A Wordy Post About Stuff

One problem with writing a post everyday is finding themes. In that regard I admire Daniel Greenfield who writes for his blog called Sultan of Knish. He posts several times a week and each time it is an academic essay on some aspect of politics or world affairs. His posts are between 1200 and 3200 words each time. On the other hand, when I am in good form I will post about three times a week and average about 600 words. Lately, my posts are about four times a month, and I am having difficulty thinking of stuff to write about.

I wouldn’t be surprised if someone labels me racist again, because when Obama was president he did so many things I disagreed with that I couldn’t stop writing negatively about him. When Trump was president, I didn’t want to fan the fires of those who were against him because the press didn’t need any help from me. Biden on the other hand hasn’t done anything I like, and I believe he is destroying the country. Biden is making Obama look like an amateur when it comes to stupid policies and stupid governance. I don’t want to waste my time repeating what the daily news is already doing. Besides sleepy Joe is an old timer like me, and I won’t pick on someone who can’t help himself because his brain has stopped functioning. There is nothing sadder in life than watching a person who was a fireball while younger, and who has lost it to Alzheimer’s. I saw what happened with my wife, and it is truly saddening that so many people end their time on earth by slowly losing their memory to the point where they forget how to breath.

One memory invoked by Sleepy Joe is the era of Jimmy Carter when inflation kept rising and the Federal Reserve couldn’t do anything but raise interest rates to 16%. It was a great time for people with cash who could buy Certificates of Deposit earning a 16% return for a five year period. They advanced the size of their savings dramatically. The high interest rate eventually worked, and the economy adjusted so the rates began to drop, and about the time the 16% CD’s matured the rates were back to a paltry 3%. So for anyone looking at how long this pain will last history says it will be at least five years after the current rates rise to 16%.

For the past twelve years we have enjoyed an economy that was operating on free money. Loans were down to the low 3.0% range and that allowed many people to buy the house of their dreams. Those who had cash in the bank were sadly only making 0.1 % on their savings. Most people invested in stocks to make decent money. My retirement has been happy because of the earnings I have received, but I’m not so sure I will be happy moving forward as the economy begins to falter. My advisor continues to admonish me to look at the long run, and not the short term. Excuse me, but just how much longer do I have? Ten minutes, ten days, ten months, ten years? I worry that my paltry portfolio will not be strong enough to keep me going for the duration.

Last week I went into a McAllister’s deli for a sandwich($20 for a cup of soup and a six inch sandwich), and I swear the lady who took my order was older than me. I had a vision of me behind the counter making sandwiches, and that is not appealing. I’d rather spend my time standing in the middle of busy intersection dodging traffic with a bucket in my shaky hand collecting money for my Lions club.

In the good old days everyone was a farmer who worked until he died. It was only after the industrial revolution, and the Great Depression that people began looking at work as a forty-five year duration. Pensions, vacation, and medical insurance all became perks for workers. These benefits were being offered by companies desperate for help. With Trump’s economy we saw a huge shortage of help, but I didn’t see anyone offering huge new benefits to lure workers to their factories. About the most extreme benefit I saw was the work from home model which came because of Covid. Let’s hope things get better sooner than later.

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A Debate or a Fumble

Writing is a chore. It was fun at one time, but now I consider it work. I long for the day I wrote my opinion pieces lambasting Obama for his socialist ways. Then it was fun, exposing his transformative ideas stolen from the communist manifesto. I admit he was Mr. Smooth in his delivery and his ability to put people to sleep with his melodic big-word speeches that sounded important but were all loaded with bullshit. It is not the same with Joe Biden. His brand of mumbling through speeches doesn’t appeal to me at all. Besides, I grew up in Chicago, the home of gangsters, and he is definitely one of them. The gangsters are evil, and so is Joe.

In Chicago, A Political Dynasty Nears Its End : NPR

How this guy survived in the Senate for so many years is baffling. How he was ever chosen to be the VP candidate by Obama was equally baffling, except Obama is a crook too, and crooks of a feather must stick together. The biggest mystery to me is how he was ever elected to become president. I know he got more votes than Trump. That’s how. My boyhood was spent reading headlines about the “Machine” politics of Chicago’s Richard Daley. It wasn’t uncommon to have votes coming in very late from wards, which always seemed to lose a bunch of ballots and then mysteriously find them as the count proceeded. The system has been operating this way for as long as I can remember, but no one ever does anything about it. Except for Donald Trump, who finally questioned the veracity of the lost ballots being brought forth in the middle of the night from places no one ever knew existed, did anyone try to end the mystery of how they went missing and how they were found?

The audacity of the man, who is he to have challenged the process so carefully designed and developed over the years to bring home winners? The only way it seemed to beat this process was to be voted in by such an enormous landslide of votes that even the least savvy among us would understand it as a win.

Modern politics is an extravagant stage show by political actors to convince us that their process is fair and democratic. I turned on regular TV last night to watch the Republicans, who all want to become a better president and bring the system down. I’ve been watching debates since Kennedy and Nixon, and this one was the worst excuse for a debate ever. The moderators, three of them, never controlled the show. They explained how they would conduct the show, and then the free-for-all began. In most civil debates, the debaters will take sides and attack or defend the subject. This forum was composed of several candidates, and each was given a chance to answer a question posed by one of the three moderators. The candidate was given time to answer.
Before the debater could answer, the entire stage jumped into the fray simultaneously, attacking him and posing new questions. It reminded me of how when in a football game, a player fumbles the ball. In his attempt to recover, both teams attack him, pushing, shoving, grabbing, digging, and trying to steal the ball to take possession. In a ball game, the referee continues to blow the whistle and summons his co-workers to assist him in determining who really has the ball. The rules dictate that the ref has the final say in the game. It didn’t work that way in the debate. The seven debaters were all speaking rapidly to get their points in. They all shouted to be heard over all the others with the net effect that no one got anything, much less a point, to the audience.

Ozark season 4 part 2 theory: Ruth Langmore killed by newcomer | TV & Radio | Showbiz & TV | Express.co.uk

I watched the debate for ten minutes before I switched to Netflix to watch the final episode of Ozark, which is about Mexican drug cartels controlling US Citizens by threatening them with death. The bullet always seemed to settle arguments and disputes. Perhaps we should require that the moderators be armed to help settle disputes and conduct a civilized debate.

Surrogate President?

Here is my advice to you. Pull your knee high rubber boots on, and get your muck rake ready. It seems our president in name only (PINO) has hired Actor Tom Hanks to deliver a pseudo the State of the Union speech. I will not watch Tom, nor will I watch Joe if he has the nerve to deliver such a speech. I have reached the point where I am asking my friends who they would rather have as president: Joe Biden or Kamala Harris? There is only silence. Okay, how about Joe Biden or Barack Obama? There is even more silence. Finally, I ask how about Joe Biden or Hillary? At that point I am ready to duck a punch.

No one will watch any more speeches delivered by Joe but perhaps they will watch his surrogate Tom, especially if the speech is delivered as a short commercial narration written by the Democratic National Committee explaining how much better the country is under Joe’s leadership. The stints will appear as commercials on major news networks. How could we not watch when we are really awaiting the weather forecast, or a sports score, and Tom Hanks appears to tell us how wonderful a president Joe is.

It’ll be good to hear how Joe has fulfilled his campaign promise to defeat COVID, or how he will lower gas prices, reduce run away inflation, and stop the flow of illegal immigration at the border, and turn these everyday human hardships into government acts of mercy propagated to save the world by preventing Antarctica from melting, and drowning us all.

Trial By Television

I didn’t watch the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, but I did read a few headlines about it and of course now I am in overload listening to and reading headlines about this so called unfair trial. The only reason it was unfair is because the people who on the spot proclaimed this young man guilty wanted to see him hang. By their demonstrations they telegraph a message to America that they do not believe our system of justice works. They do not believe the jury was being fair, because they are all racist. I don’t even know if any of the people that were killed in the protest that caused this ruckus were of color. The people protesting don’t believe that this system based on a jury of your peers works. Neither do they believe that the jury must make their decision on the basis of two things, the law, and the evidence presented. The jury cannot make a decision based on a video shown on NBC news or CNN, they can’t make their decision based on news reports published in news papers. They must adhere to that which is presented by lawyers to the jury during the trial, and that the lawyers must adhere to very strict rules in how they can present their case. The judge is there as a referee to make sure every one plays by the rules.

Our unifying president who swore upon his mother’s grave to bring unity to the country has not moved one millimeter towards unifying the country. Instead he prefers to add fuel to the fire. At another time and with another unifying president I remember an incident when a white policeman was ridiculed by President Obama because he did his job and challenged a black college professor that the cop caught breaking into a house. It turned out to be the professor’s home and he had locked himself out. In a move to unify the country Obama reacted by making an insulting comment about the white cops racist action. Eventually, all the facts came out, and we learned that the cop did not know it was the man’s house, the cop did not know the man he caught was a college professor, the cop knew only that he was called to check out a break in. The newspapers had a field day crucifying the policeman and covering for Obama’s too quick reactionary response. The whole thing was papered over by the cop sitting down with Obama over a beer, but only after the news media went over board decrying that America is a racist country.

As long as there are many races of different colors racism will be an issue. It would be nice if we could as a country have a do-over on the matter of slavery. It might be a little bit easier. As it is, leveling out the race issue will take at least two more centuries.

When You Are Rich You Can Squander

@gunnymacg

Border wall material sitting unused #borderwall

♬ original sound – GunnyMacG

The bottom video is the one the title refers to.