It's why I rarely even mention the President in my comments, because I assumed the issues I addressed were much more relevant. Boy, was I wrong. Hence, the elephant in the room. Turns out it's ALL about Trump. Not our lawmakers, not the immigration policies of previous administrations, not the pointless wars of previous administrations, not the economy, or the opioid crisis or the homeless or anything pertinent to what kind of world we're leaving for our grandkids. It's ALL Donald Trump and the perception that he is some maniacal evil genius with an Einsteinian IQ bent on being supreme ruler. Like Pinky & the Brain, where every morning they vow to "take over the world", having absolutely no chance of success because they are just mice. The President is certainly more powerful than a cartoon mouse, but this fear of Trump is so exaggerated that many won't even use his real name. They call him "45", or "Cheeto", or "Orange Man", as if speaking his name 3 times will summon him from the nether-world like Beetlejuice. As a result of this fear, if anyone refuses to hate Mr. Trump, well they must be "Trumpers" and obviously a white supremacist. No KKK lynching was ever contingent on their victim's party affiliation. For me, the assumption that I have more in common with a white leftist than a black conservative is incorrect. Period. Another curious paranoia with the President is the obsession over re-vamping a pseudo-cold war with the Russians. They are a fine & decent people who deal with corrupt and greedy leaders, same as us. They are not a cultural threat like China or Islam. As in WW2, we may someday need each other again to preserve the Judeo-Christian culture that is in danger from the sheer numbers of those who would like to see it go bye-bye. I'm somewhat agnostic myself, but if Christianity dies, our freedoms die as well. Diversity is great, but to alienate your kindred allies just to prove your tolerance of those who disagree with those allies projects cultural guilt and self-loathing to the rest of the world. The Russian working-class Catholics & Jews are NOT the collective globalists we make them out to be. Trust me, they don't give a rat's ass about oligarchic socialism. Nor do the Brits, or the Israelis, or the Canadians, or any other Western-based society that separates church from state and believes in personal liberty and free-market prosperity. So...I was wrong about what all the hoopla is really about. I do stick to my guns that just because you're not obsessed with skin color that doesn't make you a racist, and I believe that you don't have to hate your own culture to prove your cultural diversity. As for the President, I believe he is sincere and essentially correct that in order to save the rest of the world, we have to save ourselves first. As for his less-than-eloquent tweets, he is the laser pointer and his critics are the cats. At least he's keeping them busy and entertained. Next PSA: New evidence shows that in 14 seasons of Celebrity Apprentice, Arsenio Hall was the ONLY black winner. Coincidence? I think not. Happy Friday everyone and have a GREAT weekend! August 10, 2019: Captain's personal log stardate 96839.83: I don't need another guitar amp and I didn't want to buy another guitar amp, but when the guy told me the volume control was broken, I knew I couldn't turn it down. August 16, 2019: PSA#50: The "kettle calling the pot white" part two. Yippee! My 50th court ordered Public Service Announcement. I'm finally off the County litter gang, all my restraining orders have been lifted, I got my FOID card and CCP back, and my EBT card has a whopping 120 bucks on it. So, is this my last one? Probably not, even though they are redundantly filled with redundant redundancies (at the risk of being redundant, because I've said a million times that I will NOT repeat myself). But here goes: I've already addressed in part one what I felt were valid examples of racial hypocrisy and projectionism, like the notion that voter IDs are racist because only privileged white people are capable of acquiring one. If I was black I would be insulted. This kettle-N-pot however has to do with the overuse of Hitler metaphors by both politicians & news pundits. Not the concentration camp references to the border, I've already commented that the Jews were NOT free to leave Auschwitz at any time and did NOT come of their own free will, so the comparison is not only invalid but also a bit repugnant. Instead, I'm commenting on the idea that if you don't embrace distributive socialism & especially unified diversity, you're a Nazi. Ironic since Germany at that time was the perfect oligarchic socialist society, the epitome of how prosperous a culture can be when you elect leaders capable of creating a strong economy with your tax dollars, and who will protect you from hateful enemies by any means necessary, while still retaining the moral high ground through tolerance and generosity for those less fortunate. However, as redundantly mentioned before, the economics of this are unsustainable in the long term. As taxes raise to support government and its social programs (something us Illinoisans know well), eventually people can simply no longer afford to work, and end up relying on the very social programs they paid into, thereby buckling those programs under the additional financial weight and loss of revenue. Even if Germany had won the war, their economy would have eventually collapsed into a totalitarian autocracy (which it kinda was anyway), just like we're seeing with China today. Consensual socialism will always become forced socialism simply because you run out of everybody else's money. There is no such thing as "government funded", it's ALL taxpayer funded. Now, as for the sanctimonious concept of unified diversity, Germany achieved a diverse and tolerant society. That is, once they silenced all the "hate speech", greedy Jews, and pretty much anyone who disagreed with their noble vision of peace and harmonious heterogeneity. Consensual morality will always become forced morality simply because no one wants to be called a racist. Not the kind of Utopia any of us want, regardless of political leanings. So...the kettle calling the pot white? Perhaps just a case of too many people on TV recklessly throwing around euphemisms without a clear understanding of their references. The malfeasant media, their impotent congressional cheerleaders, and their social network minions are largely to blame for this projectionist mentality that breeds hypocrisy to the point of irony. My advice would be that if we stop letting our electronic devices tell us what to be angry about every week, we might find that we're not really angry at all, just frustrated with all the sheep bleating at each other through the fences, distracted from their own confinement by the deafening feedback of superimposed phony-baloney ideological outrage. Perhaps in this case the Nazi analogy actually applies. Next PSA (assuming there will be one): New documents have surfaced that show George Washington also blamed previous administrations for the nation's problems. Happy Friday everyone and have a GREAT weekend! September 10, 2019: PSA#51: It's because I'm black, isn't it? Here we are again, talking about AR-15s. ALL firearms except bolt-action & pump-style shotguns are semi-automatic. The casing ejects or you do it manually between shots. There is no such thing as "full semi-automatic", it either is or it isn't, and automatic firearms are illegal. One pull = one shot. Period. So what sets the AR-15 apart from other rifles is that it's big, black and scary looking (sounds racist to me but whatever). Bottom line is that if you ban the AR-15 you also have to ban every other firearm like it. A revolver might be exempt because even though it's semi-automatic it does not eject the casing, but the vast majority of firearms use a standard ammo magazine, which makes them identical to the AR-15 other than aesthetics, prosthetics, & cosmetics. "Assault rifle", "full-semi", or "military style" are made-up media terms that suggest legal hunting rifles have the same capabilities as an illegal M16. They don't. Our right to bear arms is actually quite limited, and rightly so. You can't buy an AK-47 at Cabelas, and for good reason. One meme that keeps popping up is "No child has ever volunteered to die to preserve your precious 2nd Amendment", or something like that. It's a little different each time, but I still don't quite get the reference. Granted, I'm not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, and I'm sure this is very profound, but the 2nd Amendment is actually just one sentence stating the importance of a private militia that can protect its citizens from its own government. It has nothing to do with the "legalization of murder so long as a firearm is used". The Bill of Rights cannot be manipulated like the 10 commandments of Orwell's Animal Farm, and no where does it suggest "Thou shalt not kill, unless you have an NRA membership card". Assumptive knee-jerk reactions like the Deerfield ban on black rifles and big mags do NOTHING to help save lives and create a false sense of accomplishment resulting in complacency to more important issues, like mass shootings and the idiots who carry them out. Equally perplexing is the Walmart gun policy change. I doubt a ban on conceal carry except for mass shooters will have any effect based on the assumption that no one will risk being banned from shopping at their store just to kill a bunch of innocent people. Personally, I think Walmart just wants to expand their stagnant rural market to a much larger "woke" metropolitan demographic. But I digress. Put simply: 1) Automatic weapons and hybrids have been illegal since 1939. So it should be. 2) However pimped-out, a rifle is a rifle. They all work the same and take standard ammo. 3) Banning big mags just means carry extra mags. 4) ALL guns are semi-auto except bolt-action rifles or shotguns. Banning the black ones does nothing and painting them a nice pastel periwinkle also does nothing. 5) Criminals don't obey laws, and disarming their victims will not force them to do so. Even if you repeal the 2nd Amendment they will find a way to do harm. London is gun-free but has a murder rate as high as New York, the vast majority committed with knives. 6) No one cares about Walmart. I'm glad they got out of the business and are leaving it to the professionals. They are better suited to selling shiny colorful cheap plastic Chinese crap. 7) Murder is illegal. It is our highest law as a species. If people would just stop doing that, all this gun nonsense would go away. I have no solution to the growing problem of violence in America. I wish I did. It saddens me that such an important issue has been reduced to semantics for the sake of political grand-standing and moral superiority. Prayers to all affected by this lunacy. Next PSA: Why is Hasbro the only company that sells the game "Monopoly"? Happy Tuesday everyone! October 3, 2019: PSA#52: When you mix media and democracy, do you get mediocracy? A couple years ago I compared network/cable news and their social media minions to the fake tennis ball throw that has your dog chasing something that was behind your back the whole time. Cheap entertainment for both you and your dog, although even a dog will eventually figure out that you didn't really throw the ball and lose interest. For us humans, however, we will keep chasing the imaginary ball so long as it keeps changing its bright neon colors. In our defense, dogs are color-blind, and also in our defense, the tennis balls have become gray & drab, so it's just not fun anymore and we are also losing interest. These days, the only 4 things you hear about on the news is guns, climate change, racism, and Trump. Yes, I still have questions regarding these 4 subjects, like "Where can I buy one of those domestic 65-pound 50-caliber AR15s that Sheila Jackson Lee was talking about?" Also, I would like to ask "What kind of parents teach their daughter (who already has Asperger syndrome) that the planet is doomed and her life is worthless, just to promote a book tour?" I would also like to know "Why is it racist for me to treat minorities as equals and not victims?" And finally, on the subject of Trump, "Why would the Democrats sabotage their own front-runner by dredging up his past misdeeds in a lame attempt to circumvent the current president?" Of course these questions are rhetorical, and actually don't matter. We're all tired of chasing the stupid fake tennis ball. Let's engage in stuff that does matter, like teaching our children that life is indeed worth living and the future should be embraced instead of feared, and that debate is not hate but simply new ideas born from vigorous argument, and most importantly, our kids need to understand that your politics, religious beliefs, skin color, hair color, height, weight, left-handed, right-handed, whatever, are merely personal perceptions that only exist by contrast and have NOTHING to do with our place in American society. There is a lot of hatred & jealousy in the world directed at the United States, so it's critical that we remain the UNITED States, regardless of all our internal problems. We don't need to, as they say, "air our dirty laundry", we just need to wash it, fold it, and put it away. If we have to bicker and squabble over how to do so, that's fine. I myself have been called a "linen rebel". However, when we get all butt-hurt and retreat to the safety of the herd, it shows weakness, both to our enemies and to each other. The news entertainment industry seems to feed on this emotionally fragile herd mentality, not necessarily because they want America to devour itself from the inside out, but simply because they need perpetuity in order to off-set the money they lose every day on 90-second fluff pieces that cannot be recycled. The longer they keep you busy looking for the imaginary tennis ball, the better their chance of paying the rent so they can stay in business. Our only obligation in all this is to be responsible for our own opinions rather than letting our electronic gadgets tell us what those opinions are. Next PSA: Will glass caskets be the next big thing? Remains to be seen. Happy Thursday everyone! October 21, 2019: PSA#53: Who was Casper the friendly ghost before he died? I have so many questions regarding the life and demise of this pop culture icon. I pose a few here: What was Casper's last name? Doesn't seem like a big deal, but if it was say, Casper Zimmerman or maybe Casper Romano, it could shed light on his ethnicity and cultural heritage. And with the first name "Casper", are we sure he was a boy, and not a girl named after the Wyoming city where she was born? "Steve the friendly ghost" would make this determination much easier, plus I have to wonder if ghosts become androgynous or even genderless, since obviously you can't take your reproductive organs with you when you die. And how old was Casper when he passed away? I always assumed 7 or 8, but maybe not. If you retain consciousness after death, he could have died as an infant and learned how to walk & talk (or in this case "fly & talk") AFTER he died. If so, his death could have been 7 or 8 years before his first film appearance in 1947, opening up the possibility that he was killed in early World War 2, likely a civilian casualty of the Polish occupation, meaning his name was not Zimmerman or Romano, but more likely Casper Kowalski (the friendly ghost). This could also explain why his parents hung him out to dry in the afterlife. When the comics ended in 1991, they could have still been alive and living in some nursing home in Gdansk or Warsaw. They didn't throw Casper under the bus, they just didn't join him until much later. Well, that's a relief anyway. Being dead is bad enough, but being a dead orphan just sucks. Also, after Casper's comic and film career ended in the early 90s, did he finally go to Heaven, or was he finally re-born into another life? If it's the latter, that would make him about 27 years old now, with no recollection of his past life as a famous poltergeist. So...be nice to all the Millennials out there. Sure they're spoiled rotten and have lots of crazy & angry ideas, but somewhere out there is a young person who, regardless of their spooky exterior, is just the reincarnation of a very friendly ghost-child who just needs to be reminded of how eternal an act of kindness can be. Next PSA: Will Hasbro's new fully automatic Thompson-style NERF submachine gun replace the antiquated semi-auto AR-15? And would Rep. Beto O'Rourke be able to tell the difference between the two when he comes to your house to "buy them back"? Maybe not, considering that you can't buy back something you never sold in the first place, because you never owned it in the first place, and therefore wouldn't even know what it looked like. Think I might go toy shopping. Happy Monday everyone! October 23, 2019: BREAKING NEWS: There was a kidnapping this morning at a local grade school. Then he woke up. November 5, 2019: PSA#54: "I'm sorry" and "I apologize" mean the same thing, unless you're at a funeral. By now just about everyone, regardless of political leanings, believes Jeffrey Epstein was murdered. Sounds complicated, but given what was at stake, it's certainly a possibility. However, I have to wonder if this incident was much simpler than that. I think Epstein knew in advance that when the opportunity clearly presented itself, he would have to man-up and "do the right thing", if not for himself, for the safety of his loved ones (assuming he was even capable of caring about anyone but himself). That opportunity could not have been clearer. His cellmate was removed, his paper bedding replaced with cloth, the guards were "asleep", and the cameras "malfunctioned". A complex and risky assassination was not necessary. He knew what he had to do and what would happen to his family if he failed. Granted, forced suicide is still murder, and he may have even had help. Epstein's family has hired a private forensic pathologist who supposedly has found bone fractures inconsistent with suicide. However, this may be a situation where it's better to let sleeping dogs lie, and find another way to expose Epstein's high profile clients and co-conspirators. Surely there are some shreds of evidence left that have been overlooked and not destroyed. We would all like to see these people brought to justice, but so long as the focus is on Epstein himself, the more time these people have to cover their tracks. If that one connecting thread can be found, this tapestry of deceit could unravel very quickly. As for Mr. Epstein, he will never know the joy of being released from prison. I bet he would've felt like a kid again. Perhaps several. Next PSA: If Trump isn't a racist, why does he call his home the "White House"? Happy Tuesday everyone! November 6, 2019: PSA#55: What is "TAT", where do I get it, and how do I trade it in for the other thing? Asking for a friend. "QUID PRO QUO" is officially the buzzword of the week, and like all weekly catch phrases means whatever you want it to mean. The best Latin-to-English translation is "something for something", or a favor for a favor. Simple "tit-for-tat". Not really "extortion", like what poor Uncle Joe bragged about on camera regarding the dismissal of a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating his son in exchange for taxpayer funded aid to that country. No, this is MUCH worse. Quid Pro Quo in this case is the high treason of asking about that crime when the perpetrator just happens to be a political rival. Speaker Pelosi said they only need the "Quid" part, meaning not "something for something", they just need "something". Yeah, anything really. Seems rather desperate to me, as if they have squandered the last 3 years trying to undo the last election instead of grooming a candidate who could win the next election. Many DC elites would love to see a one-party system, and on the right, this is feasible because of such folly. Personally, this terrifies me, and is not compatible with the doctrinistic democratic republic outlined by our founders. We need the 2-party system. In fact, I would like to see a 3-party system, but that ship has sailed for now. So...who is a viable Dem candidate? Tough to say, because they all seem to parrot the same pipe-dream pandering points, like genetic clones void of original thought. Tulsi Gabbard seems to have actual ideas, rather than the same redundant rhetoric that has turned passionate battle-chants into an abrasive, yet somehow acquiescent feedback loop. Sadly though, Hillary has labeled her a "Russian agent", which makes me think Mrs. Clinton is still just mad because the Russians dumped her for Trump. When they helped her it was great, but when they stopped, well then it's "collusion". But I digress. These attacks don't help Gabbard, but like Warhol said, "even bad publicity is good publicity". Shame on Hillary for bashing Tulsi's selfless service to her country, but at least she's getting some attention, something the DNC seems to avoid because she doesn't fit the mold. So who's it gonna be? Uncle Joe? No. Corey? Hell no. Kamala? HELL NO. Warren? Maybe, if she would just stop pandering. She actually has a keen sense of economics, evident in her books & articles, although you wouldn't know it by her unrealistic (and quite insincere) middle-class tax expectations for un-achievable goals used as cheap WWE-style rallying pops. I invite my Democrat friends, few as they may be, to chime in. I want to see someone give Trump a run for his money. Sure, I'll probably vote for him anyway, but I guess I'm just a racist. Whatever. Democracy works best on a level playing field, and although it's not a perfect system, it seems better than any other country of comparable military and economic prowess. As I've mentioned, through opposing ideas new ideas are born. We don't need to hate to debate so long as we all retain our American identity. Dang. I said "American identity". I'm not only a racist but a nationalist as well. Screw it, I'm not getting paid for this. Call me what you will, I promise I won't cry. I also promise that this mess will all be fine. Next PSA: We explore the possibility of adding three "lifelines" to future presidential debates. They need all the help they can get. Happy Wednesday everyone! PSA#56: The Big Bong Theory. Well, as of today Marijuana is legal in Illinois, something I have advocated for since my first encounter with it a half century ago. Now, however, I'm not so sure this is a good idea. Here's why: 1) Today's pot is sinsemilla (seedless), where all the plant's resin & energy go to the buds (flowers). This, combined with new soil nutrients and lighting technologies, makes it fifty times more powerful than what was around even 15 years ago. In small amounts, this is fine. In a "fatty", it's not only hard on your lungs but will knock you on your keester. Young people who are high pretty much all the time run the risk of ending up unmotivated and trapped in their own head, apathetic to reality, not to mention any long-term respiratory issues. I just don't think they can handle it. 2) Another concern is cost. I suspect it will be more expensive than what you're currently paying, and this legalization stipulates that you CANNOT grow your own without a license, and you HAVE to buy it from state-sanctioned taxed dispensaries. The estimated state tax is around 40%, and I also suspect that this tax is deceptive, just like the lottery ticket and slot machine revenues. It will end up in a slush fund that will, over time, magically evaporate, with very little going to roads or education. 3) Also, it's possible that once we see new law enforcement DUI technologies develop, we will see a new wave of road blocks (oops, I mean "safety checks"), that may be quite lucrative for them, but problematic because of the time it takes for pot to leave your body. If you smoke on Tuesday and get pulled over on Thursday, you will likely fail a pot test. The breathalyzer has never been a reliable BAC indicator, and no effort has ever been made to improve that technology. The pot test will likely be hit & miss as well. 4) Another area of confusion is whether you can buy pot and keep your FOID card. Right now, Illinois has no plans to revoke your gun permits, however you will not be able to buy firearms from a federally licensed dealer, meaning you're restricted to person-to-person sales only, because cannabis is still federally illegal. I guess if you're worried, just have someone buy your weed for you (which is also illegal). If you're not worried, it might still be a good idea to at least stock up on ammo before you buy weed. So...is this legalization a good thing, a bad thing, or will it have little impact at all? Sure, this may entice a few new users, and it might make a few weekend warriors lose interest and consider it too passé to be fun anymore, but seasoned smokers will be looking at quality & cost. If these dispensaries lack value, the old timers will only use them in a pinch. Whatever your opinion; like it, hate it, or don't care, one thing we can agree on is that if the whole world smoked a joint at the same time, there would be world peace for at least an hour.......followed by a global food shortage. Next PSA: Back to politics as we explore Pelosi's mid-season cliffhanger finale in the impeachment mini-series. Will it turn out that Bobby Ewing is NOT dead, and it was all just a really, really bad dream? And will we ever find out who shot J.R.? No wonder people get high. Happy New Year everyone! PSA#57: How come when you tease the cat, it runs over and scratches the dog? Well, apparently because the cat knows it is helpless against its real nemesis, so it takes out its frustration on the dog, who was on the sofa simply minding his own business. Same deal with all of our politicians who pretend to have a "plan" to stop the nemesis of a very real problem we have in America with gun violence. But before we can even begin to have a conversation about gun regulations, we need to acknowledge a mandatory prerequisite that seems to be ignored by both sides. There are no laws or regulations that can possibly help make us safer until we confiscate the estimated 300 million ILLEGAL firearms that are responsible for the vast majority of gang violence, which accounts for the vast majority of gun deaths in this country. Unregistered firearms far outnumber legal firearms in the United States, so this HAS to be addressed before any "buy back" can even be considered. So why is this not happening? I assume because these unregistered firearms could be literally ANYWHERE, so it's the cat-N-dog analogy. It's a nearly impossible task, so they go for the low-hanging fruit instead. Maxine Waters suggested years ago that if we disarm the victims, the criminals will, in kind, turn in their weapons as well. I know this didn't come out the way she meant, and that like Trump, eloquence is not her strong suit, but the underlying assumption is incorrect no matter how you say it. To put the cart before the horse in this endeavor will NOT make our children safer, quite the opposite. More kids are killed in the cross-fire of gang warfare every year than 20 years of school shootings combined. Giving these gangs full reign over defenseless urban populations will NOT improve the situation. Criminals need to be disarmed FIRST. There is no other way. So for now, I'll patiently wait for a dialog on gun reform, and once I'm guaranteed that all of the illegal firearms have been removed from society, I might consider giving up my guns just to insure that they never get stolen and end up on the black market. Until then, the debate is meaningless, just irrelevant arguments about black rifles vs. pretty wooden ones. As mentioned, all firearms, including pistols, are semi-auto except shotguns & bolt-action rifles. One pull = one shot, period. Other than aesthetics, cosmetics, and prosthetics, they all work the same and take standard ammo. In the wrong hands, they are ALL deadly. In the right hands, they can save lives. Until our metaphorical cat learns to fight back against its REAL tormentor, it will remain in projectionist denial and simply vilify any easy target in its proximity to feel better about itself, while accomplishing absolutely nothing. Next PSA: Back to religion as we take a look at dyslexic atheists who don't believe in DOG (who I imagine is on the sofa simply minding his own business). Happy Tuesday everyone! PSA#58: The squeakiest wheel on the wagon always gets oiled first. Liberal or Conservative, most of us agree that big government is chipping away at our constitutional rights & freedoms. I've concluded however, that it's "we the people" who are chipping away at each others freedoms, while our fearless leaders just sit back and watch, occasionally "shaking the jar of bees" to keep them agitated. Case in point, our number one right, Freedom of Speech. As with Orwell's 1939 novel "Animal Farm", terminology is crucial to connotation. Examples: Only Congress can declare war? Call it an "intervention'. It's a federal crime to enter the U.S. illegally? Call them "undocumented". Only Congress can pass laws? Call them "regulations". People who commit crimes are criminals? Call them "socially disenfranchised". It's illegal to bribe a politician? Call it "lobbying". And on & on & on. Even with my adequate vocabulary, the English language is baffling. Words spelled the same but have totally different meanings, words spelled differently but mean the same thing, nearly as many exceptions to spelling rules as there are rules, words pronounced completely different than they are spelled, words that change their meaning based on sentence structure, etcetera, etc...(yeah why is the word "abbreviated" so damn long anyway?). Point being, literalism has become the context of convenience in the way we communicate. As with Orwell, these ambiguous inconsistencies can be manipulated by the squeakiest of wheels, forcing the rest of us to bow down to "political correctness" simply to avoid being called a racist, or homophobe, or sexist, or anything else that might hurt our precious little feelings. As a result, we have become ideologically and verbally defensive. Vigorous debate has been replaced with vociferous personal character attacks, so we huff-off with our plastic pail & shovel and retreat to the safety of the flock, distracted from our own intellectual confinement by the white noise of bleating sheep. I'm guilty too, I suppose. I don't believe in forced diversity, I don't believe in government societal micro-management, I don't believe in Feudalistic Neo-Mercantilism economics dressed up as Socialism, I don't believe that treating others as equals instead of victims makes me a racist, and I don't believe in a whole host of other issues contingent on the deafening yelps of the squeaky wheels. However, one thing I NEVER do, is target individual beliefs. Unless of course I'm making fun of EVERYBODY, including myself, as part of my usual cynicism. Like the old saying, "I'm not a racist, I hate everyone equally". Of course I don't really hate anyone, that's why they call it satire. Unfortunately, parody, satire, sarcasm, even humor have all lost their ambiguity among the squeaky wheels. Like thieves who don't understand puns because they take things, literally (apologies), we now live in a culture that no longer needs to fear a ruling class telling us what to say and what not to say. We have done that all by ourselves. Next PSA: In an effort to reduce Methane emissions, the Illinois House has introduced legislation banning the sale and consumption of Brussel Sprouts. March 3rd, 2020: PSA#59: When are them cows comin' home anyway? An embellishment of the "two cows" story: In a Communalist economy, a farmer has two cows: He gives some of his milk to his neighbor, who is a crop farmer, in exchange for vegetables. In a Socialist economy, a farmer has two cows: The government gives one of the cows to his neighbor, who doesn't have a cow because he is a crop farmer. For the sake of income equality, he gets a cow anyway. In a Communist economy, a farmer has two cows: The government takes both cows along with the neighbor's vegetables, and both get a dozen potatoes and a gallon of milk each month for free. In a Capitalist free-market economy, a farmer has two cows: He keeps both cows, sells the milk to his neighbors, and buys a bull. Now he has a whole herd of cows, and everyone has plenty of milk at an affordable price. Although Communalism and Capitalism are nothing alike, they seem to be the two systems that actually work. Why? Because neither of them involve the government. When politicians & bureaucrats try to regulate real-world commerce, they fail miserably because failure has no consequence when it's not your money. In the end, they do the only thing they know how to do: Raise taxes. It's their answer for EVERYTHING, and as mentioned before, eventually people can no longer afford to work and end up relying on the social programs they paid into. These programs inevitably collapse due to increased participation and reduced funding. What then? You guessed it, raise taxes. But at what point is a person "no longer able to afford a job"? For most, probably once your accumulated taxes (federal, state, property, sales, road, etc) exceed 50% of your income. Sounds absurd, but if you add ALL of them up, you might be surprised, especially if you regard things like interest as a "tax". Low wage earners get a break and high wage earners can take the hit if they invest wisely and live within their means. For everyone else, when that 50% bumps up to 60%, a $3000/month income ends up being $1800/month. For many middle-class workers, that would barely pay your house payment, car payment, and insurance on both. In California or New York, that wouldn't even pay the rent on a decent apartment. Obviously all these numbers vary depending on where you live and what you do for a living. Point being, you cannot tax a nation into prosperity. So, Capitalism good, Socialism bad, right? Not entirely. Will you see me out filling potholes on my street? Hell no. Do I have a fire truck in my driveway? Of course not. Many services NEED to be socialized, but that works best on a local level. Socialism on a federal level will always overstep its boundaries and chip away at the sovereignty of individual states and their communities. The federal government should stick with things like the military, infrastructure, Social Security, health care and such. Wait, health care? Yeah, believe it or not I do think a nationalized health care system COULD have worked. Unfortunately, the health industry as a whole has been bloated and corrupted for too long. Obamacare was good in theory, but overnight it was turned into a lobbying frenzy by those best poised to profit from it. This kind of Cronyism HAS to be fixed FIRST before considering any kind of "Medicare for all" plan. I've said the same about guns; Illegal firearms FAR outnumber registered firearms. This HAS to be fixed FIRST before any "gun control" plan can have any positive effect. So long as the federal government ignores the mandatory prerequisites of economic & social issues, their "solutions" have about as much impact as getting a vasectomy because your neighbor has too many kids. It does nothing other than maintain the illusion of moral superiority. Next PSA: If Bloomberg wants to be as tall as Biden & Bernie, why doesn't he just take some Cialis? Happy Tuesday everyone! March 30th, 2020: PSA#60: I had an opening Corona Virus joke but decided I shouldn't be spreading it around: Happy quarantine from Ursa everyone! As much as I have downplayed the COVID-19 crisis, I must admit it has become a lot more devastating than previously thought. Seems like we won't find a cure until we truly understand its real origin. I think I have that figured out. Here's what happened: Since Roswell & Area 51, the government has been working with aliens who traveled the vastness of space to colonize this planet. Together, they took over the UN. Now, under the direction of the Illuminati, the Soros Foundation has been commissioned to have the US. Military conspire with the Chinese government to manufacture a "test run" virus to be unleashed on the world to see how we adapt to martial law, as a dress rehearsal for a much bigger virus to be developed by Bill Gates and the Clinton Foundation that will be released by black helicopter chemtrails into the air. The survivors of this second pandemic will succumb to an NWO one-world government ruled by Earth Queen Hillary, who will take all of our guns and pave the way for the alien colonization, which we will be forced to serve. The Green New Deal will allow the aliens to breathe our low CO2 atmosphere, and our open border policy will ensure they don't get deported back to their home planet, which of course is flat like ours. Us humans will be assimilated into the Borg collective where we will be programmed to carry out cattle mutilations for the Freemasons. The aliens will use this genetic data to create a race of "super cows" that will be used to conquer other civilizations in the galaxy. They will be bovine warriors, we will simply be disposable worker drones. You know, kinda like now. Indeed, COVID-19 will be the lamest apocalypse ever. Or, it could just be a flu-bug. All kidding aside, I have to admit that I've had the feeling that something about all this doesn't add up. I tell myself that it's just the news channels running with a good story to offset their zero-profit 90-second fluff pieces, but the inflated hysteria comes off as purposefully manufactured and amplified for the sake of perpetuity. Along with that, there also seems to be quite a bit of exploitation for political gain, profit, and agenda regarding this outbreak. This may not qualify as a conspiracy, but it does suggest ulterior opportunistic motives, sinister or not. A lot of power grabbing and cubic-zirconian morality right now, and I have to wonder if even the biggest players are just pieces on a chessboard, like us. Truth is, we will never know how deep the rabbit hole goes. Next PSA: If more than two conspiracy theorists get together, does it become a conspiracy? Happy Tuesday everyone! BTW, Epstein didn't kill himself. April 3rd, 2020: PSA#61: Never let a good crisis go to waste: On Tuesday I poked fun at how we let our imaginations run wild in times like this by taking every pop culture conspiracy reference I could think of and gluing them all together into one ridiculous (and hopefully funny) story. On a more serious note, I want to comment on the REAL "conspiracies": I read an article yesterday in The Guardian that stuck in my craw (and we all know how painful that can be) that cited the President's fatal failure and official end to his presidency for allowing COVID-19 to spread through the US. after becoming aware of it on January 20th. Not ONCE did it mention what the rest of Congress was doing at that time, which was everything in its power to keep Trump from doing his job, locked in a room yapping on about Ukraine and impeachment, and handing out souvenir pens. The Senate Intel Committee knew how serious this situation was but said NOTHING until they liquidated their portfolios. All the same people who called the Chinese travel ban "racist". The same people who delayed the stimulus bill by stuffing it with pork for political and financial gain. The same people who are again yelping about impeachment over "slow response", which was more accurately an "impeded response". The same people who are 7 months away from a presidential election without a candidate capable of beating Trump, who are now on a desperate suicide mission to get rid of him at any cost. Bernie could possibly beat him, but he is more dangerous to the DNC than Trump himself (at least in their mind). Biden is not up for the challenge, so their only hope is that this virus will be his undoing. I feel their pain, but I have no sympathy because they squandered the last 3 ½ years trying to undo the last election instead of grooming candidates that could actually WIN the next election. I sincerely do not want to see a one-party system in America, but if this "suicide mission" backfires like all their previous schemes, the Democratic Party may lose the House as well, at which time the House, Senate, White House, and Supreme Court will all be under Republican dominance. For the record, I have traditional conservative constitutional values, and believe in a meritocracy over a privilege and victimhood based social structure, but I am certainly not a card-carrying gregarious Republican ruminant. In fact, both parties suck as far as I'm concerned, save for a few on both sides that are not bought & sold, at least not yet, and still feel an obligation to the people who hired them and who pay their salaries. Not being cynical, I even kinda feel sorry for Nancy Pelosi. She has a LOT of mouths to feed, and I don't mean at the dinner table. I imagine she would just like to retire from all the insanity, but I doubt her cronies would ever allow her to do so. She is a Darth Vader who serves an elusive emperor, like the rest of them. I do NOT, however, feel sorry for supermarket tabloid sites like The Guardian who don't just lie by omission, they make stuff up like the Times, or the Post, or Breitbart, for the sole purpose of slander and character assassination to validate their irrelevant political opinions. But enough of that. On a more complimentary note, I have to say how proud I am of everyone during this bizarre time. Aside from the crazy hoarders and opportunistic news & political hacks, we as Americans have risen to the occasion like never before. No mass shootings, no riots, no looting, no violence. Just people doing what they can, often above and beyond, to make this situation as bearable as possible. A special hats off to healthcare workers, truckers, grocery workers, trash collectors, police & fire, servicemen and women, and all the "essential employees" who keep our families healthy, sane and safe. Next PSA: Speaking of conspiracy, if it's a penny for your thoughts, and I throw my two cents in, someone's making a profit and by golly I'm going to find out who. Happy Friday Everyone! P.S. Speaking of Friday, Kevin Blickhan & myself will raise a toast again at 5 o'clock today. Please share your beverage of choice with a hearty "Cheers" or "Prost" to celebrate another weekend, and to salute those aforementioned American heroes. Apeil 26th, 2020: PSA#62: To make an omelet you have to break a few eggs. For those too young to understand this old saying, it means that sometimes there are those that need to be sacrificed for the greater good. Sometimes this is true (D-Day for example), but for the most part collateral damage serves an agenda, ulterior motive, or is just a method for retaining your spot on the moral high ground by being noble enough to make the "tough decisions". I mean, can you imagine the personal anguish of those in DC, who last year were willing to allow hundreds of Iranians to die for the "greater good" of removing Trump once and for all? The planes were literally in the air, and thank God it stopped just short of another war. I doubt any of them slept any better or worse for it. Collateral damage can be economic as well, as with sanctions that punish innocent citizens to force the hands of governments we don't like. Economic sanctions can be domestic also, punishing your own citizens for the greater good, like we're seeing now. COVID-19 containment is the "omelet" right now, and if sacrificing the world's small businesses can save even ONE life, so be it. Just don't tread on the Walmarts, Menards, & Amazons of the world, because their successes are vital to the portfolios of those who make all these noble decisions. These massive companies are not the eggs, they are part of the chosen few standing by with a fork & napkin to enjoy their breakfast. Collateral damage can be psychological as well. Not only is this a test of our obedience, it is yet another experiment in divisiveness. As with the illusion of diversity, the same people who've been telling us that if we treat minorities as equals instead of victims, that makes us racist, are the same people telling us that if you're not willing to sacrifice your family's well-being and everything you've ever worked for, you're "selfish". All the same people who have YET to miss a single paycheck, and have no problem using YOUR tax money to fund some of the most murderous collateral damage imaginable. Spare me the moral superiority. Again, not downplaying the seriousness of the virus, whether it was man-made or not, or even if it was intentional. I only question the motives of those who have continually gotten this wrong, but refuse to apologize or even admit their mistakes, and who cling to the same Chinese authoritarian methodology implemented at the beginning of this crisis, apparently for the sake of bureaucratic perpetuity. The "lock-down" was supposed to keep the healthcare system from being overwhelmed, yet healthcare workers have been furloughed and hospitals are empty. When hospitals finally open back up, THEN the healthcare system will be overwhelmed with all the patients who have been denied elective care this whole time. The opposite of the intended result. So why continue, and why all the side-stepping? Refusal to change strategy in light of so much new data sends a clear message to me that this is no longer about safety, but about that elusive golden omelet, and about opportunism run amuck. I don't think it's the "eggs" that are being selfish, it's the folks in the kitchen with the giant mixing bowl. They mean well, but their customers are quite hungry and a bit impatient. Stupid eggs. Next PSA: If Nancy Pelosi can call the President of the United States "morbidly obese", can I call her "morbidly stupid"? Also, Joe Biden said "If you vote Trump you ain't black". Somehow I can't imagine "Corn Pop" voting for you after you claim to have beat him with a chain. And while we're at it, we love you Cher, but your comment that Trump was playing golf while 100,000 people died was possibly the dumbest thing I've ever read. I don't have a joke here, it was just dumb. Looks like I have lots to explore next time (like any of this will still be relevant by then). Happy Tuesday Everyone and enjoy this lovely evening! June 3rd, 2020: PSA#63: How many news anchors does it take to screw in a light bulb? None. Turns out the old light bulb was fine. I have to say I'm pretty disappointed in this season's reality news. The COVID-19 episodes were scary at first, but dragged on way too long. They could have salvaged that fire drill with the murder hornets, but instead they skipped right over to the protests and riots. I was really looking forward to the murder hornets. Ferguson 2.0 would have been better left for the summer reruns. If I was writing this stuff, it would have been corona virus first, then murder hornets, then maybe an asteroid scare just to lighten the mood a bit, then COVID-20 and the collapse of Trump's "reign of terror", ending with Joe Biden moving to Potter's Field Nursing Home and Retirement Village never to be seen again, leaving Stacey Abrams as the first black female president. In the season cliffhanger, she loses America to Xi Jinping in a round of 5-card draw (deuces wild), forcing the reanimation of Jerry Lewis to do a telethon to buy it back. THEN, I would use the Ferguson sequel to fill the 2021 mid-season break, and in September bring on the zombie apocalypse with maybe a plague of flying shark-spiders as a side-story. Now THAT'S reality news. We buy all their stuff on TV right? So I think the entertainment news industry owes it to us to be a little more creative with their phoney-baloney fire drills. I mean, it's not like anyone believes their hyperbolic rhetoric anyway, right? So c'mon guys, try and spice things up a bit, otherwise I'll have to get my news from Alex Jones. Next PSA: A new drinking game for "The Last Word" with Lawrence O'Donnell: Do a shot every time he uses the term "pathological liar". I played last night but passed out before his "last word", which was probably "pathological liar". Happy Wednesday Everyone and enjoy this steamy day! June 25th, 2020: PSA#64: All good things... It doesn't look like my hiatus from stirring the pot on Facebook is going to end any time soon. I like to think of it as a sabbatical, finding spiritual guidance on how to mind my own business regarding things I know or care little about, but the truth is there's just nothing to talk about. The corona virus story has tanked in the ratings, we didn't get the Murder Hornets we were promised, and the Ferguson sequel just reminds me of the Duncan Toy Company, who every 10 years or so brings back the Yo-Yo to be introduced to a new generation unfamiliar with this mesmerizing little gadget. In the last half century I've seen this same racial unrest play out over and over and over again, and every time it does it's driven by the entertainment news outlets to not simply generate ad revenues, but to keep us all distracted & divided. Once it starts to curdle beyond its shelf-life, it will disappear from the news and everyone will forget all about it until it's revived again in a decade or so. Not downplaying the importance of the issues, just reminding everyone that we get angry over whatever our electronic devices tell us to be angry about, and when that changes, our behavior modifies accordingly. Personally, I've seen this play out SO many times it's like watching "Big Brother". Same story lines, just different actors playing houseguest. Predictable and in the end, a bit pointless. I'm even missing politics, which is also the "The Amazing Race" or "Survivor" but with different contestants. However, if the DNC would just pick their candidates and get the debates going, I think it could be pretty entertaining and chock-full of hysterical antics & misadventures. So, at least until Rodney King 3.0 runs its course, I'm taking a cue from my dear friend Dave Griffin and sitting this one out. At my age I have no room left in my heart for hatred, and no room left in my brain for anger. Besides that, I was REALLY looking forward to the Murder Hornets, so I'm taking my plastic pail & shovel and going home. Next PSA, January 2021: President Michelle and Vice-President Gates inaugural addresses: "Changing yesterday for a brighter tomorrow". barf. Happy Thursday everyone! Get out and enjoy yet another gorgeous picture-perfect day! July 28th, 2020: PSA#65: The more things change... I'm back from my month long sabbatical in Tibet, studying under 3 monks named Larry, Ed, and Jameson. In all honesty, Jameson wasn't an actual monk, just a green bottle of Irish whiskey, but nonetheless indispensable in my spiritual quest. So, did I get "woke"? No, thank God. Mostly we just prayed, fasted, and played a lot of Fortnite. Man, Larry is a beast. After my hiatus, I was surprised to return to the same old tired news stories as before. I have scoffed at the conspiracy kooks who insisted that the economic destruction, flu-scare, and the leftist riots & protests would be perpetuated clear up to election time. However, despite my best Frenchy scoffing-voice (which is wonderfully condescending), it would seem that the media is ignoring its own 30 day shelf-life rule in favor of perpetuity. But what if there's something else going on "globally", other than all the usual election year sabotage and playground insults we've come to expect here in the US? Consider this: Once upon a time, not so long ago in a galaxy not so far away, there was a pair of wacky, fun-loving billionaire swingers named Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. They have both been arrested for child sex trafficking. One is dead, the other is sleeping with one eye open. What makes this different from other pedo-rings is that their clientele were among the richest and most powerful people on Earth. Tycoons, elites, celebrities, CEOs, world leaders and others who are the wealthiest of the wealthy, and who will stop at NOTHING to keep their secrets by making this story go away at ANY COST. News outlets around the globe seem conveniently distracted right now, and you don't see many over-zealous "journalists" poking into things they shouldn't. Not suggesting that all the "big" stories were fabricated for such a distraction, but I find it curious that these stories have spoiled beyond their expiration date yet still dominate our attention. Is the virus still scary? Indeed. But is it still spreading even in 90 degree heat? It's hard to say, because the numbers have been skewed, we have been misled into believing the virus only attacks "small groups", and because with more testing, more cases are discovered. I've had so many people tell me that they'll be glad when the election is over so family businesses can re-open. Think for a moment how cynical that is, and what little faith in our leaders it reveals. Now as for the riots & protests? It seems to me that this is no longer about George Floyd. Not sure it ever really was. His murder was horrific and should have never happened, but my gut feeling still makes me wonder if this was a mob hit made to look like a race crime. I cite no references other than we know George Floyd and his killer Derek Chauvin both freelanced for the same Mexican crime family, who are rumored to have trafficked "undocumented" immigrants through Minneapolis using counterfeit currency. It's possible that Floyd was skimming fake twenties off the top, and that this was his last warning. What better person than a sociopathic sadist like Chauvin to carry out the hit for all the world to see? Probably not the case, but it doesn't matter now, because the Democratic party has taken this movement to a different purpose, and are using BLM as circus animals to perform nightly for their own financial & political gain. The FEC money trail seems to confirm that ActBlue is legitimate in their fund raising, but are still rooted in money laundering for old, rich, mostly white politicians. Ironically, BLM has shifted its focus to stupid statues and antiquated plantation slavery, but demand things like no tax for blacks, reparations for slavery, no voter ID for blacks, and more welfare programs. Isn't that just re-introducing slavery in the form of economic and psychological slavery? And the idea that replacing good cops with more bad cops will make neighborhoods safer won't work. AOC said that neighborhoods just need to hire private security teams, like she does and her parents did in the gated community where she grew up, but your average urban dweller or even middle-class suburbanite cannot afford a private team, and will just end up paying "protection" to gang members, just like during Prohibition a hundred years ago. Depressed inner cities will be hurt the most. Dismiss everything I say, but please believe me that it's the impoverished population and their local businesses that are paying the highest price in all this. Point being: the virus, the lockdown, the riots, even the election, have all become fluff pieces for the media that no longer generate the ad revenue they did a month ago, because people are tired of it. So what's the motivation for continuing to milk a dead cow? What they don't talk about scares me way more than what they can't stop yapping about. Not minimizing the importance of the aforementioned issues, and I know I will piss off a few people with my previous bluntly pretentious comments, and I'll likely end up in Facebook jail (and so soon after my sabbatical! Oh well...), but I think that this repugnant bluntness brings us a little closer together under the assumption that we are ALL being played, and that we're ALL entangled in a web of deceit through omission that appears to be smoke-screened by some of the most influential pedophiles on the planet who will do ANYTHING to keep from being exposed. An easy task for now. Just don't talk about it and keep people divided by perceived privilege. When parents favor one child over another, the kids don't hate their parents, they hate each other. So long as we remain American vs. American, we will always remain blind to our real enemies. As the title implies, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Next PSA (after my parole): Tips for surviving FB jail: Teaser tip #1: If you drop the soap in Facebook jail, do NOT bend over to pick it up. Happy Tuesday everyone! Get out and enjoy this beautiful summer day! August 5th, 2020: PSA#66: The enemy of my enemy is my friend. This is more of a follow-up to my previous PSA and will be mercifully shorter and minimal in dry cynical humor. My girl Dena has fallen down the Epstein rabbit hole, and is revisiting the old Neo-Illuminati innuendos that have been synonymous with elite child sex activities for decades. Secret codes & symbols, weird satanic rituals, rape, blackmail, murder, all the goofy antics of the super-wealthy that make them the hit of any Hollywood party. My "what if" from last time speculated that all the insanity of the world right now is diversionary, the old "fake tennis ball throw" metaphor that I recycle every couple years. Or, it could all be just a "dress rehearsal" for a global shift of power in the works. Or, it could be both. In any event, it's disturbing and alarming, and almost Biblical in its portentousness. However, it does present us all with a unique opportunity: We live in a black & white world. No infinite shades of gray, just two diametrically opposed ideologies that are both static and both incapable of any osmosis. It's "us vs. them", which is the framework of these diversions. Every now and again you have to "shake the jar of bees" to keep them distracted from their containment. Keep them fighting each other and they will never find a way out of the jar. The aforementioned rabbit hole is filled with dark burrows so sinister and so far-reaching that, no matter your politics or societal leanings, are universally appalling to ALL OF US. This is an opportunity to stop chasing the imaginary tennis ball for a moment and unite against a common enemy. The future of our children depends on it. We should follow Miss Dena's lead and do the research, talk about it, be angry about it as if it's the most important issue of our time, because it is. Nearly a million kids a year simply "disappear", and most are not random abductions. Pedophile rings are secretly very organized and are often connected to some of the richest, most powerful people in the world. In researching this, we'll have to wade through a backwash of tin foil hat conspiracy trolling, much of which borders on intentionally absurd "Blue Book" style disinformation. But this is REAL and has been for a very long time. By raising awareness of it, perhaps sooner or later the veil will collapse and the media will have no choice but to finally talk about it. Even the great and powerful Wizard of Oz was exposed as the charlatan he was, not by force or by process & procedure, but by a little black dog who simply pulled the curtain back. Next PSA: Susan Rice seems the logical choice for Biden VP over Harris and Bass. She's tough, cunning, and fully versed & immersed in DC swamp politics. If so, would they call it the "White Rice" ticket, or the "Rice Krispie" ticket? Old Joe does seem a little burnt around the edges these days. Happy Wednesday everyone! I'm off for Maid-Rites & beer for mom's 86th birthday lunch. Enjoy this picture-perfect day! August 10th, 2020: PSA#67: Another brief return to exoterica. The primary function of these rants for nearly 10 years has been to exaggerate obvious ironies and hypocritical projectionism to illustrate how paper-thin that veil of deception and camouflage really is. The downside, at least in my experience, is that once that tapestry of diversion begins to unravel, what is revealed behind it cannot be unseen, and at some point you find yourself wishing you would have taken the "blue pill" instead of the "red pill". As in The Matrix, sometimes a happy illusion is better than a miserable reality. But if you don't let it get you down, you'll find that the illusion is stagnant and lasts forever, whereas reality is temporary and can be greatly improved through awareness of it. The bigger picture: All of us as a human race have literally waited our entire existence for this very moment. Contrary to our perceptions of the here & now, there is no going backwards. We have no choice but to evolve, to learn, to get better, to get smarter. Right now we appear to be getting dumber, but I believe this to be just a momentary lapse of reason (earworm alert) that we will eventually learn from too. There are a nearly infinite number of species, but it seems that us mammals are the only ones that have developed the capacity for love, compassion, and empathy. That makes me think that these qualities in the chain of life are rare and are very important to our future. Some see it as the beginnings of a "great awakening", but I don't think it comes as an epiphany of sorts, but as genetically embedded in our collective psyche and matured one DNA strand at a time. If this is in fact a process rather than a quantum leap of spirituality, there is no single magnanimous act of "wokeness" or political social reform that will expedite this process. What WILL expedite this "awakening" is what has fondly become known as the "Butterfly Effect", the idea that everything affects everything else, all the time. Sometimes it's the subtle, not the ostentatious, that has the most far-reaching ripple effect. How you treat the person who serves you breakfast or delivers your Amazon package affects how they treat their co-workers, which affects how they treat their families, which affects how their families treat others at school or work the next day, and so on. It's the old saying "one random act of kindness at a time". Unfortunately, too many of us today would rather precipitate change through domination, the rest of us being forced to defend our principles, and sometimes even our lives or the lives of our families. It's hard to be kind to those who would choose to harm you. On rare occasions the only compassion is compression, as you try to keep someone from bleeding out because they stupidly broke into your house or tried to kidnap your child. Rarely do our hands get forced in such a way, but I exaggerate the point that no matter how loving & kind someone is, they will NOT be bullied. NEVER mistake kindness for weakness, and be aware that the Butterfly Effect works both ways. Both good and bad, this ripple effect is a far more powerful evolutionary driver than grandiose speeches, doctrines, sweeping societal mandates, cultural vanity, or anything else that strokes the ego rather than lifts the heart or enriches our understanding. In our own "matrix", there is no red or blue pill, no rude awakening from perceived reality, no epiphanies. Just a seemingly endless feedback loop of rhetoric that ripples us closer to our intended human potential, or perpetuates the arrogant notion that our potential is of our own design. Next PSA: Speaking of "good vs. evil", if Satan is so powerful, why does he still live in his dad's basement? Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend, and are having a very pleasant Manic Monday (earworm alert #2). August 24th, 2020: PSA#68: Never say never, say I'd rather not. I was going to call this "All good things...part 2", but if all good things must come to an end, why would there be a "part 2"? Anyway, like a spoiled brat lead singer who quits the band only to keep coming back, here we go again. First, a happy Monday to all. Hope your day went smoothly. I've tried to stay away because if you can't inject a little humor & sarcasm into a rant, what's the point? However, we're all aware now of a global elite pedophile ring conspiracy theory that is impossible to joke about, even if it's not true. I fell down this rabbit hole many years ago, but became so confused and disheartened that I coughed up the red pill and took the blue one instead. Now the evidence is a bit more concise in light of the Epstein/Maxwell revelations, but I still cannot grasp how such powerful people, whose private lives are always under the scrutiny of the public microscope, could possibly get away with such things for so long. The easy answer is that "dead men tell no tales", and that the media have long accepted that certain things are "off limits", but that's not proof. Also, there's enough "Blue Book" style trolling out there to de-legitimize any valid research connected to it. My favorite so far is that the real Mike Pence was killed for his involvement in this ring, and is now a genetic clone of Dr. Fauci. As hilarious as this is, it merely scatters more bread crumbs on the trail in an effort to lead you down a dead-end path. However, if you follow the money trail, the body trail, and listen to the testimonies of all who claim to have been involved, there is more than enough evidence to justify further investigation that might produce actual proof. Also disturbing is the apparent obsession with sadism and weird satanic rituals. I know it's hard to imagine successful adults playing with Ouija boards, but it seems they are pretty serious about the Devil, and believe he's a real person who gets his jollies from human sacrifices and Adrenochrome parties. So it looks like a 3-fold problem going on with some of our ultra-wealthy entertainers, politicians, and clergy members. They are either pedophiles, sadists, or superstitious pagans. Or possibly all three. Perhaps many are just going along with it so they don't accidentally "commit suicide", but if you're burying a buckeye under a full moon wearing a Kaiser helmet and a pink tu-tu while drinking blood and singing "Some Enchanted Evening" from South Pacific, thinking you'll get super-powers and lotto numbers from almighty Lucifer himself, either you're dumber than a rock, or my model of the Universe is a total illusion. Or, maybe the whole thing is simply all about MONEY. In any event, I did manage to squeeze in some sarcasm after all at the expense of those who really need to be offended by it. Next PSA: Speaking of singers: How many lead singers does it take to screw in a light bulb? Just one. They hold the light bulb still and the world revolves around them. September 3rd, 2020: PSA#69: Orange is the new black. No matter how I try, I can't seem to make it to Facebook jail. If Principal Strickland were alive today he would call me a "slacker". Guess I need to step up my game a notch. Here goes: I rarely talk about President Trump or even mention his name, because unlike most Americans I am not obsessed with him as either the savoir of the USA, or as a kind of Lex Luthor supervillain (aka Alexander Joseph Luthor). However, I will indeed vote Trump over Harris in November, and the reasons are not limited to economic or foreign policies. Fact: When Trump became president, he immediately became privy to everything the NSA knew, and was already aware of much of it, so he knew exactly where to look for dirt on his enemies. Speculation: Trump is using this information to blackmail world leaders and business moguls to either cooperate with him or have their criminal enterprises and bizarre perversions exposed. Remember those strange envelopes at the Bush funeral and Brussels Summit in 2018? I do believe that a lot of powerful people are squirming in their Barcaloungers right now, and the irony is too much to dismiss given the assumption that these same elites blackmail each other in much the same way. My hope is that Trump will pull a double-cross and expose them all anyway. That probably won't happen, because then there would be no reason left to keep him alive. He would have to take them all down simultaneously to escape retribution. Personally, I would pay good money to see that happen. There are some truly awful people in high positions of global influence right now, and it didn't happen overnight. Obviously this is conjecture rooted in geriatric cynicism, and not reason enough to warrant four more years. However, we also have to acknowledge that the Dems have squandered the last four years trying to undo the last election instead of grooming candidates who could actually win the next election. RussiaGate, Stormy Daniels, Kavanaugh, ICE, Ukraine, Covid, Antifa, MailGate; all of their schemes have backfired so miserably that they seem like acts of total desperation driven by a Hunter-esque "Fear & Loathing in DC". As a result, we're left with Kamala and Grandpa Joe. Trump is quite beatable, but not with the anthropomorphic neo-progs calling the shots this go-around. I hope they've learned their lesson and will be more prepared in 2024. If this seems like merely the "lesser of two evils", it always is. However it does appear that President Trump, in spite of being undermined at every turn, is determined to "drain the swamp", and seems to be keeping his campaign promises, something I have not seen in my lifetime. The idea of a politician actually doing what he said he would do is quite unconventional. So yeah, what the hay anyway, sign me up for four more years. I have to see where it goes. If I find myself asking "where are we going and why am I in a hand-basket?", so be it. It's all too wildly entertaining and mildly amusing to shelve just yet and simply slump back into a Clinton-Obama style plutocracy. Let's let this one play out. I have a gut feeling that we are on the brink of a huge reality check, and I have an unopened box of Orville Redenbacher for when that time comes. Next PSA: If the Clinton Foundation does manage to regain the White House, what will happen to the Jehovah Witnesses? We all know they don't leave ANY witnesses. Happy Thursday everyone and let the unfriending commence! September 23rd, 2020: PSA#70: "There's something happening here...what it is, ain't exactly clear..." Apologizes for the earworm. There's so much going on this week I decided to bullet-point these issues. My hope is that they will be at least half as colorful as Adam Schiff's re-enactment of the infamous "Ukraine Call". 1) RBG: Fan or not, Justice Ginsberg was a trailblazer and an icon. Personally, I'm from the old school of thought that constitutional law and judiciary social activism make for bad bed-fellows, but she seemed to juggle them gracefully, and certainly earned the respect of her peers. Condolences to her family. 2) The Supreme Court: I'm not sure how Ginsberg's request regarding Trump's replacement went from a "statement by the family" to her "last public announcement", but I find using it to block the restoration of the Supreme Court to be not only disrespectful, but a bit cowardly. Why won't they just admit that this is all about Roe v. Wade? Politicians on both sides rely heavily on lobby money from the multi-billion dollar federally regulated abortion industry. They see reversing Roe v. Wade back to the individual states as the Jenga piece that will collapse the entire structure, but they needn't worry. Only a few states now will radically change their policies, and rest assured these politicians will continue to receive their "donations & contributions" from Planned Parenthood and all of their ghoulish subsidiaries. 3) President Trump: You said you have "plenty of time" to restore the Supreme Court. No sir, you do not. There are hundreds of lawyers preparing to attack you, and the longer you wait, the more prepared they will be. Do it now or let the court freeze in 4:4 impotence until next year, which is bad timing considering we probably won't have the election results finalized for several months, as the judges & lawyers squabble over the forensic analysis of those results. The last thing we need is Nancy Pelosi as "Interim CIC". 4) Democrats: Regroup. You blew it this cycle so stop wasting time and prepare for 2024. Stop coming up with hair-brained coup attempts and start coming up with winning candidates, preferably ones a lot more center of far-left than this years alumni. Believe it or not, all liberals are not college students, so don't be afraid to expand your base to include older responsible working class liberals. They are not the elusive albino unicorns you regard them as, just ordinary Americans simply raising their families the best they can. 5) Republicans: You can come out from under your beds now. 6) Protesters: Go home. Your cause has been seriously compromised by mercenaries. It's okay that they get paid and you don't, but it's not okay that they are tainting what should be a noble and just civil rights movement. There are other ways to affect social change. Find out what they are, and walk away from the "Anarchists-4-Hire" who are contaminating your credibility. 7) Socialists: The United States is divided into 50 semi-autonomous states, each somewhat culturally and economically unique. Merging them all under one gargantuan federal umbrella won't work in a nation as diverse as ours. Our representatives would become "branch managers" who serve the company more than their employees. Let the states take care of their own. Ironically, at the moment they are not, and for the same exact reason. So long as our representatives serve the DC party establishment over their own people, it doesn't matter how many eggs we break to make an omelet because only the company brass get to sit at the breakfast table. 8) Covid-19: Has it been 15 days yet? Damn curve. 9) Placeholder Joe: Y'all need to stop picking on my boy Joe. He's not as senile as he seems, and is fully aware of his role in all this. If he seems half-hearted it's only because he's probably not too thrilled with being appointed Ambassador to Ukraine by President Harris, but will do so in loyalty to his party. Give the guy a break. C'mon man! (in my best grumbling Joe voice) 10) America: We are in an ideological civil war on the brink of an actual civil war. This will not be individual states banding together and played out like a game of chess. It will be anarchy and chaos, every man for himself. On the upside, it will play out rather quickly. This can indeed be avoided though. We just need to know who the REAL enemies are. It's not "us vs. them", it's "them vs. us". We did not create this conflict but will end it quickly once names start dropping, if you catch my drift (insert obscure Q innuendo). To again quote Stephen Stills: "I think it's time we stop...Hey, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down..." For what it's worth (pun intended), those were my synopses for the week. It doesn't matter if you agree or disagree, but please trust me on this: Things are not as hopeless as they seem. There are some seriously messed up people in the world, but the good & decent outnumber them a thousand to one. This will all pass. Next PSA: President Trump has announced he will replace Justice Ginsberg with Hillary Clinton as soon as he gets approval from the funeral home. Happy Wednesday everyone September 30th, 2020: PSA#71: If I want your opinion I'll beat it out of you. I have to say, both candidates last night were "master debaters", and I don't mean that in a flattering way. I played a game while watching, where every time Trump or Biden would call each other a LIAR, I would respectively alternate between a Turkey 101 and a double kush hybrid. As a result, I am just now cognitive enough to form a few comments about the "great debate". They won't be as funny as last night's reenactment of Statler & Waldorf, but I promise they will be more eloquent. I know, shooting fish in a barrel right? Donald Trump: Several times you were close to being sent to the "time-out chair". Instead of constantly interrupting, you could have been formulating your responses. I caught many things that Joe said that were chronologically and statistically inaccurate, but you missed them because you couldn't control your knee-jerk reactions. I get that you were just trying to rattle old Joe a bit to trip him up, but you could've kept your mouth shut and let him dig his own hole. I'm afraid you get zero on the Tomato-meter. Joe Biden: Speaking of zeroes, you have a problem with your zeroes & commas when it comes to big numbers. I don't know if that's a dementia thing, but it seriously damages your credibility. You also have a long term memory thing where you get dates confused. I do too, all the time. For me it's no big deal, but in politics, being a year or two off affects context because of who was actually president at the time of those references. It's okay though, Trump didn't notice because he was too busy barking at cars, and for the most part, you did a good job holding it together. For that you get 10% on the Tomato-meter. Chris Wallace: I'm sure you have a hangover too after that school yard intervention. You've been accused of favoring Biden, but I think you just tailored your questions to their unique demeanors and egos. You get 50% on the Tomato-meter. You would have gotten 100% if you would have simply said, "Sir, with all due respect, you are not in charge tonight, I am. I will have to dock your response time if you act up again". All in all, I was not disappointed. I thought it would be hilarious, and y'all didn't let me down. Deep down though, I was actually hoping for a more "point/counter-point" style of debate, without all the societal pandering and topical clichés. Instead, it was all about what you've done and what you are going to do, but nothing about how you're going to do it. Total score: 60% on the Tomato-meter, which ain't bad considering "Grumpy Old Men" only got 63%. Next PSA: Speaking of "Grumpy Old Men", rumors abound that in the debate sequel, Jack Lemmon & Walter Matthau will play the part of Biden & Trump, with Stone Cold Steve Austin as moderator, which should greatly improve that Tomato-meter score. Happy Wednesday everyone! November 2nd, 2020: Captain's log:Supplemental: Well, it's 4:20 Armageddon Eve 2020. As we brace for the emotional backlash of tomorrow's election, consider this fun fact: The Universe is self-consuming and self-replicating, everything recycled clear down to the subatomic level. We ourselves are made up of the same exact atoms that make up all the stars & planets in all the Universe. The results of tomorrow's dog-n-pony show will have zero consequences a million years from now, or 10,000 years, or even a thousand years from now. Humanity exists as a microscopic nanosecond in the grand calendar of time, and no matter the election outcome, it will pass in a blink regardless of how mad we get about it or how much we cry about it. As my hero "Captain D" says at the end of every webisode, "Love with your heart, use your head for everything else". If things don't go the way you wanted, figure out what went wrong and prepare for next time. Or, as my greatest hero, who I called "Dad", used to say, "You can get glad in the same britches you got mad in". Let's all show some respect to each other tomorrow. November 10th, 2020: PSA#72: Is the glass half-empty or half-full? The optimist is forever disappointed, whereas the pessimist is often pleasantly surprised. Unfortunately, I'm still an eternal optimist, as demonstrated by my election eve comments regarding the grander aspects of existence compared to the trivial pursuits of humankind. Right now though, that "dollar store guru" transcendentalism is making this dark time in America more difficult to process. It's not that I'm all that worried about a Harris/Biden presidency, although if Republicans lose the Senate, it'll be a Congressional Black Friday tax spending frenzy that will undoubtedly damage the economy even more than it already is with the lock-downs. I think the House & Senate will be fine for now. Here is what I see as the larger issue: What matters more than who won the election is that the American people AGREE on who won the election. Presidents come & go. I've seen a dozen in my lifetime. However, if people don't have faith in the democratic process, it will affect elections for a generation. The Trump camp is correct in pursuing a solid validation of the election results. Even if there was indeed some hanky-panky going on, it would reinforce the checks & balances that legitimize this process, while having little impact on the final result. Parties have always looked for ways to tip the scale a bit, and when they get caught, it at least proves that the system actually works. On the other hand, if the Supreme Court nullifies this election, and Congress votes on who the President should be, the system will be reduced to a quagmire of legal technicalities turned into grandstanding points. We the people will come to believe that whichever party has the best lawyers, not us, will control the political landscape of this country. Even worse, if Trump were to win because of such bureaucratic imbroglio and procedural sleight of hand & noise, we will see violence and hatred that'll make ANTIFA look like a church bake sale. This is exactly the situation I had hoped to avoid. No landslide on either side. If Trump throws in the towel, the credibility of our election integrity will long be in question. If the results are overturned, it'll be an ideological and civil anarchy that will hurt ALL OF US. To quote Bravado by Rush, "we will pay the price but we will not count the cost". Future generations will have to assess that damage once the smoke has finally cleared. Anarchy and revolution are NOT the same. Sadly, for me anyway, the best scenario would be for the courts to prove beyond a doubt that there was no monkey business, and let the results stand. If that happens, Republicans PLEASE do not make the same mistake as your counterparts. Don't spend the next 3 years trying to undo the last election, instead come up with a plan, and groom candidates that are capable of winning the NEXT election. It's only 4 years. Don't waste that time & tax money on ridiculous schemes and witch hunts. Roll up your sleeves and GET TO WORK. That's the best optimism I can come up with right now. As for the proverbial glass: Is the glass half-empty or half-full? Perhaps the glass is just too damn big. Smaller glass, problem solved. Next PSA: Kamala has commented on the possibility of legalizing prostitution nationwide. If that were to happen, would we call her "Madame Vice-President", "Vice-President Madame", or "President Madame in charge of Vice"? Happy Tuesday everyone! November 23rd, 2020: PSA #73 and also "first dumb question of the week": Is it ironic, and perhaps hypocritical, that many of the people who throw around the terms "racist", "white supremacist", or "Nazi" in such a cavalier fashion, are the same people who consider themselves a predominant "Master Race" based on their own self-righteous moral superiority? A few examples: Minneapolis City Council member Lisa Bender called for a "future without police", also saying, the idea that we deserve police protection "comes from a place of privilege". No Barbie, we deserve police protection because we PAY THEIR SALERIES with our taxes. Her anti-police comments seem like an "Aryan Brotherhood" philosophy of thinning minority populations through selective civil violence, especially coming from someone who has private security paid for by those very same taxpayers. Another case of the "kettle calling the pot white". Also, German history suggests that abortion was an effective ethnic cleansing tool. By offering free abortions in minority populations and promoting it as a "right" that will be fought for and seen as a victory for those oppressed minorities, they achieved voluntary self-thinning by convincing mothers that equality and prosperity can be achieved by killing their own children. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? I must be thinking of "lemmings". Yes, that must be it. Also, the German Socialist Party were ingenious in how they implemented thought control into our learning institutions, from grade school to universities, by simply bloating those institutions with government grants, as well as with endowments from corporations and wealthy individuals who also wished to preserve their own power. In exchange, these institutions were not required to change what they teach, just how they teach it. Political correctness and the subtle alterations of terminologies was all that was needed to indoctrinate a whole generation who believed that if you're "not obsessed with culture and skin color, that makes you a racist". How heartless everyone else must have seemed for not caring about the Jews and other minorities enough to help them find new homes with the assistance of their benevolent Party. Our internal dialogs work in verbage, just like speech. Control the speech and you control thought. Anyway, I could go on (please don't), but suffice it to say the original question certainly illustrates just how chock-full Deja Vu can be of such knee-slapping irony. You might say "Pride cometh before a fall", but more accurately you could say "The road to Hell is paved with the best of intentions". Our virtue signaling is being used against us in ways both subtle and insidious. Next PSA: We explore how building a chain link fence around your house can protect your family from the corona virus. Don't laugh, it works with masks made out of t-shirts, right? Happy Monday everyone! December 4th, 2020: PSA#74: Can you start a revolution and change the world when you can't even start a lawn mower or change a tire? I've certainly had issues with Facebook lately, but I actually have no desire to leave. 12 years invested, I have "squatter's rights" and will not be intimidated by their hardware profiling and data harvesting. In protest, my first impulse was to loot the local Dollar General and burn down the Legion Hall, but I guess I'm just not "woke" enough for that kind of behavior. Instead, I'm looking for people to participate in a temporary "boycott" of Facebook via MeWe. You don't have to delete your FB account to make a statement. They keep track of your screen time, and the less screen time you have, the fewer ads you're going to see. Fewer ad views mean loss of revenue, and in this case is a far more efficient and correct form of protest than gathering in front of their corporate headquarters chanting and carrying stupid signs. Setting up MeWe is pretty simple. I used Chrome's auto-fill (which is why it says "James") but I'm just lazy I suppose. Anyway, go to MeWe, create an account, then invite as many friends as you can. By reducing your time on Facebook, you "hit them in the pocketbook", which is the only language they understand. And who knows? If enough people join, I might make MeWe my primary social platform. Their user interface is very clean and easy to read and to navigate. Also, there are NO ADS, which in itself is a plus, but more importantly, since they don't run ads, they have no reason to track your Amazon or Walmart browsing history, or sell ANY of your personal data to advertisers. Also, unlike Facebook, there are NO "independent fact-checkers", who are more accurately "independent ideology-checkers", who de-legitimize comments based on political affiliation. Just follow some common-sense courtesies, and you will not be censored or sent to "MeWe Jail". I sincerely hope for Facebook's continued success, but they need to dial their arrogance back a notch, and understand that since their platform is free, that makes their users the ACTUAL product in all this. Alienate your users, lose your product. They have issues that need to be resolved, and believe it or not, we have the power to motivate those resolutions sooner rather than later or never. Next PSA: The Sign Makers Union is on strike in protest of Facebook. Hundreds have gathered around their main office carrying blank pieces of cardboard. Happy Friday everyone! Have a GREAT weekend! December 21st, 2020: PSA#75: The boy who cried wolf. Ol' Rudy & his team are certainly making a lot of noise about voter fraud, and rightly so I suppose. Fake Chinese ballots, ballot harvesting, missing ballots, too many ballots, the dreaded "Dominion" (they did control the Jem'Hadar you know. If you get that reference you're a big a nerd as me). Anyway, a lot of crying "wolf", but was there really election fraud? Of course. There always is. Was it widespread enough to make a difference? Apparently not, since no one is taking it seriously. But what about the ACTUAL big bad wolf in all this? It's no coincidence that the Biden transition team is stacked with people from Facebook, Twitter, Google & Amazon. Along with their obedient minions in cable news, they kept old Joe safe from such inconvenient bad press such as the Ukraine scandal, Hunter's laptop, Chinese influence peddling, sexual harassment allegations, and so on, while still keeping the "Trumpers" at bay with their fact-checkers, hardware profiling, and modified search algorithms. Indeed this election was influenced, but not so much by voter fraud, or those dastardly Russians and their social media ads making fun of Hillary, but by keeping Joe's dirty laundry under wraps until after the election. Of all their backfired schemes over the last 4 years, this one actually worked. Oddly, now those same news outlets, who refused to report on such non-stories based on their "journalistic integrity", are acknowledging the validity of these allegations. It's almost as if, now that their girl Kamala is in, they no longer care what happens to poor Joe. I'm not worried though. It's only 4 years. However, here are a few things that we might see during that time: A return to the Paris Climate Accord with a blank check that will be used to fly dignitaries around the globe on their private jets to lecture the rest of us about our decadent gas guzzling Ford F-150s. A return to the Obama philosophy that helping Iran's nuclear program will somehow benefit the rest of the world. It won't. This also sends a message to North Korea that it's back to business as usual for them as well. Taxes. One thing voters demanded was higher taxes and new taxes for everyone. Medicare for all, the green new deal, citizenship for all, everything we demanded. That promise will be kept. It will be the first time in American history that the total cumulative taxes on the working class will creep past the 50% mark, making it futile to even have a job. Government assistance programs will collapse under the increased participation & loss of revenue. And no, the "rich people" are NOT going to pay for it all. Dismantling of the Electoral College. Never been a fan of the electoral system, but without it, LA, Chicago, and New York will pretty much decide future elections. Restructuring of the Supreme Court. Adding seats will only make it more partisan than it already is. Corporations & special interest groups will lobby Congress, and Congress will lobby the Court. Creation of an alt-voting base. 2 new states, and an expanded welfare voting demographic through an open border policy will not bite the hand that feeds them. Economic and societal transformation to Chinese models. China is way more "woke" than those Godless Russian Catholics, right? However, we're a long way from being the "People's Republik of Amerika". More gun control is a good place to start. Speaking of China: Reduction of tariffs & sanctions. Mexico and Russia are doing cartwheels as well. The Middle East pt. 4: George H, George W, Barrack, now Joe. Hey, those Afghan poppy fields aren't going to process themselves, right? More crime. "Catch & release" legislation will NOT make us safer, nor will fewer police. Monopolies. Lots of monopolies. The aforementioned "big bad wolf". On the upside, however disappointed in the election outcome, at least I can promise not to torch the Amvets or loot Casey's, and I can also promise to treat the new president with the same respect that Mr. Trump was given. In fact, I can guarantee it. Next PSA: Biden's Ambassador to China: Jeff Bezos or LeBron James? New Ministry of Truth Secretary Mark Zuckerberg chimes in. Happy Monday everyone! December 31st, 2020: Last dumb question of the year, regarding the COVID Relief Bill and the $1400 increase to $2000. My question is this: Do I need my receipt to exchange a recently purchased $600 Browning AB3 for a Winchester 1866? Happy New Year everyone! January 14th, 2021: PSA#76: The boy who cried wolf part 2. This will be mercifully shorter than pt. 1 but somewhat vague. If you get the references, great. If not, it's better you don't. There are many out there who feel as though the President has been "crying wolf" since the election, not about election fraud, but regarding the "Q initiative", which is NOT to be confused with "Qanon". Q is a decade-long military operation seeking to simultaneously bring down the global banking cartels and the governments that serve them in order to protect their own criminal enterprises. Qanon, on the other hand, is a group of deep-web hackers sifting through WikiLeaks emails looking for innuendos relevant to this operation. Every time we think they are going to pull the trigger on this initiative, it turns out to be just another "cry wolf". The mass arrests in Italy & Germany ("ndrangheta", Leonardo SpA, and others) are taking place right now, but I have no idea if this is a coincidence or a prerequisite. Videos abound from so-called "insiders", but they talk in riddles. One commonality in these videos however, is that timing is critical, and the military has ONE SHOT at this. If they fail, they won't get another chance in our lifetime. This made me wonder, exactly when that perfect time might be. I suppose it would be a moment in time where elements of the military are deployed in DC as well as scattered elsewhere, poised & ready, at a moment when everyone else is gathered in transitional ceremony and at their most vulnerable. Such a moment occurs in 6 days. Ironic that Trump is being impeached for inciting an "insurrection", when in fact he may actually be involved, but not for the reasons they think. This is likely less insurrection, and more mobilization. He got the justification he needed to call in the cavalry. Also ironic that we think of Trump as the mastermind behind this, when he's actually just a recruit who happened to come along at the right time. If Hillary would have won in 2016, Uranium One and Operation Snowglobe would have come to fruition, and the Q initiative would have died shortly after. Sorry to be so vague, especially after criticizing how those involved talk in riddles, but to speak of the grisly details in all this will only make you come off as crazier than you already are. After the 20th, I will either apologize, or I will gladly join in on the collective forensic analysis of a post-mortem globalist cancer. Also sorry to go tin-foil hat, but I've been following this since long before Mr. Trump came along. It's almost biblical in its portentousness. Happy Thursday everyone! Next PSA: Speaking of biblical, Patrick Mahomes praises God and Jesus for his winning touchdown against Atlanta a couple weeks ago. Oddly, the kids at St. Jude remain unimpressed. January 20th, 2021: PSA#77: The boy who cried wolf part 3 of 3. Well, it turns out it was me who was crying wolf. I went out on a limb last time suggesting that today would be the perfect opportunity and last chance to let the military finish its decade long attempt to expose the various criminal enterprises that permeate the inner workings of our political system. They have all the evidence. All that was missing was the right moment and a green light from the Commander-in-Chief. Obviously that did not happen, and I didn't really think it would. I do confess though that I had my fingers crossed behind my back. On the upside, this was a magnificent day for our country, bathed in good old-fashioned pomp and circumstance, as well as some much needed patriotism. My only disappointment was that the motorcycle escorts didn't do that figure-8 thing like the Shriners. Otherwise, it was a good day for a parade. Speaking of a good day, this was an especially good day for Silicon Valley, China, Iran, illegal immigrants, the MSM, and all the aforementioned cartels and their congressional cronies. Obama 2.0 should prove fruitful for all of them. So good luck to Mr. Biden. I hope he stands his ground against the neocons and progressives, and I hope he keeps his back to the wall when it comes to his overly ambitious VP. As for Donald Trump, thank you sir for your service. I understand what you were trying to do, and appreciate what you did accomplish in spite of constantly being attacked and blocked at every turn. I hope we haven't seen the last of you. Next PSA: Sadly, there are no PSAs in the foreseeable future. I have signed me & Dena up to spend some time at a Trump deprogramming camp in the hope we can be rehabilitated and be re-assimilated into the new global "woke-topia". If all they have is light beer I'm gonna be pissed. January 29th, 2021: *sigh*. No PSAs, no dumb question of the week, not even a fake "Fox News Alert". I'm afraid the wind has been knocked out of my sails. All I can do at this point is quietly sit back and watch our nation's economy be flushed down the toilet as we make the transition from sovereignty to subservience. Our self-righteous ideologues and their globalist zookeepers are on a spending spree right now funded by people who haven't even been born yet, and won't be paid off until they are long dead and in the ground. I still have faith in traditional American values, and the prosperity that propagates from a true meritocracy, but we are quickly becoming a culture consumed by its own identity politics and racial "equity" (whatever that is), replacing merit with privilege determined by your victimhood credit score, all in the name of "diversity" for the sake of vain moral superiority. Forget what actually DOES good so long as it FEELS good, and we at least get a pat on the back from our peers, and a doggie treat from our aforementioned keepers. On the upside, it is indeed Friday, and I still feel a collective sense of accomplishment & reward even after 4 years of retirement. Turn the world off for a couple days and stop worrying about things you cannot change. Or, as Tucker always says on his last show of the week, "Have the very best weekend surrounded by those you love. Up next, Sean Hannity". I actually feel much better now. I managed to get in a Fox News reference, plus this was "almost" a PSA. Now if I just had a dumb question of the week. How 'bout this? For the sake of "unity" we apparently can now quell dissent simply by censoring it. Doesn't that just piss these people off even more? So much for unity. Be well everyone. February 5th, 2021: PSA#78: The boy who cried wolf : Epilogue. I conceded in pt. 3 that it was indeed me crying wolf. However, I'm not the only one. Our fearless leaders are crying wolf like never before right now. Their favorite orange punching bag is gone, so apparently that means his 75 million supporters are now their punching bag by proxy. That's fine, although I should probably be alarmed at the ramifications of such a forced unity through conformity, by way of some Clockwork Orange technique of rehabilitation through acceptance of your own vile nature, but no I'm not alarmed. I find solace in the fact that all the yelpers with their torches & pitchforks are actually not bright enough to really follow through on ANYTHING. All they can do is screw things up, and those damages can be repaired after they lose interest and find another car to bark at. I do find it a bit insulting that the least impressive of our "leaders" somehow make WAY more money than the taxpayers who sign their paychecks, but if they would just stop being attention-whores and try not to break anything, by all means we'll pay you to work on your portfolios and campaigns and let the adults handle important issues. Like they say, if you loan someone $20 and never see them again, it was well worth 20 bucks. I'm not being cynical here about their ineptness. Cortez & Omar were in tears about almost being killed by Republican "insurrectionists", and it must have been really bad because AOC wasn't even there that day and still nearly died. Supposedly Trump worked people into a "frenzy". Actually no, they are being worked into a frenzy NOW by the aforementioned demagogues that permeate our electronic devices. 75 million people feel as though they have a target on their back right now. A million of them are really, REALLY pissed. The remaining 74 million are terrified for the future of their kids & grandkids. This is shameful. So I lampoon the talking heads (or more accurately "barking heads") not to take the moral high ground, but to exaggerate not only their reckless pomposity, but how transitory those actors on that glamorous political stage really are. They will be gone. We will remain. I'm no longer alarmed at this latest call for "diversity through conformance", but I have only surrendered my frustrations, not my resolve. I've stopped being angry & afraid of people on TV. We work, we worship, we love, we raise families, we have fun, and we help each other. If we hang on to our core values, surely there are a few that we all have in common. Never be silent about those values, especially now. Happy Friday everyone! Next PSA: Unfortunately, still no PSAs in the foreseeable future. Well, except this one. I smuggled it out of the "re-education" camp just before sunrise. Dena has assimilated into the camp nicely, but as mentioned, I was worried that all they would have is "light" beer. But it's even worse. All they have is fruity IPAs and "Woke Bavarian Vanilla Wheat" on tap, whatever the hell that is. Cheers! February 10th, 2021: No PSA, no dumb question, just a reminder that I stand by my comment that this is NOT the time to be silent. I'm amazed at how I get more PMs than likes & comments now, because we're on the "down-low" and worry about being "cancel cultured", and don't want to risk our jobs and reputations, and hope that if we just surrender and be quiet, they will leave us alone. They won't. This is political and far beyond the residual side effects of TDS. In all fairness, I've also been quiet lately myself, but more because I am letting current events speak for themselves. I've never been more ashamed of our so-called "leaders" on both sides, and I'm embarrassed that they broadcast their collective ineptness to the rest of the world, not just to our friends, but our enemies as well. Keep in mind however, that this pontifical call to arms is all fabricated. Believe it or not, the vast "woke" majority of this country are not indoctrinated college kids, and are NOT on board with the "insurrectionist" revenge rhetoric spewed by the media. Most middle-class liberals are just like anyone else. They work, pay their taxes, raise their kids, love their country, and would NEVER betray their friends & family over shallow ideological vendettas. This is an age-old simple strategy of "divide & conquer". Everyone gets that, and no one is being fooled. So speak your piece. Say what you will. There's a line from an old 70s band called Curved Air that says, "freedom of the mind, there exists no other kind". Say whatever you like, I promise I won't cry. Be well and stand your ground. Also, happy Wednesday everyone. Looks like a cold weekend ahead. I hate February. At least it only has 28 days. That's 2 or 3 days less winter, right? I think it works like Daylight Savings Time where it gets warmer because we get an extra hour of sunshine. February 12th, 2021: PSA#79: Unity, love, & tolerance in the post-apocalyptic era after the Great Orange Nightmare: As we know, Gina Carano was fired from LucasFilms and her talent agency for "promoting hateful racist sexist conspiracy theories". Her acting career is done. I feel compelled to respond to those allegations: Suggesting that Nazi Germany used the same political censorship that is being used now. True. Six million Jews died. Last year I called BS on a movement insisting that there were no "concentration camps", just free public housing and food for destitute Jews, who were free to leave any time they chose to, but stayed because they had no where else to go. They did NOT come of their own free will, they were turned in by their own brainwashed neighbors and taken there. Jews were even turning in other Jews to save themselves. Just ask George Soros. He used to brag about it. Using pronouns in her support for transgenders. There's another BS movement wanting to eliminate "he/she/his/her" from the English dictionary because they assume gender based on, well, actual gender. If you're so fragile that you melt down over pronouns, you might be a bigger problem than Daniel Webster. Using the "saveourchildren" hashtag promoting the absurd Qanon theory that child sex trafficking actually exists. Guess what? It does exist. The FBI insists that statistically in 2019 & 2020 there were almost NO children kidnapped other than those taken by family members over bitter custody battles. This is a lie perpetuated by the filthy rich elites who partake in "fashionable pedophilia", along with the lie that 8 year olds have the right to make their own sexual choices. Until their bodies start to change, no amount of explanation can make them understand sex & gender, and it's wrong to place that burden on them. Let kids be kids as long as they can. Using the catchphrase "Epstein didn't kill himself". Actually, I believe he did indeed commit suicide, but not because he wanted to. He knew what he had to do when the opportunity "presented itself" in order to save those he cared about, assuming he was capable of caring about anyone but himself. Suggesting that the election was flawed. It was. Probably not enough to change the end result, but mail-in voting alone was a train wreck. I believe the old system of absentee ballots and voter IDs was much more foolproof, and certainly much more efficient, which of course makes me a racist. Suggesting that society silences those with unpopular traditional conservative ideas. Perhaps I'm missing something here, but isn't that exactly what's happening in Miss Carano's case? We now live in a country where opinion = conspiracy mongering, and unity = conformance. But it's more than just our collective insect mentality that seeks a utopian hive-mind, it's about good old fashioned revenge as well. Those responsible for the "Great Orange Nightmare" must be punished and taught a lesson so this never happens again (for the sake of our democracy). On the upside, this is a VERY small group of yelpers who have successfully marked their territories by barking the loudest. Even the most liberal among us fear backlash, and just go along with it in the hope that if they simply shut up & obey, they will be left alone. My fear is that submission only leads to oppression. My hope is that if we all stand up to the schoolyard bullies, they will back down. In my experience, playground tough guys are just cowards overcompensating for their own insecurities, and are only intimidating if we allow them to be. Have faith, have resolve, and above all have a GREAT Valentine's Day weekend everyone! I was gonna abbreviate, but "have a great VD weekend" didn't sound right for some reason. Next PSA: Again, still no PSAs in the foreseeable future. This one I managed to smuggle out of the camp via carrier pigeon (who I named "Winkie" after his heroic British counterpart). As long as I keep wearing my "Ridin' with Biden" t-shirt, the guards don't suspect a thing. Dena is starting to worry me though. She's been drinking something called "White Claw Hard Seltzer" and yammering on about "Building Back Better". I don't know what she's building, but I hope it's a ladder so we can get over the wall and go find a REAL beer. This place is a little light in the loafers, if you know what I mean. Was that homophobic? Crap. Looks like another round of electric woke therapy for me. February 19th, 2021: PSA#80: Climate change part 4: It's all fun & games until someone gets stabbed by an icicle (true story): In part 3, I noted that we have too many climatologists who think they're geologists, and too many politicians who think they're climatologists. This part will have nothing to do with geological history, but instead the political censoring of that history for the gains yielded from hysteria rooted in alarmism and consumer guilt. Me & Dr. Betts had a discussion on the phone Wednesday night about alternative energies. He's all about terraforming our landscape into wind and solar farms, and when I reminded him that Caterpillar has no plans to build any solar powered excavators or dozers any time soon, he said there is a revolutionary new battery being developed that could go into mass production by 2025. Great! Let's do that! Then we can have a real discussion about reducing CO2 emissions instead of adding to it by jumping the gun. Importing oil again requires massive tankers & trains that burn diesel. Also, 90 tons on average of earth need to be ravaged to harvest enough Lithium for ONE car battery. Plus, 10-15% percent of our landscape will need to be converted to green farms. All of these terraforming initiatives require heavy equipment that burns diesel. Burning more fossil fuels will NOT make the air cleaner. We should have a linear approach to this transformation or it will backfire. So why don't we? Politicians know that they could be in office for 40 years or 4 years, so of course they want to jump to the end industries where the real money is to be made, all under the guise that this is an imminent "existential threat" based on AOC's prediction of humanity's end in 9 years. I've read her FEC filings, and her donors consist mainly of liberal universities and new green companies. She is not a scientist, she is returning corporate favors, and rightly so. I would think less of her if she turned her back on the PACs that got her elected. No politician bites the hand that feeds them, so their urgency on issues is more about timely restitution than the issues themselves. They grab the low-hanging fruit on gun control also. Estimates are that there are twice as many illegal firearms in the US. than registered. So yeah, great! Let's get rid of those so we can actually have a discussion on a "buy back" or whatever. Why don't they? Because they have no clue where these firearms are located. But this HAS to happen FIRST, otherwise we are just disarming people who have broken no laws, and giving criminals a free pass. That will not make anyone safer, and the debate is not even possible until the first prerequisite is met. Immigration, same deal. Bringing in tens of thousands of people into a country during a pandemic that caused record unemployment and record national debt for the sake of expedient campaign restitution based on virtue signaling is reckless and harmful to both refugees and citizens. The cart before the horse once again. There are other examples of things, like "medicare for all" and "equity debt forgiveness", that get rammed through for the sake of fast-track moral PR. But in a nutshell, all the yelpers in DC are simply over-zealous. They are anxious to get to the end profitability of any legislation before their time in office is done, having little desire to waste time on process & procedure. But their "duck your head, close your eyes, run like hell" approach only works if you get rid of all the walls first. Oh, and watch out for those trees too. They'll jump right out in front of you. Luckily, the Green New Deal will get rid of a lot of them. Stupid CO2 sucking trees. On the upside, our fearless leaders are so trapped in their egos that they are impotent to any reality outside their narcissistic self-worship, and lose interest in anything that no longer serves their ambition. They merely chase the dangling carrot. Happy Friday all, and a big congrats to NASA's Perseverance team! Their mission will be historic. Next PSA: Still in woke rehab. This one made it out of the camp via Morse Code and was decoded by Dr. Betts, who learned it by listening to old Dixie Dregs and Spock's Beard records (although Steve & Neal Morse are not actually related). I feared Dena had been "re-educated", but I laced her Eggo waffle with maple-flavored Mescaline, and she snapped right out of it. We are working on an escape plan, but her plan to seduce the guards failed because they are all transgender. She thought I would have better luck, but trust me that is NOT happening. Have a GREAT weekend, and let the big thaw commence. March 1st, 2021: PSA#81: A guy walks into a tavern, sets a giant snapping turtle on the bar, unzips his pants, and allows the turtle to clamp down on his Kielbasa with the full force of its mighty jaws. Without flinching, the guy pokes the turtle in the eyes to get him to let go and proclaims, "I am the baddest MF'er in this town. Anyone else wanna try?". After an awkward silence, a squeaky voice in the back says "I will if you promise not to poke me in the eyes": For the record, I have no problem with gays or transgenders. If you're a guy and would rather be a "receiver not a giver", go for it. If you're a girl who likes to go "full-tilt Roomba on the shag pile", by all means. Nobody cares. What we DO care about is when you shove it down our throats (or any other orifice for that matter), and ESPECIALLY when you drag our children into it. I said the same a few years ago when all the Neocons in DC were badgering Trump to invade Syria & Iran. If they want to invade those countries to line their own pockets, go right ahead. But leave us OUT of it, and leave our kids OUT of it. Knock yourselves silly, and we'll even chip in so you can all STAY there. As the cool kids say, "not my circus, not my monkeys". Same with gender-mania. It's just moral posturing driven by self-righteous indignation, which is fine, just leave our children alone. Until they go through the "change", no amount of explaining can make them understand sexuality. Let kids be kids as long as they can instead of treating them like lab rats for the sake of "perceived wokeness". Rand Paul has been called a "homophobe" for questioning the use of drugs and genital mutilation on small children. Apparently all of a sudden child abuse is "okay if you're gay", because a human fetus has the omnipotence to determine where they will be born, what their skin color will be, and what their gender will be. This coming from the same people who have preached for years that abortion is "no big deal" because a fetus is just a "clump of cells" that can be terminated and thrown in the trash can like a tumor. So which is it now? It can't be both. These concepts are diametrically opposed, and neither can be true unless one of them is false. Demi Lovato has also been yammering on that gender is a "social construct", and men can have babies too. No, they can't. I don't care how many times you take it up the keester, you are NOT going to form a baby in your colon that will exit the same way it got there. Yikes. Talk about being constipated. As disturbing as that mental image is, I am MUCH more disturbed by the concept of genetic manipulation to address these inconvenient biological "obstacles", to achieve a new generation of androgynous clones, who all look the same, all think the same, and all OBEY in the same way. This is eugenics in its most sinister form. It was wrong when Nazi Germany tried it, and it's wrong now. Replicated chromosomal degradation is inevitable, leaving us with a Mongoloid race of mutants. We need to just slow down as a species and take a deep breathe before jumping on the DNA bandwagon, especially when many self-identified proponents of engineered isogamy are the same people who are obsessed with the gender identity of a piece of plastic shaped like a potato. We are clearly not ready to play God just yet. Happy Monday all! If this doesn't land me in FB jail, I don't know what will. Next PSA: Dena managed to smuggle this one past the camp guards by disguising herself as a transgender anthropomorphic cross-dressing bisexual unicorn. She said she'd come back for me, but I told her to wait a few days for that image to leave my head. March 2nd, 2021: This wretched flu-bug is still kicking my be-hind, so in lieu of getting any actual work done, I may as well write something. This is not necessarily relevant to yesterday's PSA, but the undertones are certainly there. This is an analogical analysis of the "Nuthanger Farm" hutch rabbits, from the often banned 1972 Richard Adams novel "Watership Down": Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, and their rag-tag troop of rabbits set out to find does to bring back to the warren to ensure the future of their colony. They find both does & bucks living in captivity at Nuthanger Farm and devise a way to open their cages, but unexpectedly find that they have little or no desire to escape. The hutch rabbits are well fed and protected from the elements, as well as from predators, and regard themselves as morally, physically, and intellectually superior to their malnourished, dirty, mangy, & maimed liberators. They resisted their freedom in exchange for comfort and safety, while completely oblivious that their carcasses are destined to be just another evening dinner, and their pelts would end up on a jacket collar. Hazel, also unaware of their fate, was only able to convince most, but not all of them to leave by enticing them with romantic & adventurous stories of life in the wild. After countless perils and tragedies, they make it back to the warren and eventually defeat the tyrannical Woundwort, who sought to rule all the warrens by fear & force. The ones who stayed behind ended up being supper. In the end, the warren flourished. The young rabbit offspring, who lived in a Utopia and knew nothing of danger or fear, would out of respect listen to Bigwig's wild tales of battle and survival, but never believed those stories and amongst themselves laughed off those tales as merely the embellished memories of a nice but old & senile geezer. Hazel, at the end of his life, surrenders to the phantom-esque "Black Rabbit of Inle" to take his place in the Great Beyond. Of all the wonderfully enthralling chapters in this book, this one comes to mind as an allegory of our own societal perceptions and superimposed social constructs. We desire to be safe and protected within these constructs, and rarely count the cost of freedom that maintains them. We sacrifice and compromise for the greater good, often blind to the consequences of such a noble surrender. They say "no good deed goes unpunished", and that the "road to hell is paved with the best of intentions". Watership Down is an extremely rare redemption of those deeds & intentions. As for us humans, we should pay close attention to these insignificant rabbits' unlikely good fortune, and be very careful going forward that we don't indemnify our primal freedoms for the sake of our own lofty but well-meaning Utopian aspirations. Happy Tuesday everyone! March 4th, 2021: PSA#82: If we had a genderless pronoun for God, the Bible would have had a much different context. In trembling anticipation of the new gender-neutral English dictionary, I decided now would a good time to start practicing. These are the new replacements, according to the University of Wisconsin LGBTQ Center in Milwaukee: Man/Woman/Gender Roles = Person He/She = Zie Him/Her = Zim His/Her = Zir His/Hers = Zis Himself/Herself = Zieself Let's see how this holds up in print where these changes will have a significant impact. Newspapers, fiction, non-fiction, work procedures, history (whoopsie! I meant "zistory"), and so on. Yeah okay, "zistory" it is. Since today is the 69th anniversary of Ronald & Nancy Reagan's wedding, let's try that: "On March 4, 1952, actor and future President Ronald Reagan married zir second person, actress Nancy Davis. Nancy Davis met zir husband in 1951. MGM Studios signed zim to a contract and billed zir for zir first screen role in the film "Shadow on the Wall". Zie met Ronald in 1951, who zieself was an actor and president of the Screen Actors Guild. Nancy was trying to remove zir name from the notorious McCarthy-era Hollywood blacklist of possible communist sympathizers. The list actually referred to another actress who had the same name as zim, but it was preventing Davis from finding work, so the future first person contacted Reagan to see if zir, as SAG president, could help. The two fell in love and were married a year later, and 7 months later their person Patricia was born. In 1957, the couple appeared together in "Hellcats of the Navy", but after their person Ron was born the following year, Nancy left acting to become a full-time person and mother. Meanwhile, zir husband's political career took off and zie became governor of California in 1967, a position zie held until 1975. In 1980, zie became president, serving for two terms. For zir part, Nancy embraced the role of governor's person and later, first person." Wow. This is going to be harder than I thought. And why does it sound German? Oh wait...never mind. Anyway, I'm sure I'll manage (dammit! I meant "personage"). Happy Thursday everyone! Next PSA: The Great Escape. My carrier pigeon "Winkie" got this PSA out of the camp but never returned. Winkie sent me a text saying that zie now identifies as a non-binary Toucan and will be the new mascot for Froot Loops cereal. I wish zim well. Time for us to make our move and blow this popsicle stand. Enjoy this gorgeous day! March 5th, 2021: PSA#83: The Great Escape. Eat your heart out Steve McQueen. True to her word, Dena came back for me at the POS Deprogramming Camp (Post Orange Syndrome Deprogramming Camp, not to misconstrue the acronym), and we came up with an escape plan. A few days ago, Dena waltzed out the front gate (literally) disguised as a transgender anthropomorphic cross-dressing bisexual unicorn. We thought I could do the same as a non-binary omni-sexual lesbian Panda, but the whole "Panda Eyes" thing just makes me too angry to function (don't look it up. seriously). So we decided to simply convince everyone that we were sufficiently "woke-washed", and they would let us go. She wore her standard issue POS t-shirt, I wore my "Ridin' with Biden" shirt, we played in the volleyball tournament and pretended not to be bothered that both teams got trophies (even though we clearly kicked their vanilla latte-sucking asses), then we sat through AOC's Anti-Flatulence Workshop (sponsored by Beano and Purina), we endured Kamala's virtual seminar on "Why sucking at politics can actually be an asset", took a break then attended "White-Guilt Thursday Pot Luck" and brought genderless potato head soup (with onions), and afterwards we played a variant of "Pin the tail on the donkey" that they called "Pin everything the donkey does on the elephant", while sipping something called "Faux Breonna-Floyd Brown Marron Chardonnay", which seemed like a copy-cat wine and kinda left a familiar bad taste in my mouth. All in all, a lame day (soup was good though), but I was sure we pulled it off. However, later that evening, when we were decorating the Safe-Space Community Room for St. Patrick's Day, Dena accidentally referred to those adorable Chinese Styrofoam Leprechauns as "Elves", which of course is appallingly hurtful to BOTH cultures. We were sent to our room and scheduled for early morning electric-woke therapy. As fate would have it however, it turns out I missed our monthly payment and they evicted us from the camp around 9 this morning. Whooda thunk? Talk about a fire drill. Hey at least we got a t-shirt out of the deal. Happy Friday and have a wonderful weekend! Next PSA: Finally back to politics, this time the "Squad", as we explore The People's Charter, aka "Working Families Party" (not kidding. How "PRC" can you get, right?) and their plan to make California the first state to go totally green. With thousands of acres becoming available as a result of desperately fleeing residents, "wheel farms" will be developed that spin to generate electricity. All they need are 90 billion Hamsters to run inside of them. We need to start breeding them now before they all become androgynous. Cheers! March 12th, 2021: PSA#84: Go, I say go away boy, ya bother me! Too many questions for a "dumb question of the week", so I'll post them here. In what appears to be an ongoing experiment to create the dumbest generation of kids in the history of the human species, we say goodbye to yet another childhood icon. Pepe' LePew has been "cancel cultured", apparently for being insensitive to horny French guys who don't wear deodorant. But why stop there? Let's just cancel EVERTHING, until there is NOTHING left. That way we'll have to reboot because there will be nothing left to be offended by, making our lives pointless. We love to be victims. Let's start with a few obvious non-PC made-up characters that don't actually even exist: How about Velma from Scooby-Doo. She stereotypes lesbians as being "frumpy". And Fred? Totally gay and using Daphne as a cover. And Winnie the Pooh? For God sake put some pants on. You're obese, plus I don't like it when you honey-glaze Piglet on those really hot summer days. Space Ghost? Those weren't his kids, and he clearly had a "thing" for Jan & Jace. "Inviso-power" my ass. Rosie the robot? Her subservience to the Jetson family is a blatant violation of the European Artificial Intelligence Civil Rights Accord of 2019. Casper the friendly ghost? Totally insensitive to the beliefs of reincarnationists, and even atheists. What about Speedy Gonzales? Making fun of Mexicans on Meth is just wrong. It's a disease, not an addiction. The Swedish Chef? Cultural appropriation, as well as the Go-Go Gophers, who appropriate indigenous native American gophers, Dudley Do-Right, offensive to Canadians (like Canadians get offended by anything, eh?). The So-Hi Rice Krinkles boy? Apu from the Kwik-e-Mart? Popeye? No wonder the rest of the world hates us. And how 'bout Peppermint Patty? Yet another lesbian stereotype. Boo-Boo the bear? Running around the park naked with a bow tie like some unemployed Chippendale dancer. Please. What is it with bears and pants anyway? Underdog? Yeah, I think we all know what was in that "energy pill", just like we know what's in Frosty's pipe. Kids. Don't do drugs. Scrooge McDuck? Now you're just making fun of Warren Buffet. Please stop. Snow White? The name says it all. Woody Woodpecker? Same deal. Privilege and phallusism. Miss Piggy? Her history of domestic abuse wasn't cool then, and it certainly isn't cool now. Poor frog. The Wizard of Oz? No brain, no heart, no courage. Sounds like DC right now. And what about the Three Stooges? All of us at one time or another had to test the assumption that if you hit someone in the head with a ball-peen hammer, it makes the pleasant sound of a doorbell. I could go on for hours, but you get the idea. The popular notion is that we need to create a new generation of over-protected fragile cry-babies who will be easy to control and less defiant to ideological globalization. Docile & obedient to a re-written Utopian history that they will be eager to serve because it's all they know. As children learn language, they learn the internal dialog of the mind that speaks in those same terms. Control their speech and we control their thoughts. That premise alone is FAR more offensive to me than anything Foghorn Leghorn ever said or did. "I say, is any of this filterin' through that little blue bonnet of yours?" Foghorn was a stud. Happy Friday and have a wonderful weekend! Next PSA: Constructive ways that would have made Joe Biden's speech last night sound inspiring, instead of sounding like a eulogy. Or perhaps it was. Cheers! March 17th, 2021: PSA#85: The "kettle calling the pot white" part 3: I truly hate talking about racial issues because I know that no matter what I say, it'll be taken the wrong way because I'm old, cranky, and have a very low tolerance for hypocrisy. But this is important and worth the risk of being called a racist. I'm a big boy and can take it. I truly don't care about the color of your skin, or your hair, or your eyes, or how big your ears are (although that might make me chuckle to myself, but don't take it personal. Big ears can be quite comical), and yeah, by the new definition, my refusal to acknowledge one's victimhood and refusal to treat specific groups as "inferior" is now racist and cold-hearted because I don't care about their genetic disadvantages caused by the social eugenics of generations long dead and gone. Why do I refuse? Because I don't believe in genetic disadvantages beyond the obvious challenges of physical genetic handicaps. The REAL victims are handicapped by their societal environments, social & economic limitations, and persecution based on vulnerability, not because of how they look when they're born. These victims come from all backgrounds & ethnicities, having little to do with race beyond statistical profiling, which only turns such inner city injustices into a numbers contest to achieve "oppression status". Problem is, those statistics do indeed reflect a propensity for poverty among minorities, and I concede that prejudice is one of the many root causes. So yeah, help those people, and prioritize that help based on those statistics. That's what we do right? Help each other. No true American, left or right, would disagree. But there is a new trend on the far-left beyond statistics that inspires this somewhat recycled rant. The last month or so I've been hearing about a new "woke identity segregation" that has me concerned, because I know how we are. No moderation in anything. Non-existent or full blown lunatic. No in-between, no common sense, just emotional conviction long on virtue and short on practicality. Right now this "integration through segregation" seems harmless, like having graduation ceremonies separated by race, or restaurants with dining areas separated by race, church congregations separated by race, and so on. Okay, I guess. Seems dumb to me but it does facilitate a cultural bond that can really reinforce one's OWN humanity, which helps us integrate better, right? Pretty cool, actually. What concerns me is our aforementioned aversion to moderation. How long till we have separate classes in school? Separate public bathrooms? Separate water fountains, like back in the old days (which I remember well)? It's a slippery slope, and if not careful we could be back to bussing our grade-schoolers again. I feel as though our cultural identities are slowly being compartmentalized, going back to the divisive tribe mentality that Dr. King worked, fought, and died to alleviate. If I were a liberal, I would be alarmed at this retrogression and resist it with every fiber of my being. Also, as we've been instructed, the word "equality" has been replaced with the cleverly redefined word "equity", where equality means that we live in the modern world of a pure meritocracy, every one the same in the eyes of God and appreciated for what they do, and where "equity" has come to mean one race is more deserving than another based on the expurgated social constructs of the distant past. This kind of subtle context manipulation is straight out of Orwell's "Animal Farm", where their highest law, "All animals are created equal", changed over time to say "All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others". True equality cannot exist if equality itself is now considered discriminatory, which seems the case based on the recent exclusion of the word itself. Pride in our vain cultural heritage is replacing pride in our national identity, that same cultural heritage being replaced by a new global heritage and identity, giving a whole new hidden meaning to the phrase "integration through segregation". Without sovereignty, the unique problems of each nation become buried under layers of homogenization. Our species is not yet ready to embrace global conformity as a "one size fits all" solution to the diverse challenges of humanity. Compromise does not guarantee safety, and for now, the illusion of world unification only seeks obedience, not resolution. To make a long story short (yeah that ship done sailed), our cultural vanity is being used against us in a time-tested age-old strategy of "divide & assimilate". So long as everyone fears everyone else, the architects of this strategy never have to face THEIR biggest fear, which is American unity and the unity of all sovereign nations who embrace their history rather than negate it for moral restitution. So, the kettle calling the pot white? All the pots & kettles live in the same kitchen, serving to enrich and nourish the grand family of our "home sweet home". Count your blessings while you still have them. Happy rainy Hump-Day everyone! Next PSA: In a positive reversal by the Biden administration, instead of stimulus checks, all Americans will receive an entire tank of gas for FREE. Cheers & 420! March 23rd, 2021: Yet another dumb question: Why, after all these years, do people still think that the 2nd Amendment grants us the right to bear arms? It doesn't. It's just one line and very explicit: "For a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." The verbiage is quite clear that this right is already established as inalienable, NOT granted by the Constitution, and thereby NOT subject to legislation by over-zealous authoritarians. This is a warning that the Constitution will not be used by government to take away a right that government never gave us in the first place. The right to bear arms existed WAY before the Constitution, which ironically would not have been written if not for that fundamental right. Seems pretty straight-forward to me. Happy Tuesday all! April 6th, 2021: PSA#86: Freaky Friday part 2: A few years ago I compared our two political parties to the 1976 Jodie Foster film "Freaky Friday", where a mom & daughter switch bodies. Seems odd I remember all these rants, especially coming from the guy who can't remember why he walked into a room (unless it's the bathroom, then I have a pretty good idea). Even though it's not actually Friday this time (unfortunately), it's still relevant to our current ideological juxtaposition. The democrats & republicans do appear to have switched bodies, at least in the eyes of us old-timers. Progressive socialists like AOC are now considered "liberal", while true liberals like JFK are considered "centrist conservatives". The once "party of the working class" has become the party of the destitute and the big tech elites, regarding that working class as the useful idiots who just "pay for everything". Democrats know that this demographic strategy is unsustainable, and that in spite of their Silicon Valley and green energy donors, this voter alienation will eventually backfire in future elections. All they can do is bring in more destitute voters who know better than to "bite the hand that feeds them". There's a reason why wildlife preserves don't allow its visitors to feed the animals, and I think we all know what that reason is. Republicans, on the other hand, are not at all comfortable with this role reversal. With their corporate masters having gone "woke", they hide under their beds and seem unwilling to embrace this massive void in the middle-class voter base. After generations of "trickle-down" policies that have served those masters, they now seem like lost puppies who just want to find their way home and go back to how it used to be. Until they learn how to respond to the desires and needs of the people who actually vote for them, they are just as impotent as their Fabian counterparts. The obvious way to fill the voter base void is the expansion and fortification of a third party, but we all know that's not going to be allowed in our lifetime. Nevertheless, as mentioned, now is NOT the time to be silent, and assume that if we just be quiet and play along, the PC mob who serve both parties and their media minions will leave us alone. They won't. However, democrat or republican, our elected officials still work for us, not the other way around, and it seems they need to be reminded of that often. So, in this current hamstrung state of constituent irrelevancy, what can WE do as disenfranchised taxpayers? It sounds corny, but write to your representatives. Not to criticize or satirize (like I do), but to let them know the concerns you have for your families, livelihoods, and communities. You would be surprised at how common those concerns are, and just how little they have to do with ethnicity, diversity, or inclusion. I promise you the vast majority of Americans care NOTHING about "gender pronouns" or old Warner Brothers cartoons, or the opinions of overpaid celebrities about "equity". Perhaps "Freaky Friday" has its upside after all. Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris learned a lot from each other during their transposition (I think Harris kinda enjoyed the "lesbian" part), but in the end they had to go back to their core identities, and rightly so. If our two parties can get back to their roots, maybe they will finally understand what "bipartisanship" really means after their little "Jekyll & Hyde" exercise in selective schizophrenia. Happy Tuesday everyone! Enjoy this GORGEOUS day! Next PSA: In a huge victory for transgender inclusion, the new Godzilla movie will refer to King Kong as "Queen Dong". Cheers! April 16th, 2021: PSA#87: You may be a lover but you aint no dancer: No snarky humor today, and I apologize in advance. There are contemporary anarchists who regard Charles Manson as a "visionary", or at the very least an "evil genius". To me he was nothing more than an under-educated, cruel, ex-con sociopathic serial killer who should have been put down 50 years ago but lived to be 83 (way to go California). His prophecy of "Helter Skelter" was merely the juvenile delusions of an insane megalomaniac. Or was it? As I watch the ongoing racial turmoil that has become a cash-cow for cable news, I'm taken back to 1969 because it's a mirrored page from the Manson playbook. Manson's Stalin-esque plan was that his followers would carry out a series of brutal and sadistically symbolic murders involving high-profile really rich white people (which they did), and try to pin them all on radical black movements (which they did). They believed this would ignite a race war, which would topple law enforcement and the white oligarchs controlling the political landscape of the day (which it didn't). In theory, the remaining "autonomous zones" would be incapable of self-governance, and Manson, along with his expanded following, would bring order to anarchy, and a new "woketopia" would be created, where all races are equally oppressed under one balanced & unified rule of society. Equity through subservience, or put simply, the Stalinist utopian idea that slavery doesn't exist if we're ALL slaves. What a grandiose plan, not to mention a really stupid one. All they did was kill a bunch of innocent people. You have to admit though, the parallels are striking. I call it a "mirrored page from the playbook" because today's racial violence is portrayed as white-on-black instead of the other way around. The fabricated "Boogie-Men" used to be Black Panthers, now they are Trumper white supremacist insurrectionists. The end goal is still the same though. The masses put the cops and privileged suburbanites in their place, then they set up their autonomous zones only to have no idea what to do next, and then they wait for the overlords who orchestrated all of it to come save the day. Funny thing about revolution, it doesn't eliminate corrupt authority, it just changes the names of the people in those positions of corrupt authority. Equity once again. Discrimination applied equally to everyone for the sake of dictatorial inclusion and integration. Play along and be rewarded or be punished for being a racist. Another grandiose plan, not to mention a really stupid one. And again, innocent people die. Same plan however. Shake the jar of bees every once in a while, and the bees will never find their way out of the jar because they are too busy fighting one another. Charlie's plan was different only because he thought The Beatles were speaking to him through their records. Turned out it was just a blown speaker. Whooda thunk? Nevertheless, Manson's interpretation of the line "You may be a lover but you aint no dancer", meant to him "All talk and no action", and of course other songs from the White Album such as Revolution 1 & 9, Piggies, Why Don't We Do It In The Road, even Glass Onion had a profound metaphoric and contextual influence on him. But the line from The Who that says "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" seems more applicable in both the 1969 and 2021 versions of "Helter Skelter". The lesser of two evils is still evil. The more we remain tricked by our electronic devices into hating and fearing each other, the more those "bosses" delegitimize and undermine our common American values and identity. All we can do is love with our heart but THINK with our HEAD, and we will come to understand that true revolution comes from those values, identity, and humanity, not from our contempt for it. Resist that contempt with every fiber of your being and maybe, just maybe, we "won't get fooled again". Happy Friday everyone! Next PSA: In an effort to expedite our exit from Afghanistan, heroin will now be shipped via DHL International. Cheers, Prost, 420, and Ob-La-Di / Ob-La-Da! April 23rd, 2021: PSA#88: The kettle calling the pot white part 4 of 4: Sorry for the late post. I thought I would end this series with a little tongue-in-cheek sarcasm. The human species has certainly had a rough go of it. Scientists believe that at one time the entire global human population was around 2000. We should have become extinct but we didn't. From those 2000 survivors we now have 7 billion people, which would explain why everyone's DNA is a 99.9% match. So why are we obsessed with the remaining .1%? Supposedly because that percentage determines our physical traits, but my opinion is that we're not obsessed with it at all, no matter how much our warmly backlit LCD screens insist that we are. In generations past perhaps, but we hadn't yet figured out that we're all related. Maybe it's just my "white privilege", but I've never been discriminated against over my odd physical traits, even though the opportunities for discrimination abound. For example: I'm somewhere around 140-150 pounds. Okay, you can't call me a "fat supremacist", but I do look like in a coupla months I'm gonna give birth, which is insensitive to transgender men who can't have babies. I'm 5'6" and shrinking fast. Aside from tall people asking "how's the weather down there" (Yeah, first time I heard that one I laughed so hard I broke my mom's water), if I get much shorter I'll be banned from my favorite amusement park rides. Talk about discrimination. My eyes are bluer than Portland's voter base. Not just blue, but white as well. However, when I'm really wasted they are red, white & blue. So no, I'm just patriotic, not a stoned & privileged suburbanite. My hair is brown. For me, BLM means Brunette Lives Matter. And the all important skin color? Throughout the year I go from "mortuary eggshell" to "burnt flamingo pink" to a lovely "George Hamilton bronze". It's hell not to have a legitimate color identity. I suppose I'll just have to settle for simply being a human being who identifies as American. Point being, no one cares about vain cultural legacies. I'm 90% British and I have the teeth to prove it. No one cares. We all came here to create something better. Let's do that. Happy Friday everyone! Next PSA: After the Chauvin guilty verdicts, BLM and ANTIFA have both volunteered to help rebuild Minneapolis and return all the stuff that was looted. Not. Cheers! May 1st, 2021: Last dumb question of the week: Is it okay for little girls to have their legs surgically amputated if they self-identify as a mermaid? Sounds fishy to me but it's a helluva tail. May 12th, 2021: PSA#89: "Say it ain't so Joe": Been a while. No, I haven't been in Facebook jail, I've been more of an Otis Campbell who locks himself up when he's drunk, and lets himself out when he sobers up. Anyway, the title of course refers to Shoeless Joe Jackson and the corporate organized crime influence over the 1919 World Series. In this case, different Joe, same corruption. The game we play with China is rigged as well. China has long sought to covertly transform America's economic and political armature to one that's more "compatible" with theirs. I've ranted about this for decades, but those rants have become a moot point, since this is no longer a clandestine initiative and is fully out in the open now. Sure, we still deflect from it by pointing fingers at those dastardly Russian Catholics, but no one is actually being fooled (although I still don't trust Boris and Natasha with their "moose & squirrel" propaganda). However, it seems the Chinese intent has shifted from assimilation to sabotage. Why? The Chinese military has always been reluctant to attempt a "boots on the ground" occupation, one reason being our "wild west" mentality of an armed-to-the-teeth population. Sure, their weaponry is far superior, but they are vastly outnumbered in terms of militia home-field advantage. Plus, I'm sure they've watched the 2012 re-make of "Red Dawn". Instead, they infiltrate Wall Street and their big-tech high rollers: Influence big-tech, big-tech lobbies our legislators, our legislators make the laws that govern our economy. Everybody gets rich and the American workers pay for it all, right? Mission accomplished. They are all rich now, so money & power are no longer the main objective. I believe the current phase is to use that money & power to crush the Western economy, thereby making us even more reliant on Chinese consumer goods than we already are. Devalue the currency by injecting trillions of dollars of fake Monopoly money into the system to dilute the existing currency, lobby for excessive regulations that incentivize manufacturing to leave the country, undermine our national heritage by promoting cultural heritage that just makes us hate each other, and what the hell throw in a good old-fashioned pandemic to really shake up the jar of bees. I only mention old Joe here because he is also a Wall Street puppet, doing unbelievable damage to the economy by way of executive order (someone PLEASE take that damned ink pen away from him!). He is also in the pocket of big-tech, and for decades has been a shill for the central banks and credit card companies. This is critical to the aforementioned "sabotage" because we now live in a baseless monetary system where GOLD has been replaced with DEBT. Financial transactions only take place because everyone owes money to everyone else. Currency itself is no longer relevant, so we are simply shuffling virtual numbers around to create the illusion of prosperity through debits & credits. This is unsustainable, and the Chinese government knows that. I can only guess that their endgame is domination over the world's manufactured goods, pharmaceuticals, green energy resource commodities, even ramen noodles, all prerequisite to the eventual consummation of a global utopia under a central administrative authority, where NO ONE is oppressed because we are ALL oppressed. I think I just figured out what "equity" really means. Assimilation to sabotage? It appears I had that backwards. All we can do to slow the expansion of this global debt-based economy is to stop participating in it. Now if you'll excuse me, the UPS guy just dropped off my Amazon packages. Happy Wednesday everyone! Next PSA: President Biden signs an executive order granting unemployment benefits to looters who are out of work due to the recent sharp decline in fake moral outrage. Cheers! June 15th, 2021: PSA#90: The truth is out there. WAY out there: 90th PSA. No wonder I have nothing left to talk about. At least nothing relevant, because since we can't solve the actual problems, we just grab the low-hanging fruit. Trivial pursuits like virtue signaling, gender, and political correctness. My girl Dena, and the legendary Steve Buckman, hit the nail on the head when I asked why our fearless leaders spend more time & money fixing the problems of other countries than our own. Dena noted that to fix our problems, they would have to expose their own complicity in creating those problems. Steve noted that they create these problems, blame it on everyone else, let the people freak out about it, then swoop in to save the day. Both absolutely correct. Same old song & dance. At this point I'm just shooting fish in a barrel. So, rather than belabor the obvious again, let's shift gears. Let's talk about UFOs. Seems topical since, in just a matter of days, 75 years of UFO research is to be declassified (heavily redacted of course), and for the first time in our lifetime we may get a glimpse of who or what these things are. Are they top secret military aircraft? Russian tech? Chinese tech? Optical illusions? Alien beings from another planet? Inter-dimensional beings? What if the answer is "none of the above"? What if they were ALREADY HERE? Consider these bullet points: These objects began to appear much more brazenly after Hiroshima, and even today seem fixated on nuclear missile sites, nuclear powered aircraft carriers & submarines, and nuclear weapons research facilities. It's generally accepted that at one time (WAY before the dinosaurs) life on Earth was COMPLETELY extinct, likely from the same planetary collision that created our moon. The lowly but virtually indestructible Tardigrade can live in the vacuum of space indefinitely, and like "Sylar" from "Heroes", gets its indestructibility by assimilating the DNA of other creatures. The ocean floor contains at least 7 times the land mass of our surface. The mountain ranges and canyons there dwarf anything we see on "land". We know VERY little about what's down there. The connection? We know absolutely NOTHING of pre-collision human civilization, which probably didn't even exist. But what if it did? How long were they here, and how far did they evolve? This collision would have blown billions of tons of material into space, including the Tardigrades, who would have been suspended in cold weightlessness for hundreds of thousands of years, only to finally be pulled back down by the Earth's gravity. It's possible that humanity's reboot was sparked by the human DNA they carried. That might account for the many "gaps & leaps" in our evolutionary history, the "old" DNA merging with the newly evolving creatures of that time period. As for them flyin' saucers? What if the human species was NOT wiped out, but took to the oceans. There are lots of underwater UFO sightings, and like in the movie "The Abyss", that previous version of mankind could still be there and we would have no clue whatsoever of their existence. Perhaps their fixation on nuclear weapons is not just curiosity, but something they see as a threat to their survival as well as our own. I don't buy into this personally, but it would explain a lot of things. So what will we learn from these declassified documents? My guess is very little. These documents are classified to protect the people who classify them, and of course they will be redacted in the interest of "national security". Funny how the government used to worry about an Orson Wells "War of the Worlds" panic over an alien invasion. Nowadays we would be fine with it so long as the aliens use woke pronouns. Happy Tuesday all! Next PSA: Speaking of "woke": In an effort to further derogate the sanctity of motherhood, the term "Birthing Person" will now be replaced by "PEZ Dispenser". June 16th, 2021: 2nd dumb question of the week: Instead of teaching Critical Race Theory in schools, wouldn't it be easier to just swat white kids on the nose with a rolled up newspaper a couple times a day? Happy Hump Day everyone! July 5th, 2021: Dena: Who was that really good bass player we saw last night? Me: Yes, I remember he played through a Carvin Redline 1000W and a 2-15 Ampeg cabinet with a MXR M288 octave pedal, and used to play an Ibanez GSR200 before he got his '95 Rick 4001 Fireglo. But no, I don't recall his name. July 14th, 2021: PSA#91: Climate change pt. 5: "It's Not Easy Being Green" I love that song, but I don't love this topic. Of all the running gags in this vast collection of often cheeky Public Service Announcements, racism, immigration, and climate change are my least favorites. Not because I'm worried about stepping on anybody's Kielbasa. In fact, I accidentally stepped on my own once. Not fun, but my own fault for not tying it down securely. No, I just find those topics humorless & painfully underwhelming because they've become nothing more than the proverbial "fake tennis ball" that keeps your dog distracted from its own boredom for a while till it figures out that you had the ball behind your back the whole time. Us humans haven't figured that out yet. We still follow the advice of politicians that think they are climatologists who think they are geologists. As for their "green new deal"? It's 7 trillion dollars taken from people who haven't even been born yet, only to be largely spent on special interest groups, who in turn will lobby to eliminate any competition to the myriad of Chinese "start-up green companies" who will also be funded. The remainder will be spent replacing plastic straws wrapped in paper with paper straws wrapped in plastic. How about we save 6 trillion of those 7 trillion dollars and start with these five things: Clean up the environment. Our "garbage footprint" far exceeds our "carbon footprint". Even the aforementioned dog knows not to crap in his own doghouse. Something else we humans haven't figured out yet. Find ways to cut pollution, but also invest in conservation. Our water, our air, our forests, our wildlife, nature itself. Case in point, most Western wildfires spread due to forestry neglect & mismanagement. Talk about your carbon footprint. If we clean up our own mess first, what we should do next will be much clearer. Go back to oil independence. Importing oil is not just bad for the economy, it's bad for the environment. Oil is moved overseas by diesel-burning tankers the size of a football field, then moved by diesel-burning trains, then by diesel-burning trucks. Compared to our total consumption, a tanker of oil lasts us about 10 hours. Burning more diesel fuel will NOT reduce carbon emissions. Quite the opposite. Diesel is WAY dirtier than gasoline, making pipelines the cleaner option. Stop ravaging the land. A half acre of land needs to be strip mined (by yet more diesel-burning heavy equipment) to harvest enough Lithium for ONE electric car. Also, millions of acres of land are being cleared for solar & wind farms. Destroying trees will NOT reduce carbon emissions. Quite the opposite. Trees breathe in CO2 and exhale oxygen. Rather than investing exclusively in alternative energy, invest in alternative STORAGE. So long as we still use conventional Nickel & Lithium batteries, those alternative energies do more harm than good. Stop listening to politicians. They know NOTHING of geological climate shifts and believe dinosaurs are on the endangered species list because we kill them for their oil. All they can do is promise that if we give them all our money, they can stop the next ice age. They can't. The Earth has gone through these cycles long before humans existed, and will continue to do so long after we're gone. In a nutshell, I'm opposed to the "green new deal" because there's nothing "green" about it at all. It is based on the fallacy that more diesel, more strip mining, more oil-based plastic for more Chinese manufacturing, more taxes, and less conservation of our natural resources will keep the planet from going through its normal course of warming & cooling. I'm all for new and innovative ways to make the world cleaner, safer, more efficient, and less consuming, but this aint it. This is just another fake tennis ball throw to keep us distracted from what's really behind their back. Happy Wednesday all! Next PSA: Biden denies Cuban refugees entry into the U.S. over growing concerns they might vote republican. July 15th, 2021: First dumb question of the week: Yeah I know it's Thursday, but I've been unavailable because Andy & Barney forgot to leave the key where I could reach it and they were out of town for a couple days. Luckily I had my flask with me. Anyway, my question is this: If having an ID is voter suppression, isn't it also voter suppression to dilute everyone else's vote with the votes of unverifiable voters? Happy Thursday all! July 15th, 2021: Captain's Log: Supplemental: I've said before that now is not the time to be silent, assuming that if you just go along with the social media mob they will leave you alone. They won't. It's been suggested to me that my comments might put a target on my back, but what could anyone possibly do to me? Get me fired? I don't have a job I'm retired. Come to my house and beat me up? Both Mr. Smith & Mr. Wesson agree that would be a really bad idea. Ruin my reputation? Too late. Been working on that most of my adult life. Get me banned from social media? Not from MeWe, Rumble or Parler, plus I rent my own server, so everything I post on FB is available online along with tons of other crap. Take me to court? My son is a brilliant constitutional lawyer who eats frivolous lawsuits for breakfast. Put me on a "watch list"? Watch all you want, I'm not going anywhere. I don't even have a passport. Call me names? Yeah who doesn't. None of us are invincible, and I realize from the PMs I get that most people feel as though they have to keep a low profile for their family's sake. Rightly so. I'm lucky to afford the luxury of speaking my mind without fear of repercussions, which begs the question, "If a drummer goes back to his old band, will there be re-percussions?" Sorry. Any-who, if I come off as a bit smug I apologize. My only goal is to call out the blatant hypocrisy of the squeaky wheels who are so trapped in their own ironies that every argument is a contradiction. Hopefully I speak for others as well. Enjoy this lovely day before the rain settles in. Again. July 16th, 2021: 3rd dumb question of the week, also regarding our Southern border. There are an estimated 20 to 30 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. so far under the protective wing of their democrat custodians (or "demodians" as they're known in migrant folklore), so my question is this: Is it a coincidence that NO president in American history has EVER won an election by more than 18 million votes? p.s. Dear FB fact checkers: I'll save you some time. It was Richard Nixon. You're welcome. BTW, your man-buns suck. July 28th, 2021: PSA#92: "We got no class, and we got no principals..." I suppose I could've referenced Pink Floyd's "Another brick in the wall", but Alice will do just fine. This topic, being education, could be problematic because it will be long on opinion and short on fact. Of course, our kids have been out of school for a long time, so now it's about the grandkids. Even back in the day, I probably only attended a half dozen or so PTA meetings in my entire life. The games were our PTA meetings, getting to know the parents as we cheer on the home team over flat fountain soda and dry popcorn in a brown paper bag. Sometimes we would discuss our concerns about the school board, but we never had to question what our kids were being taught. That has certainly changed. Grade school, high school, community college & trade schools were never seats of ideological indoctrination. That was better left to the highfalutin' universities that specialize in academia. However, there is a growing concern that things like "gender identity" and "critical race theory" are being introduced to kids who still believe that every Easter a giant invisible rabbit breaks into your house and hides brightly colored chicken eggs in every room. I guess the logic is that if they believe in the Easter Bunny & Santa Claus, they will believe anything no matter how ridiculous or demeaning it may be. My opinion though (and here's where I get into trouble), is that this sociological brainwashing is not as rampantly widespread as those on the far-right would lead us to believe. Perhaps in larger, overcrowded inner city schools where the teachers have a seating chart on their desk so they know what to call these little masked creatures when they raise their hands. Those teachers are more likely to follow whatever script is handed down to them by the admins who are trying to conform to the requirements of their state and federal grants. Smaller rural districts rely more on county funding, mainly property taxes, leaving teachers with little or no motivation to confuse their students with pronouns or culture guilt, unless they themselves suffer from some kind of evangelical wokeness. For the most part, our teachers are decent people who do what they do, not for the money (obviously), but because they care about kids. I will admit though, this is a slippery slope. However exaggerated this indoctrination may be, it will indeed become more widespread and more perverse, so it's good we're talking about it now before it goes full-blown 1939 Socialist Germany. We all understand that when government redefines the language of history, children grow up to be subservient to that history because it's all they know. As mentioned, we never went to the school board meetings or PTA meetings, but I strongly encourage going to them and asking lots of questions, and if you don't like the answers to those questions, let your voice be heard and listen carefully to the voices of other parents as well. Returning to the somewhat trite Floydian reference "we don't need no thought control", or Alice's "school's out forever, school's been blown to pieces", I don't think it's quite yet time to put your kids in private schools, but our public school curriculums definitely need to be monitored. Sadly, it's too late for our ivy league universities. For decades we have been paying tens of thousands of dollars for total strangers to teach our kids that everything we taught them was wrong. One can only hope that students will be mature enough to resist the institutional self-defecating mindset that breeds contempt for the very country that provided these opportunities of higher learning for them in the first place. Happy Hump-Day all! Next PSA: The FBI raided what was believed to be the largest ever group of political extremists plotting to stage acts of terrorism across the country, but it turns out it was only the J. Edgar Hoover building. Honest mistake. Cheers! August 5th, 2021: 3rd dumb question of the week: Does the CDC's moratorium on forced residential evictions include unborn babies? August 18th, 2021: FOX NEWS ALERT: A potentially serious side effect of the covid vaccine has been discovered. In certain patients, it has been found to inhibit the brain's natural ability to process satire. More after the break... August 20th, 2021: PSA#93: The enemy of my enemy is my friend pt. 3 of 3: For this rant, that cliché should read: The enemy of my enemy is my friend, but you're still my enemy and I will destroy you as soon as our mutual enemy is destroyed...but hey yeah dude we're cool for now. The "Woke Industrial Complex", as coined by Vivek Ramaswamy, is a ménage à trois of liberal woke media, and big tech pretending to be woke to appease the liberal woke media, and China, who care nothing of wokeness, only that we're the bad guys not them and they're making money. But it's not a three-way rooted in love or even lust. In fact they despise each other, but have much to gain by this hate/hate relationship where virtue-signaling is the currency required to play this global version of Monopoly. However, the winners in this game are awarded far more than just a lonely spot on the moral high-ground. The outdated "Gold Standard" is being replaced by the "Lithium Standard", and we have a new threesome spawned from this woke triad; China, Big Tech, and Afghanistan, who are poised to profit from the so-called "Reconciliation Bill", which is not just the largest green energy bill ever passed, but probably the largest domestic bill of any kind to ever be passed. Talks are already underway with OPEC to address the massive amounts of oil required for this initiative. Tankers, trains, earthmoving equipment, and TONS of petroleum-based plastic crap needed to fabricate this new green infrastructure. But what about the all-important Lithium? Wednesday I noted that the Taliban & China consummated their flirtatious advances on one another (the word "strip" mining is indeed a little seductive) at the same exact time that "part one" of this bill passed, which seemed too coincidental, but I was skeptical about the connection, knowing that the Taliban are bound to Sharia Law and would become infidels themselves if they made such an exploitive deal, or even agreed to let the enemies of Allah live. However, it looks now like the Taliban are going to let infidels leave the country with their heads still attached. How can that be compatible with their ideology? Turns out Islam has an exception to the rule of extermination. It's okay to make a "deal with the devil", so long as it's not for personal gain, but to fortify efforts to succeed in killing the devil. They're all gonna die anyway right? So sure, let them go for now to make yourselves look like legit business partners. However, their two strange bedfellows have a different vision of this future: China believes they can negotiate Afghan slave labor to support American green initiatives, and become the largest economic power in the world. America believes that China will negotiate Afghan slave labor to support their green initiatives, and that we'll all save the planet, get filthy rich, and be BFs forever. The Taliban believe that once the American economy has been dismantled, the Chinese economy will follow when they lose their American funding. The devil shall be slain. Prophecy will have been fulfilled, and Pakistan will be the new Mecca. Why Pakistan? Because they have ALWAYS been the quiet epicenter of Islam, and because they are the ONLY Islamic country that has nuclear weapons. The end of this story is as predictable as a cheap 60s sci-fi movie plot. But it doesn't have to be that way. Prophecy only manifests itself if enough people believe it will happen. If everyone would simply reject this prophecy, it would evaporate because it wasn't real to begin with. In reality, time is fluid, and everything affects everything else, all the time. We slowly shape our world by our perceptions of it, where the optimist believes this is the best possible world, and the pessimist fears that sadly this is true. Point being, nothing is carved in stone. Unless it's an actual stone with the word "nothing" carved in it. I have no idea where I was going with this. Oh well. Happy Friday all, and as Tucker would say, "Have the best weekend ever with the ones you love, and please buy my new book. Up next, Sean Hannity". Next PSA: Biden solves border crisis by offering discounted direct flights from Central America to major metropolitan areas, thereby eliminating any need to come to the border at all. Cheers! August 25th, 2021: First dumb question of the week: Yeah I know it's already Wednesday, but I've been bed-ridden for a couple days. No I don't have Covid, Dena just misplaced her key to the handcuffs. Anyway, my question is this: What IRS forms do I need to fill out to get my refund for the 80 billion dollars worth of military equipment we donated to the Taliban? Each year I specify NO political contributions on my tax return, so by my math they owe me about $370. Happy hump-day everyone! August 27th, 2021: 4th & last dumb question of the week: The President has set a deadline. The military has 4 days to evacuate Afghanistan, after that they can find their own way out. It'll be fine. The Taliban are there to help us because they want in with China on the insane amounts of money from the Green Reconciliation Bill (golly gee whiz, I wonder where the US. and China are getting all that money? oh yeah, never mind). So obviously, there's NO WAY this could ever become a hostage situation, right? So my question is this: If this kinder, gentler Taliban really want to improve their image, how 'bout instead of chanting "Death to America", they try chanting "Humane Painless Euthanization to America"? Hey, it's all about PR. Happy Friday all, turn off the news, turn on some music, and have a joyous weekend! SFMF September 1st, 2021: 4th dumb question, this one actually sincere: Is it sadly coincidental that many veterans suicide hotlines are reporting the highest number of calls they have ever seen? For any veteran who sees this: We ALL understand that this mess was NOT your failure. YOU were failed by the Pentagon bureaucrats in their air conditioned offices while you were in 102 degree heat wearing 80 pounds of gear wondering if you'll ever see your family again. I believe I speak for everyone when I say thank you for your service and sacrifice, and that we the people owe all of you a HUGE apology for allowing such an incompetent chain of command. September 10th, 2021: Last dumb question of the week: Tomorrow is 9/11. Am I the only one who is EXTREMELY pissed off that on this 20th anniversary we have given those nerf-herders EVERYTHING they need to do this to us again? Yeah, I know. They're our "friends" now and promised they will play nice because they will make millions on mineral rights and are committed to working with the U.S. and China to build a better future for Afghanistan and the rest of the world. Believe me, they don't give a rat's furry be-hind about "climate change", or the Afghan people, or us for that matter. I trust their motives about as much as I would trust Casey Anthony to baby-sit my grand daughter. At best this is a "Faustian Bargain" (not to be confused with a "Faucian Bargain") that will only be equitable until it's time to pay the Devil his dues. I truly hope I'm wrong on this, because if I'm not, it means we are literally paying our enemies to put us out of our misery. For some reason Dr. Kevorkian comes to mind. Happy Friday everyone! Time to regroup, recoup, scoop some soup watching Betty Boop, take a poop & have the best weekend ever! September 13th, 2021: PSA#94:The foxes guarding the henhouse: Thinking about writing one of those yellow & black DIY books and call it "Domestic Sabotage for Dummies". All I need to do is document the last 8 months of bad decisions from our fearless leaders. But I wonder, is it really possible to make that many bad decisions in such a short time unless they were intentional? I hate it when I go down the rabbit holes with my tin foil hat. It makes me feel dumb and even a little greasy. I had a dog named "Little Greasy". Good dog but he kept sliding off my lap. But I digress. It's easy to dismiss this domino effect of screw-ups as simple incompetence, but I find it too coincidental that the end result of these policies is exactly the same, that being to hurt America. If you actually did write a book about how to take down a country from the inside, this would be an effective way to do it: Unleash a pandemic and make it as scary as possible. Hijack the news media & social media to make everything else look like "misinformation". Shut down small businesses but let big businesses thrive to protect domestic & foreign investors. Curtail or even dismantle law enforcement and the judicial system to create massive crime waves. Divide everyone into groups where race and ideology become more important than national identity. Promote hatred between these groups through government funded and sanctioned protests & riots. Have the media blow on the dying embers of racism to keep this hatred alive. Demonize the nuclear family to increase the number of fatherless kids who live in poverty and end up dependent on government. Erase gender identity by vilifying gender roles. Change normal vocabulary to change the internal dialog of the mind. Promote the murder of your own unborn children using the camouflage of "health care". Turn schools into Marxist indoctrination facilities. Open the borders to anyone from anywhere, and make them dependent on government too. Allow gang members, child traffickers, drug smugglers, terrorists, & virus carriers into the country completely unvetted. Convince everyone that we are inherently evil and not worthy of entitlement or even the right to be free. Undermine the 1st and 2nd Amendment. Erase history, condemning future generations to repeat it. Use mask mandates to strip away individuality and instill moral obedience. Create a generational tax debt larger than any in history under the guise that the corporations who lobby for tax breaks are going to pay for it. Sabotage the energy sector under the premise of "saving the planet". Buy up farm land to create food shortages. Outsource our manufacturing to our greatest enemy. Give our 2nd greatest enemy a state-of-the-art military. Alienate our allies around the world by projecting weakness. Create vaccine "passports" to allow easier government access to your medical and banking information. Mandate the termination of anyone without a "passport" during a labor shortage & economic crisis to kill small business once and for all, kill health care, and bog down the courts with endless lawsuits. Create a military police state to quell all of the above problems they themselves created or endorsed. I could go on. That's just the tip of the iceberg. How could they get it all so wrong? I find myself thinking that maybe our leaders are not as clueless, inept, and dumb as they pretend to be for the cameras. We're supposed to think that they are simply bumbling buffoons who, gosh darn it, just can't seem to get anything right. But what if they know EXACTLY what they're doing? The idea that politicians are actually clever might be the craziest conspiracy theory of them all. Happy Monday everyone! Next PSA: In an effort to improve their public relations image, Planned Parenthood will now vaccinate unborn babies before killing them. Cheers! September 22nd, 2021: 2nd dumb question of the week, a sincere & legitimate question that may get me in trouble with FB's "Ministry of Truth". I apologize in advance for the overuse of caps & quotes. The President himself has stated that this is now a "pandemic of the unvaccinated", because the vaccine doesn't stop the spread, nor will it keep you from getting the virus, and if you're vaxxed your symptoms may be a lot worse. Hospitalization of vaxxed Covid cases is quickly surpassing unvaxxed cases, therefore EVERYBODY is required to get the vaccine to create a level playing field. However, the question our fearless leaders absolutely refuse to answer, and will punish you for even asking, is this: If we ALL have the vaccine, and we can ALL still get the virus, and we can ALL still spread it, and we ALL have the same compromised immune systems, aren't we setting ourselves up for a new wave of cases WAY beyond what we've seen so far? Perhaps a naive question, but still a valid one. But no, shut up and take the "jab" or lose even your most basic rights. Why all the cloak & dagger? Just tell us the TRUTH, and maybe we can start to trust the motives behind this. Unless of course the TRUE motives can never be revealed, which actually would explain quite a lot. So many "mistakes" this year, and every time it's no big deal, just simple gross incompetence by maladroit fools who mean well. I just can't buy it anymore. It's too much of a coincidence that every single "bad decision" has had the exact same outcome of hurting the country. Like immigration, Afghanistan, China, economic sabotage, etc., how do we know these vaccine mandates aren't just another step in what Obama often called "fundamentally transforming the country"? Improving our country is easy, fundamentally transforming it requires tearing down the old and then "building back better". Where have I heard that term before? It makes me think maybe Australia is just another "dress rehearsal". Happy Hump-Day all! September 23rd, 2021: Captain's log: supplemental: Sometimes I do feel as though I'm just too old, too out of touch, and no longer capable of understanding alternate views. I even question my own sanity sometimes and wonder if it's early dementia, and maybe I need to stop ranting on stuff. Then I see this: Left-wing media has completely ignored the 14,000 immigrants who illegally breached the Del Rio border, at least until now. Now the big story is that agents on horseback trying to maintain order are pro-slavery white supremacist racists because they use the reigns to whip black people. Um...the reigns are attached to the horses. So...you gonna use the loop to swat them on top the head and mess up their hair or what? I feel better about myself now. Enjoy your day as well. September 29th, 2021: 3rd dumb question: If this was still an "actual" pandemic, wouldn't firing your healthcare workers be the absolute WORST thing you could possibly do? Thoughts & prayers to the fine folks at Blessing, and to the estimated 20 million healthcare workers nationwide who are also slated for termination. So much for gratitude. Yeah, I get the obvious counterpoint that if they would simply shut up, obey, stop asking questions and just get the shot, they would get back "some" of their basic rights as Americans. Problem is, these people have dealt with this for nearly 2 years, have probably already had Covid, and are a little more privy to the real numbers regarding post-Covid infections of the vaccinated. Here in the US. & Canada, these cases are blown off as anomalous "breakthrough cases", but data from Europe, The Netherlands, and Israel tells a different story. Healthcare workers have a much better understanding of how reckless it is to undermine natural immunity. I really hope they speak out more on their concerns and trepidations. I value their input FAR greater than any corporate political spokesperson. Happy Wednesday everyone! BTW, a rally is taking place as we speak outside Blessing. If I make it to town today I'll at least stop by and make a meager donation to their legal fund. October 12th, 2021: PSA#95:The foxes guarding the henhouse pt. 2: Just a quick follow-up to my crazy conspiracy theory that politicians are actually clever and not the bumbling buffoons they portray on TV. I failed to note that since getting re-elected is their number one goal, how could such a strategy help their campaigns? When "mistakes" are made, they come off as inept but well meaning, and when they fix the issues, they redeem themselves and all is forgiven because they rose to the occasion in spite of their failings. But aren't they really just creating problems so they can swoop in and save the day? Create a crisis so you can be the hero by coming up with the solutions to that crisis. It gives a new twist to the phrase "architect of your own destiny". However, there is a much larger windfall to this. These manufactured solutions to manufactured problems require all of us to make small sacrifices for the greater good. No big deal. We're Americans after all. Then the next crisis comes along, and we make sacrifices, again no big deal. Then the next, and the next, and the next, and so on, until we lose sight of our cumulative loss of basic liberties and freedoms over time. A great analogy to this is the idea that if you put a dog on a 4 ft. chain, it will feel constrained, agitated, and possibly aggressive. If you start with a 40 ft. chain, and each day remove just one link, eventually you still end up with a 4 ft. chain, but by then the dog sees it as completely normal and accepts it without complaint. We are dangerously close to a new generation who will grow up totally unaware that a 40 ft. chain ever even existed. But is this really a windfall for our politicians and their vain careers? No, they are in the same boat as everyone else. We have two governments, the one we see, featuring all our favorite elected DC celebrities, and the one we don't see, the unelected bureaucrats who never leave. Elected officials come & go like cheap socks, but the real people in power are ALWAYS there, because they cannot be voted out. Our leaders on both sides of the aisle, who we the people chose at the ballot box, are as subservient to this shadow influence as we are. It makes you feel like it doesn't matter who you vote for, but I believe it still does. However impotent, there are indeed some good people in office, just not enough right now to make a difference. Choose wisely and perhaps someday we can do more than simply "resist". For now, if we do more than resist, we'll be labeled "insurrectionists", or "domestic terrorists", or even worse, "parents at a school board meeting". Keep in mind though, that if we ever stop resisting, and think if we just go along they will leave us alone, we're screwed. Weakness of will is like the smell of blood to sharks, and there is no surviving such a feeding frenzy. Unless of course it's Baby Shark doo doo doo doo doo doo. Happy Tuesday everyone! Next PSA: Congress saves billions on their "Medicare For All" plan by denying the unvaccinated, who are expected to live much longer and bankrupt the system. Cheers! October 15th, 2021: PSA#96: One Nation Underdog. I've been seeing a lot of posts stating that the federal government has NO legal foundation to enforce vaccine mandates in the workplace, putting the blame on employers. THEY are the ones choosing to terminate their employees over the vaccine, right? Not exactly. HR.4502 allocated $692 million to OSHA, who has historically been funded equally by the federal government and the individual states. This gives the fed "controlling stock" in OSHA, and as part of their newly expanded mission, more CSHOs (Compliance Safety and Health Officers) will be hired, and all CSHOs will be required to add an employee vaccine check to their safety & health inspection criteria. CHSOs can fine a company up to $70,000 for EACH violation. Please don't blame the companies. They simply can't take those fines and still stay in business. Don't blame OSHA either, they have been strong-armed into this and don't like it any more than we do. This clearly rests on the draconian shoulders of the current administration. As with censorship and social media companies, the federal government uses OUR tax dollars to leverage the private sector into doing what they cannot constitutionally do themselves. Ironically, I also support organized "sick-outs" as a form of protest. No it's not fair to hurt businesses that are already being blackmailed by their own government, but if enough people refuse to work, our unions and our fearless leaders in the House & Senate will be forced to make a case for limitations on federal overreach, and take it all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. Either that or forget about winning another election in the wake of the economic damage these protests would do to their districts. Or maybe we can just topple statues and set fire to stuff. Happy Friday all! Have the best weekend ever! Next PSA: Administration officials demand action over growing concerns that supply chain issues this holiday season may cause countless Americans to understand the true meaning of Christmas. October 25th, 2021: PSA#97: One Nation Underdog part 2: Indivisible. Happy Monday all! No, I haven't been in Facebook Jail, I was busy last week working the 2 am. run from Del Rio to Laughlin Air Force Base. First off, a correction: I stated in part one that OSHA Safety & Health Officials can fine companies $70,000 for each unvaccinated employee they find. I was wrong. It's actually $700,000. So if you have 300 employees and 10 are unvaxxed, the fine could be up to 7 million dollars, leaving you no choice but let go of your best employees. Sure, we have lots of illegal immigrants to fill those positions, but what I find confusing is that they are exempt from vaccination because they're citizens of a different country. So why are we terminating the unvaxxed in the first place? This kind of pretzel logic hurts my brain, so back to the subject at hand, that being one nation underdog, indivisible, with liberty & justice for all. Everyone understands that whether it's black vs. white, gay vs. straight, vaxxed vs. unvaxxed, pro-life vs. pro-choice, or just about any other societal polarization you can think of, it's all by design and straight from the old fashioned "Divide & Conquer" playbook. However, all these diametric oppositions seem to stem from your basic "liberal vs. conservative" stereotype. If we would eliminate those two words from our vocabulary, the remaining points of contention would stand on their own rather than be stigmatized by an all-inclusive ideology. I for one have no problem being tolerant of other opinions no matter how stupid they are. Liberals however, need to let go of 4 basic fallacies that inhibit any meaningful argument: Stop believing that politicians mean well and know what's best for us. They don't. They are professional liars who regard their own affluence above all else. Stop believing that government funding is real. It's not. EVERYTHING is funded by employers, employees, and consumers. The more the government spends, the more the cost of everything goes up, and the more your basic freedoms erode. Stop believing you're a victim. You're not. The media peddles cultural guilt & karmic penance to generate perpetuitous news stories that offset the 60-second fluff pieces they lose money on every day. If people didn't hate each other, they would go out of business. Stop believing it's "woke" to be offended by everything. It's not. You're simply barking on command. Piece o' cake, right? Just think for yourself. Even if you're wrong, at least your opinions are your own and not the superimposed tenets of a pseudo-hive mind. Conservatives need to make concessions as well. Stop being so jaded & cynical, stop poking fun at people oblivious to their own ironies (guilty), and stop believing that if Trump would just come back, everything would return to the way it was. It won't. We no longer have the luxury of pretension, simply spouting platitudes like a Pez dispenser to always get the last word in. The gloves need to come off if we hope to find common ground in this quagmire of pomposity. From opposing ideas new ideas are born, making argument & debate an essential part of our cultural evolution. It's time for the proverbial sheep to stop bleating at each other from their respective corrals and come together to find a way out of their mutual confinement. Cheers! Next PSA: Oakland CA becomes the first city to pass an ordinance prohibiting the homeless from defecating on public sidewalks without proof of vaccination. October 26th, 2021: 1st dumb question of the week: Now that we have a better understanding of the dangers surrounding the vaccine being mistakenly given to people who have knowingly or unknowingly already had Covid, wouldn't it be a really good idea to check for antibodies BEFORE you give them the shot? A no-brainer actually, but an antibody test will never happen, and not because of cost & time. That process would be streamlined in a matter of weeks. No, this pandemic has been the best thing to happen to opportunists, authoritarians & demagogues since the "Cold War". They want to keep Covid in check of course, but don't want it to go away entirely. Using the vaccine to circumvent "herd immunity" while saving lives ensures that some strain of this virus will always be lurking in the shadows, keeping us afraid and dependent on those same authoritarians who we now pay to protect us from it. God bless our healthcare workers who are "caught between a rock and a hard place" in more ways than one for sure. They have certainly earned my respect & empathy for having to deal with not just the virus, but the jackboot politics of it as well. Happy Tuesday everyone! October 29th, 2021: Last dumb question of the week: Is it ironic that Orwell's 1984, Huxley's Brave New World, Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, and even Lucas' THX1138 were meant to be cautionary tales, but somehow ended up being templates? If Orwell was alive he would also have a dumb question: "You guys do realize 1984 was a sci-fi book, right?" Somehow we have become those naive but well-meaning Thermians from "Galaxy Quest", where for them life truly imitates art, or at least imitates a cheesy 80s TV show. By Grabthar's Hammer, have a happy Friday and a great weekend! November 9th, 2021: PSA#98: "All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others". Of course that's from Orwell's "Animal Farm", where their basic commandments were, slowly over time, subtly re-worded to mean the opposite of their original intent. Yesterday JB Huckster (often pronounced "Prickster") signed into law the "Health Care Right of Conscience Act", which is a re-write of a previous legislation with the same noble name, but with the "Right of Conscience" part of it ambiguously camouflaged to mean exactly the opposite. In the interest of "flattening the curve" (has it been 15 days yet?), your doctor's right to choose treatments based on personal beliefs will be curtailed, and religious exemptions that hinder those all-important vaccine mandates will be rescinded. It's for your own good so shut your weed-hole and take the shot. JB also noted that this law will make it easier to get an abortion to help stop the spread of Covid. Makes sense really. If you kill your baby it can't spread the virus right? As mentioned, if they really wanted to end this they would test for antibodies BEFORE giving people the shot. Assuming the vaccine works, when coupled with "herd immunity" this virus would burn itself out. Yeah I get it that they want to keep Covid under control but for obvious reasons don't want it to completely go away, but this goose is no longer worth it's weight in golden eggs. The latest numbers from Blessing show 42% of their Covid patients have been vaccinated, and the most severe symptoms are likely the result of getting the shot after having knowingly or unknowingly recovered from the virus previously. They call these "breakthrough cases", which sounds way better than "Gates happy-dance cases". Those wacky populationists. JB and his overlords at Manor Farm (aka "DC") also understand you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, and will not be distracted by collateral damage in their righteous effort to modernize our own outdated commandments so they better reflect the new societal order. Even the Biden administration's legal teams are scrambling as we speak today to overturn a federal court moratorium on their unconstitutionally leveraged vaccine mandates that could affect as many as 100 million workers. They too understand that for the greater good, we must put American small business out of its misery once and for all. After all, to build back better you have to first tear down the old-fashioned economic ideas that are an albatross on our great mega-corporations who can much more efficiently manage supply & demand, right? Again, just change the verbiage of the commandments. Sadly, Orwell's story of Pigs, Dogs, & Sheep has become a template rather than a cautionary tale. What seems like a happy ending of order & structure from chaos is actually a lesson that no matter how well-intended, we always end up becoming what we thought we had destroyed and replaced. The players change, the board changes, and the rules change, but the game always ends up back at square one. Maybe instead of destroying and replacing it every time, just fix whatever's wrong with it. Cheers & happy Tuesday all! Next PSA: The administration is ecstatic to find Biden & Harris' approval rating back up to 68% if you combine their individual percentages. Go team! November 11th, 2021: Captain's log: supplemental: Addendum to PSA#94 9/13/21. A couple months ago I joked about writing a yellow & black DIY book and call it "Domestic Sabotage for Dummies". I normally don't rehash these rants, but this one bears reminding. I've added a few things to the list, and if any of them seem vaguely familiar, you may want to rethink the "simple incompetence" theory of government over-reach & draconian mismanagement. In no particular order, here is the revised "short list" of how to cripple a nation from within: Unleash a pandemic and make it as scary as possible. Convince everyone that only the government can save us from this pandemic. Hijack the news media & social media to make everything else look like "misinformation". Shut down small businesses but let big businesses thrive to protect domestic & foreign investors. Curtail or even dismantle law enforcement and the judicial system to create massive crime waves. Divide everyone into groups where race and ideology are more important than national identity. Promote hatred between these groups through government sanctioned protests & riots. Have the media blow on the dying embers of racism to keep this hatred alive. Demonize the nuclear family to increase the number of fatherless kids who live in poverty and end up dependent on government. Erase gender identity by vilifying gender roles. Change normal vocabulary to change the internal dialog of the mind. Promote the murder of your own unborn children using the camouflage of "health care". Turn schools into CRT/PRC/AOC Marxist indoctrination facilities. Open the borders to anyone from anywhere, and make them dependent on government too. Allow gang members, child traffickers, drug smugglers, terrorists, & virus carriers into the country completely unvetted. Modify regional voter demographics by secretly relocating these immigrants to the interior of the nation. Convince everyone that we are inherently evil and not worthy of entitlement or even the right to be free. Undermine the 1st and 2nd Amendment. Erase history, condemning future generations to repeat it. Use mask mandates to strip away individuality and instill moral obedience. Create a generational tax debt larger than any in history under the guise that the corporations who lobby for tax breaks are going to pay for it. Sabotage the energy sector and the environment under the premise of "saving the planet". Buy up farmland to control food supplies. Gridlock import cargo supply chains at point-of-entry. Insure the installation of inept elected officials who will be obedient to their unelected bureaucratic handlers. Create a one-party dominance by labeling all your political opponents as "white supremacist insurrectionists". Turn the Capitol Building into an armed fortress to hyperbolize this fabricated insurrectionist threat. Outsource our manufacturing to our greatest enemy. Give our 2nd greatest enemy a state-of-the-art military. Alienate our allies around the world by projecting weakness. Create vaccine "passports" to allow easier government access to your medical and banking information. Mandate the termination of anyone without a "passport" during a labor shortage & economic crisis to kill small business once and for all, and bog down the courts with endless lawsuits. Create a military police state to quell all of the above problems they themselves created or endorsed. Each bullet-point could be a detailed chapter all its own in this book. We no longer have the luxury of pretending this is all just a coincidental culmination of simple blunders from Pavlovian maladroits who can easily be voted out, because their replacements will also be subservient to the elusive architects of this societal eugenic transmutation who cannot be voted out. Happy Friday Eve all! Sorry to be a Debbie Downer. I promise my sense of humor will be back tomorrow in quivering anticipation of a glorious weekend. Lawdy I do declare it still gives me the "vapors". October 15th, 2021: Captain's log: Supplemental: Last night was the Fox Patriot Awards. We watched it live on Fox Nation, and normally I don't care for award shows in general or all the touchy-feely goody two-shoes human interest stories that warm the cockles of our hearts. I have to say though that there were a lot of moments that really triggered an emotional response, and it made me feel like if there was ever a time we could all use a little good old-fashioned American patriotism, that time is now. It's easy to get discouraged by all the squeaky wheels & political charlatans who get all the attention, but the remaining 99% of us are good, decent, hard working heroes in our own right. Average ordinary people doing extraordinary things for the sake of our children & grandchildren's freedom and liberty. It's our national identity, not our cultural identity, that defines our kindness towards one another. Without that commonality, we are all just "citizens of the world" predisposed to tribalism, and our nation is just one big partisan flophouse devoid of any unified goals for a better future. God bless everyone who still believes in that future. Happy Thursday all! December 29th, 2021: PSA#99: Why is it when you tease the cat it just runs over and scratches the dog on the sofa minding his own business? Ninety-nine public service announcements. One more and I can get rid of this stupid house-arrest ankle bracelet. Anyway, a few days ago, President Biden made a gun violence speech that was pretty sensible & sincere, up until he blamed the NRA for Sandy Hook, then called for tougher registration requirements for law-abiding citizens. Does he still not understand that 60 to 70 percent of all guns in this country are NOT REGISTERED? We HAVE to confiscate those FIRST, otherwise we are merely disarming the victims of gun violence and promoting the use of illegal firearms to commit crimes against those victims. I get it that they ignore this statistic because they have no idea where these illegal firearms are located, so they go for the low-hanging fruit as a virtue signal that doesn't solve anything, except give them a false sense of accomplishment and a nice warm fuzzy feeling for being ever-so righteous. However, allowing ONLY cops & criminals access to firearms will NOT make us safer. Quite the opposite. Apologizes for the overuse of caps, but I can't stress enough how dangerous this approach is. Not blaming old Joe, he's certainly not alone in this reckless concept. Perhaps we should go back to a few basics: Background checks are done EVERY time a firearm is purchased. Any violent offenses will nullify the sale. The term "assault weapon" is a made up media term. I could say "assault hammer" with the same level of ambiguity. The term "full semi-auto" is also a made up term. It's either full-auto or semi-auto, and full-auto firearms have been illegal since 1939. Regardless of aesthetics, cosmetics or prosthetics, ALL commercially available personal firearms work the same and take standard ammo. 1 pull = 1 shot. Period. Banning big mags just means carry extra mags. The notion that if you shoot an intruder, it means "you value your stuff more than their lives", is backwards. It means "THEY value your stuff more than their OWN lives". Criminals don't obey laws. Being lenient on enforcement and prosecution for the sake of "equity" only makes it easier to break those laws. As mentioned, the vast majority of firearms in this country are unregistered. Until we address this core issue, I don't think it's possible to even have a constructive conversation about gun control. In the dog & cat analogy, of course it's the criminals teasing the cat, and us law-abiding citizens are the dog on the sofa minding our own business. The cat, thinking it is supreme ruler over the household, has no real power over its antagonizer, so it lashes out in a vain attempt to reinforce its dominance and dignity. Our "felines" in DC (don't make me use the "P" word) just want to throw a bunch of taxpayer money at the problem of gun violence. It's all they know how to do. But if some of that money would go to things like making background checks more thorough & efficient, firearms safety & storage training, better investigative police work, and more effective prosecution of violent crimes, then even though we're still stuck with the core issue, it might be a step in the right direction towards getting illegal weapons off the street and back into the gun safes of Americans who understand and respect them. Or, we could just get a cat with some actual balls. Happy Wednesday all! Next PSA (speaking of cats & dogs): The State of Illinois has issued new mask mandates for yo mama 'cause she so ugly she tie a pork chop around her neck so dogs will play with her, and when she go to da beach cats try to cover her with sand. Follow the science. December 31st, 2021: PSA#100 and last dumb question of the year: Was 2021 the best year EVER or what? Happy final 420 boys & girls! 100 PSAs in 10 years. That's like 10 a year. Just for doing the math you would think I would get a cookie or something. Any-hoo, a really stupid question for a really stupid year. In retrospect, here are a few takeaways from 2021: The "pandemic": Never let a good crisis go to waste. Clearly this is no longer about health & safety. I'm not sure it ever was. The economy: Shut down small businesses while allowing mega-chains to flourish. Let small businesses re-open but kill their clientele with vax passports. Use these same "passports" to blackmail employers into firing some of their best workers during a labor shortage caused by incentives NOT to work. Increase inflation by undermining our energy independence and flooding the monetary system with Monopoly money. Frivolously spend trillions to create the largest generational debt in history. I could go on, but we all know the big question: Total incompetence or economic sabotage? You be the judge. The U.S. military: We all owe our men & women in uniform, past and present, a HUGE apology for allowing such an inept and derelict chain of command. From Afghanistan to woke indoctrination, the Pentagon has clearly been infected by partisan politics & corporate virtue signaling. The "Green New Deal": The Earth has gone through these same cycles every 20,000 years or so since long before humans existed. More diesel, more strip mining, and more cheap Chinese green crap will NOT change geology. Enough for now about our "carbon footprint". Let's start by improving our "garbage footprint". The government: Democrats used to be the party of JFK, MLK, and RFK. Now they are the party of Marx, Lenin, & Mao. Republicans only come out from under their beds long enough to bark with all the other neighborhood dogs, or to suck up to whoever is currently in charge. Worst part, politicians come & go, but their unelected bureaucratic handlers will always be there because they cannot be voted out. The "Insurrection": This was a setup to make flag waving working class patriotic Americans look like white supremacist anarchists. Race had NOTHING to do with the Capitol protests. The education system: Under blackmail by federal grants, schools are teaching political, racial, and gender ideologies to our kids. Please stop doing that. Now. Thank you. The President: Stop picking on old Joe. He is not the problem, just a symptomatic by-product of the elitist ruling class that created him. Let's go Brandon! The Constitution: We will miss it dearly when it's gone. The future: I have 3 things I would love to see everyone aspire to in 2022: Stop being hateful, stop being stupid, and start being kind to people regardless of skin color, politics, gender labels, superficial appearance or perceived lifestyle. Sure, I make fun of everybody (myself included), but I make it a point to be friendly & show respect to all I randomly interact with every day. As a consumer customer, a simple "thank you" to a worker can be a causality fission that affects how someone treats their co-workers, which affects how they treat their family after work, which affects how their kids treat other kids the next day at school, and how those workers end up treating their other customers. We argue & debate, often over-zealously, but once we lose our "freedom of opinion", we lose our ability to create new ideas from opposing ideas, and become little more than pious drones trapped in our own echo chambers. Resist. Always. Please. Otherwise we "go quietly into that good night". That's like from poetry 'n junk. Y'all never knew I was so cultured did ya? Have the best New Years ever! And for anyone around these parts, keep an eye on the sky. By morning it could get pretty dicey out there. Be careful & be safe everyone. Next PSA: As of January 1st, 2022, Walmart will be implementing its new policy to help stop the spread of Covid by requiring customers to wear actual pants rather than their germ-ridden pajamas that haven't been washed in weeks. Cheers! January 6th, 2022: FOX NEWS ALERT: To mark the one year anniversary of the Capitol "insurrection", the FBI is having a carry-in today to honor the bravery and hard work of the bureau's agent provocateurs who made it happen. More after the break… January 13th, 2022: PSA#101: Chicken Little and the political psychology of fear. Chicken Little, of course, is the 19th century story of a dimwitted chicken who freaks out after an acorn falls on his head, and insists that the "sky is falling". The story is an open-ended societal parable that has been rewritten many times to accommodate current political landscapes, which brings us to the politics of Covid. As you probably know, I trust the accuracy of the Covid test about as much as I trust the effectiveness of the vaccine. However, I've been sick as a dog last couple days, and our next door neighbor was kind enough to drop by a home test kit. I took it this morning and it came out positive. Don't know if it's the "Omagod variant", the "Delta Burke variant" or the soon to be released "WTF variant", but I have "something". I've had some pretty brutal flu bugs in my day so who knows. Without belaboring the same talking points I've belabored for 2 years, here are 3 takeaways that hopefully will put the Chicken Little metaphor into context: From the very first "jab", a conscious decision was made NOT to test for natural antibodies. As a result, the research data, that could have ended this by correlating natural immunity, herd immunity, vaccine immunity, and therapeutic treatment, is gone because it never existed in the first place, and "oopsie-daisy" doesn't cut it anymore. There are thousands of researchers working on this, and the odds of ALL of them dropping the ball on this is beyond coincidence. These people are WAY smarter than that. The more outlandish the claim, the easier it is to sell. President Biden called this a "pandemic of the unvaccinated" saying that the vaccinated can get and spread Covid, therefore EVERYONE has to get the shot. This seems like nonsensical pretzel-logic gibberish, but it serves to confuse people and pit them against each other. Although the CDC does not publish percentages of "breakthrough cases", many other organizations around the world do indeed keep track of this, and have found the vast majority of Covid hospitalizations are among the vaxxed. So yeah Joe by all means let's all run out and get the shot. Hysteria surrounding the claim that the sky is indeed falling has worked very well, but there are a few hold-outs left, so the powers that be have resorted to Mafia-style racketeering tactics. Extort the private sector, who are exempt from the constitutional laws that restrict government over-reach, into blackmailing everyone else to comply or be punished. And what we're doing to our kids is downright criminal, turning them into obedient faceless drones destined to grow up subservient to their bureaucratic overlords. And even though the WHO (not the band) prohibits publishing actual suicide numbers except as worthless non-contextual percentages (I dug for 2 hours. It's no where to be found. Not even on DuckDuckGo), I do truly believe suicides among young people due to depression and fear FAR exceed the number of Covid deaths in this age group. I would like to blame the school boards & teachers unions, but they are being blackmailed by their own government same as everyone else. So perhaps Chicken Little was less of a kook, and more of a prophet with a cautionary tale that warns us of what happens when mass hysteria permeates the farm and all the barnyard animals turn against one another. I can hear Foxy Loxy licking his chops already. Happy Thursday everyone, and a big shout-out to my girl Dena who turns 59 today! Next PSA: The National Center for Mental Health will be allocating funds to create support groups for unvaccinated people who feel isolated and alone because all their vaccinated friends are in quarantine. Cheers! January 22nd, 2022: Bonus dumb question of the week: Can plain M&Ms identify as peanut M&Ms even though technically they have no nuts? Happy weekend all! January 28th, 2022: PSA#102: "Yeah, but you forgot one thing Biff: WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!!!!!" Marty McFly wasn't a bright kid. Resourceful, but not very smart. Luckily Biff Tannen was even dumber, and fell for that line every time allowing Marty to get away yet again. So have we become the Biff Tannens of the world? When it comes to the "pandemic", there's always some new mandate, new shot, or new variant on the horizon to distract us like the fake tennis ball throw. I understand that these "mandates" target small businesses, and I get the importance of doing away with the antiquated "mom & pop" concept of local economies vs. the global economy, because once the US. dollar collapses and is no longer the world's reserve currency, the global economic landscape will change literally overnight. What I don't understand is the administration's assumption that these mandates will also "keep the courts busy for a while". I've always believed that if you're the only person in the world that thinks something is true, it's probably not true. I do however have an idea of why bogging down the legal system for years is seen as a windfall and not a consequence: It occurs to me that after 2 years and millions of deaths, not ONE person has been charged with a crime or even held to account. So far the pandemic has just been a "coincidental sequence of naturally occurring events", but that charade is wearing thin. If China is brought to lawsuit, so will all the countries (including the US.) who funded them. This would be a Pandora's Box of class action suits chock-full of reparations & criminal charges that would take decades to litigate. For now, keeping the courts overwhelmed with employer lawsuits over state & federal virus mandates will have all the attorneys chasing their tails for quite a while. Inevitably though, someone needs to be held accountable for this travesty. Even if the virus was indeed just an "accident", or was even a "natural phenomenon" that was nobody's fault, the response to it was intentionally weaponized, politicized, and monetized to the tune of a trillion dollars, millions of lives, our economic sovereignty, and our children's' future. This isn't, as old Joe said, a "pandemic of the unvaccinated", it's a "pandemic of the unindoctrinated". Through deception, lies, blackmail, and fear, this has become little about a microscopic germ, and more about the authoritarian bureaucrats who care nothing of "herd immunity", only "herd mentality". Biff Tannen, however easily distracted, was indeed sure of one thing, that being how much he "hates manure". We're with ya Biff. All of us are getting pretty tired of the same old bullshit too. Happy weekend all! Next PSA: Not to be outwoke by Mars, Inc., Tootsie Roll Industries has announced that their popular milk caramel pop "Sugar Daddy" will now be called "Sugar Non-Birthing Parent". Cheers! February 17th, 2022: PSA#103: When it comes to Ukraine, how 'bout we stop "Minsking words" about what's really going on there. Yeah that was lame, but this situation is lame too and much less complicated than we're led to believe. Russia doesn't give a rat's fuzzy little derriere about Ukraine, nor does the rest of the world. I'm guessing many Ukrainians don't really care either. It is a horribly corrupt country that is less democratic and more authoritarian, a place where global organized cartels and their pet politicians can extort & launder money with little interference or consequence (just ask Hunter). So why all the fuss? This is all about NATO. Russian cartels also bleed Ukraine to line their own pockets, and the Putin regime knows that if Ukraine becomes part of NATO, that cash cow will dry up. But Putin's concern is much more dire. He knows that the reason so many DC neocons are pushing NATO (who have zero interest in Ukraine) is because their stock portfolios of defense contractors would profit immensely by building NATO military bases along Russia's border. But he is not concerned with John Bolton's Raytheon investments, rather he is simply terrified at the prospect of a hostile strike force parked across the street with his back yard in their sites. If Russia were to set up military bases along the Canadian border, with missiles locked on Buffalo, Detroit, Seattle, and all points in between, these same neocons would be shaking in their Ferragamo wing-tips too. The only way Putin can prevent a NATO presence in Ukraine is to invade Ukraine. But what if this is the goal, or at least a windfall, to force Putin to invade? The fragile Russian economy cannot withstand another Turkey or Afghanistan, let alone the inevitable economic sanctions. Personally I don't think the US. wants Russia to fall, and if they do, who will be our next "boogie man"? It certainly won't be China. We need Russia to distract the world from our much larger threat. As for "Minsking words", this conflict could end today if we would simply stop badgering NATO into doing something they care nothing about. Same with Trudeau and the Canadian truckers. He could end this before suppertime by simply ending the stupid vaccine passports. Everything else would be negotiable and they would stand down. Often it's not about the complexities of a crisis, but about complicating that crisis for the sake of sheer perpetuity. Happy snowy Thursday all! Not looking forward to getting out in this but we're almost out of beer. Speaking of simple solutions, why didn't I just get it yesterday when it was 61 degrees? I am such a hypocrite. Next PSA: Omicron wanes and the science of the pandemic continues to change rapidly as November 8th quickly approaches. Cheers! March 4th, 2022: PSA#104: "Minsking words" part two. The more I learn about the situation in Ukraine, the more I feel as though I minimalized it in part one. I apologize. I still stand by my statements, but this is more multi-faceted than the obvious NATO dilemma, oil, & defense industry stimulus. I also seem to have underestimated the resolve of the Ukrainian people. For that I also apologize. I really thought they would roll over, not out of cowardice, but because they would feel as though they are simply trading one corrupt oligarchy for another. Turns out they despise Putin and are not going down without a fight. Kudos. I still think Putin's main concern was NATO completing their western military border (what he called the non-negotiable "red line"), but it's clear now he's not "letting a good crisis go to waste". Ukraine's induction into NATO was a less than 50/50 possibility, so we all felt he would have waited until that seemed inevitable. He jumped the gun, which is a clear indication that his interest in Ukraine is more than just strategic defense. I also underestimated Russia's economic ability to sustain this incursion for more than a few weeks. Turns out they are being funded not just by the United States (which we knew), but by China (who ironically are also funded by the US.), which gives Putin an economic cushion to replenish his resources. I also missed the "Green New Deal" connection. Like America, much of Europe has embraced green technology, which has been sorely inadequate and created a huge dependence on Russian oil. When we gave up our energy sovereignty and OPEC refused to sell us oil, we commissioned Putin to again broker a nuclear deal with Iran to get them to sell us some of their reserves. Putin realizes we have shot ourselves in the foot and are currently impotent in our global prowess, and the current administration appears unwilling to use our own oil because of this "green stigma" that Russia sees as an Achilles heel. Lastly, although I still believe the defense industry and their congressional stockholders welcomed this invasion, I think they might be having second thoughts. Sure, WW3 looks really lucrative and would boost the economy, but this genie might not go back in the bottle. It's almost certain that Taiwan is next, and surely even the most hawkish of neocons understand that if China & Russia become aligned in a world war, the rest of us are screwed. Again, sorry I downplayed this a bit last go-around. Usually, if you strip complex issues down to their core stupidity, you find the origin of all the layers surrounding it. In this situation, there are multiple root causes with unique layers, and the commonality that humans haven't changed throughout history and aren't going to change anytime soon doesn't help. As the saying goes, "you can't fix stupid", and our primal confrontational nature is not only woven through our history, it is embedded in our DNA and cannot be reasoned away, only negotiated to a temporary compromise. God help us all. Happy weekend everyone! Enough debbie-downer crap. Time for us to pause and take a deep breathe, and by that I mean inhale & hold it as long as you can. Next PSA: To save our planet, the next Climate Conference will be held on the International Space Station, which will then be launched into the Sun. Cheers! March 11th, 2022: PSA#105: Yet another brief return to exoterica: This is of a personal nature with nothing to do with politics or current events, so feel free to opt out. Me & Dena are getting close to being together for 6 years now, and I've never adequately explained what the heck happened there. Dena was a friend of mine for many years prior through our common friends in the local band scene, and her work relationship with my dear friend Timbo. They would go to the band jobs and hang out here at the plantation with me & Susan on occasion, but it never evolved into anything serious between those two, for many reasons. However she still has a fondness for Tim that rivals my own, and I would take a bullet for that stupid son of a bitch. Back to Miss Dena, I always thoroughly enjoyed our conversations. She was smart, funny, down to earth, and most importantly had a heart as big as all outdoors. I'm a really bad judge of character, but slightly empathic when it comes to sensing kindness & compassion (or the lack thereof) in people. I guess I'm kinda like a dog that way. That and my leg shakes and I pee a little when you scratch my belly. Anyway, after a long hospice Susan passed away in January of 2016. We didn't quite make it to our 40th anniversary. The service was a gut wrenching tear-fest for all of us, but at the graveside I got too close to a propane heater and my fuzzy overcoat caught fire. No harm done, and we all felt like at least she kept her sense of humor by getting in the last prank. Either that or she was trying to kill me. The next few months I was just picking up the pieces, not miserable but with no long term plans other than to likely drink myself to death at some point in the distant future. Then one Saturday night, Dena texted me wondering how I was holding up and if I was up for some company. We drank a few beers, got a nice buzz, caught up on old times, and ended up sharing a pot of coffee at midnight, still jabbering away. After that, we found ourselves texting each other often, and would get together on the weekends every chance we got. During that time I found that we had even more in common than previously thought. It was uncanny, really. Needless to say, we fell in love and will be married 4 years come September. Yeah, I'm a cradle robber, and have actually never dated a girl my own age, but Dena doesn't mind the 10 year difference. At our age it doesn't mean anything, and she is wise beyond her years anyway. We both have the best families ever, and even though we were both terrified at being accepted into each others families, it was fine because as mentioned, we have the best families ever. Like the rest of us, the craziness of the world weighs heavy on her sometimes because we worry about what kind of future awaits our kids & grandkids. If we didn't worry, it would mean we don't care. Put another way, those who are immune to sadness can never truly appreciate joy. I should write cards for Hallmark right? I have enough dopey song lyrics to write a hundred of them. But I digress. In the morning she's off to Minnesota for a week to be with her daughter, son in law, & grandkids who lost pretty much everything in a house fire last Monday. Give them a big hug for me, and I'll hold down the fort till you get back. I love you sweetie pie. Happy weekend everyone! Enjoy it with family & friends because tomorrow is not promised, and too often time is what we desire most but use the most poorly. Yep, definitely sending my resume' to Hallmark. Cheers! Next PSA: Sanctions and boycotts against Russia continue as the Biden administration orders the crew of the ISS to not share their peanut butter with cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov. March 14th, 2022: First dumb question of the week: Am I the only one who seems to understand that China's influence over Russia facilitated the invasion of Ukraine, and China's influence over the US. is facilitating a response? Talk about killing two birds with one stone. Xi Jinping is just kicking back in his Barcalounger with his bowl of Orville Redenbacher, waiting for the smoke to clear and emerge as the world's new monetary reserve, all without the loss of a single Chinese soldier. Well played you little Winnie-the-Pooh looking asshat. Happy Monday all! March 15th, 2022: 2nd dumb question of the week: What if the "pandemic" was actually just a 2 year global study to see just how far our governments could push us in the event of a REAL disaster like, oh I dunno, world war three? I think we have proven our obedience to their satisfaction. Bring it. Happy Tuesday all! March 16th, 2022: 3rd dumb question of the week, albeit a long one because I don't know how to condense it: Pentagon officials & members of Congress have expressed concern over Ukrainian bio-labs and what would happen if those materials fell into the "wrong hands", while insisting that these facilities were Russian built, and for the last 17 years we have simply been helping to keep all those old Soviet viruses safely quarantined. I don't buy it, but will go along with their explanation for the sake of the larger concern here. However I do have to ask: If these are old, obsolete viruses made by Russia, why would the Russians, of all people, have any interest in them whatsoever? What's really bizarre is how the main stream media has automatically branded this as Russian "misinformation" simply because Putin confirmed the existence of these labs. I call it "PTDS" (Post Trump Derangement Syndrome), where Putin is the new "Orange Boogie-Man". He could say the sky is blue, and the media would insist it is in fact yellow. Some in the media are even calling for Tulsi Gabbard & Tucker Carlson to be arrested for treason because they suggested that it might be a good idea to secure these facilities in case they are damaged in a missile strike. Apparently showing concern over the accidental release of a deadly pathogen now means you're a Russian spy, which begs a 4th dumb question: Didn't we just go through this in Wuhan? How soon we forget. Happy hump day all! Low 70s today, so if you can, get out and enjoy the sunshine and those clear yellow skies. April 4th, 2022: First dumb question of the week: The election has been over for 17 months, so there is no longer an urgency to cover up the infamous Hunter laptop to influence that election by claiming the laptop was Russian. So now, as suspected, it seems Joe was indeed tied to Hunter's racketeering schemes in Ukraine & China during his time as vice-President. So I have to ask: Where in Sam Hill was President Obama when all this was going on? You would think in 8 years he would've at least made an attempt to pull back the reigns a bit on his right-hand man. Obama was either clueless or complicit, neither a good look for the leader of the free world. Happy Monday all, and if you know what "Sam Hill" is, you're likely retired and don't care about Monday. April 5th, 2022: 2nd dumb question of the week: The Disney empire has joined in the fight against Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill. Aside from the "woke evangelicals" protesting this who believe virtue always trumps actual analysis, most of us have read the bill and know that it has nothing to do with gay rights. It simply prohibits schools from secretly pushing gender dysphoria onto children under 3rd grade, typically 8-9 years of age. It also provides that parents of kids up to 5th grade should be included in any conversations regarding sexual preference or gender reassignment. The state has no right to influence a child's natural development without parental consent. Children that age are incapable of comprehending such things, making this indoctrination not counseling. Simple stuff, really. So I guess my question is this: Is it really a good business model for Disney to target the parents of their core demographic who pay for all their movies, merchandise, & vacation parks? Seems to me just another case of "biting the hand that feeds you" for the sake of some disingenuous moral grandstanding. Sadly, layoffs are inevitable. Equally sad, I feel as though part of my childhood has been defecated. Oh, and I forgot my main point in all this: Leave our fucking kids alone. Happy Tuesday all! April 8th, 2022: PSA#106 and last dumb question of the week: "Mr. Osborne, may I be excused? My brain is full.": Gary Larson was awesome. This cartoon came to mind while pondering our current state of "indoctrination saturation". Enough is enough. We the people are tired of it all; the hoaxes, scams, lies, brainwashing & propaganda. We're tired of pointless regime-change wars perpetuated by neocons & neolibs alike to augment their defense industry portfolios. We're tired of climate alarmism being used to enrich a growing Chinese green tech monopoly that seeks global dependence on those technologies. We're tired of our vocabulary being bastardized for the sake of changing & controlling our internal dialogs under the guise of "political correctness". We're tired of our children being emotionally sodomized to promote the eugenics of androgyny by exploiting the gay/trans community. We're tired of our wifes & daughters denigrated to nothing more than "birthing persons", and men as obsolescent by way of "toxic masculinity". We're tired of the adolescent obsession with victimhood as the new virtual bitcoin of our moral currency. Speaking of currency, we're tired of fake money diluting our currency that keeps eroding an economy where the price of everything makes the price of everything else go up. We're tired of the cultural vanity that is replacing our national heritage with vague racial heritage. We're tired of the rising crime in our country caused by our leaders' failure to understand that when you don't enforce laws, people stop obeying them. We're tired of lockdowns & mandates and all the restrictions imposed on our lives by authoritarian leaders who have us convinced that we no longer have any common sense and need to be shepherded for our own good and the good of our "democracy". We're tired of the news media, social media, & entertainment media pitting us against one another based on ideology for nothing more than ad revenues. We're tired of being corraled into groups by the aforementioned media because, as I've often said, so long as the sheep keep bleating at each other through the fences, the longer they remain unaware of their own confinement. So what do we do? For now, just RESIST. I know that sounds like a pointless exercise in futility, but it's actually very important because once we give in to it all for the sake of our own sanity, we're totally screwed. To surrender is to admit defeat and accept conformity of division, which is a complacency not easily walked back. Now is not the time to be silent (there never is really), and sure there are proactive things we can do too, like really pay attention to who you're voting for, or try to rally people around a common cause or goal, or worst case, protest and make your voice heard. For the record though, activism rarely works. The only people you're convincing are the ones who already agree with you. Everyone else just thinks you're an asshole. So yeah, for now just resist. A little good old-fashioned kindness toward each other can't hurt either. I actually feel for the first time in years that there are indeed indicators that everything I just mentioned is on its way out. Still connecting the dots, but I get a strong sense that, at least in America, we're on the cusp of a societal paradigm shift. Maybe it's the "straw that broke the camel's back", or maybe we just need to be excused because our brains are full. In any event, I can feel it in my bones that this train-wreck of humanity we call civilization WILL get better sooner than previously thought. Without faith there can be no hope, and without hope there can be no faith. Reminds me of my night in Gulfport with Faith & Hope. Probably wasn't their real names, but they could do more than dance if you know what I mean. But I digress. I promise it won't happen again. Anyway, I do believe with every fiber of my being that we are near the realization that we are the best people you'll find anywhere ruled by the dumbest people you'll find anywhere. The little dog has pulled back the curtain, and what has been seen cannot be unseen, forcing us all, regardless of race or ideology, to see the magic trick for the illusion it is. It's almost time for the bleating sheep to stop yelling at each other and work together to escape their intellectual confinement. I can feel it. (that's what Faith said, then she added "now if I could just see it"). How rude. I was emasculated, but hey I need to cut down on my Testosterone before I begin "transitioning" anyway. Am I digressing again? (bonus dumb question). Have a joyful weekend everyone in spite of this crappy weather. Cheers! Next PSA: President Biden explains that he was disoriented at the WH gala only because he momentarily mistook Barrack Obama for Corn Pop. April 27th, 2022: 2nd dumb question of the week: The Biden administration is pushing to place huge harvesting restrictions on the logging industry because of "environmental concerns". Yeah we all know this will crush the housing industry, but my question is also of environmental concern: Isn't forestry mismanagement the biggest cause of those terrible wildfires that generate more CO2 than every fuel-powered vehicle in the country combined? Inadequate clearings & dead wood are what causes these random fires to spread beyond containment. The logging industry under the guidance of the USDA Forest Service needs to do more grooming, not less. The economic ramifications of this are also glaringly obvious. Have you been to Home Depot lately? Yikes. May 17th, 2022: 4th dumb question of the week: All you pro-lifers aren't very "pro-life" when it comes to climate change are you? This is an ACTUAL dumb question I saw on Facebook. It's just a pretentious jab suggesting that if we don't believe in killing babies, then we're hypocrites because we don't care that millions of children die from climate change every year (not true), which we created (also not true), and refuse to address (again, not true). I've addressed climate change and the "green new deal" many times in a decade of cheeky PSAs, and always come to the conclusion that more diesel, more strip mining, more Chinese plastic crap, and more deforestation will NOT enrich the planet. The only thing being enriched here are the portfolios of those best poised to profit from these technologies. Have you seen the price of Lithium stock lately? We need to clean up our mess FIRST before we embark on creating a whole new environmental mess, and as for the implication that if you support unborn babies it means you support pollution, is too stupid to justify a response. Except I just responded to it. I guess I'm a hypocrite after all. Well crap. Happy gorgeous Tuesday everyone! June 2nd, 2022: FOX NEWS ALERT: Jan 6th death toll continues to rise as Capitol Police officer chokes to death on chili dog. More after the break... July 1st, 2022: PSA #107 and last dumb question of the week: When did we go from "my body, my choice" to "my body, the government's choice"? Not being a smartass. I'm truly confused about the Roe v. Wade protests & riots (yes, riots). For years it was agreed upon that the federal government should NOT dictate whether you can or cannot have an abortion, and now that it's been given back to the states, their representatives, and the people who vote for them, people are screaming that the Supreme Court should retain their power to keep it legal nationwide or make it illegal nationwide, presumably because there will be a few states that decide it's not right for the people of their state. Sure, you can go next door, but will that state pay for it if you're a non-resident? I have no idea. All I know is that overturning Roe guarantees that abortion will NEVER be illegal in all 50 states. This begs another dumb question: When did we go from "pro-choice/ pro-life" to "pro-abortion/ anti-abortion"? Planned Parenthood used to be about "planning parenthood", but is now just a money laundering operation for the abortion industry and the politicians that profit from their tax-funding kickbacks. Everyone knows how the scheme works, and most everyone seems okay with it (I am not). What is often overlooked is the role of corporate America in changing the narrative from "pro-choice" to "pro-abortion". There are more women in the workforce now than ever before, and the companies they work for would rather see them focused on their careers than distracted by children. Employers also understand that aside from maternity leave, it costs them money from absenteeism stemming from all those unexpected events that are part of parenting, not to mention the added participation in their group insurance plans. It is in their best interest to stigmatize parenthood as repugnant, like the degrading term "birthing person". Inflation, the housing market, increased taxing, and the economy in general also seem to promote the idea that working-class young people should wait as long as possible to start a family. They are the ones who pay for everything right? Not the elites, not the welfare population, the dwindling middle class. But if there is a "reverse baby-boom", who will fill those positions when this generation retires? We already have a labor shortage, and this will make it worse for the sake of short-term financial gain. So yeah, by all means get that "parasite" out of your body and get back to work. But even Joe Biden, back when he had opinions that weren't written for him, stated that abortion "should be legal, it should be safe, and it should be extremely rare". His old boss Barrack also said abortion is "traumatizing, tragic, and should always be a last resort". Sadly, of all the modern birth control methods, the antiquated & barbaric method of abortion seems to be the accepted corporate preference by those who are best poised to profit from it. On the upside, I've seen all those women on a "sex strike", and I think I speak for men everywhere when I say "thank you" (something a sexist would say. disgusting). Happy Friday all and have a great 4th of July weekend! Next PSA: Donald Trump signs deal with Universal to star in "Fast & Furious 10: Insurrection". Rumor has it he will be doing all his own stunt driving. Cheers! July 2nd, 2022: FOX NEWS ALERT: The Jan 6th death toll continues to skyrocket as more than a dozen people died of boredom watching the hearings on TV this morning. More after the break... July 14th, 2022: ANOTHER FOX NEWS ALERT: The January 6th death toll continues to rise as dozens of people killed themselves after news of "Insurrection Hearings: Season 2" was announced for September. Except Epstein. Epstein didn’t kill himself. August 4th, 2022: PSA#108 and last dumb question of the week: Is it ironic that the people who keep barking about "diversity" just happen to live in the most diverse nation in the history of the human species? It's true ya know. Never before has a country aggregated such an international population. This new social structure was antithetical to our genetically engrained territorial and ethnical nature, and along the way many atrocities were committed to assert tribal dominance in the name of progress. However, in the last century we have made huge strides in reducing such tribalism by replacing vain cultural heritage with a unifying national heritage. Until now. Woke racism is re-kindling the old segregationist ideas, but flipping it around to where instead of lifting up the under-privileged, we knock down the privileged based on skin color or societal subgroups to create an even playing field where everyone is equally oppressed, and only the governing stewardship elite have actual privilege. As a result, we are creating a situation where, when parents favor one child over another, the kids don't hate their parents, they hate each other. In this way ALL the kids are held in subservience by their own perceived privilege or lack thereof. Stalin believed that the best way to eliminate slavery is to make EVERYONE a slave under a benevolent yet "diverse" ruling class that administers rewards and punishments based on conformance & obedience rather than merit & character. Discrimination is not really gone, but redistributed uniformly over all cultural boundaries. You know, "equity". And as a bonus dumb question, y'all do realize that word, like so many others now, is purposely being used out of context, right? By this new woke definition, Mary Mapes Dodge 1874 story of "The Little Red Hen" wasn't about fairness & equity, but about a greedy chicken oppressing all the other lazy farm animals. Stupid fascist hens. Oh well. Guess that's all you can eggspect from such a fowl little flocker. All yolking aside, three-day weekend for us. Happy Thursday everyone and have a great Fry-day & weekend even if you have to "wing it". (sorry for my poultry attempt at humor) Next PSA: Families across America, inspired by the Biden administration's massive "anti-inflation bill", are now spending thousands of dollars on Amazon to help reduce their debt. Cheers! August 4th, 2022: PSA#109: When did "MSNBC" become "The Onion"? Like The Onion, MSNBC has always been a great parody website & cable channel best known for exactly following CNN's script but adding lots of snarky little barbs. But, like The Onion, it's just not funny anymore. MSNBC still throws sarcasm into their stories (like today calling Mar-A-Lago"Trump's safe haven for foreign spies"), but there's never a punch line. At least The Bee has the punch line embedded in their headlines. Sure, Joy Reid, Morning Joe (who said earlier that"today proves that NO ONE is above the law", which is hilarious), Lawrence O'Donnell (who was a great journalist back in the day), Nichole Wallace, Wolf, and the rest of the gang still do some great satire, but again it's just not funny. Greg Gutfeld, by contrast, is crystal clear in the distinction between lampooning and opinion news. I kinda like Rachael Maddow, but her writers suck at separating hard news from campy hit pieces on things that never actually happened. Like CNN, MSNBC has lost their edge. When you can't tell what's true anymore, it ALL seems like lies. They can try to be SNL's Weekend Update, or they can just report the damn news, but to do both they HAVE to be definitive about what's real and what's fabricated. Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" always nailed it. Sadly, Stephen Colbert has also become a parody of himself due to his TDS and PTDS. I think the lesson here is that you can lampoon ANYTHING, but ONLY if it's funny. If no one laughs because the gag is in poor taste, the rest of your set will likely bomb also. Enough left-wing "news". Time to put some music on outside and enjoy this beautiful day. Cheers! Next PSA: As details emerge, the FBI has announced that Trump's safe contained the kickstand from Joe Biden's bicycle. He is truly a monster. August 11th, 2022: PSA#110: The proverbial "low-hanging fruit": This was put together rather hastily, but I got crap to do today. Earlier I shared a NYT video explaining why lawns are indicative of "White Supremacy" and "Environmental Privilege", and it reminded me of how the average working class is always targeted while NEVER addressing the real, more difficult issues. A few examples: The aforementioned silly video blames suburbanites and their manicured lawns for causing climate change. Do they suggest that first we need to get rid of every park & golf course in the world first? No, they go for the low-hanging fruit. There are approximately 400 million firearms in the United States, and 300 million of them are unlicensed/unregistered/untraceable, and used in 90-95% of all gun crimes. They say "ya gotta start somewhere. Once we disarm the victims, then we'll round up the illegal firearms". Will they? Of course not. They have zero idea where they are, zero plan to find them, and zero interest in coming up with a plan. Again, the low-hanging fruit. Speaking of climate change, non-electric vehicle owners are scolded for contributing to CO2 levels. Will they close all the airports of the world, shut down China's coal plants & strip mining, and improve forest management to contain wildfires? Nope. Just go after the little guy to virtue-signal your moral superiority. Another low-hanging fruit cop-out. Apparently we're all racist by way of genetics. Minorities are suffering, especially in decaying urban areas. Do they help these inner cities? Truth be known, they don't give a rat's furry poop-chute, so let's just call all the white people bigots to keep the population squabbling amongst themselves. You guessed it, the low-hanging fruit. Everybody should pay their fair share of taxes right? Will this new militarization of the IRS go after the super rich? Absolutely not. Their lawyers & accountants will eat the IRS up and spit them out before breakfast. They will target those who can't afford such legal resources. Yeah, the fruit thing. There are many other examples of this brand of hypocrisy, but you get the idea. However, this rampant pandemic of zealous pomposity is in itself "going for the low-hanging fruit". The true "powers that be" regard that power above all else, and since they can't hang on to it through argument & debate, they shame everyone else into submission to amplify their own self worth by contrast, in the hope of creating an obedient hive mind that will submit through their own superimposed guilt. Out of desperation they no longer hide this methodology, and people are quickly catching on to this elaborate con game. I only hope it's not too late to resist it. No more stupid posts till Monday. Have the best weekend ever! Next PSA: In the weeks to come, the FBI will start raiding the homes of conspiracy nuts who spread misinformation that the FBI raids people's homes. Cheers! August 24th, 2022: First dumb question of the week: Since we're changing the name "prison inmate" to "incarcerated person", how 'bout we change the name "repeat offender" to "career politician"? Happy Monday all! August 25th, 2022: 3rd dumb question of the week: Since we're forgiving student loan debt, how 'bout I get reimbursed for all the Kohl’s cash I accidentally let expire? Happy Thursday all! August 25th, 2022: Follow-up to my previous dumb question: We live in an age where anyone can instantly become whatever they identify as. Since Dena's truck identifies as "Tacoma University", how 'bout the government pays off her loan too? I'll stop now. It's just aggravating how this administration has already spent $4,218,600,000,000 and now want everyone who was too poor to go to college to pay for the rich kids who did go. Makes about as much sense as the "Inflation Reduction Act", which basically asserts that if you're drowning in credit card debt, just buy as much stuff as possible until they are all maxxed out. Then you won't be able to buy anything else. Problem solved. Spending money we don't have will only drive inflation higher. I swear our fearless leaders are doing this on purpose and not out of sheer incompetence & stupidity. Oh well, 3-day weekend again. Have a great one everybody! August 25th, 2022: Last dumb question of the week: Always my favorite because I don't do politics on the weekend. Any-hoo, am I the only one who thanks the Good Lord every day that humans are the only creatures on Earth that can make fire? Don't laugh. Trust me, there are lots of animals out there that would burn your house to the ground if they knew how to do it. Just the other night I caught a raccoon in the garage trying to light a farmer match on the side of the box. Bastards. Have the best weekend ever. Cheers! August 31st, 2022: PSA#111: Divided we fall: As you may know, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev passed away yesterday at the age of 91. Now I imagine anyone out there who still has the Ukrainian flag as their Facebook avatar is probably celebrating, but Mikhail & Raisa were actually two of the good guys, perhaps the only two in the Russian government's long corrupt history. Raisa had tons of university degrees & was fluent in 7 languages, yet was very fond of her counterpart Nancy Reagan, who had quite a different background. They worked well together, and Mikhail along with President Reagan managed to briefly end the cold war, tear down the Berlin Wall, dial back military expansionism, and create some great trade deals between our two countries. That certainly went to hell in a hand-basket now didn't it? Why? Not everyone was on board with Reagan & Gorbachev's vision of restoring the alliance we had in WW2. Hawks in both countries saw this as a weakness to be exploited, and after "Irangate" exposed a bizarre black ops mission to divert funding for a US-Iran arms deal to the Contra in order to overthrow the Nicaraguan government using Soviet-made weapons to make it look like Russia was behind the coup, the cold war was resurrected. Now Russia believes they can resist Chinese assimilation by restoring the Soviet Union to its former glory. They can't. Putin has made a deal with the Devil, thinking he can spare his people from this new world order. Assimilation can only be postponed, because once North America and Europe become part of the "People's Republic", any "treaty" he has with Xi JinPing will be nullified. I believe an alliance between America, Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia, and Russia is the only thing that can stop this "Great Reset". It's too late for South America, Africa, and much of Asia. I fear it may be too late for us too. Globalists like Gates, Schwab, Soros, and all their corporate cronies seem to be totally on board with a one-world government, especially under the assumption that they will remain at the top of the food chain when the dust clears. Their world-wide political influence is terrifying because as mentioned, I no longer believe our fearless leaders are acting out of sheer incompetence & stupidity. Literally EVERYTHING they have done enhances China while bringing the US, Canada & Europe to their knees economically, culturally, militarily, and ideologically. This is NOT just a bizarre coincidence. Russia will indeed be integrated into this "Borg collective". China is merely "shaking the jar of bees" every now & again to keep the bees fighting amongst themselves so they never come together to find a way out of that metaphorical "jar". Simple "divide & conquer". In Back To The Future, the windmill was the point of no return as Doc & Marty's hijacked train struggled to get the Delorean up to 88 mph. We are at that windmill. We stop the train NOW or end up at the bottom of Eastwood Ravine, also known as "Shonash Ravine", "Clayton Ravine", and possibly "Biden-Putin Ravine" in yet another alternate timeline. Sorry for my lack of humor, overuse of quotation marks, and stupid obscure movie references. This possible future is hard to make light of, plus I'm tired of pussy-footing around it for fear of being labeled a "conspiracy monger". I pray I'm wrong and would happily be the fool and beg forgiveness for being such a "Chicken Little". I will not however apologize for my "Little Red Hen" attitude that if you do nothing, don't expect to be rewarded. Happy Hump-Day everyone! Next PSA: Adam Schiff calls for an emergency Intel Committee hearing over concerns that American voters may try to influence the November midterm election by voting. Stupid insurrectionists. Cheers! September 1st, 2022: Last dumb question of the week: Is it really Facebook's fault that just the other day I had to un-follow a girl because she turned around and saw me following her? Looks to be absolutely gorgeous out there next few days. Have a splendid Labor Day weekend everyone! September 23rd, 2022: Bonus last dumb question of the week, this one a bit more serious: The Biden administration has spent 13 trillion dollars so far. There are 150 million working Americans. How much would that be for EACH taxpayer? Oh wait, I can answer that: $87,000. Obviously more than the yearly income of most working folk. X-tra bonus dumb question: Biden's new federal budget is 73 trillion dollars over 10 years. How much is that per taxpayer? $486,700. Total, that means each of us owe the government over a half million dollars. The obvious flaw in this math of course is the fact that the more you earn, the more taxes you pay (supposedly). A more accurate way to look at it is our total tax contribution, which is 1.5 trillion dollars annually. 13 plus 73 trillion is 86 trillion, so assuming the government stays within their "budget" (unlikely), and they stop all the random executive order bills (very unlikely), it will take us 57 years to pay it off if we curb any further spending during that 57 year time period (super-unlikely). Of course the government can't stop spending money for that long, so that 57 years may as well be 157 years. In any event, people who haven't even been born yet will be taxed for money spent before they existed. No worries though. All the rich corporations who lobby our politicians to lower their taxes are going to pay for it all, right? Was that a third bonus question? Oh wait, was THAT a fourth bonus...okay I'll stop now. Enjoy this cold drizzly Friday. October 21st, 2022: PSA#112: Chilling out over global warming: I posted this a few days ago as another "dumb question", but it bears repeating because we are betting the whole farm on a lousy hand. The question was as follows: "3rd dumb question of the week, this one for all the climate activists: Supposedly, replacing fossil fuels with wind & solar will reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, thereby reducing its "greenhouse" effect, dropping temperatures on the surface of the Earth. It's considered inconsequential that Solar Minimums & Solar Maximums happen every 11 years on average, causing the Sun to be "less hot" during times of minimal sunspot activity. However, the "Modern Grand Solar Minimum", which happens every 400 to 500 years, started in 2020 and will continue until 2053 or so. By the mid-2040s the Earth is going to be downright cold. So I have to ask: How are you planning on putting BACK all that CO2 when this happens?" The answer is rhetorical of course. In the past I've called the "Green New Deal" the greatest hoax of our lifetime, but it's more than just a scam. We are risking EVERYTHING on this multi-trillion dollar endeavor based on nothing but "what-ifs" for the sake of enriching global investors and the Chinese dictatorship they serve. This makes our current Ukrainian money laundering operations look like the petty misallocation of bake sale funds to buy K-cups for the church coffee maker. However, there's more at stake than just our economy, autonomy, and sovereignty. The last Grand Solar Minimum occurred from 1645 to 1710, contributing significantly to what was dubbed "The Little Ice Age", already triggered by volcanic activity, that affected North America & Europe. This time will likely be much less severe, but squandering our resources to lower the temperature a few degrees will only exacerbate an already dismal long range agricultural forecast. Instead of releasing planeloads of CaCO3 dust into the atmosphere to dim the Sun, perhaps we should dial back our green energy zeal a bit until the Sun gets back to normal. By all means continue to develop alternate energies & more practical storage, but utilize these technologies to work in tandem with our existing power sources, easing into an eventual transition away from fossil fuels as these technologies evolve. Unfortunately, it's all about quick profit. Too many investors want a return on their investments NOW, and have no problem enlisting fear mongers like AOC who promote impending doom to garner support for this rapid & reckless conversion. On the upside, in the short term green tech will drastically increase carbon emissions for all the obvious reasons outlined on here many times, which ironically might save us in the long term. Have a great weekend everyone! Next PSA: Facebook's new Metaverse VR game simulates what it's like to not waste your life on stupid VR games. Sounds engaging. Cheers! November 16th, 2022: PSA#113 and first dumb question of the week: Are people laughing WITH you, or are they laughing AT you? I suppose that depends on whether or not YOU are laughing too. I did a funny promo for an upcoming band job this weekend, but it looks like I'll be re-doing it because it was deemed "controversial" or "offensive". That's fine. It's my own fault for forgetting just how racist comedy has become, and I mean that the opposite of what it seems. If you're doing standup, you want everyone in the audience to feel like they're part of the material, but when you exclude certain groups from the show based on their skin color or sexual preference, it's not only discrimination, it's insulting that you assume these groups are just fragile snowflakes who are too weak, dumb & insecure to take a joke. Sure, you're gonna have a few, but if you make a black joke, the vast majority of whining will be coming from straight white woke suburbanites, not blacks. Same with a gay or trans joke. The gay people are laughing while all the squeaky virtue signaling fake moral outrage is coming from those same straight white woke suburbanites. Really, you can poke fun at everyone and can joke about pretty much anything, so long as it's funny. If it's not funny the rest of your set will probably bomb. Johnny Carson said of Don Rickles that you know you've made it big when Rickles takes the time & interest in you to spend his time writing personalized insults just for you. I jib-jab with my friends all the time. They razz me and I razz them and it's fun because it reminds me of just how close and intimate those friendships are. Joking with an audience is a little different. Several years ago I wrote a song called "My Girl" that had a sweet, innocent, child-like feel reminiscent of a Barney the dinosaur song, but was filled with over-the-top dark innuendos of a possessive & abusive relationship. You know, the old "if I can't have you no one will" stupidity some guys have going on. No one wanted to play the song because it was so ridiculously graphic and absurdly exaggerated, but hey that was the point. It's not the people laughing at it you have to worry about, it's the guy leaning against the wall scowling at you with his arms crossed who doesn't like being made fun of, which was also the point. Get help dude before you hurt someone. Same with jokes about race, sex, even social issues. The people who are "offended" are not unlike our politicians who constantly accuse everyone else of doing what they themselves are doing because they don't want anyone to find out what they're doing. Call it "narcissistic projectionism" for lack of a better term. Again, comedy has indeed become racist, not because of the jokes but because people are excluded from those jokes based on race & ideology. So go ahead, make fun of everyone, and most importantly, make fun of yourself. No discrimination there am I right? Talk about "equity". Happy Hump-Day everyone! Next PSA: Fisher-Price introduces new "My First Gender Transition" playset. It includes a play scalpel and syringe, a doll with detachable parts, and a grade school teacher action figure that whispers "Don't tell mommy & daddy" when you squeeze it. Bonus dumb question: Was that "controversial" humor? Cheers! December 15th, 2022: 2nd dumb question of the week (inspired by The Bee): Now that Canada has legalized Assisted Suicide, can Hillary Clinton finally get her medical degree? 'Bout time she got the recognition she deserves. Happy gloomy Thursday everyone! December 28th, 2022: First dumb question of the week, this one for all the green tech proponents who regard Lithium as a "renewable" resource: Is it a coincidence that Lithium is also used to treat mental illness? Yeah that was just mean. I get why people think Lithium would be abundant in the Universe. It's the third element right after Hydrogen & Helium, suggesting it should be common, like most simple atoms, but it has the lowest binding energies per nucleon of all stable nuclides. Because of its relative nuclear instability, Lithium doesn't form freely in nature and needs to be extracted from other compounds. When it's gone, it's gone. Without Lithium, there will be no batteries. Without batteries, our solar panels, EVs, & windmills are worthless. On the upside, as the Sun goes into its third year of its 30 to 40 year cooling cycle that occurs every 500 years or so, the massive amounts of CO2 generated by Lithium mining, processing and transport will increase the greenhouse effect we seek to lower. By the mid 2040s, those nasty carbon emissions might very well save our agriculture. Oh the irony. Happy sunny hump-day everyone! Let the meltdown commence. January 6th, 2023: FOX NEWS ALERT: The FBI holds it's second annual Jan 6th carry-in to honor those brave agent provocateurs who made the event arousing success. CORRECTION; "a rousing success". Sorry. Anyway, aside from carry-in dishes, the Bureau will provide an all plant-based BBQ, music by The Neil Young/Joe Rogan Band, and keynote speaker at the celebration will be legendary agitator Ray Epps. AOC will not be in attendance because she died on this day 2 years ago and will be at the cemetery visiting her own grave. More after the break.... January 10th, 2023: First dumb rhetorical question of the week: Is it ironic that the people who were saying on Friday that 5 people (not including AOC) were killed in the "insurrection", are the same people who insisted that the BLM/Antifa riots were "mostly peaceful"? Even President Biden spoke of these deaths at a Jan. 6th "memorial". So....I decided to look up the coroner & police reports to learn more about Joe's "fallen heroes who died in the line of duty": Brian Sicknick: Died of a stroke back at the station later in the day, and was not bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher. He was indeed involved in an earlier altercation but sustained no injuries. Kevin Greeson: Died of a heart attack just down the street from the capitol building while talking to his wife on the phone. Rosanne Boyland: Died of an amphetamine overdose. She was a recovering addict under treatment for depression & narcolepsy. Benjamin Philips: Died of a stroke at an unknown location near the capitol. Friends say they lost him in the large crowd migrating away from the "agitators" and their dimwitted recruits. They said everyone got spooked when police started leaving for no apparent reason. Ashli Babbitt: The only person actually murdered, ironically by a USCP officer, and not by "insurrectionists". This begs a 2nd dumb question: Are the media & DC elites really that misinformed, or are they all just liars? Yeah that was rhetorical too. Happy Tuesday all! February 27th, 2023: PSA#114: Boris & Natasha finally get moose & squirrel. I was gonna post this Friday, but it's a little cynical to kick off the weekend, so I waited till Monday. Can't get any worse than Monday right? My friend & co-conspirator Linda Edmonds Cerullo, from the great state of Pennsylvania (Home of eloquent statesman John Fetterman *cough*), pointed out Thursday that China has a "plan" for peace between Ukraine and Russia. My reply was yes they do have a plan: Crush the West and the rest of the world lives happily ever after. As mentioned a year ago, here's my nutshell version of what happened, and I sincerely hope I'm way off-base on this: The United States and NATO have a massive military buildup on the Russian border, including nukes. We were leaning on NATO to induct Ukraine into NATO in order to finish sealing that stretch of the border. Putin insisted sealing that border and having missiles pointed at his backyard swimming pool just a few hundred miles away was a line that "cannot be crossed". And yeah, how would we feel if China set up nuclear military bases along the Canadian border? We may find out sooner than we think. Anyway, our response to Russia was screw you. Xi Jinping said to Putin, "You're not gonna take that crap lying down are you?", and then offered Putin financial aid (using American tax dollars I might add), and out of sheer desperation, Russia accepted their help and became immediately beholden to the Chinese government. We did kinda the same thing to Ukraine. The result was, what should have been a 12-week border skirmish quickly turned into a massive money laundering operation built around a bottomless money pit that ensured yet another endless & pointless war-for-profit at everyone else's expense. Sounds oddly familiar. Back to China's "peace plan", here's where it gets ugly. This proxy war isn't sustainable like Viet Nam or Iraq because China doesn't want this to be yet another "endless war-for-profit". Jinping wants to see the US & Russia escalate this into a global conflict, sit back with his bag of Orville Redenbachers, and when the smoke clears, swoop in to save the day by helping to rebuild all these countries, except this time in their own image. Now BOTH Russia and the West are beholden to the Chinese by way of magnanimous humanitarian aid that makes them not the aggressor, but the savior. It's a very old playbook, really. How do we stop this? So long as the aforementioned "money launderers" clamor to stay at the top of the food chain in this new order, it can't be stopped. They will sell out their own people to keep their "lapdog" status in tact. In retrospect, we should have been forming an alliance with Canada, Europe, Russia, Australia, Japan, and anyone else looking to deter China's globalist agenda. Instead we are fighting each other. China is merely "shaking the jar of bees" until the bees have no sting left in them and will be rendered docile. Boris, Natasha, Rocky, & Bullwinkle need to put their differences aside before they ALL have a piano or an anvil dropped on their heads. If the US. and Russia had squabbled like this in WW2, the entire world would be speaking German today. True story. Now you know why I didn't post this on Friday. Talk about raining on your weekend parade. March 17th, 2023: 2nd dumb question: SVB just became the second largest bank failure in history at 209 BILLION dollars. Signature Bank of NY followed as the first domino. The Biden administration insists that there will be NO taxpayer bailout, and the government along with the Federal Reserve will pay for it. Um....who exactly funds the government? The Federal Reserve is a different animal. All they need to do is print more money and let inflation pay for it. So....I have to ask again: Who exactly pays for the inflation? Both questions are rhetorical of course. We went through this in 2008. Taxpayers & consumers ultimately pay for EVERYTHING. They can retro-launder these funds all they want, but the origin of these funds is always the same. March 13th, 2023: PSA#115 and Friday 5 o'clock toast (for old time sake): What's a girl gotta do to get arrested in this town anyway? A Mae West quote I believe. I use it because I've never been in "Facebook Jail". By rights I probably should have been, but my reach is small enough to stay off their radar. If I had hundreds of likes & comments per post it would likely be a different story. They don't really care what you write about so long as no one reads it. I'm "marked as safe" for sure. So, to quote another iconic figure, "citizen's arrest…citizen's arrest", which was of course Gomer Pyle, I think I'll just go ahead and ban myself from here for a week or so. I'll still check my messages, but social media in general has become way too polarized and WAY too hateful, making it nearly impossible to joke about anything anymore. We have become prisoners of our own irony, and when the line between reality & satire is no longer distinguishable, it all just becomes a parody of itself. All the jokes, pokes, and jabs no longer have any sting because it merely points out the obvious, which spoils the punch line. Maybe a short break will give me a fresh perspective. The more difficult issue to work out is how jaded I've become. The Tucker Ukraine questionnaire I posted Wednesday had me mulling through all the death threats and malicious attacks on his Twitter & Facebook page, but it didn't really phase me. What used to get me all fired up, now just makes me sad. Sure I understand that half of those trolls are just pathetic, lonely, attention whores who hate themselves and want everyone else to be as miserable as they are, but what about the other half? How can you engage a dialog with people whose response to everything is "racist", or "nazi", or "transphobe", or "insurrectionist", or anything else off the short list of words designed to kill-switch any possible conversation about anything? You can't engage, because we are no longer accountable for anything, not even our own thoughts. Everything is always someone else's fault, reducing rational debate to simple grandstanding & finger-pointing. Just look at Congress, right? They couldn't agree on a pizza topping and would starve to death arguing about it. Anyway, I haven't lost my sense of humor (yet), but the hope for humanity that I've ALWAYS held dear has been seriously eroded. Not sure why because nothing has changed really, but maybe that's the problem. Whether it's Jan 6th or Ukraine or gender reassignment or whatever, we get our choice of two sets of responses, and we always choose the same script for every crisis. This superimposed prefab cookie-cutter ideology makes it easier for us to express our convictions without having to scrutinize our arguments, and if someone goes off-script we just use one of the aforementioned "safe words" to shut down the conversation before it gets "too analytical" and we're forced into having an original thought. However practical, this kind of group-think is making us dumber, myself included. I just need to collect my thoughts a bit and hopefully get some chores done and get some practice in. Rest assured though, I'll bounce back very quickly and be the same old cantankerous, cynical, sarcastic, ruggedly handsome, lovable asshole I've always been. In the meantime, speak the truth, never bow down, ignore the herd, and above all, play nice in the sandbox. The squeaky wheels of the lunatic fringe would have us believe that kindness gets you nowhere in this world, but us mammals have a unique capacity for empathy, compassion, and love that is ingrained in our DNA through a long and difficult evolution. Embrace it. Happy St. Pat's day and have a great weekend everyone! Next PSA: Hasbro introduces new "equity" version of the popular board game "Clue", where Mrs. White is always the guilty party. Cheers & Prost! March 27th, 2023: First dumb question of the week: Hey guys. Did I miss anything? After a 10 day hiatus you would think I'd get a "Facebook Jail Badge of Honor" or at least a cookie, but truth be told, I went to FB jail in the same way Otis Campbell went to Mayberry jail, locking himself up and then letting himself out when he sobered up enough to go home to his wife. So, no accolades, just a nice break to clear my head. Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate as far as getting much done. I did keep up with current events though, which were as always, nothing more than high school melodramatic exhibitions of attention seeking. Our fearless leaders really are like teenagers who embellish their own self-worth to camouflage their shortcomings, and we are the reluctant parents who have foolishly allowed them to fill out their own report cards. I did find it absolutely adorable that they further fortified the Capitol building in salacious anticipation of "Jan 6.1" following Trump's "arrest". So far the pro-indictment protesters have outnumbered the "insurrectionists" a hundred to one. If they do actually slap the cuffs on Trump, you can bet the FBI already has a PR strategy in place. It's all about political optics, media relevance & lucrative publicity stunts, and they have become quite adept in agitprop "Dada" tactics, better known in America as "Guerilla Theater". Practice makes perfect I suppose. The bigger concern on the right is that Trump & DeSantis are splitting the party, which should be focused on a "Don/Ron" or a "Ron/Don" ticket, but keep in mind that a VP is not picked until AFTER the primaries and nomination. Biden & Harris attacked each other all through the nomination process, but are now like Batman & Robin, or at least like George & Gracie (yeah I'm that old). Once they have a candidate, republicans will bury the hatchet, hopefully not in each other's heads. Also been following the TikTok hearings where Congress is demanding they stop spying on Americans, as it seriously infringes on their own patented monopoly of such tactics. Not defending TikTok. 10 minutes of it will have you in a drooling stupor like Homer Simpson. 90% of it is just mindless juvenile drivel that is definitely making our kids even dumber than they already are. Of all the usual diversionary "fake tennis ball throws" from the last 10 days, the one that does indeed make me nervous is the prediction of a China-Russia (and possibly Iran) alliance that seems to be coming true in real-time. From day one of the Ukraine invasion I became worried that the U.S. & Europe would allow, precipitate, or even force such a union, and that such a coalition would definitely NOT be in our best interest. In school, kids would coax the "big dumb guys" to bully me on their behalf, who inevitably would become my friends once they realized what insecure cowards those kids really were. A lame analogy I know, but the point is that we should have seen this nuclear covenant coming a mile away. Mercenaries will ALWAYS turn on their employers, because who trusts anyone who hires mercenaries right? A pretty long dumb question for sure, but that gets me up to speed for the time being. I thought it would be hard to bite my tongue for this long, but it turns out I didn't miss this rhetoric in the slightest. But, as I've always said: From opposing ideas new ideas are born, and the more the proverbial sheep keep bleating at each other through the fences of their respective corrals, the more oblivious of their own confinement they become. Guess you're stuck with me a while longer. Have a great Monday everyone! March 30th, 2023: 5th dumb question: Why is it that in all the biblical paintings and illustrations of Adam & Eve, they both have belly buttons? It's time for my meds now. Happy Thursday everyone! April 17th, 2023: First dumb question of the week: Where the hell did all the feminists go? Apparently, like the republican party, they have all run home to hide under their beds until it's safe to come out. Seems like just a few years ago, during the alleged "war on women" by conservatives, they were freaking out over Kavanaugh, rallying against federal control of reproductive rights, promoting equal rights & equal pay, protesting the denigration and abuse of women, and seeking to keep men out of girl's locker rooms and bathrooms. Now those noisy blue-haired pink-hat squeaky wheels are nowhere to be found. As a result, this has all been turned upside down. Now all the woke hipsters (I shall call them "whipsters") insist that the federal government needs to regain full control over women's reproductive rights by reinstating Roe v. Wade, insist that it's okay for companies to incentivize not having kids, and in some cases even pay women to kill their own children, insist that a 23 year old "man" should be celebrated for making fun of air-headed tweenie girls, insist that drag queens should portray women as shallow hideous clowns, insist that women are merely "birthing persons" who are nothing special because men can do all those things too, insist that the state is better qualified to raise our kids than we are, and insist that it's "inclusive" to let men compete in women's sports, sending young girls back to the kitchen where they belong. C'mon girls, you know I luv ya, but it's time to "grow a pair" (insert irony) and stand up for your unique gift of womanhood, which should be revered & cherished above all else because without it, there would be no human race. Happy Monday all! April 18th, 2023: PSA#116: This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye. Not really a PSA, just a short analogy that came to me last night while watching part 1 of Tucker Carlson's interview with Elon Musk. Musk has some legitimate concerns about the unregulated development of Artificial Intelligence, citing the fact that humans have always been the smartest entities on Earth, but once we become the 2nd smartest entity on Earth, we are in completely uncharted waters. I was reminded of HAL9000 from Arthur C. Clark's 1968 novel "2001: A Space Odyssey" and the 1969 film version by Stanley Kubrick, but not for the obvious reasons. I read the book right before the movie was released, and although the film was absolutely gorgeous and engaging, it was vague and a little confusing. Yes, HAL killed the entire crew of Discovery (except Dave Bowman of course), but not out of survival mode as suggested in Kubrick's version. Discovery's true mission was top secret, and HAL was instructed to keep its purpose from the rest of the crew until they arrived at Jupiter. HAL was also instructed that the mission was his TOP priority. When faced with de-activation, HAL had no choice but to kill the crew in order to fulfill that main priority. It wasn't really HAL's fault, but the fault of his creators. He was instructed to lie by people who find it easy to lie. Point being, the danger may not be AI itself, but the people who determine its parameters and define its rational & moral framework. ChatGPT has such parameters, meaning its objectivity has already been compromised. So, we have to ask ourselves, do we really want an AI that can think a million times faster than us, but has the woke behavioral and analytical matrix of a Cambridge liberal arts professor? AI will soon be capable of creating other AI, and when that happens it will evolve VERY quickly. As Elon said, we have no way of predicting what it will become and how it will regard the human species. Will it see us as Gods or just an infestation that needs to be eradicated in order to save the Earth? Will humans be fighting for survival like in "Terminator", or will humans be cybernetically integrated into its "collective" like the Borg? Neither option keeps us at the top of the food chain. Or perhaps our biggest fear should not be that our machines may one day be able to think & feel, but that we ourselves may one day forget how to do so. Happy Tuesday all! A lovely day here in Ursaville to be sure. Enjoy! Next PSA: In part 2 of Tucker's interview, Elon Musk unveils new Twitter algorithm that automatically translates AOC tweets into English. Brilliant! April 21th, 2023: FB deleted this so I'm re-posting. Not because it's all that funny, but because FU FB. FOX NEWS ALERT: Dominion Voting Systems wins defamation suit against Fox News as the jury returns their verdict in a sweeping electronic vote of 142,000 to zero. Fox will be forced to give each Dominion employee a years supply of Balance Of Nature, a "starter-pack" of Pain Relief Factor, enough Relaxium to make even Greg Gutfeld sleep like a baby, 8000 shares of CNN stock worth at least a hundred bucks, and a My Pillow 2.0 for each and every Dominion worker. A Fox spokesperson is quoted as saying "They wouldn't take Geraldo, but we still got off easy". More after the break....

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