Funny how these things can sneak up on you if you’re not careful. So here’s Ian Anderson with his band celebrating the beginning of the lengthening daylight. Why I can feel those extra two minutes for sure! Ring out those bells, Jethro Tull.
Category: Current Events
Joy Reid Gets a Haircut
Alright the above title is a figure of speech. Obviously, physically, Joy Reid’s hair could not possibly be any shorter. So, what I’m saying is the management at MSNBC, her employer, is telling Joy that if she wants to continue working there, she’s going to have to agree to a lower salary (see first video clip below for details). Now this isn’t just Joy being targeted due to her awfulness. Rachel Maddow, the reigning star of MSNBC had to take a $5 million dollar cut from her present $30 million-dollar annual salary too. Apparently, Comcast is trying to make the soon to be cast off cable station slightly less doomed. So, let’s assume everyone will get the Maddow treatment. Doing the math, Comcast is asking for one sixth of the salary they pay to be relinquished by their “stars.” I’ve seen estimates that say Joy Reid currently makes three million dollars a year.
Wow. I think they’re being ripped off. But anyway, assuming she is currently receiving that amount under the Maddow reduction model, Joy would be left earning $2.5 million a year.
Wow. That’s still way too much money to pay a talentless, unlikeable hatemonger like Reid.
And for that reason, I am advising Comcast to search around in their hearts for a different number. I think the correct number is $660 a week. That’s based on a forty-hour week, so it can be adjusted if she’s taking long lunches. But that represents the minimum wage that will be in effect as of January 1, 2025 in New York City. And that’s a very fair rate for someone providing the level of craftsmanship that can be expected from her. And assuming that she will base her salary on a fifty-two-week year, that $34,320.
Wow. That still seems like too much money to pay a lying sack of crap like Joy.
Come to think of it, forty hours a week seems excessive. Maybe she could show up on Tuesday for four hours and that way she’ll scare off fewer viewers and the cable channel might have an even chance of surviving a few more months before Comcast or anyone stupid enough to purchase it finally puts it out of its misery. So where am I? Okay so let’s see. $16.50 X 4 X 52 = $3,432 a year.
Wow. No, I’m sorry. There’s just no way to justify that large an outlay for something so useless and toxic (see second video clip below for a sample of this dreck).
But you know what she could do instead? She would make the perfect speech writer for Kamala Harris. Yes, that makes sense. I remember Joy said that Kamala ran a flawless campaign. It’s obvious that Joy would be happiest working hand in glove with the flawlessness that is Kamala. In fact, they could spend most of the time talking about how racism and misogyny were responsible for why neither of them was rewarded by this racist, misogynistic country with the positions they deserve. For it is obvious to both of them that in a fair and just world Kamala would have Trump’s upcoming spot in the White House and Joy would have Rachel Maddow’s office. But, as the poet said, you’re down when you’re riding the train that’s taking the long way.
Oh well.
Getting in the Spirit
Some snow falling today surprised me into remembering how close Christmas is. Of course, I dasn’t say such a thing aloud in Camera Girl’s presence or she would toss an oven mitt or a ladle at me for my oblivious attitude as she soldiers on in her pre-Christmas baking and cooking marathon. She is calculating cooking and storage times down to the nanosecond as enormous quantities of baked goods, meat, pasta, cheese and vegetables are processed in the run up to the big event. My party line is that I am available to help in any capacity she sees fit. This merely elicits rueful head-shaking and eye-rolling. Well, that’s my story. And anyway, I serve many useful functions. I am the snow removal department and I also serve as chauffeur if the roads seem too tricky for her. And I have a thousand and one other jobs. For instance, I’m in charge of the yearly Christmas card design and procurement. Well, of course. I’m a photographer. But such things are easily forgotten by someone who can point to a table groaning under the weight of a feast. Well, we also serve who wait and eat. But who’s keeping score anyway?
I have all of next week off and I’m looking forward to the get togethers. But I’ve been keeping an eye on the situation in Washington. It’s almost unbelievable how feckless and dishonest the Biden administration intends to be right up to the final day of their reign of terror. Biden’s pardoning of hideously evil people would be shameful if Biden and his cronies had any shame. I have to assume that there was a price list posted somewhere for the scum of the earth to figure out whether they could afford to be freed by Hunter and Jill and whoever else wrote out the pardons for Joe to scribble his signature on. And the Republicans don’t disappoint with their nitwitted attempts to pass legislation in the House of Representatives. Only the dishonesty and corruption of the Democrats allows the GOP to seem better by comparison. But it really is a sad sideshow to behold.
The clowns and the cretins, the monsters and the madmen; the whole cast of this insane drama that is playing out on the deck of a sailing ship headed straight for an iceberg. And at this point Donald Trump is the captain and he and his crew are locked in a cutlass fight with the usual pirates and so no one is steering the ship. Well, it should give us a reason to pop popcorn in 2025.
But this is all beside the point. We have Christmas to celebrate and the relief from knowing that somehow, we dodged the bullet of a Kamala Harris presidency. And, sure, so many things will go wrong in 2025. Trump will waffle, Democrats will lie and cheat, bureaucrats will obfuscate and interfere and Republicans will prove themselves inept and obtuse. In other words, standard operating procedure. But things will be better than they’ve been the last four years. God willing, the wars will start to die down. Energy prices will come back to Earth and that will tend to drive down the prices of everything else. And the biggest bonus, we may never see any of the Bidens for the rest of our lives. That alone is worth a hallelujah.
Top Men Working on It – Part 2
Well, I enjoyed yesterday’s outing so much I thought I’d have another go at solving the world’s problems on Uncle Sam’s dime. Here are some more projects to keep me off the streets and make the world a better place:
- Stamp Out the Metric System. – That’s right. I want to outlaw it and insist that the freezing point of water is 32 degrees and the boiling point is 212 degrees. And I’m talking Fahrenheit. I want halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths and thirty seconds of an inch as the way we measure lumber. I want everyone to know that a pint’s a pound the world around. I want horsepower, tons of cooling, foot-pounds, cubic yards, pounds per square inch and inches of mercury everywhere you look. I want the speed of light to be 186,000 miles per second. I want pounds and ounces and BTU’s and I don’t want any kilometers or kilograms or ergs or any of that European or Canadian jazz, thank you very much! And I will back up my hatred with the force of Trumpian law. Anyone found using a metric tape measure, scale, thermometer, pedometer or any other metric device will be subject to public dunking followed by banishment to Bogeyland. And no one will be immune. If I find out that Elon Musk is using metric tools and hardware on his cars, they will be forced off the roads. And if his rockets are instrumented using metric units, the Air and Space forces will be authorized to shoot them out of the sky. This may sound harsh but order must be maintained. Some of you may claim that decimal units simplify and make calculations easier. I say, calculations are supposed to be difficult. So, suck it up!
- Defund PBS and NPR and Subject the Personnel to the Inquisition – My hatred for these institutions knows no bounds. Every time I heard some bow tie wearing doofus on NPR whispering softly about some pathetic cause he wanted me to espouse I had to change the channel. Now it’s time for payback. And closing down their operations and returning that money to the American people is a wonderful accomplishment. But shutting them down is not enough. I propose that a sort of Artificial Torquemada (AT) be programmed to subject these awful people to whatever punishments will make them suffer the most. First off, their diet will be Big Macs and fries, morning, noon and night. Secondly, a public address system will play a loop of Donald Trump’s greatest hits from his campaign rallies, played twenty-four hours of the day. Each inmate will be provided with a mockup of the Sunday New York Times newspaper featuring a facsimile of the Times crossword puzzle but unfortunately, none of the possible answers will fit the spaces. The gulag will have mandatory television viewing of reruns of Hee-Haw, The Dukes of Hazzard, Benny Hill, Home Improvement and Baywatch. The prison library will consist of the collected works of Mickey Spillane. And finally, every month there will be a special session where the inmates will be strapped into chairs and forced to watch a ten-hour compilation of the 2016 and 2024 election coverage including the rants and crying jags caused by the epic failures of the Clinton and Harris campaigns. None of the inmates will be available for parole until under surveillance of a lie detector they can state honestly that “The 2020 election was rigged against Donald Trump through voter fraud.”
Okay so that’s enough for now.
Tom’s World – 19DEC2024 – Incarceration; Retribution or Isolation?
Check this link, the subject is about something I can’t remember ever before having seen.
As far as I can remember, I’ve heard of incarceration in the context of the benefit to society, i.e., putting them away so they can’t do more damage. Among reasonable people, there is no dispute as to the truth of that proposition. (Unreasonable people? Who cares, screw ’em)
The link above is about the mass commutation Biden recently issued and how there is a very low chance of recidivism from the individuals freed, therefore not a net negative to society based on the principle of isolation. But the article disagrees with the commutation based on this principle: retribution, some of those people just flat deserved punishment.
The poster boy for this principle is a judge who was receiving $millions in kickbacks from a for-profit-boy’s prison for sentencing boys to that institution and betraying every principle, every person, and the trust (such as it is these days) in the judicial system, all for his personal enrichment.
So the guiding principle behind punishment for crime is now extended from incarceration for isolation from society to also include retribution, or the principle that people who do evil deserve punishment based on society’s perception of right and wrong.
Top Men Working on It
My recent thought experiment to determine whether the geometry of our universe is Euclidean or not has inspired me to get involved in the upcoming Trump Administration. Just as Trump has farmed out budget cutting to DOGE, I would like to volunteer (well not for free though) my services to perform research that is woefully needed by the United States government. I haven’t come up with a snappy acronym for my team but I’m working on it.
Here is a non-exhaustive list of some of the projects I’d like to tackle for Uncle Sam.
- Global Warming – Now, this is a no-brainer. Up until now research on this subject has been performed by commies. And no matter what information they get they “analyze” it until they can work it into a hockey stick graph that warns that the end of the world is imminent. What is needed is an objective, scientific approach. And that’s me all over. I will analyze the hell out of that data and something tells me that my result will be a call for more fossil fuel and nuclear energy to stave off the next ice age which is already rearing its ugly head. Also, I’ll perform a mass and energy balance and a cost analysis around such technologies as wind generators and solar energy panels. Something tells me that the cost of each kilowatt hour taken over the usable life of the equipment and including the replacement cost of the equipment (not neglecting the cost of environmental remediation for mining and processing of heavy metals and other toxic materials) will be an order of magnitude higher than either fossil fuels or fission reactors. Is it too much to ask to have the “climate scientists” hauled into court for fraud?
- The Definition of a Woman – In a country where this
Is called a woman, things are not going to go well. What I propose to do is convene a panel of experts. I will use the most credentialed individuals available. I will include married men, wedding planners, hairdressers, script writers from the Hallmark Channel, employees at grocery and clothing stores and shoe salesmen. In addition, I’ll recruit a fair cross-section of guys found habitually at strip joints from across this great land. Between them all we will work long and hard to come up with a consensus definition and if necessary, a list of qualifying and disqualifying “conditions.” I’m sure the team will have a contentious and spirited discussion about everything from terminology to visual aids but we’ll make sure that the exhibit shown above or anything like it is never mistaken for a woman again.
- My team will devote a full year to trying to figure out exactly which mental conditions Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are suffering from. After making an exhaustive study we will try to translate their last four years of speeches into rational English sentences. Where no meaning can be found we will overlay those sections of the transcripts with pictures of kittens and puppy dogs.
So that will be a start. Eventually we’ll expand out and solve all the problems of the multiverse. But I will charge time and a half on weekends. After all I’m only human.
Ho, Ho, Ho
I was trying to think what could be the most fortunate unexpected outcome from the Trump victory. Well, we may have already seen some hints of what could be a larger reaction. Comcast is laying off employees, reducing salaries and otherwise preparing MSNBC for its upcoming ejection from the corporation. Rachel Maddow had her annual salary slashed by $5 million and there are several other senior staff who will either be let go or given a haircut. And I have to imagine that Morning Schmoe’s pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago with Lycra Spandexy in tow had to be motivated by fear of the network deep-sixing them in the new environment of a dominant Trump presidency. And think about it. What are the chances that MSNBC (or whatever they’re going to call it) can survive on its own with its decimated viewership and falling advertising dollars? Oh, think of the howling if it shuts its doors!
Rumblings at CNN’s parent company are also ominous and plenty of multimillion dollar salaries are most probably hanging in the balance as ratings have cratered and executives are at a loss as to how they can justify paying that much money to talking heads who are only talking to themselves.
And the same thing is going on at the network news front offices. George Stephanopoulos just cost ABC (Disney) $16 million for calling Donald Trump a rapist. I can’t imagine that’s endeared him to the bean counters who have to pay his huge salary. And several other entities are currently wrestling with libel lawsuits from the incoming president.
So, with all this as the backdrop I had a wonderful holiday dream. Imagine if during the New Year, or even in late December, all of these media conglomerates simultaneously dumped all of these partisan hacks on the unemployment line. What a wonderful present it would be to the whole right-wing world. Couldn’t you just see Anderson Cooper, Joe Scarborough, George Stephanopoulos, Chris Hayes and Jake Tapper meeting in the waiting room of NPR headquarters as they all interview for some rinky-dink position on public television? They’d be glaring at each other and checking their makeup in the mirror of their man-purses.
But why stop there? How about all the newspapers and on-line publications? I’m sure the Bulwark must be running a little low on billionaire funding right about now and I know the LA Times is looking to balance out their staff with more conservatives so since they’re not making any money over there it would make perfect sense to lighten the ship a bit. And the same goes for the Washington Post, Vox, Slate, Politico and a host of others. Thinking of all those Never-Trumpers in knife fights with the other flavors of commies in order to get a spot at the fryolator in Mickey Dee’s just does my heart good.
Now you may think I’m out of line here. Okay, maybe all of this won’t happen by New Year’s. But all of the indications are that left-wing journalism is already going through an enormous contraction. YouTube, TikTok and X are dominating the market for news and entertainment and after their horrendous performance handicapping the 2024 presidential election even the devotees of the lefty news sources feel like they’ve been had. There is a real sense that they were lied to about the credibility of Kamala Harris’s chances of winning. Even late into election night they made pathetic attempts at describing the race as “close.” And as soon as the last glimmers of hope had been extinguished, the intrepid reporters immediately switched over to their flipside; “She ran a flawless campaign and lost because of racism and misogyny.” Okay, everyone but the most hopeless losers could see that women and black men voting for Trump couldn’t be construed as misogyny and racism. Saying it over and over just makes you sound nuts.
So, I’m pretty hopeful that over the next few months we’ll be saying goodbye to a lot of old friends from tv and print news. And just like when we lost Fredo and Don Lemon it will bring back memories of exactly why we detest them so much. Well, anyway that’s the present I want Santa to leave me under the tree. Ho, ho, ho!
Let’s Pray for Their Success
What to write about tonight? Well, how about thinking about, “How did we get here?”
I know all about the deep dives where everything traces back to the Enlightenment and the loss of faith. Or there’s the Abolitionists and the Civil War enshrining social justice in our government. But I don’t want to go back that far. I’ll settle for Woodrow Wilson and FDR as the source of the runaway bureaucracy that Washington DC has become. Sure, in between, there were others but I think Wilson set the stage with the WW I expansion and FDR metastasized the problem with the New Deal and the WW II expansions.
Now, I’m not denying that by creating the Leviathan FDR assured the defeat of Hitler and Japan. He did. And by funding the Manhattan Project he created the American Empire and eventually destroyed the Soviet Union. But at what cost? As one of his successors (Eisenhower) warned, the melding of the US war machine with corporate interests fueled by almost limitless investment from the Federal Reserve has swallowed up our democracy. And with it, has enveloped us in a police state that dictates to us in a way that is in line with what the Stasi did in East Germany and what China does with its people today.
The final nail in the coffin was 9/11/2001. The reaction to that attack assured that the Patriot Act and the FISA Courts could treat American citizens like Stalin’s victims that we read about in the Gulag Archipelago. You can be arrested, convicted, sentenced and buried in the gulag for annoying the bureaucrats or just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Freedom of speech, unreasonable search and seizure and the right to an open and fair trial are all stripped away with the wave of a magic wand when the FISA Court and the Patriot Act declare that national security is threatened. And all kinds of other atrocities are possible when the intelligence agencies can convince banks, airlines and social media companies that you are a dangerous person because you don’t agree with the bureaucracy’s priorities.
And all of this is because a bunch of rag tag Islamic extremists hijacked four airliners. Well, as I’ve confessed innumerable times, I was one of the fools who agreed to this nonsense back in 2001. I allowed myself to be swayed by anger to allow George W Bush and his geniuses to put in place the very laws that would plague Americans ever since. All of us who agreed with these measures put on our chains voluntarily. More the fool me.
Well now it’s time to start undoing all of this. And I mean all of it. First to go must be the FISA Courts and the Patriot Act. Ending the ability of the CIA and FBI to target American citizens and sweep away their constitutional rights is the primary goal. That must go.
But after that, the military industrial complex must be examined and the practices that allow it to bribe elected officials and collude with contractors to bleed the American taxpayers must be changed. Sure, we need up to date weapons to assure the security of this country. But we’re not even getting that anymore. We have bloated weapons programs that produce expensive but unimpressive results. Our state-of-the-art Abrams tanks are being decimated on the battlefields of Ukraine by $500 drones. Our next-up super-fighter jet is a vaporware project that is so poorly defined that despite a price tag rumored to be close to a trillion dollars we don’t know why we should build it, other than it will enrich the contractors beyond their wildest dreams.
Getting this done will be a battle royale. Both Democrats and Republicans will defend the military industrial complex with every fiber of their beings. People like Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell have amassed huge fortunes and incredible influence by serving the interests of the defense contractors in everything they do in the Congress. It’s not too much to say that Donald Trump and his cabinet appointees in the Department of Defense will be risking their lives when they defy the vested interests there. There is probably no limit to what they might do to prevent reform of the present situation.
Let’s pray for their success. Nothing less than the freedom and prosperity of our children hangs in the balance over the next few years.
A Modest Moratorium
So tonight, Camera Girl was unleashed on the baking supplies she’s been assembling for the last week or so. Tomorrow our daughters and our granddaughter will be showing up at noon or so for the tradition grandma-cookie baking ritual. Grandma cookies are Camera Girl’s mom’s recipe for what some people in the family call white cookies. These are lethally addictive. With a large mug of coffee (or milk for the kids) it’s almost impossible not to binge on every cookie that’s left in harm’s way. It’s hard to believe that the ingredients are only things like flour, eggs, butter, sugar and vanilla extract. There must be some cocaine or opium in them somewhere.
Well, anyway, tonight she baked alone. She baked all the other cookies for the holiday. She made oatmeal, chocolate chip, M&M and sugar cookies. And then just to make sure I won’t survive the year she made a big pan of baklava. Oh, man. Even Zorba the Greek after dancing for a week straight wouldn’t be able to finish off the portion she made. Between the butter, honey and walnuts I can see myself in the local emergency room receiving last rites as the intern on duty calls for the crash cart and the body bag.
Tomorrow I’ll be on a road trip to northern New England; to Vermont. I’m riding shotgun just as company. It should be fun. Meanwhile the womenfolk will be bonding in the kitchen and indoctrinating Princess Sack of Potatoes in the mysteries of family tradition of the female variety. All very sacred proceedings. So, the holidays are progressing satisfactorily.
But it’s not as if all is normal. After her latest shopping trip for the holiday supplies, Camera Girl was horrified at the increase in the prices of such staples as eggs, butter, flour and coffee. I felt very sad for her so I tried to cheer her up by saying that after the holidays the prices would come back down based on supply and demand. I think she could tell I was making it up but she forced a smile and we moved on.
Trump will have his hands full trying to fix the economy and deporting ten million illegals. Just doing those things would be hard enough but he’ll have to do it in the face of not only a hostile Deep State but also the Congress. The House has a razor thin Republican majority and the Senate is packed with RINOs who want to please their corporate paymasters and don’t give a damn about making America great. Yes, he’ll have his hands full.
But despite all this resistance, I am surprisingly optimistic. I was very pleasantly surprised by his victory. And because of it, I no longer assume that the Left will have everything its own way. Trump has seen a lot of the worst that the powers that be can do against him. If he’s half as smart as I hope he is, he’s going to eliminate a very large number of his enemies from the ranks of many of the the agencies that he controls, basically the whole executive branch of government. Unless he’s crazy he knows he has to eliminate large chunks of the management of the FBI and the Justice Department. Once that’s done, I expect he’ll have an easier time dictating terms to the rest of the departments. And in fact, after he has loyalists in charge of the FBI I wouldn’t be surprised if the various RINO senators suddenly become much more cooperative. All of these people must have files that are kept for just such an eventuality.
Now maybe my optimism is foolish. But the holiday is upon us and I think optimism is better for my digestion during this season of overeating. January is the time for resolutions and facing facts. So, unless a planet killing asteroid is discovered approaching Earth or I see the incoming ICBMs over Dunwich between now and Christmas I’m declaring a moratorium on gloom and doom.
I’m going to eat way too many cookies and much too much roast beast and spoil my grandkids and watch way too many old movies. I think that’s a plan.
Bring Back Our Jobs
In the 1990’s America began off-shoring almost our entire industrial footprint. I saw some of that migration first hand. China hired American engineering companies with the technology and experience to build petrochemical synthesis plants. And they built them in pieces, shipped them to remote sites in China and then assembled and even started them up for the Chinese. On their own it would have taken the Chinese generations to learn all the particular technologies and avoid all the hazards in running plants that produce all the myriads of organic materials that the US chemical engineering companies like Dupont pioneered in the early twentieth century.
And we did it on purpose.
Now multiply that by the number of other products that we used to make in America and you have an inkling of the betrayal that Wall Street has wreaked on us. And the result is the wreckage that we call the Rust Belt. But it’s not just the Midwest. Every area of the country has been hollowed out. Even the most cutting-edge manufacturing, the most valuable computer chips are made in Taiwan. And it’s even worse than that. Even our food is now imported from Asia and South America. That is how much American businesses hate us. So, if I want to sum the whole thing up, the boardrooms of American business eliminated the American middle class to globalize their operations and minimize their labor costs.
And reversing this project is what I think is the highest priority of anyone who loves this country and the people who call themselves Americans. It really doesn’t matter to me if the people who work to fix this call themselves Republicans or Democrats. Populist might be the closest thing to a label for the project. Obviously, anyone who is getting most of his income from Wall Street lobbyists and insider trading tips is not on this team. It’s not Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi or the Bushes. Maybe it’s Donald Trump. He sounds like he understands some of what’s going on. He talks about tariffs and that’s part of what needs to be looked at. But where I see the tariffs helping is putting them on American companies who try to sell cars and other products made in Mexico and Cananda and elsewhere as if they were “Made in America.”
We’re missing about a hundred million good manufacturing jobs in this country. That’s about what it would take to restore the middle class in this country. Of course that will do a lot of damage to China, India, Southeast Asia and parts of Latin America. Well, that’s too bad. Charity begins at home.
On-shoring American manufacturing will take decades. Of course it will. It took forty years to off-shore it. But every step the government takes to worsen the economics of off-shore manufacturing will work to improve the job prospects for our grandchildren. And now is the time for legislation. The Republicans have (slim) majorities in both houses of Congress and a sympathetic president. All that is needed is for Trump to co-opt a few Democrat votes. Who knows, he might even get someone like Bernie Sanders to sign on for some of the votes.
But the important thing is to prevent this country from turning into a feudal system with the super-rich lording it over a peasant class hanging on by the skin of their teeth. There is still a chance to turn this around. Come on Mr. Trump, to make America great again, you have to resurrect the middle class. Bring back our jobs.