Tag Rant

Yay for me

Michael 14 Comments

I had such a weekend. l’ve been collecting pieces of idiocy and ran out of space in my brain before we ran out of weekend.

I doubt there is anywhere in the country where stores are not feeling the penny pinch. The US Mint stopped making pennies earlier this year. That hasn’t really caused the shortage. That the Federal Reserve Bank’s coin exchange program was directed to not accept pennies from member banks caused a big problem. Some parts of the country have none, others have enough one cent coins to last through their expected 60-year lifespan. In my neck of the woods, a major local grocery chain was running perilously low on the copper clad coins so they came up with a solution. Bring in any pennies you have laying around the house and they’ll double that in gift cards for you. The preliminary count Saturday night was over $1 million dollars in coins turned in for exchange. All because somewhere in country, banks have vaults full of rolled pennies they can’t exchange for other coinage.

Speaking of coins, there was a lot of coin dropped Friday night when The Big Cheeto gave a 1920s, Great Gatsby themed party where he performed his signature dance, the f—-ed up chicken. This on the eve when SNAP (and don’t forget WIC) benefits would be stopped. The orange menace probably thinks he’s punishing people for not working hard enough to pay their own way. I know how to stop the bleeding and get him to release the funds he is legally required to release. Tell him every dollar of benefits he holds back is $2.00 of business one of his greed-soaked friends is missing out.

There were many other tales of stupidity but I tire of listing them even though I’ve stayed away from Herr Cheese Puff’s lunacy for a while. He damn near overshadowed that today is publication day for Bad Impressions. Yay me!

MacBeth walks among us?

Michael 12 Comments

Macbeth was fascinated with murder until he committed his first. Consumed with paranoia, he continued his murderous ways to avoid suspicion and then the fix was in. Or so some may say.  Almost from the moment of the murder, Scotland became a land depicted as one contrary to its natural progression as it was moving under the former king. It took a while longer for the bloodbath to encircle all in, and associate with, the household and drive them mad.

Of course, we know that as the EXTREME synopsis of Shakespeare’s tragedy, not close to what the historical MacBeth went through. Yes, he too killed, and his victim was King Duncan whose reign he then took for himself. But it was on the field of battle and that was how kingdoms were passed around in the eleventh century.

Often fiction resembles fact but not in that case. Perhaps though it does in the fiction we are currently living. We may not have found ourselves in a Shakespearean tragedy but there is at least a figurative bloodbath happening and those drawing the bath are indeed heading toward, if they haven’t already arrived at, insanity.

The seeming victim of our contemporary Hamlet is free speech, with such decrees as remove this comedian, remove that comedian. But no, it’s not about late night comedians. On the plane back from his recent trip to England, the orange menace railed about networks being “97% against me…that’s bad publicity, bad press…they have licenses you know.”

Let’s look at one of those networks and how intricate this really is. ABC claims Jimmy Kimmel was “pre-empted indefinitely” ostensibly because of a remarks made in a recent monologue. Those who have not listened to that monologue assume it was all about a particular right-leaning activist. But in the entire monologue his name was mention once over a 2 or 3 sentence portion of the bit. The vast majority of the time was devoted to our grand(iose) leader. The one who referenced those licenses.

It so happens ABCs parent corporation is negotiating several routine business and acquisitions which would all require federal approval. One of the network’s affiliate voicing most of the initial outrage Nexstar, happens to have a $6.2 billion purchase of a rival group of television stations pending government approval. The other affiliate group, Sinclair, also is pending FCC approval of their proposal to relax the rules limiting broadcaster ownership of its stations. And Disney itself is pending administration approval for the completion of its ESPN affiliate’s takeover of the NFL network.

There may just be more than speech being challenged with that particular incident. Now the Pentagon’s announcement over the weekend that all stories regarding or referring to the Pentagon must be approved by the Pentagon. That might be a different story  if it gets approved.

Maybe not the bloodbath (yet) but indeed we are living in a time when intelligent people are being silenced so stupid people will not be offended. Sane? I think not.

 

The Orange Menace versus Pizza Man

Michael 7 Comments

Hello everyone. I’m home! Something 3 people in Minnesota will never say. In breaking with my new tradition of discovering and delivering only good news on Thursdays, we’re going to talk about the recent shootings in Minneapolis. Yes, shootings – plural.

We all know that a deranged 23-year-old, armed with a rifle, shotgun, and handgun, opened fire through a window of a Catholic Church on school children attending daily mass, killing 2 children ages 8 and 10, injuring 14 other kids, and also injuring 3 adults in their 80s. Yes, the Second Amendment gave him that right. Or so that’s the perspective of every New Wave Republican, NRA member, gun owner, MAGnut, and other disgustingly irrational fruitcake, including everybody who ever own, ran, or invested in a firearms company in the U S of A.

Less than 24 hours earlier, some other nutcase opened fire on six individuals outside a nearby Catholic high school, killing one. Depending on your perspective, they could be related. That’s as reasonable an assumption as that there are two wackos targeting religious groups in the same city at the same time. I’m not sure which is scarier.

Just two days ago, the orange menace said on camera that it’s not a dictator, it “just knows how to stop crime.” Let’s see it stop that. I’ll tell you where it’s going to land. It will tell you that the shooter at the Assumption shooting was a suspected trans person. It’s putting a stop to people deciding what gender they want to be so we can forget about this one. What will he say about the gun freaks who have killed 195 other people in 24 school shootings since the Columbine massacre in April 1999? Let’s not even bring up all the people targeted at churches, synagogues, temples, other houses of worship. So-called “normal” people committed these crimes. Come on criminal-pardoner-in-chief, let’s see what you can do to stop these crimes. What sycophant will you appoint to the committee to look into how to lie about those. Well, I suppose it a matter of perspective.

It’s time for action and we don’t mean some unhinged social media rant in all caps posted in the dead of the night. And the last thing we need are thoughts and prayers. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said it best: “Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying.”

In the midst of all this, here is some good news. Also from a Minneapolis suburb this week, Chuck Kolstad, owner of Pizza Man in Columbia Heights, puts food out for people who previously were rummaging through his dumpster for food. He tells them to call, or leave a note by the door saying they are hungry and he’d leave food out for them. He said there are always mistakes or extras they can’t sell and rather than throwing them away, he offers these to the hungry homeless. His efforts caught the attention of food truck and other restaurant owners who have also offered to help. That’s a perspective with a positive view.

So, now it’s time, even with this sad news, to plug the latest Uplift post, A Matter of Perspective. Not everything in life is valued equally by all, but all value everything according to their own wants and needs.

Girls just wanna have…

Michael 11 Comments

Let’s do something different this week and find some other people who have taken Pope St. Celestine’s challenge with the words, “We are deservedly to blame if we encourage error by silence,” and see how they are speaking out.

You may not realize it because the mainstream media is not covering it as they cower under the threats of being sued by Adolph Trumtler, but there are protests happening all over the country challenging the authority of the orange authoritarian. A protest last week in Columbus, Ohio saw bunches of people holding hands and creating a human chain calling it Hands Along High Street stretching — are you ready — 8 miles!

What do you do with your spare time? There’s a lady in Florida who goes out and protests every week. Last Thursday she “marched” with the sign, “Girls just wanna have funDING for scientific research.” I put ‘marched’ in quotes because I’m not sure how far she can get. See, she is turning 105 years old this week! Happy Birthday!

Last week Washington, DC joined Los Angeles in the “list of American cities invaded by America.” Protesters in DC joined their California brethren marching against the camouflaged invaders, surrounding the more vulnerable of their fellow citizens from abuse by the leaf-patterned mobsters. By the way, why do the toy soldiers were camouflage in the cities. With what do thing they are blending in?

They weren’t invited but they are going anyway. Seven European leaders and the Secretary General of the United Nations announced this weekend that they will accompany Ukraine President Zelenskyy when he meets with the grifter-in-chief to express their thoughts, prayers, and guaranteed, continued support for the Ukraine.

From the office of the other dictator, just yesterday Russia has agreed to enact a law that it would not “go after any other European countries and violate their sovereignty.” Of course, we know that Russian law has as much authority as. U. S. Senate resolution, so there is that.

So there are some people out that not encouraging error by their continued silence, some unexpected, some likely complete fabrication – Russian law for sure, some absolutely remarkable – yes I’m talking about our new favorite centenarian who is doing her part to contribute to the possibility of their still being a USA  even after she goes.

📷 = MSNBC

Discouraging error by silence

Michael 5 Comments

 

Just like last Monday, I had fifth century Pope St. Celestine I, founder of the papal diplomatic service and speaking of the words, “We are deservedly to blame if we encourage error by silence,” in mind as I prepared today’s post. I intended to follow the good pontiff’s advice and call out some of the more egregious errors of the week but there were just sooooooooo many!

It truly is too difficult to narrow them down to a chosen few. Do we skip the top cur and go with the Vice-dingaling-in-chief having a river level raised so he can go rafting on his sixth vacation of the year?

Maybe we should think hard about this when the orange menace and the red menace get together and say the Ukraine will have to give up some land without asking the Ukraine. Sort of like when the wannabe king-in-chief says for 60 years people have been wanting a proper ball room at the White House so he will build one that is 3 times bigger than the current ballroom and cover it in gold. The manchild has a thing about gold and getting other people to pay for it.

Let’s consider how the Department of Injustice is opening an investigation against the people who prosecuted, and won, the case against sphinctermouth when he was a regular citizen. This follows the pattern of “retribution” it has sought since the swearing in ceremony (the one it refused to place its hand on the Bible for) in January. And yes, I said sphinctermouth. Watch a video of it talking. If you can ignore the orange makeup and the accordion playing pantomime, and concentrate on his lips (like it does when watching its press secretary talk) you will see that classic sphincter movement.

CarrotFace continues his purge of FBI agents who had worked on the January 6 investigations. This was only days after Homeland Security released plans to lower the minimum age of masked avengers, errr wannabe secret police to 18 and raised the maximum age to unlimited. Perhaps the lure of full student loans reimbursement didn’t bring in the number of new recruits they were hoping for. But then you have to have gone to school to have incurred student debt.

Now we come to the two most egregious happenings. In the running for top disgusting distraction, was the plan to destroy two satellites orbiting the earth measuring carbon dioxide release and other climate altering effects. Not just taking them offline, but destroying $750million dollars of state-of-the-art climate monitoring equipment.

But perhaps the single most egregious occurrence of the week was discovering the Library of Congress had restored parts of the Constitution to the official online version of the U.S. Constitution. Why? Because sometime in the dark of history, not to mention the dark  of the night, a couple key sections of Article I were removed. Those parts included the right to habeas corpus that protects people from detention without just cause, the foreign emuluments clause addressing gifts to government employees (like prez), and several references to Congressional powers.

Don’t encourage errors by silence. Open your mouth and call your representatives. They may be beyond help but they’ll at least let you talk. Remind them that they likely will be out of a job by next year, if not voted out by the people, forced out by the kakistocracy. You can try your senator too but they are all just too far gone. Both parties have become dead ducks.

There is good news though. I will post some Thursday.

Random acts of randomness

Michael 11 Comments

Over the weekend we worked on Moments of Motivation for the ROAMcare site for September and October. It’s a good thing we’re almost done with the year because I’m not so sure I can keep a positive enough outlook to find another 9 or 10 somethings to feel motivated over.

Here are some random thoughts that gave me pause this weekend.

The US has more guns than people. We currently stand at 1.2 guns per person. I know for a fact that neither I nor my daughter have any, so someone is walking around with over 3&1/2 guns. Actually, there are some walking around with way more than their 1.2 allotment. Late last week, local firefighters responded to a house fire but had to wait an half hour or so until the 20,000 rounds ammunition stored in the building stopped exploding before being able to move in to fight the fire. Crews salvaged more than 100 firearms.

Dingy Donald was in Scotland last weekend to play golf at his newly acquired second golf course there, drop in on his original course there, and visit a third that somebody else still owns. I guess because the American taxpayers paid about $10 million in transportation, lodging, staffing, and security, he figured he owes us something, so he also paid a short visit with the European Union President to sign the new tariffs deal. After signing the deal that lowered tariffs to 15%, the grifter in chief said, “We did it.” Oh, care to take a guess what the tariffs rate with the EU was before the orange menace was crowned…err sworn in. If you said 15%, give yourself a piece of Belgian chocolate.

In the interest of fairness (I suppose) news came over the weekend that not all violence is gun violence. Eleven people were stabbed at a Walmart in Traverse City, Michigan on Saturday in what a Michigan sheriff said appeared to be a random act. No,I don’t think so. The stabbings were done with a folding knife. So this random dude decided to go Walmart with a knife in his pocket, decided to take it out, decided to open it, and decided to slice and dice his nearby fellow shoppers. Does that sound random to you? The sheriff may have trouble with his overall view of life though. He also mentioned to reporters, “Eleven is too many.” Hmm. No word on what the right amount for a weekend stabbing spree would be.

And lastly, on the international front. On Friday, the Russian parliament (who knew they had one?) passed a law to make it illegal to search the Internet for “extremist materials,” punishable by a fine up to the equivalent of US$64. No word on what constitutes extreme. According to an article in the AP “the official definition of extremist activity is extremely broad.”

Okay, that last one did it. I can whip out another dozen Motivation Moments now no problem.

Buddy can you spare a billion

Michael 13 Comments

One of the annoyances of being addicted to 70 and 80 year old movies (and older even), is having to translate certain period references to their twenty-first century equivalents, most notably (at least for this discussion), is money. As in, the value of money.

An obvious fact of money is that money of this year is almost always going to be worth less than money next year. (Eventually it will likely become worthless but that is a discussion for a different day.) The point being, when someone in a movie made in 1933 tosses down a dollar coin in payment for a meatloaf dinner, pie, and coffee – and gets change(!) you instinctively know money went a lot farther then. (Further?) (Whatever). Those aren’t so bothersome. But when someone says something like, “I want to put $1,000 down on Nag #1 to win in the third race,” I get to wondering, just how much is that guy gambling.

I did some research, and I found out that $1,000 American dollars in 1933, when adjusted for inflation is the rough equivalent of $24,000-$27,000 today (depending on whose rate of inflation you want to apply. So our erstwhile horse race lover is splurging with let’s say $25,000 on his horse race.

Some of the more criminal endeavors in the so called gilded age were really up there. A garden variety kidnapping when the perpetrators then demand “$50,000 or youse’ll never see da brat again,” are looking for a payout of $1.25 million of today’s dollar bills. (In December 2024 a cryptocurrency executive was kidnapped and returned after a ransom of $1 million was paid so maybe that’s not so far off.) (I wonder if those guys got money or crypto for their ransom???) (Anyway…)

In the 1930s, the richest man in the world was John D. Rockefeller. Topping out at about $1.4 billion 1934 dollars, making him worth $35 billion dollars today. Some would pooh pooh that trifling amount. Today’s richest of the rich are worth over $200 billion dollars, except they aren’t. A billionaire in the 1930s had a billion dollars in dollars. True, some of that might be in the value of their business (in Rockefeller’s case, Standard Oil), but their businesses were worth their values in real dollars. Today’s wealth is more a standard of leverage than liquidity. If John D. wanted to buy the New York Times for $20 million dollars, he would have gone to the bank, taken out $20 million dollars (or maybe he’d get it out of his change jar at home), and paid Adolf Ochs $20 million dollars. (He didn’t do that and probably missed out on a great deal because newspapers were a dime a dozen during the depression years.) Today if someone wanted to buy say Twitter, they’d be lots of stocks transferred and “financial considerations” made but nobody ends up with real folding money to put in their wallets.

The other thing about the difference between 90 years of inflation is that not only has inflation devalued the dollar. So called market adjustments must also be taking into consideration to really determine the purchasing power of a dollar is. Remember those $25,000 dollars oof today’s money that would buy you 1,000 of 1933 dollars. You need about 2&1/2 times that much to buy what $1,000 would buy in 1933. The actual spend equivalent of $1,000 1933 dollars in about $62,000 today.

Put another way, in 1933 the average income was $1,300 per year. The average house cost $5,700 or 4.4 times the annual average income. In 2024, the average U.S. income was $62,000, the average house cost $520,000 or 8.4 times the average annual income. We are actually making more money but getting less spending power. By inflation only, that average $1,300 dollars is about $32,000 today but the average income is almost twice that. By calculating for inflation alone, that $5,700 house should cost $140,000 today. The house price rose 3.4 times higher than the rate of inflation.

Remember those numbers when you read in this morning’s paper that your Senators approved the Big Bastardly Bill taking even more of your money away. I’m sorry, any billionaires reading please, please ignore that last statement. You’re going to get to keep 38% more than you did last year. Everybody else go out for dinner this year. After next year’s tax bill you probably can’t afford meatloaf, pie, and coffee all in one meal.

Not your usual Thursday fare

Michael 12 Comments

My gosh, it’s Thursday again. Where does the time go? At least Thursdays are fairly easy days for me. I would imagine it’s everyone’s favorite weekday, or at least in the top five. Apparently, Thursday are quite good days for bars and taverns, particularly happy hours. People who just can’t quite make it one more day without a little assistance must tend to stop on the way home. It is also a big night for take-out. I would imagine for the same reason.

This year, this week, this Thursday may be an even bigger day out for folks who are trying to do their best to stick it to the big corporation who have been sticking it to the little guy. The economic blackout is to hit April 18-20. No purchases at any big corporate anything, buy local, buy small.

I am a huge proponent of buy local. Which is why I don’t understand these ‘blackouts’ like nobody shopping at Target since January. It makes for nice social media posts. “Store traffic is down again this week!” I don’t suppose anybody is checking to see if there is a corresponding decrease in associate hours. See, as far as the big corporations go, they really don’t care about foot traffic or gross sales, as long as net profit, stock price, and most importantly dividends go up. If they don’t make enough cash to make their dividend payments (and to pay their salaried employees), they simply take that money from the most convenient available bucket, usually the bucket that showers payroll dollars on the hourly employees. Less foot traffic = less sales and stock people. The little guys. So those big boycotts sticking it to the big corporations eventually just get little guys laid off.

 Do I have a solution. I do indeed. Shop local. And boycott local. Do yu really want to make a difference and get someone to reconsider their support for Donny McScrooge and his merry band of Dingy Donny followers. Find a local business, florist, bakery, gift shop, restaurant, bar and tavern, dry cleaner, or what have you (maybe even the stray car dealership), who vociferously supports or supported the current regime and boycott them. They are the people who need to be convinced that if there is ever another election, the nice lady with the economic degree probably knows more about running a country’s economy that a part time golfer and business bankrupter.

Normally this is where I make some clever tie in with this week’s ROAMcare Uplift post. And it is a good one. So good that it doesn’t deserve to share space with such Debbie Downer content. And I can honestly say, I’m not feeling very Abrahamic right now. Read it anyway.

What’s wrong with this picture

Michael 9 Comments

I am having a hard time this week with a post. Not true. I’m having a hard time this week coming up with an intelligent post. I’ve taken a swipe at this over 3 or 4 days. Most of the world has gone crazy and I’m worried about putting something intelligent out into the ether.

The craziness for me culminated Sunday morning when I read the news report that the governor’s mansion in Harrisburg Pennsylvania was the target of an arsonist. Someone had scaled a 7 foot iron fence carrying homemade incendiary bombs, broke into the banquet room, and set off his explosives. He later “surrendered” and confessed he did it because he “hates the governor.” He also had a small sledgehammer he planned to beat the governor with if he had a chance.

Is it coincidence the arson targeted the room where Governor Shapiro with his family and guests had used just hours earlier to hold their Seder dinner on the first day of Passover? Is that why the lunatic “hates the governor”? Or is it because Charcoal Charlie has a nifty little criminal record and maybe resents Gov. Shapiro from his time as state attorney general. Or could it be that the ding dong was having a boring Saturday night and was hoping to come up with something to impress the bar crowd and random acts of violence are always in style among that class of primate.

But let’s not stop at one ding-a-ling with a match and a pocketful of explosives. That was almost sane compared to what else is going on in the world. The federal “government” “refuses to say” what their plans are (translation = “refuses”) to bring back a mistakenly deported man, who is most likely only one of thousands mistakenly deported people.

Measles continues to spread primarily in Texas but also in significant numbers in 4 other states, even though it was declared eliminated in the US in 2000. Of the 700+ confirmed cases reported to the CDC through last Friday, 97% were in unvaccinated patients. For those interested, it’s not just children. 198 of the 712 reported cases, that’s 28% are in adult patients.

Random shootings continue. Helicopters and planes are falling from the sky. The House of So-called Representatives passed a budget plan that includes cuts to even more social services. The stock market is in shambles. Through it all, Daffy Donald has spent millions pursuing his personal favorite pastime, combining golf while screwing whoever is handy, this time the American taxpayer, who is footing the bill for these excursions this year through March 31 to the tune of $26,127,531.

And I’m worried about putting something intelligent out into the ether.

Did you know

Michael 10 Comments

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. There have been 3 airplane crashes plus a helicopter in 8 days and 2 runway incursions tossed in for good behavior all starting within 24 hours of air traffic controllers being “offered” 8 month severance in exchange for leaving their positions within the next 7 days. The chairpersons of the National Archives, Federal Elections Commission, and National Labor Relations Board, the entirety or near entirety of the FBI cyber security division, US Agency for International Development, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Kennedy Center board of trustees have been removed from their offices (although some are fighting those orders). And all of your social security data has been turned over to a group of 20 year old computer programs working for an unelected, non-vetted, immigrant. (I wonder if anybody ever called him African American?)

Also in the news this week, a measles outbreak in Texas, a tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas, and the flu at its highest incidence level since 2015.

The stuff in the first paragraph you knew. That was all over the news. The stuff in the second paragraph…show of hands please for who know about them.

I’m not sure if there’s a moral to that story but it’s made me really tired. I suppose I should try to get rid of the anger and bitterness. Forget about the ironies like sending ICE into the Navajo Nation. Life might easier to forget the anger. But it wouldn’t be better.

Have a good week.

Blog Art 2

If you’re ready to give your bitterness, even if you can’t find much to celebrate about the world around you, start with celebrating yourself. Make America Kind Again. Check out Celebrate You for all the details.

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