Tag: Musings

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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.

 

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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…

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Why Bother?

Gavin Newsom Biography.Newsom with his political stunt called Prop 50 “Won”.

Of course he won, Newsom and the California Democratic machine always “wins”

In one of the most gerrymandered states, Newsom gets to gerrymander it further.

The original California Redistricting commission, whose charter says something about grouping communities with similar interests and needs made our congressional representation Judy Chu who in addition to being wholly ineffective has the heart of her district in the wealthy Pasadena, Montrose, La Cañada / Flintridge, Alta Dena areas. 

Those of us living in the mountain communities and high desert have little in common with those areas. We were better off with Jay Olbernolte who actually lives in the mountain community of Big Bear. He’s also lived his whole life in and around the high desert if I recall correctly.

But the difference between La Cañada / Flintridge is astounding. They’re concerned about whether their Latte is properly mixed, the people on this side of the mountain are concerned about paying our heating bills so we don’t freeze to death.

Their interests are if the automatic gate to their community is working, our interests are is the freeway open so that we can get to work.

Our communities have very little in common. Not that it matters because the candidates that are presented from that side of the mountain literally don’t know where we are nor do they know anything about the “Fly Over” area they see from their first class window seats as they fly to Las Vegas or Lake Tahoe for the weekend.

After the census when the redistricting commission was doing their work, Jerry & I spent a lot of time on phone calls and writing letters politely explaining why some of their redistricting schemes improperly grouped us with communities that had nothing in common with us.

We managed, with our voices joining with thousands of others to prevent some of the worst ideas. But it was clear that the Commission itself was seeking to slice up Republican strongholds. The mountain communities and the high desert is unsurprisingly, heavily Republican, Libertarian, or independent conservative. There’s a lot of working class people who have little time or concern about the “Feel Good” Democrat agenda. We want low crime, were/are fighting to stop illegal pot farms that steal water from fire hydrants to water their pot harvests and enforce their will with illegal guns. We want the roads to be maintained, and a lot of us moved up here to get away from the noise, crime, and insanity of the cities. There’s a lot of folks here who escaped LA, choosing to commute 80 miles to work, so they could have peace & quiet. They wanted to live in a high trust environment and know their neighbors.

Unfortunately, a large chunk of this area got consumed by a democrat district. Oddly, the democrat district is one of 3 that cover the foothills from Glendora to Rancho Cucamonga. Even stranger, is that the district that consumed us, isn’t even the closest. 

Clearly, whatever “Logic” the California Redistricting commission used was designed to associate an extremely wealthy LA suburb with people on the completely opposite side of the financial spectrum.

It wasn’t just the congressional district. It was the state representative district too. By the time all the wrangling was done, we went from a Republican congressional district and a swing seat state representative district to solid Democrat representation all the way. Before the redistricting we could actually contact someone and get things taken care of.

Neither level of representatives have ever visited this area. Judy Chu as a photo op tried banging on an ICE detention center in Adelanto once, a few months ago demanding entrance. Adelanto is not in her district and I’m sure she didn’t have any clue where she was. She could have dropped by a community center meeting or two on that Tuesday as she headed back to the lap of luxury in her Pasadena area home.

I don’t even know the state representative’s name. He’s wholly ineffective and the few times I dialed into his “Town Hall” conferences he refused to answer any questions from folks on this side of the mountain, concentrating instead on the LA side of his district. (Truth to tell, I don’t think the guy even knew he represented those folks.)

All of this is to say, when the redistricting commission was done with us, we effectively had no real representation. It was representation in name only.

Now along comes Newsom. Not content with lots of disenfranchised people, he wants to make even more people un-represented. He wants to silence dissenting voices to his authority and even though he’s on his way out, he wants to screw over more people of California.

I suspect he’s got two goals here. 1) He’s using the California electorate to give a middle finger to President Trump. 2) He’s setting up a solid Newsom voting bloc called California to propel his Presidential Aspirations.

It should be noted that a huge chunk of California called San Bernardino County actually voted to investigate secession from the state of California to become the 51st state. In part because Newsom’s management of California state resources left the entire country without many needed resources that they pay for in taxation. San Bernardino county is larger in total square miles than some entire states on the east coast.

Newsom doesn’t care though, it won’t be his problem and the next election cycle which will put a new governor in Sacramento will cause the people of San Bernardino to pause their efforts hoping that the new governor will be a good one.

In my opinion, they’ll be pissing into the wind. The next governor of the state will in all likelihood be just as bad as Newsom.

It’s with all of this frustration as a backdrop that I voted “NO” on Prop 50 on Tuesday.

I knew going in that my time would be better spent jerking off in a truckstop toilet but I voted anyway.

Even as I was casting my vote on a single issue, (it was the only issue on the ballot,) I thought to myself why bother voting at all in California? All dissenting voices are immediately drowned out by the majority of Democrat voters. Many of whom, apparently thought they were voting to impeach President Trump.

So in addition to the one party rule the Democrat party has in California. A rather substantial portion of those Democrat voters have no clue how the government works at either a State or Federal level. They happily vote against whatever “Enemy” the Democrat party tells them to.

So I thought to myself, “Why bother?”

There is no way voting in anything to do with California politics will change the outcome. No matter how much research or effort I put into carefully considering my position on a candidate it will not matter. Nor will other people like me ever regain any kind of voice in California politics. (As an aside, I vote the candidate, not the party.)

Newsom is technically violating California Law with Proposition 50. It’s billed as a “Temporary” measure. But there’s no real expiration date on it. I suppose that the 2030 census could reset the Governor’s ability to redraw district maps. But by then, no-one will remember that the California redistricting commission actually has that control and de-facto the redistricting will remain under the direct control of the Governor’s office.

Who’s the “King”? The Dictator? This is some real 3rd world shit right here.

This realization has led me to believe that voting here is a pointless exercise and that California is lost.

I’d been contemplating moving to an all RED state. Then I thought, “That’s the exact same bullshit you have in California, just the other side of the coin.”

Now I contemplating moving to a state that is conservative leaning, but Purple. It seems that if I’m going to move, perhaps a purple state would have more people like me. Folks that are interested and engaged in exercising their right to vote for the benefit of the people of the state, not the enrichment or control of political parties. People who can have discussions and debates about ideas without fear of being cancelled or having violence done to them.

Then it occurred to me that what I’m seeking is the real American spirit. A concept of “One for all and all for one.”

Realistically, that has probably never truly existed. Humans are after all, inherently self centered and self absorbed. That concept is a dream and it has two sides. One is Communism and the other is a constitutional Republic.

In the one, it’s about government mandated compliance, in the other it’s about the willingness to compromise so that everyone “Hopefully” rises and lives the life they choose in the way that they choose.

Surprisingly Newsom may have done something good for me personally. He changed my view about what kind of state I wish to live in. So I guess I owe him thanks for broadening my perspective.

I also think that I’ll hold off buying a new house. Instead I’ll rent maybe in several places until after the 2028 election. If Newsom by hook or crook should “win” the Presidency then I’ll be able to move out of the United States and live out my days somewhere else like Poland, in peace.

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Well Damn!

Was cleaning the house today.

I moved the coffee table and a chair to vacuum. Under both were areas of the rug that looked “Odd” I didn’t think much of it until I’d run the vacuum over them. Then I was looking at the backing of the rug.

It took me a moment… then I saw a moth. I got down on my hands & knees and saw immediately what happened. Some kind of small species of moth had come in, and made themselves right at home.

The rug was made of wool.

Well shit!

The rug was 13 years old. It was the last one of a set. The first one had been destroyed when the fire sprinkler pipe in the ceiling broke. This one had survived, but it was showing signs of wear around the edges.

I wasn’t quite ready to let it go but found myself having no choice. I rolled it up and carried it outside. Now I have to figure out how to get rid of it. It’s small enough that I may be able to stuff it in a black trash bag with some plant trimmings ( as camouflage).

The rugs, were two that Jerry & I picked out when we were buying furniture after the house rebuild. Both were neat matching geometric patterns.

I had to get rid of it, but it’s still another thing in the house that we selected together. Now it’s gone.

Jesse isn’t pleased. I think he believes he was bad although I’ve been trying to reassure him. I ended up wiping the underside of all the furniture trying to make sure I got any remaining eggs or other creatures.I scrubbed the floor and put felt on the bottoms of the furniture pieces to protect the floor. In case anything slid around.

I sort of like the room without the rug. I’ll have to see how this works. If it doesn’t I’ll pick something up.

This was not what I had planned for the day, but it’s probably for the best. I went around the house checking on the cedar blocks in drawers containing wool. I should probably find some replacements, they’re not as pungent as they once were. I’ve got wool sweaters and scarves for winter. I’d prefer not to have them eaten.

I usually moved the furniture around every couple of weeks to vacuum and I remember seeing something a few weeks ago but thinking it was just that the rug was getting old. I’m amazed how much damage was done in such a short period of time.

If there’s any benefit to synthetic carpeting, I suppose it’s that moths aren’t an issue.

Between the grape vine and now the rug, it feels like things are just slipping away.

Sigh…

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Peace in the Middle East, for however long it lasts

I’m glad that President Trump managed to bring peace to the Gaza – Israel conflict. Overall it’s a good thing.

I’ve noticed that there are Democrats claiming President Trump is building on something someone did in the Biden Administration.

I don’t believe it and honestly don’t give a damn what they think. Or what lies they have to tell themselves to maintain their delusion that Biden was in any way good for the country.

I don’t think it will last, Hamas is already testing the boundaries and they are not to be trusted. They’re not going to willingly give away their control or power, and they’ve no doubt negotiated this peace as a survival tactic. I believe they should be hunted down and exterminated like the lying vermin they are. If Israel decides to do exactly that, I’m all for nobody noticing.

My only concern is that I don’t want America involved in it at all. It’s none of our concern.

That’s not being islamophobic, or genocidal, it’s recognizing an enemy that has for decades played the same game. Attack, get their asses kicked, sue for peace, rebuild their arsenal, attack again. 

It’s like the shampoo bottle instructions, “wash, rinse, repeat.”

“Oh Hamas did a terror attack in Israel? Again? Yawn!”

I’m really hoping President Trump holds the line regarding our involvement and that he’s able to keep the other Middle Eastern nations to their word about controlling the bullshit in Gaza.

Unfortunately, I don’t think this will be a lasting peace. I’m willing to enjoy Palestinian protestors being off our streets for a while.

I’ve been amused watching the media trying to acknowledge the accomplishment without choking on their own bile.

Trump’s been in office less than a year, and thus far he’s keeping campaign promises. Illegal crossings at the border are at what some reports indicate, a 50 year low.

Corporations are brining manufacturing back to America, (that’s going to be a long term improvement.) Oil drilling is allowed in US coastal waters again. I’m not sure that I’m all for that, but I am for energy independence, and if drilling is a stepping stone to that I’m good with it.

The H1B programs are under fire so maybe we’ll have the ability to call a bank, cellphone, electric, natural gas, and almost any other service oriented company and get someone that we don’t need a universal translator to understand. It would be nice to conduct business in my language without straining to understand the person.

Folks are screaming that our medical industry will be impacted. Maybe. However, since we’re deporting a substantial number of people who use hospital ERs and urgent cares like their primary care physicians because they’re getting medical services on the tax payer dime. The medical issue may sort itself out without intervention.

I for one don’t feel comfortable with the sloppy medical care that has become commonplace. Nor do I feel comfortable having to ask for a translation of the doctor’s diagnosis, then ask for a translation of the translation a nurse provided, from a janitor.

Yes, these people supposedly speak English. But it’s unintelligible.

I do enjoy the fact that when these people look at my last name, they revert to “Mr.” And my first name. 

That being said, I’ve recently had some “American” workers do the same thing because they can’t navigate saying my last name. Had our family not americanized the spelling when we came in on Ellis Island or other ports of entry, I’d probably be a whole lot more amused. Or offended… I’m not sure which.

Were it not for the expense and inconvenience, I’d consider changing my last name back to the original spelling. At least then, when someone botched it they’d have a good reason.

How is it that I, an uneducated American, can usually say someone’s first and last name from the way it is spelled? When I was answering technical support calls, I always took the time to give it a whirl, ask if I got it right, then carry on with the conversation properly using the Mr. Mrs. or Miss pronouns and the person’s last name as a sign of respect.

It’s a small thing, but I always found it made people at least more comfortable and feel that they were being heard. Referring to someone as “Mr. Steve” always felt, to me at least, disrespectful.

Then there’s the prescription pricing that President Trump is working on bringing into line. I’m super happy about that. There’s never been any excuse for being able to buy the same medication in Mexico or Canada at 1/2 or 1/4 the price just because you bought it outside the United States.

What does the drug cost to manufacture? What does it cost to package and distribute? What did it cost to develop? Add the costs up divide that by the number of people likely to use the drug during it’s patent period, add a little % of profit and that’s the freaking cost the consumer should pay no matter where they live.

If their government wants to subsidize the cost to provide the medication to the poor, that’s their business.

There’s no way that the people of the United States should have been paying higher prices for something just because someone, somewhere, decided they should pay for someone in Zimbabwe to pay less. President Trump is right in saying the American people have been ripped off for years.

I know the pharmaceutical industry is pissed off at Trump and I’m “all in” for that too. 

Even here in America, you can see the differences. Wallgreens charges 4 times the price for a generic medication I’m familiar with than Rite-Aid did. What Wallgreens charges medicare is even more.

House & Senate Democrats light their hair on fire about medicare and social security becoming insolvent but don’t have any plan except to keep pumping money into those systems, except asking why. They never get to the root cause of stopping that kind of fraud.

President Trump went to the source and attempted to put a stop to usury pricing.

The Senate Democrats are claiming that millions will lose healthcare due to the government shutdown. They neglect to say that many of those millions are getting it for free due to government subsidies. Some are flat out illegal aliens, some are people who are citizens and who truly need assistance. The latter, I’d like to see taken care of but until the former are not getting the freebies they’ll be hurt too.

Why is it better to be an illegal in America than it is to be a citizen?

I could’ve had healthcare for the previous 5 years.

I didn’t because the math just didn’t work.

Let me lay it out to you. I couldn’t pay for a bottom of the barrel Obamacare plan. It cost more than my mortgage. I could have applied for a subsidy that the state insurance folks called “Free”.

But it’s not free. It’s paid for by tax dollars, and required giving the state direct access to my banking, retirement, and pensions. Oh and since I owned a house, they’d have had the ability to put a lien on my house to cover the “Free” taxpayer subsidy.

They’d have monitored my income, so they could make sure I wasn’t getting benefits I wasn’t allowed to have. Oh, and guess what? The subsidy is taxable as earned income. 

I’d have been paying full income tax on a subsidy that did nothing but pay for a service costing $1600-$1800 a month, but over the past 5 years the actual cost of medical care cost  me a grand total of 12K out of pocket.

Plus I’d have been paying for car registration, property taxes, sales tax, gas tax, and all the wonderful little fees & taxes on my utility bills that provide “Free” utilities to people who are poorer than me.

Providing those “Free” services to the people poorer than me, in effect drives them further down the economic curve by increasing their tax burden, rather than raising them up.

Our Senate Democrats are fighting for more money to provide subsidies for a system of insurance that is clearly broken, and whether by design or implementation breaks the backs of not only the poor, but also the working individuals paying their taxes to the Federal and State governments. 

Admittedly I’m a special case. In that I have hard assets, but even a single guy in an apartment would feel the impact, if for example his employer didn’t provide health insurance.

So I’m actually all in for not raising the subsidies. I’m hoping that the Senate Democrats demand to raise more subsidies to pump into a broken system like Obamacare, casts in sharp relief just how broken and wrong Obamacare was from the start.

A functioning system shouldn’t require endless money to be poured into it in ever increasing amounts.

If you’ve got a car that costs more to maintain than the payment on a newer vehicle, you dump the broken car and buy a new one. You sure as hell don’t keep pumping money into it and at the same time let your drunken buddies keep borrowing it then returning it more broken, with an empty gas tank day after day.

That’s essentially what Obamacare is doing.

I hope that Kennedy or Trump asks how much money shows up in Politicians bank accounts or campaign funds from Obamacare insurers and pharmaceutical companies.

I think the answer would be very enlightening. Afterwards, I’d like to see those answers referred to the DOJ followed by swift indictments and punishment for any wrong doing. I don’t care how many Congressmen are utterly destroyed or which party they’re affiliated with.

Which brings me back to peace in the Middle East, and the war in Ukraine.

Trump bringing an end to the Israeli / Palestinian conflict in short order makes me question in a broader sense just how similar the flow of money is in the military industrial complex to the medical / pharmaceutical games.

For those Congressmen who’ve been feeding the conflicts through words or deeds, how much money have they made?

Could it be that’s why they hate President Trump’s policies with every fiber of their being?

I hope President Trump is able to put an end to taxation for everyone. I’d be happiest if he stopped all taxation. But I’d be willing to accept him doing away with taxation on everyone that didn’t make a million a year.

That should make the Senate Democrats happy. After all, they’ve been saying for years, “Tax the rich,” haven’t they? But they say this knowing they’re immune from taxation don’t they? Maybe the House and Senate should be taxed at 50% on every dollar they make in excess of their Congressional pay.

Yeah, I know I’ve been all over the map with this one. Sorry…

Have a great day.