My favorite is the Amish Powerball. I just paid $8.00 for a dozen eggs.
Filed under: economy, Government, Humor | Tagged: Amish, Bird Flu, Inflation | 2 Comments »
I Pray I Am Wrong
Posted on 04/10/2024 by Grumpa Joe
So many pundits give us their reasons for why Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are ahead of each other. My personal feelings will be revealed later. This week, I watched the Vice Presidential debate and saw the polished young lawyer JD Vance overcome the moderators’ attempts to rattle him as Vance destroyed his opponent Walz with finesse and pure logic. The days following were loaded with excitement by the right-wingers who were anti-Kamala. The right wingers unanimously proclaimed that the totally unreal Kamala had lost points in the debate. Pundit after pundit proclaim her reluctance to engage with the public and her in ability to effect any argument that is not pre-written and pre-memorized. Her inability to engage spontaneously and extemporaneously will be her downfall.
I am skeptical about the whole spectacle. Even though she is a moron, that she has lost her debates, that she doesn’t engage with the press, and she speaks words that seem to be incoherently put together, she will win this election. There is only one way Donald Trump can win. He must win by a landslide so great that the clever democrats cannot sneak enough illegally garnered votes to overcome the numbers, and they cannot themselves deny that they lost.
Why do I feel this way? It is simple. Kamala Harris is a feminine copy of Obama. They have too many things like each other not to win. I watch interviews of the man on the street asking questions of people about Kamala, and their responses are senseless. They like her smile, they like the way she talks with her hands, they like the way she speaks. . . . Most of the respondents are young, very young. They see her as a needed change in leadership. They fail to recognize, however that she shows no signs of leadership what so ever.
The latest news bit I watched was Kamala addressing people affected by the hurricane. They watched their houses wash down a flooded river, their possessions gone with them, and their vehicles smashed and piled into trees and posts. They have nothing left: no clothes, no housing, no food, no water, no help from Uncle, and Kamala so powerfully proclaims that the Federal Government will give them each $750. “You heartless bitch” is all I could say to myself. If you had leadership skill the size of a mustard seed, you would have said “I will go to Congress and beg for money to help you rebuild.”
Even after this stupid disastrous $750 dollar slap in the face she will win. All I can say is that I pray I am wrong, because if she does win we will all regret it. All I will have left is to say “I told you so,” as I watch inflation rise, and my retirement fund shrinks daily because of the money the democrats will spend on stupid things.
Filed under: Biography, economy, politics | Tagged: Election, Inflation, Kamala | 3 Comments »
Eating Cats and Dogs
Posted on 13/09/2024 by Grumpa Joe
For whatever reason, I awoke at 5:00 a.m. today and couldn’t fall back to sleep. Usually, I’ll visit the toilet and return to a deep slumber for another three hours. Today, I could not, but right now, I think I could. Instead, I’m trying to write a post that might make some sense.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/voters-react-harris-trump-presidential-005217525.html?fr=yhssrp_catchall
It seems that the Trump-Harris debate has turned into a draw for us old people and a giant win for Kamala if you are too young to vote. To me, she never really answered any questions. The easiest one she avoided like it was the plague. The very first question: Are you better off today than you were four years ago? Evidently, if you are as rich as she is, it doesn’t matter that a run-of-the-mill small house costs over a half million dollars, or that a loaf of bread is over five dollars, or that eggs are 4.79 a dozen. Most voting age people already own homes and like me and I won’t be buying one soon, so let them cost a million dollars, I don’t care. My next home will most likely be a nursing home. What I do care about is the price of things like food, and gas. They are the only things I am buying these days. My fixed income however doesn’t rise along with the prices so I am falling behind quickly. It won’t be long before I’m using credit cards to survive. Her policies, at least the few she admits to, will all make inflation rise even higher, and that will put a huge dent into a senior’s ability to enjoy life.
I felt that Trump was holding back and as a result he seemed to lack vigor. His message is not new. We have heard it so often at his rallies that it seemed stale. I would liked him to have attacked her with some nasty salvos on her desire to communize the country. I’m sure his handlers threatened him with death if he left his game plan and began ad libbing amusing cheap shots at Kamala. Somehow he has to get her away from her sob-story-life and bring her down to earth. If she isn’t in tears at the next debate from his misogynist slurs I will be disappointed.
I’d like to know how they would do if they debated the way Lincoln and Douglas did. They spent hours at each other’s throats. She would turn her arguments into word salads. A better match would be putting JD Vance against Kamala. His command of language and argument is superior to hers and even Trump’s. I believe JD would stick the dagger into her chest so smoothly that she wouldn’t even know she was being slain.
What Kamala needs is some experience with real work. As she said, she has always worked for the people, implying that in her role as a lawyer and prosecutor, she was on our side. When I say work, I mean as a waitress or a clerk in a corporation where a boss looks over your shoulder expecting you to perform. Or maybe she should take a spin as a nurse in the ER where she would have to think on her feet and perform miracles quickly. Based on her performance as the border czar she has not shown any ability to solve problems but she does know how to create them. By expanding the populations of small towns she has literally forced people into taking desperate measures to find food. Being resourceful, hungry people will look upon household pets as a protein source, and there are reports they have already eaten cats and dogs. There are countries in the far east that offer cats, dogs, snakes, and large birds on the menus. I personally witnessed these items while on a business trip to Malaysia. Many eating places in the far East keep live fish and animals in cages so the customer can pick his meal on the spot. The people insist on eating only freshly killed and cooked items. The only exotic animal I could stomach was fried alligator, or a carp pulled out of the fish tank as we watched.
The people of the USA will have to get used to eating anything that moves as inflation increases. The positive side of eating fresh kill is that the foods won’t be overly processed as commercial foods are today. Follow this link to an interesting news article about eating dogs
https://www.cnn.com/2014/06/22/world/asia/china-yulin-dog-meat-festival/index.html
Filed under: Conservative, Election, family, Food | Tagged: eating dog, higher taxes, Inflation, Kamala | Leave a comment »
They Speak With a Forked Tongue
Posted on 22/08/2024 by Grumpa Joe
This week, I have been watching the DNC after I watched my favorite programs. Thankfully I missed Clinton’s speech last night but I did hear a few others. What amazes me is how faiithfully and how genuinely these people rattle off untruths. I read many news articles and listen to a few programs that often pick apart Democrat speeches or articles and fact check them. So, I recogize the untruths as they are spoken.
One hypocrisy is about abortion. They want the right ot abort (kill) unborn and sometimes even the born because they think it is their right. In order to increase the population to keep the economy rolling they allow millions of new people into the country without any qualms about the cost of doing so on my rights. As a tax payer they are diverting tax dollars away from things that are important to me. These two facts are at odds with each other. They want total control over thier own childbearing rights but they insist on allowing others to come into the country without any concern about my rights and use my tax money to support the people who replace their aborted babies.
Tax the billionaires.(Tax the Rich). Okay, there are reportedly about 1000 billionaires in the country at this time. Take every penny of what they have and you will get a trillion dollars in tax. At the same time they spend 5 trillion dollars more than we currently take in. It will take a whole lot of very rich peoplle to satisfy the spending appetite of the democrats.
How about circular arguments. Food prices are rising (because of inflation) so let’s spank the big food companies by putting ceilings on what they can charge. Many big companies will go out of business, forcing the others to make even less because they are forced to supply us with the food that out-of-business suppliers can’t. Two things happen: 1. More people need government help and they print more money to give them money for food. 2. More companies go out of business, and eventually cause shortages to occur. Short supply drives up the price.
I lived through the inflationary period that Jimmy Carter was responsible for. Nixon took over and had a field day trying to fix things. He fixed prices, he froze wages, he lost his mind. My employer tried helping us out by increasing wages so we could keep up with inflation. The wage freeze happened. My employer gave everyone of his employees a promotion which increased our wages. (A loop hole in the wage freeze allowed wage increases with promotions.) The only fix for inflation is to stop printing money. Government has two ways to pay the bills: 1. Raise money by looting your pocket with taxes, 2. Order the Federal Reserve to print dollars to cover the bills. The problem with printing money is that the value of things doesn’t change. A loaf of bread that costs a dollar(trust me there was a time when that was a pricey loaf of bread) is the result of its components. Flour, yeast, milk, salt, and other componenets can all increase in price by fractions. The value of a dollar reduces to 95 cents. But the components didn’t change. In order to make up that difference the baker has to charge $1.05 for the same loaf of bread. When everything goes up this way we eventually wind up out of money a lot quicker than before.
What caused the government to print money? They felt sorry for us having to stay away from work during COVID so they decided to cheer us up with a check, but they didn’t have to money in the bank. They printed dollars to give us money. The effect was that the value of the dollar dropped and we had less money in our pockets to pay for things.
Democrats lie in speeches. Last night I heard them say multiple times that Trump was the author of Project 25. What the heck is Project 25? I had to look it up. It is a list of several things we have to do to turn the country conservative. Quite frankly if they adopt every one of the recommendations it will take at least twenty-five years to make it happen. Project 25 is the product of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank to which I happen to belong. Many prominent people were involved in the development but Trump and I were in no way involved. If he wins, I hope he adopts the plan in its entirety. That is why the democrats are pooh-poohing the plan every chance they get. They know that, if adopted, the country would wind up kicking democrats off ballots. They continue to talk about it because it is a threat to their existence and if they repeatedly tell us it is bad too many will know only what they heard, even though it is wrong, and believe it because they heard it on TV.
This is no longer the politics of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas who debated each other often. This is all out war between two halves of the country trying to keep thier ideas intact.
Lawyers are trained to win cases, and there are way too many lawyers working in politics today.
Filed under: Government, politics | Tagged: debates, Fact checks, Inflation, Project 25 | Leave a comment »
April Showers Bring????
Posted on 04/04/2024 by Grumpa Joe
I’m back from the walk I ended my last post with. I’m still cold, but at least dry. The embarassingly hilarious part of feeling cold was revealed when my Lovely, also complained. She is a cold human who comes from a cold country and enjoys living in the cold. I took her mild complaint as a sign that something was seriously wrong. I was right. I checked the thermostat and discovered that in my morning fog while adjusting the temperature upward, I had put the blasted thing into Aircon mode. Being an obedient artificially-intelligent device it responded accordingly. There was ice-cold air blasting from all of the vents. The expected 74 degrees was down to a chilly 69 and dropping fast.
This morning, I looked out my window and saw what I thought was rain coming in at a seventy-degree angle. It looked like rain, but it was snow, turning into sleet and eventually into rain as it slid in against the ground. April showers are supposed to bring May flowers, but we are still a long way from May. I don’t expect anything but daffodils to bloom.
I feel my body becoming weaker as my daily exercise consists of shuffling from one chair to another. Either I’m reading a book or pounding keys on my computer trying to finish my book. I came across an old note on my phone yesterday, made in October 2013. I started writing my book, Space Rod. There is nothing like taking a few breaks in the project. I think I may have overdone it a bit. I have promised myself that I won’t stop until it is complete.
I’m debating whether or not to waste another three dollars on a lottery ticket. The winning numbers will net one billion dollars. It is wishful thinking on my part, but the price increases due to inflation are draining my resources faster than I want them to. I don’t mind spending money, but prices on food, a somewhat essential necessity, are as high as ten times. I remember reading many years ago about inflation in Argentina rising to the point where a person needed a bushel basket of paper money to buy a loaf of bread. Somehow Argentina continues to exist, in spite of the pain it has imposed on its population.
The moral of that story is that, somehow, a body will continue to exist no matter how much prices rise.
It is time for me to change chairs.
Filed under: Aging, Biography, economy | Tagged: Fixed Income, Inflation, Shoot Biden | Leave a comment »
