That was a surprise.

Majorie Taylor Greene has resigned from congress.

I’m not sure how I feel about that. In many ways she’d become a distraction and in other ways I think she was really trying to make things better.

Her epic confrontations with Jasmine Crockett were always amusing. She’s someone I’d really like to see gone from Congress too. She might have overstepped herself with the latest gaffe about the Dr. Epstein that contributed to Lee Zeldin’s campaign.

Crockett is trying like hell to walk it back but everyone knows she was trying to conflate Dr. Epstein with Jeffery Epstein. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people, really stupid people, that will run with Zelden accepting money from an Epstein and believe that it was the bad one. Now it looks like Crockett will retain her congressional seat because the Texas redistricting wasn’t good enough. That’s a pity because Crockett is one of the most unlikable, nasty, uninformed members of congress. She really needs to go.

MTG bailing as she has, reminds me of a local guy that used to represent my district in congress or the senate. He went to Washington trying to help, I believe he really wanted to make things better but after one term he threw in the towel. Rumor was that he got to Washington and realized that none of Congress was about doing the right thing for the people. He came back to California and got elected as a supervisor where he can actually do some good. Small as those achievements are with the state of California politics.

Jasmine crockett shouting 323714118.I hope MTG does well in whatever she chooses to do after she resigns.

I’ve been amused at the democrats being all pissy about Trump and others calling out their stupid “PSA” telling our military not to follow illegal orders. 

The subtext was that Trump is giving illegal orders and the military shouldn’t follow those orders. While Trump may have given some questionable orders, thus far they haven’t been illegal or immoral. That, as I recall is the test the UCMJ calls out.

Which means these idiot politicians are technically calling for a coup d’ état. By definition that makes what they’ve said treasonous. 

Of course they’ll never face trial, much less the punishment for treason. Honestly, I think they should. 

Back in World War II, there was a phrase, “Loose Lips sink ships”.

It was cautionary to remind people that loose talk could have dire consequences. If perhaps these politicians faced trial over their loose talk maybe it would cool down the rhetoric. So would a firing squad.

To be clear I’m not suggesting that anyone take up arms against these politicians. I’m suggesting that they be tried, and if convicted, they pay the price.

In their little “PSA”, these politicians claimed they’d have the soldier’s backs. That is an outright lie. These politicians are the same politicians that would think nothing of the soldiers they fed into the gristmill of war. These people would happily deploy American Troops to Ukraine and embroil us in a war with Russia.

They also have zero direct control over UCMJ proceedings and could only “Advise”. In other words, they not only wouldn’t have soldier’s backs, there is no way they could have soldier’s backs. But they’re more than willing to disrupt chain of command, and destroy careers for their personal political gain.

I personally find that despicable. Which is why I’d love to see them put on trial.

In the California Governor’s race, we’ve gotten a field of Democrats, all of whom are somewhat questionable. That being said, the Republican candidates aren’t especially stellar either. Once again, the people of California will not have a decent choice for Governor, not that it would matter anyway given the California Legislature will still be majority “Tax and Spend” Democrats. These folks implement policies and programs that don’t work, then continue to throw money at demonstrably failed policies and programs. 

Honestly, if they showed the slightest bit of introspection and pulled back from failures I’d be fine with them being in power. But they don’t. They continue to burn money and then actively defy any voter initiatives that they don’t like. To my way of thinking, that’s not representational governance, that’s simply living in an elitist fiefdom.

I, and I suspect a lot of America wants to see accountability. I even believe that if that accountability were to be equally distributed on both sides of the “Party Divide” it would go a long way toward healing and unifying the country.

I’m sincerely hoping that now we have the disclosure pending regarding the Epstein files, we’ll see some well deserved prosecution. I’m not holding my breath mind you, but I still have a sliver of hope.

I’d like to see trials and prosecution about the whole COVID debacle too. There were a lot of people who got rich from that mess starting in Washington and going all the way down to the local levels.

In short, I’m done with “Hearings”. Now I’m about justice, retribution, and punishment.

If that means politicians across the nation being arrested and held without bond because they’re flight risks, I’ve got my popcorn ready. Hell, I might even sign up for cable just to watch the nightly recaps of the trials.

Again, I’m not holding my breath. Sadly, I don’t really believe in the judicial system anymore.

On the plus side, the Supreme Court refused to hear a case that would overturn Gay Marriage. So there’s that. Oddly, the Liberal Democrats have been largely silent on it. Just a year ago, they were saying if Trump got into office, he’d undo Gay Marriage. 

Where are those politicians and pundits now? Why aren’t they lauding the SCOTUS decision?

Oh right… They just wanted to terrify the LGBT(insert alphabet here) community into voting against Trump and keep them on the streets protesting.

Aren’t all of us tired of being “Used” by politicians yet?

I’m torn with the rain.

On the one hand I really like hearing rain on the roof. It’s a perfect day to snooze and not worry about anything. On the other hand, it’s a perfect day to stay in my sweats & watch 1950s sci-fi movies.

I had one of those nights lat night where I was tired, went to bed, and bang my brain said, “Nope! I’m going to start thinking right now.”

Needless to say, it wasn’t very restful.

Maybe I’ll get a bowl of cereal and watch Looney Toons DVDs. That would have been a typical thing for me to do on a rainy Saturday in my childhood.

I’ve scanned the national news. I’m sure that the local news is doing one of their “StormWatch” special coverage events providing moment by moment details of local flooding and holding their breath that some disaster will occur so they’ll have something to lament.

My phone just went off with an emergency alert about flash floods.

I’m hoping for a break in the rain to go for a walk. Right now there’ve been squall lines passing through about every 10 minutes. The storm will let up a bit giving me hope, then kick up a notch.

At this rate I’m not going to close my rings today. I don’t mind walking in light misty rain, but neither Jesse or I like walking in downpours with the wind whipping around us. I won’t mention the clean up of our muddy foot prints, or the smell of wet dog.

I’m leaning more toward Looney Toons & snoozing.

 

Apple enabled their digital Passport ID in Apple Wallet yesterday.

Uhh.

Yeah, no…

I’m not interested. In the year that I’ve had the California digital ID I’ve not had one single situation that it was useful. 

Nada, Zero, None.

Aside from the slow rollout of digital ID on a state level, it appears there’s an even slower adoption rate among vendors. I wan’t expecting it to be used in every liquor store or anything.

But it would be really useful in medical situations, where the paradigm is you hand your ID to some medical clerk who then makes a photo copy of your physical ID then stick that in a file someplace. Although now medical providers want you ro scan your ID and upload it to them yearly.

Or in situations like a cellular provider who wants you to scan and upload your ID to their website.

You’d think that at least in those situations, the security aspects would be obvious and quickly adopted. 

There is the capacity for their website to get the information directly from your phone in a secure tokenized format that only provides the necessary information for their purposes and nothing else.

In the glitch I had with my watch, I lost the California ID that could be presented via the watch. California apparently has no provision to correct that. Instead they keep directing me to a verification web site page that’s not complete. The page says something like “We’re working to get this page operational please check back later.”

I just deleted the mobile license from my watch, because the notification to go to a dead California web page appearing 2 or 3 times a day annoyed me.

The ID is still available on my phone for what it’s worth but since it’s a pointless bit of data, I’m seriously considering deleting it.

Why bother?

Now you can put your passport information in your phone too. But that information is only useful at few TSA checkpoints at scattered airports across the nation. It can’t be used at border checkpoints to enter the country.

So really what good is it?

It’s an interesting little novelty widget, nothing more.

Digital ID has so much potential. It’s a pity it’s not received enough adoption to make it worthwhile.

I fully acknowledge the darker side of digital ID. One only need look at China to understand the dystopian down side.

I appreciate the idealism of digital ID. I’d be very excited if it was widely used in voting, medicine, medical insurance, and as we have recently come to understand EBT/Snap welfare benefits. I think that it could make a hell of a dent in fraud. With the biometric aspect it’s a no brainer in these situations.

However, it’s pretty obvious that the political party that consistently votes against any form of ID being required to access these services would fight tooth and nail against it. They’d make the case that not all the “Poor” have access to phones with the capability. Just as they now say not all the “Poor” have the intellectual ability to get an ID. 

Even though, those people, that party, claims are intellectually deficient, typically have the latest and greatest phone technology which they use constantly to post their TicTok and instagram videos of criminal behavior including threats, or looting & rioting.

It should be noted that in order to get those phones and phone service, they have to provide ID. That’s interesting too because it was that Political Party that voted for IDs to be required if someone chose to purchase a phone with a prepaid plan. Also known as a “Burner” phone.

I’ve come to suspect that the Digital ID thing will slowly fade away at least in this country.

I think this for a number of reasons:

1) There are a lot of people that do not trust our government.
2) I think the digital ID thing is seen as an impediment to getting a new phone. Do you have to re-register the ID’s with the issuing authority every time you change devices? [You don’t as a rule, but the issuing authorities would love that for tracking purposes]
3) Without wide acceptance and use on the part of vendors it’s a nothing burger.
4) Since even Law Enforcement isn’t using the system, requiring the user to carry the physical ID what’s the point?
5) Unless you travel weekly for business you’ll never encounter any situation that the digital ID is used at all. Since even the TSA can’t guarantee that their kiosks are operational at an airport on any given day, a physical ID is still necessary.
6) China’s example of social credit scores, where they use digital ID to absolutely destroy individuals because they said or did something the Chinese government didn’t like.
7) The UK is implementing digital ID and following China’s lead. The people in the UK, while generally compliant to their government’s commands have begun to fight because they see that misuse of the ID abridges their freedoms. The UK is even trying to implement digital IDs for visitors. Though they seem to have a rather large blind spot when it comes to “Asylum Seekers”.
8) There’s the religious overtone about everyone having “The Mark” and being unable to buy or sell unless one has “The Mark”. (As China has demonstrated.)
9) There’s the conspiracy theorist angle that encompasses all of the above and suggests compliance is enslavement. One could argue that we’re already enslaved, but digital IDs simply make the fact of enslavement “In your face”.

For someone like myself who genuinely believed that all the technology I helped to create would benefit humanity this is a depressing turn of events.

The potential for good, is so appealing. Back in my youth, I naively thought that people would choose good over the dark side. “History be damned,” I thought. “Surely we’d learned from our mistakes and wouldn’t choose that dark path again.

As I said, I was idealistic and naive. 

I’m even doubting that I’ll renew my passport when it’s due. There’s no place I want to go to visit anymore. That could change, and I have time.

If however, I chose to expatriate I’d not need a passport. All I need do is illegally enter another county claiming political, or economic asylum, with no ID. That seems to be all the rage these days. One need only look at the piles of ID’s floating in the Mediterranean, or stacked next to the Rio Grande.

For someone like myself, who’s actively trying to reduce my digital footprint and minimize my financial entanglements, digital ID has become a non-starter. I want to fade away, drop off the grid and live free.

The way we’re hooked into the system, has in the past week been underscored by my health insurance provider. I used an app (of course) to try to renew a 90 day prescription. Several hours later the app informed me that the prescription was delayed. Several hours after that, I got a call from the insurance provider.

Stupidly, I answered the call, thinking there was some issue on their part about the prescription. I’d just pulled a rare, hot lunch out of the toaster oven and thought the call would resolve the prescription problem and I’d go on with the rest of my day.

Instead what I got was some girl from some organization that was loosely associated with my insurance provider being quite insistent that I needed to set an appointment with someone else to answer questions for the insurance provider.

I explained that I was just sitting down to lunch and wasn’t interested. I asked if my answering questions was mandatory. She was unable to clearly tell me that, nor was she able to tell me what kinds of questions I needed to answer. Nope! She was badgering and demanding about my setting some appointment with a nurse practitioner, wherein there would be a video conference.

FUCK!

I just wanted to eat my now rapidly cooling meal in peace. On and on, circle within circle this girl annoyed me until I finally said, “FINE! Just set the damn appointment! I don’t give a shit when, just do it.”

40 minutes later I finally hung up the fucking phone. I gave the now cold, meal to the dog because I was so pissed off at that point I didn’t feel like eating.

(Note to self… Next time don’t answer or when the annoyance level reaches “pissed off” just hang up.)

Within minutes, my phone was blowing up with multiple text messages asking how I felt about that phone call, confirming the appointment, and telling me that there was going to be other confirming phone calls, about the appointment, and that I must go to their web site to verify that my technology would accommodate their video conferencing standard.

I don’t take orders or demands very well. I never have. The more insistent or demanding someone is, the less likely I’m going to comply. This is particularly true if I see no direct benefit to me.

In this instance I don’t see any direct benefit and have come to believe this whole thing is nothing more that these folks finding a way to bill for services that I not only did not ask for, and that I don’t want.

The other possibility is that the insurance provider is attempting to get information about my health records that they didn’t get from the useless doctor I saw a month or so ago. I’m wondering if they’re wanting to plug my data into some actuarial table for probability analysis to figure out my risk to them, so they can up the billing or demand that I submit to the merry go round of tests, more tests, and yet more tests, then follow up appointments, all of which are designed to drag me into the medical industrial complex so that I spend my retirement years running like a hamster on a wheel for their benefit, not mine.

Last night I got a call from the nurse practitioner reminding me of an appointment today. I thought… why don’t you just ask your questions now lady? Why are you wasting your time and mine? You obviously have time to call me now, why wait till tomorrow?

I know what it’s all about. It’s about racking up check marks in some form on some computer that all translate to billing somehow.

I’ll play along tonight when she calls and I’m not likely to be particularly cooperative or compliant. 

The nurse practitioner was barking orders at me during the confirmation call.

Then I got another two text messages, along with a demand that I sign into their conferencing system 10 minutes prior to the scheduled time.

Uh excuse me? When did I start working for them?

All of this is related to the complexities of systems. Digital ID simply takes a previously working simple system and makes it more difficult to manage. 

Imagine what happens when every single aspect of our lives are bounded by mandatory compliance and demands in service to any corporation or government entity that has access to our information.

How long until everyone must provide hours of their day, (translating to hours of their lives,) dedicated to nothing more than managing who, how, and what, has access to their lives. Imagine a situation wherein any misstep could mean that you don’t get something you need whether you’ve paid for it or not.

This insurance thing is one single aspect. Multiply it by 10 services, all attached to a digital ID and you’ve probably increased the points of failure by 1000.

I still don’t know what the status of my prescription is, and am researching safe ways to get off the drug entirely.

It’s not that I’m not interested in my health. It’s that I have zero trust in government, healthcare, or the common decency of people anymore.

That being said, I see no reason to participate in digital IDs. With the intrusive nature of text messages, cell phones, email, and all the rest of the modern world. I’m wondering if I can ween myself off technology entirely.

I rather like the concept put forward in the Jack Reacher series of books. In those, the main character has, his paper ID, a pension account he accesses via Western Union, and is not tied to any place or system.

He lives a simple unencumbered unconnected life.

That sounds really nice.

Now I’m off to deal with mandatory licensing for the dog, then updating payment methods on accounts for services, then I’ll spend some time on the phone with Apple to sort out some other screwups on my phone created by one of their software updates. Then I’ll have to make sure at least one of my devices has a full charge to be able to join this dumb shit conference call later today. [Honestly, I kind of liked it better when I had no health insurance it was one less thing to deal with.]

But all of this “Only takes a few minutes…”

Minutes that I’ll never get back!

See how that works?

Really, who didn’t see this coming?

Buckle your seatbelts, it’s gonna be a bumpy two weeks or so.

The Senate Democrats have voted (right on schedule) with the Republican majority to end the Government shutdown.

Honestly, I think it was nothing more than a political stunt on the part of the Democrats in Washington. They wanted to look like they were strong and doing something prior to the off cycle elections. They needed something to energize their base and were willing to use the American people as pawns.

Some of them in recent weeks admitted that they were using the American People as “leverage“.

How that isn’t offensive to people is beyond me. Really? Is that all the D.C. Democrats think of the American people and specifically their base? We’re all supposed to be nothing but tools for them to get their way, even if “their way” is detrimental to the Country at large and increases the national debt & thereby taxes on the working class?

Oh sure they’ll say they want to tax the rich more, “To make them pay their fair share” But ultimately the working class folks pay the tab. Because taxes keep going up for them too.

NYC will be interesting. With their new Mayor, the rich are already making their exit plans. To counter this, NY politicians are suggesting that they’ll still find a way to tax people that leave the city and state as if they still live there. What is that, if not indentured servitude?

It should be noted that the United States does the same thing to people living outside the country & charges people who choose to give up their US Citizenship a shit ton of taxes for the privilege to boot. So there is a precedent. California floated a similar indentured status law and was thwarted by the courts.

What about those folks in the country that don’t work? What about those who live on generational welfare? Their benefits are more than the average retiree receives and oh yeah, depending on the retiree’s income, they’re still subject to taxes while those receiving benefits typically are not.

The disparity is striking. Retirees still have to pay for supplemental health care. While the people on public assistance get virtually everything for free.

The shutdown should be a wake up call to everyone that there is a major problem that needs to be fixed. When you have people on benefits saying that their children are going hungry while they’re filming their TicToc on a brand new $1500 mobile phone with $100+ Nail & $200 hair extensions. Something is very wrong.

The first part of the lesson should be, if you’re that dependent on the government for your basic daily needs then you’re a slave to the government. The other part is the government has broken its promise to the elderly and retirees regarding all the money they’ve taken and mismanaged from working people’s paychecks for decades.

The D.C. Democrats were demanding extended funding for the ACA. Why? Wasn’t that system supposed to be self sustaining? That’s what we were told. We were also told that the ACA would control healthcare costs and make healthcare affordable for everyone.

It didn’t!

In fact there are a lot of people that the ACA outright hurt because it drove doctors into early retirement faster (many good doctors retired because they refused to have their patient interactions monitored by government and insurance companies or have the cost of their private practice double or triple because they had to add more staff to handle the paperwork).

Then ACA made the actual healthcare insurance plans too expensive to afford unless you were working for a corporation. Then the money that folks, as employees, kicked in pretax to cover increasing healthcare prices and lower quality of service drove salaries up resulting in higher taxes but lower effective wages.

The end result was more people on more government subsidized plans that were also generally unaffordable and resulted in them having the subsidies thought of as taxable income creating an end of year tax burden that drove them further toward poverty instead of helping them get back on the path toward economic stability.

Then to pour vinegar into the wounds. The D.C. Democrats flooded the country with “Asylum seekers” A.K.A. illegal immigrants and gave them all food, housing, and medical care, at levels higher than Americans in poverty, our own retirees, and children.

All on the taxpayer dime, during a declared pandemic, with no vaccination  requirements, and looked the other way when these people were protesting in the streets while our own citizens were enduring unreasonable lockdowns.

This is the Democrat party as I see it. It’s insane!

The government shutdown and all the Democrat antics prior, gave New York City an avowed communist/muslim Mayor. Took away the legally voted for, redistricting commission in California, placing drawing voting districts in the hands of a Governor. And gave the people of Virginia a person who may be a wolf in sheep’s clothing for Governor if you look at her voting record.

They used the shutdown as a mechanism to (unsurprisingly) paint the Republicans as the bad guys. The D.C. Democrats callously used the suffering (they created) of the American people to forward their agenda.

The D.C. Republicans were willing to pass a Continuing Resolution that simply held government expenditures at current levels.

The spineless Republicans know that government spending is too high. The moment the Democrats shut the government down, Republican response should have been to pass a bill in the house that enacted needed budget restraints to actually reduce spending to pre-pandemic levels instead of kicking the budget can down the road.

As it is, the idiotic Republicans have set themselves and the country, up to be held hostage next year when the D.C. Democrats decide to throw another tantrum in the run up to the 2026 election.

We know they will, all this has done is made sure that in the run up to the midterms, the Democrats will pitch another temper tantrum and use the American People as “leverage” to hopefully regain a majority in the House and Senate. It will be a replay of the midterms in 2018 and their aim is to cripple the Trump administration for its remaining two years. It will be the old “Wash, Rinse, Repeat”.

Yes enacting a real budget instead of a CR would have extended the government shutdown. But it would have forced the government to really look at the EBT/Snap/Welfare benefits and make adjustments. While they were at it, they could have looked at military wages and adjusted those, to make sure that our soldiers families weren’t living in poverty while their husband or wife was defending the nation. Maybe, they could have actually created a balanced budget and enacted necessary cuts that we so desperately need.

I’m glad it didn’t come to nuking the filibuster. That would have ensured that the Democrats, if they ever come to power again, would irrevocably alter the country toward a more communist 3rd world shit hole.

All my personal opinion aside. Now we’re looking at weeks of grandstanding and spin by D.C. Democrats to make them look like heroes who “Forced” the “Nasty” Republicans into feeding hungry people. 

They and their apparatchiks in the media will crow about their “wins” in off cycle elections and owning the Republicans. They’ll enter the 24 hour news cycle keep repeating their insane spin, and everyone will forget that they were the ones that shutdown the government. They were the ones who used their constituents suffering as tools, not to get their way, but to win a few elections. 

Then in November of 2026. Everyone will be surprised that they shut the government down again. People will be angry at the “evil”, “Nazi”, Republicans and vote Democrat. Most people will claim they didn’t see it coming.

Folks, this whole thing was nothing more than a proof of concept experiment. It was carried out at the taxpayer’s expense. The next government shutdown will be worse.

You can’t capitulate to spoiled children.

Unfortunately, The Republicans just did, and if you didn’t see that the Democrats were going to suddenly change course after this election, you’ve not been paying attention.

Who is Sydney Sweeny

11725_SydneySweeney 960x720.A while back I heard this name Sydney Sweeney.

It appears she’s some actress. I figured, “Ignore”.

I thought it was another actress shooting her mouth off about something or other. I didn’t bother opening any articles about whatever controversy she was involved in. I assumed that she was another Hollywood dumbass shrieking about any of the 10 issues that they’re always shrieking about. 

Trump, ICE, Deportations, Trans Rights, Abortion, Republicans are NAZIs, blah, blah, blah.

American eagle sydney sweeney.I thought that whatever she was saying, and whoever she was, would blow over and I’d never hear the name again.

And indeed it did blow over, eclipsed by the next “Crisis” of the 24 hour news cycle.

I guess the crisis was the government shutdown.

But in the past couple of days she popped up again. I thought, “What fresh hell?”

Then as I was clicking around on the internet last night, I inadvertently clicked on some article about her in some interview.

American Eagle ad Sydney Sweeney has great jeans American Eagle.Apparently, the first controversy that I ignored was that Sweeney had appeared in a Jeans ad for American Eagle. The tag line was “Sydney Sweeney has Great Jeans”

Sweeney was in a short video ad. She’s got a great figure, and the ad itself hearkened back to a point in our history where models with good figures routinely displayed merchandise in suggestive poses. You’d think it would be another ad campaign that came and went.

It should have.

Except, that because she was a white woman appearing in an ad with the tag line “Great Jeans”. Apparently the left lost their shit over it. When is the left not losing their shit over something?

“Great Jeans” was heard by the left morons as “Great Genes” and they made it about race. That’s what started the controversy. Yawn!!!

I don’t know about the rest of America, but I’m really sick of seeing obese people bouncing around in overly tight clothing being portrayed as sex symbols. Yeah, maybe they are to a certain segment of the population, but in the main, I suspect that people would rather see healthy weight models in appropriate clothing in advertisements.

Big Rapper Sues Lyft Dajua Blanding known as Dank Demoss 1024x600 3810616762.Spandex is a privilege, not a right. I’m personally put off seeing women in stretchy fabrics that look like over stuffed sausage casings and being told it’s beautiful.

It’s not. The rapper Dank Demoss is the epitome of what I see when I run across ads with fat models. I realize this entity is too large for even the most outlandish of the ads lately, but she’s the mental image I see.

Sydney Sweeney popped up again in the past few days because of an interview for GQ.

The interviewer, Katherine Stoeffel, appeared to be “fishing” for some kind of controversy and at one point asked, “Is there something that you want to say about the ad itself,” she asked. “The criticism of the content was basically that, maybe specifically in this political climate, white people shouldn’t joke about genetic superiority.

Sweeney replied, “I think that when I have an issue that I want to speak about, people will hear.

Folks loved Sweeney’s answer for a number of reasons. She handled the question, she didn’t make waves, she acknowledged that the question had been asked, and chose not to add any fuel to the controversy.

In a way she let the air out of the controversy entirely. Without saying it, she said that the people who created the controversy made up something to be offended by, then tried to damage her career and the American Eagle brand over nothing.

Yeah, the ad campaign stirred up press with an interesting double entendre, but it wasn’t racist as many in the media claimed. After all an ad is designed to create a need. All ads essentially say, “If you buy our product you’ll be more beautiful, more commanding, shoulder to shoulder with the movers and shakers, in the top 10 percent, on your way to success, etc.”

That’s the nature of advertisement. It’s supposed to feed you a dream. Remember Calvin Klein ads? They were racy as hell and always had hot men and women selling over priced underwear that no-one really saw you wearing. But you knew and that may have boosted your confidence. Was it worth it? Maybe.

Sydney Sweeney does apparently have good genes, and the jeans did look great on her.

I watched the ad. I liked it. 

I liked the nostalgia. I wondered if American Eagle made menswear.

So obviously the Ad did what it was supposed to do. It made me aware of the brand.

I can say that most ads these days don’t do that for me. I can’t tell you about many ads I’ve seen in the past 2 years that made as favorable an impression on me. Most of the ads have some overdriven music or repetitive synthetic percussion beat that’s more annoying than “Ear Catching” and they’re a visual mess. Some ads I’ve seen leave me wondering what the hell the product or brand they were trying to promote were.

Ozempic commercials I remember, because their music is happy happy, but they’ve got a bunch of obese people jiggling around and essentially making fat the new norm. They say to me, “Hey being too fat to comfortably move is okay, and manageable, if you inject this super expensive crap in your body. We’ll be ready with $20,000 knee and hip replacement surgery when you need it. And your health insurance might cover it.”

Jaguar 1732050077767 1732050093241.png.webp.I don’t think that’s really a good message. I personally think that a better message would be “eat right, get more exercise, and you’ll appreciate that people notice your effort.”

Then of course there was the Jaguar commercial. That one is memorable because whatever they were selling, I want no part of.

This latest blip of Sydney Sweeney will pass in a few days. Then she’ll go back to being an actor.

The next crisis will pop up in a day or two. Maybe the government will reopen and the news cycle will be busy painting the Schumer crowd as “Heroes of the Republic,” for voting yes on a Continuing Resolution that they voted “Yes” on multiple times over the past 2 or 3 years.

Or they won’t and the rioting and looting will start.

Either way…

Yawn…