What the holy Hell?

I’d heard of some singer doing something to the National Anthem and thought, “Goody, some of the mistakes are epically funny, I could use a laugh.”

I looked it up and was not amused in the least.

When I heard the lyrics;

“Oh say can you see by the blood in the streets / That this place doesn’t smile on you colored child / Whose blood built this land with sweat and their hands / But we’ll die in this place and your memory erased / Oh say, does this truth hold any weight / This is not the land of the free, but the home of the slaves! “

There was a time when the folks running the sound system would have pulled the plug on this kind of crap.

I wasn’t going to give this rancid bitch any more publicity but DAMN! Who the hell does she think she is?

Apparently, she was singing at the Essence Festival. Essence of what, stupidity?

Hypocrisy much CUNT?

This is a rich ass bitch who, if she was enslaved, would be paying all her money to Massa.

More likely if she was enslaved and if America was everything that she and people like her believe. Not Black necessarily, but weak minded, idiots the progressive leftists have deluded and corrupted, she’d be singing Camptown Races picking cotton in the fields.

I thought a number of much stronger things than I have written above.

Then I thought “Why did we bother to fight the civil war? After the war, there were some who thought that the Africans should have been repatriated to their country but that was too expensive. There were others who thought that the Africans should be put down like diseased beasts in the fields.”

Cooler, kinder heads prevailed. Sure there were still issues in the South, members of the KKK wrapped themselves in bedsheets and did horrific things.

But the incidents, while deplorable, were not nightly events contrary to what believers in the 1619 project might believe.

Members of the KKK were farmers and businessmen after all, they had families to feed and business to attend to, they didn’t have a lot of free time.

That’s one of the problems with revisionist history. Mine, Yours, Governments, or anyone else’s. There’s a tendency to frame the events and the people in contemporary terms.

Farmers in 1866 got up at dawn, fed the animals, hooked up the Ox, or Donkey, or Horses, to the plow or other farm implement and plowed a large an area as they could physically work. At night, they might read a bit of the Bible, after a simple dinner and then they’d go to sleep exhausted.

From their plot of land, they fed their families. They prayed to have enough rain, that locusts wouldn’t eat everything and hoped there’d be enough to sell come harvest time, to buy what goods they needed for the winter and the next year.

They didn’t have tractors, or much in the way of mechanized devices. They didn’t live long. A simple cut could be a death sentence.

The human equation was pretty simple. Work or Die. Just like all the rest of the animal kingdom. You have to realize that the term work encompasses hunting and gathering as surely as going to an office every day. Going to an office is just Hunting and gathering with extra steps.

Even criminal enterprises like robbing a train is technically work. The thing to remember about criminal behavior in the streets or towns back then is; crime was dealt with in brutal fashion. You’d be lucky to live long enough to see a judge or magistrate.

The truth is;

It was then, and is even today, cheaper to put a bullet in someone’s head, or cut it off, than it is to house them, feed them, and clothe them, in jail or prison.

Nobody gave you anything for free. That was pretty much a true statement right up until the 1930s.

Farming wasn’t the only option, but generally speaking no matter the profession, life was hard work.

Sure, there were some rich people, there are always rich people, but the average person was living hand to mouth.

The lyrics this lady sings make it sound like slavery is still a thing in this country. That offends the shit out of me.

Why aren’t people like her singing about real slavery going on today in other countries? Why aren’y people like her singing about child sex slavery south of the border and now moving north. Why aren’t people like her applying their immense wealth to stopping any of this?

Oh right these people are still bitching about something that happened 150 years ago. Something that no one alive today was a part of.

This bitch has said publicly that she’s considered leaving the USA.

I say, “your terms are acceptable.” I’d love to see her hustled onto a plane, flown across the ocean and dropped in Lagos. Give her $100.00. Put all the rest of her money in trust to pay her debts off.

Perhaps I’m being cruel. But I have gotten really sick and tired of this kind of shit.

Yes, we have problems, but what these people are doing isn’t helping anybody at all.

I hope her career crashes and burns. I don’t listen to R&B so I can’t boycott her. The best I can do is ignore her, and anything she says or does from here on out.

I don’t recall being this angry with any President since Bush

I happened to have the radio on while Biden spoke about the SCOTUS ruling on student loan forgiveness.

I have never been so angry.

Biden, as The President does not have the right to forgive that debt. Generally speaking The Executive Branch doesn’t have access to the purse stings. That right belongs to the Legislative Branch.

If you read the founding documents of this country, even without a law degree it’s pretty clear how the separation of powers works. By the way, when I was in elementary school, middle school, and high school there were entire units of curriculum where we actually studied The Constitution, Amendments, and Declaration of Independence.

The theory was, if students understood these documents they would be better citizens and voters.

Biden was wrong the moment he made the school loan debt promise. Even after the SCOTUS ruling, Biden, (more properly, the Biden Administration,) still hasn’t learned a damn thing.

Allocating those funds is the responsibility of Congress.

Biden had the audacity to claim the Republican Party was why the “Hope” he’d given so many Americans, was cruelly ripped away. Again incorrect! The Supreme Court may be conservative, it may be liberal, ultimately it’s sole purpose is to decided the constitutionality of cases brought before the justices.

Biden is the person who gave thousands of people false hope. He demonstrated once again, that he’ll take credit for shit that he had nothing to do with if its good. Unfortunately the majority of the Biden era has been about sleepy Joe telling everyone Shit he’s done that’s failed miserably, wasn’t his fault.

In reality Biden’s speech writers and administration said this. Clearly indicating whoever was writing the speech, has no idea how our government works. Biden sat in congress for 50 years, he’d have to have learned something in that time just by osmosis.

While I was feeling my blood pressure climbing, I realized there was another part of Biden’s speech that was freaking me out.

Biden kept dropping into this creepy old man voice.

Just based on that, whatever he said in that voice I immediately discounted. He sounded like a guy cruising around schools in a van saying, “Hey little boy, you want some candy?

How the hell is this guy and his entire administration not GONE? There is more than enough observable failure in this administration that they should have been fired!

I know we have to do it all by the rules of The Constitution I’m good with that, but damnit Congress, enact the 25th, then impeach the whore and fire all the remaining staff. Let’s see what the Speaker of The House can do.

I wouldn’t hold my breath, but it might be better.

For me the fundamental question is this; is it right for the taxpayers to pay for bad decisions of borrowers who knowingly entered into educational loan agreements?

What about those people who took out these loans and paid them back? Will they get refunds?

What about those people who have never taken out loans for college, instead these people chose to go to work. Why should they be called upon to pay for someone else’s loan when they themselves didn’t borrow or benefit from college?

For a completely different rant…

Yeah i know, I’ve been a little angry lately. I’m trying to get it out of my system and understand why I’m so pissed off.

Let’s just say this, I’ve been dealing with a lot lately and for the foreseeable future things aren’t going to let up.

I’m ignoring my Mother about 2/3 of the time. I feel terrible about it but I really can’t take her asking about people and me having to be the grimm reaper, informing her that they are all dead!

It wouldn’t be so bad once, but having to go through the details every time we talk is a super bummer. She also gets mad because she claims that no one told her…

Uh… Some of the people she’s asking about, have been dead for decades. I’m pretty dang sure it came up at least once between then and today.

She of course refuses to believe she was ever told, preferring to remain the victim.


I was thinking to myself perhaps Jesse and I could use a spa day.

He could run around all day with other dogs under a nice trainer’s supervision and then he could go get a bath, nail trim and brushing.

I on the other hand would be in a nice massage, perhaps a salt scrub, and just absolute zen. Perhaps a nice wine or fruity cocktail.

For those old enough to remember the phrase, “Calgon take me away…” I can tell you I’m so far beyond what Calgon could do, I might as well be in another star system.

I need a place where you drop all your tech into a little basket that’s locked up as two burly musclemen open massive golden doors leading out of a reception area and into a place that looks like the garden the Fey played in in “True Blood

Probably too much to ask… But it’s a nice fantasy…


I mention all of this to frame my mindset as I walked into a Chase Bank branch today.

My purpose was to pay off a HELOC that had been rendered completely useless the moment Washington Mutual was purchased by JP Morgan Chase.

This was not too long before the house burnt and honestly, that HELOC line of credit would have been really helpful during the rebuild.

We attempted to get an explanation from JP Morgan Chase, as to why the credit line was frozen, and also tired to get them to unlock the line of credit. Our household income was over 100K per year at the time.

Note I said attempted to get answers. We couldn’t, and no-one at Chase seemed to understand we weren’t trying to get a new loan, we weren’t trying to change the terms of the HELOC or anything else. We just wanted to know why the line of credit was inaccessible.

The equity in our home was well over 200K at the time the place burned. Then the housing bubble popped.

Fortunately, we had full replacement insurance house and contents. That meant the housing bubble really didn’t do much to us.

On the one hand, the line of credit would have been helpful, on the other hand It’s possible that we could have been hurt by it.

That being said when we opened the HELOC the bank wanted to give us 200K as a line of credit. I told them, “No, lets do 60K which allows for us to make realistic improvements to the house and not start drowning in debt.”

The bankers at the time looked at me like I was insane. The other half said nothing and later wondered aloud how I’d done the math. Turns out I was right and the HELOC was just perfect. Or WOULD HAVE BEEN had the line of credit not been locked for no reason.

Oh JP Morgan Chase… you’ve made an enemy in me…

We’d accessed the HELOC to make improvements on the house among other things. Those improvements were underway when the place burned. That left us with a mortgage, a 2nd in the form of the HELOC and a smoldering pile of charcoal. (I’m over stating it a bit.)

During the rebuild, the insurance company was putting the place back together based on the plans for the improvements and the original blueprints for the house. Generally speaking, It worked out okay.

Chase however never explained themselves, and never unfroze the credit line. So essentially it was a payment on a useless line of credit that should have been rolled into the first mortgage when Chase sold my mortgage to some fly by night loan servicing firm. But that would have been far too logical.

Chase had through the years really pissed me off, repeatedly.


I constantly had the following problems with Chase.

Web access and their Mobile access only worked about 10% of the time. It was so bad that I’d actually get surprised if I was able to log in and would put off banking because their online access was so shitty.

They’d change passwords on my account for my safety and convenience. Yeah, you read that right, Chase would lock me out of the accounts then change the password then force me to call them to get back in.

They also started asking for some silly assed numeric code or security phrase whenever I called them. Apparently they’d change that one too if I didn’t use it enough. But they wouldn’t tell me they’d made the change.

After 4 consecutive debit card replacements that I couldn’t activate, I gave up. The other half did all the ATM shit with Chase.

Excessive fees improperly charged to the account. Then when we’d call them on those fees they’d say, “Ooops our mistake…” But they never adequately explained why they thought those fees should be billed to our account in the first place.

When Chase sold the mortgage I really questioned why I needed Chase Bank in my life.

I stopped dealing with Chase. The Other half would maintain a balance to pay the mortgage and the 2nd and stash a little money automatically every month in the savings account for Christmas. That was it.

He dealt with them and their bullshit much more than I did.

When he died, I started really looking at all the accounts so nothing went wrong.


As I was looking at the Chase account. I realized since Chase no longer held the mortgage I could move the payment to another bank and close the Chase Checking, and Savings. All I needed to do was transfer the balance of the checking and savings account to the HELOC and all three accounts would be out of my hair.

You’d think this would be easy.

Youd be wrong

It took almost 2 hours and 3 different people to work through all of this, at a BRANCH.

The complexities were over the top. You’d think that anyone in that branch could pull up a current payoff, then do simple subtraction… But No, the balance the representative was getting on his screen was different from the balance on their mobile application which praise Jesus, was working and displaying on my phone. Finally, they converted the checking and savings account cash to a cashiers check then placed a call to figure out what the payoff was. The phone call provided another completely different answer. So what the fuck?

I’m sorry, if all this crap is in your computers, then why isn’t it available? And why was a cashier’s check necessary? Chase had all the funds, it was a matter of applying them. You know… debits / credits, accounting processes, basic banking that you learn from playing Monopoly… They were very very concerned about the payoff balance which was less than $2500. Trust me the amount of interest was less than a cup of coffee.

But… and this really pisses me off.

These motherfuckers added a $65.00 fee to cancel the lein the HELOC placed against the house.

Are you shitting me? These fucks, in addition to getting interest for all the years the HELOC had a hefty balance, decided to twist the knife one last time at payoff?

JP Morgan Chase, I swear to God, I’ll do my level best to pay off any other debts to you, as quickly as possible. and I will never darken your door or do business with you again.