Happy Holly Daze
11/12/22 07:04
Well, well, hombres and hombrettes. What have we here? Another week? What, pray tell, treasures will we find this week when we're bumping around in the ether? And, by the way, where is our bloody Christmas tree? Why don't we have a tree yet? Are we so busy that we don't have the time to go get one? By the time we get around to going out to get one, we may find that the only ones left are the scrubbiest of the scrubby, and where will that leave us? Up the friggin crick without a paddle, as my daddy was wont to say when we was in a similar predicament back in the day. Just so you don't think I've gone full Joe Biden here, my grammar is intentionally messed up. That's the way it was back in the day before I got me some schoolin'. Are you catchin' my drift?
I was on Twitter yesterday when I came across a video posted by Tucker Carlson. It was a roughly eight-minute video of an on-air conversation that Tucker had with James Woods, the actor. I've seen a lot of posts (Tweets) on Twitter over time from James Woods that were critical of the establishment, and more often than not, he was taking the Biden Administration to task for this or that alleged malfeasance. Politically speaking, Mr. Woods has always struck me as a hardcore conservative in terms of the tweets that he posted. In fact, I was in agreement with the sum and substance of most of the tweets that he posted, so I wasn't surprised in the least when the fascistic whores of the old Twitter silenced his voice by banning him from the platform.
God forbid that someone like James Woods, with maybe millions of followers, should have a voice that was free to criticize and excoriate the likes of Joe and Hunter Biden for their alleged crimes and misdeeds while in office. His was one of many voices banned and silenced by the leftists at Twitter prior to Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter and in collaboration with governmental officials from every agency within our government. Elon Musk has now laid bare this poisonous conspiracy by releasing a tranche of e-mails and tweets between the parties involved. What I hadn't known, until I listened to the video posted by Tucker, was the extent of the efforts by the left to silence James Woods. The leftists in Hollywood, and now the leftists at Twitter, saw to it that James Woods would never work another day in his beloved craft that he had perfected over the course of some forty years. I could hear the tears welling up in his eyes as he recounted events. It was just so sad. Sad and powerful at the same time.
It's no fucking wonder that Hollywood is putting out so much schlock these days. If they are nothing more than a cauldron of communists, or a den of leftists if you will, what chance do we conservative types have of seeing something that isn't pure unadulterated propaganda from the left that pushes their filthy and perverted values on those of us who have the stomach to sit through one or more of their productions. Hope springs eternal, as they say, so you keep watching until you can't watch anymore. Maybe you start listening to podcasts or, if you have a good satellite radio service to listen to, you start listening to some conservative talk show hosts like Dennis Prager and others like him. In a pinch, you can listen to Sean Hannity or some of the other dolts that profess to be carrying water for the conservatives, when in fact, they are establishment shills and ratings whores at the end of the day. Where the hell is Rush Limbaugh when we need him?
I don't usually wake up with a hair across my tuckus like this, but I guess I wasn't wrong about the impact that the James Woods interview had on me. Does any of this have anything to do with our visit to see the Ev man yesterday? I'm talking about the tone of my writing. It has a certain down-for-the-count feel to it to me. You know, throwing in the towel and all the rest. It's what you see is what you get. I'm looking for a little light at the end of the tunnel, but I ain't seeing it. The missus and I paid the Ev man a visit, and we lent him a hand in sprucing up his joint. I told him to tell Brittany that this is how he wanted her to remember him. She's moving on to other things, and she would probably like nothing better than to remember the Ev man sitting pretty in his place, all tidied up and ready for whatever inspection might come his way. That's not how we found his place when we arrived, but it is certainly how we left his place by the time we closed the door behind us some two hours after we arrived. Mission accomplished.
I'm getting out of bed later than usual this morning. It's a very different vibe. I don't know that it lends itself to writing in this here blog so let me just put that out there. The day feels "underway," if you know what I mean. Like maybe I ought to be getting on to other things instead of sitting here trying to fill in the blanks in my blog. The missus is going off to her thing in Portsmouth soon, so maybe that will help. What about breakfast? Should I eat and then sit back down here and finish whatever it is that I'm trying to cook up? I'm listening to "My Girl" by the Temptations, and it's helping, but I'm not sure how much. Did I mention that Kirstie Alley died yesterday? You know, Kirstie Alley of "Cheers" fame. She died of complications from cancer. Who knew? She was another brave soul in Hollywood speaking truth to power when it came to her politics. A died-in-the-wool conservative, for what it was worth. Godspeed, Kirstie!
It is true, isn't it? If it had been Donald Trump Jr. who had dropped off his laptop and forgotten about it only to see it turn up in the news as a laptop filled with compromising materials involving drug deals, pay-to-play arrangements with the Communist Chinese Party, and pornographic pictures of underage girls, the media wouldn't be pushing the Russian disinformation card. They would be calling for the indictments and arrests of Don Jr and his father for collaborating with America's enemies to enrich themselves and their families. It would be non-stop. It would be "let's get the cuffs on them" 24/7. The Never-Trumpers would be wetting themselves with anticipation of a televised morning raid at Mar-a-Lago with CNN camera crews not far behind. It would be the mother of all clusterfucks. But, when it comes to the Biden Crime Family and our equally corrupt Intelligence agencies, it's fucking crickets. Or, it's Russian disinformation. It's "nothing to see here, folks." "Move along."
Whoa. Where did the rain come from? I always feel like I'm getting a day off when I wake up to a day when rain is in the forecast. Well, a day off from exercising anyway. Then again, I have a nice raincoat now, so can I really still take the day off from taking my usual bike ride? I'm going to play this one by ear. The Ev man is coming over today, so he and I may have a few things to take care of before we call it a day. I hope he's up for doing what I think we need to do. He is not always in the proper frame of mind to get things done, so, yes, that's a thing. Speaking of weather, I see that snow is in the forecast for next Monday. Forecasts can be a little tricky, but this one, if it comes to fruition, will deliver some 2-7 inches of snow. I'd better check my snowblowers.
The 2022 senatorial run-off election in Georgia has come and gone. Not to steal my own thunder but, wait for it, the Democrats stole another one. If you think I'm making this stuff up, answer this question: Why is it that the heavily democratic areas are always the last to report their vote counts on election night? I'll tell you why. It's because they have perfected the steal. All they ever need to do is to manufacture just enough votes to put their candidate over the top. They wait until the rest of the state's results are in, and, then, voila, they "find" the votes they need for their candidate. I'm not sure which area in Georgia pulled this off to put the wife-beating Marxist, Warnock, over the top because I could see it coming, and I just went to bed rather than stay up waiting to hear about his so-called "win." When will the Republicans wake up?
There are a lot of democratic senate seats coming up for re-election in 2024. So many, in fact that the Republicans are expecting to take back a few and regain a majority in the Senate. It already feels to me like a rehash of what just happened in the mid-terms when the Republicans were expecting to win way more seats than they actually did. The opposing party in the House and Senate always wins big in the mid-terms. Right? This time around, not so much. The problem for the Republicans, come 2024, is that they have failed to call out the democrats for the cheating thieves that they are, and they have effectively lost the moral ground to challenge any thievery, no matter how blatant and in your face, in 2024. I don't know how they catch any of these cheating mother fuckers red-handed so they can put them behind bars where they belong. Were you to ask a democrat why they steal so many elections, they might well tell you with a straight face that it's a small price to pay for saving our democracy.
The missus did a nice job shopping for her anonymous recipient this year. The recipient of her munificence this holiday season is a fifteen-year-old boy. That's all she knows about the lad. Oh, aside from some general information she needed before placing her orders online, that is. All I can say is, he was lucky to get my missus as his holiday benefactor. His mom will probably pass it all off as her gift to her son, and that's fine too. Or, maybe he still believes in Santa. His preferences, as provided by the people managing the secret Santa gig this year, seemed to suggest to me that the young man had a hankering for things that a young person half his age might ask for. That's okay too. It's not for us to judge. His mom requested a winter coat for the lad, but the missus could only muster up a warmish hoodie when all was said and done. It should suffice for all but the coldest of days. He may not even notice since he'll be knee-deep in unwrapping everything else my missus purchased on his behalf. File this under, "The Lord works in mysterious ways."
What's the deal with this FTX guy, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF)? Can someone tell me why this guy isn't in jail already? He ran what was effectively a Ponzi scheme if we're to believe what we see in the media. And then there was something about his co-mingling of customer funds which is a huge no-no in the world of finance. What about the countless people who lost their entire life's fortune investing and trading on Bankman-Fried's FTX platform? Do they not have a voice? As it turns out, SBF contributed to a lot of politicians over the past few years who would now be responsible for dragging his sorry ass before Congress. At a minimum, you might think that Congress has some responsibility to find out what happened to FTX under the mismanagement of Sam Bankman-Fried so they can pass reforms or whatever to protect investors going forward.
So, that's just how the system works. You grease enough palms in and around Washington, and you render yourself essentially untouchable. There is no question that SBF ingratiated himself with the Washington politicians to the tune of billions of dollars. We're not talking chump change here, folks. Bernie Madoff would more than likely be the toast of the town these days had he contributed to more politicians back in the day when he was stealing money left and right from unsuspecting family and friends. Just sayin'. Maxine Waters, that dimwit of a Congresswoman and Chairman of the Banking Committee from California, announced yesterday that she would not be subpoenaing Bankman-Fried for any hearings. Wut? She is also on video blowing kisses to this Wunderkind during one of his more recent trips to Washington. You can't make this stuff up.
Are we going to have a damn Santa Claus Rally in the stock market this year, or not? I mean, what the fuck. And now, we're starting to see even more evidence of financial ruination beneath the surface. Ordinarily, when Treasury yields come down, that's good for the stock market. The ten-year yield went from 3.6% to 3.4% yesterday, and that's a pretty good move as moves go for Treasuries. Yet, the NASDAQ continued dropping. There was a massive number of new lows and nary a new high in the NASDAQ yesterday. None of it portends good things for the stock market. Oh, and oil prices are coming down nicely, so that should help the stock market. People have more money to spend, and that's good for retailers. Right? I mean, who wants to buy stocks in this environment? The proverbial bottom is about to fall out of the market, or at least that's the prevailing sentiment. Isn't that the best time to buy stocks?
I'm hitting a wall this morning. What else can I write about? Man, was yesterday the very definition of dreary or what? It was non-stop rain and fog the entire day. I had a few errands to run, so I was going here and there throughout it all. I had Christmas presents to drop off for the missus, so I took care of that by the dropoff cutoff at three in the afternoon. I brought the Ev man back to his place at Exeter but not before taking him grocery shopping. I wasn't about to have him sitting around at home without the means to go out and get himself some food if that was what he wanted to do. His car was going into the shop, so Ev was probably better off sitting around at his house than ours while waiting to hear back from the shop. The missus informed me when I got back home that Ev had forgotten his backpack in my car when I dropped him off. He had stuff in there that I knew he didn't want to be without, so back to his house, I went. While en route, the missus texted me that her mom needed a few things, so I stopped off in Exeter to do her bidding. I was a busy little bee!
Bumbles worked his magic behind the scenes and got the lesbian WNBA basketball player, Griner, out of the hoosgow in Russia just in time for Christmas. You know, that cunt who took a knee every time they played our national anthem. Never mind that Russia was holding a marine of ours and another person who might have qualified for an exit from that shithole of a country if only someone had asked. Bumbles never asked. No one in the Democrat party asked. Not one of the people working to secure the release of our Americans on Biden's team asked. It was so important that America, the greatest country on the face of God's green earth, work overtime to release a prisoner being held by the Russians that we were willing to hand over an arms dealer of significant ill repute. Let me be clear: He's a fucking killer. And we're trading this monster for a lesbian basketball player? This makes the Bo Bergdahl trade look like the best deal since, well, ever. It makes me sick and sad at the same time. It's just more bullshit coming out of our beloved White House with that fucking dolt, Biden, sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office.
I'm shocked, I'll tell you. Shocked! Just shocked. I went to pick up the Ev man's car from the shop last night, and the bill was just shy of $2k. Wut? I was so stunned that I didn't even ask why it was so expensive. I suppose I'll get around to looking at it someday but not now. Curiosity might finally get the best of me, and I'll be interested to know how much of the $2k bill went to parts and how much went to labor. Don't get me wrong; I trust the guy I'm dealing with, so that's not the issue. Yes, it's that damn check-engine light problem again. The car won't pass inspection unless I fix whatever it is that is triggering the light. He doesn't think the check-engine light has anything to do with my catalytic converters, so I thought he was going to fix the less costly of the two problems, and he'd send me on my way with a lovely new inspection sticker. Little did I know that the less costly option would be so expensive. The bad news is, I now have to drive the car around until the light comes back on, or doesn't come back on, to see if what he fixed needed to be fixed or was that just an uber-expensive way of narrowing down the things that really need to be fixed.
The backdrop to this story is that I had the dealership look at the car. They gave me an estimate of $11k to replace the catalytic converters. When I told my guy about that estimate, he told me that he didn't think it had anything to do with the converters and that I should bring it in and have him replace the oxygen sensors. He never told me how much that was going to cost me, and maybe he should have. It would have lessened the shock of getting a $2k bill just before Christmas. Is it possible that he charged me an arm and a leg and just disconnected the check-engine lights behind closed doors? I guess anything is possible. Maybe he knows that the lights are never going to come back on but can't tell me that because he'd be tipping his hand. That's me thinking happy thoughts because paying $2k to fix the problem without having to pay even more to fix the real problem, that is to say, the problem that he didn't maybe properly diagnose, would be just fine with me.
The missus told me that someone will be asking for my financial advice. I think the question will be about what to do with a sum of money. The person asking the question, as I understand it, typically chases stocks that are currently in an uptrend. She sees something going up, and it's all about wanting to get on that train before it leaves the station. Never mind that the stock she wants to buy is in a sector that is typically quite volatile and not for the faint of heart when all is said and done. The bigger picture these days, of course, is not a pretty one when it comes to the stock market and making investment decisions in general. Where do you put your money when most indices have lost 20-30% YTD, and the Fed is still trying to sort out how many more interest rate hikes are in the future? One piece of advice that she might not be expecting to hear me give is that gifting monies to her children and grandchildren might be the way to go. If she doesn't need the money, and if these monies will ultimately be left to her children someday, why not gift them the money and let them choose how they want to invest it?
I hate these mornings when I get up way too early. I'm constantly feeling the need to go back to bed, and maybe that doesn't go away until I either go back to bed or have a nap somewhere along the way. I also don't know what, if anything, this is going to do to help me get on with my blogging business this morning. Will I have the oomph to stay the course? Is there enough muddle between my ears to make sense one way or another of anything that I think I might like to put down on paper? Let's say that I'm just putting my best foot forward. Maybe having something to eat would help. And maybe it's just another distraction. Something to keep me from doing what I'm trying to do. I'm not sure that I have anything in the refrigerator that I want to snack on, so there's that. There's a reason that people don't typically eat things like turkey meatloaf for breakfast. I've got some of that, which was surprisingly good, by the way, but I'll not have it for breakfast. Not on your life.
The missus and I watched season one of the series "The White Lotus," and we're now in the middle of watching season two. It's the kind of show that reminds you how good it feels to have a good belly laugh. This show could have easily gone with ten episodes, but alas, there are only six. Six or fewer episodes work well when you're taking in a European murder mystery, but it works less well when you have a robust comedy on your hands that has viewers wanting more of the same with each passing episode. We're on episode five with one episode to go, and I have no idea how they are going to wrap it up in a nice little package. I hear that they are starting work on season three, so maybe wrapping it up ain't all that necessary. You do need to leave enough breadcrumbs on the forest floor, metaphorically speaking, so your audience can find their bearings when they sit down to a new season. For example, the guest list at the Villa in Palermo doesn't have to be the same, but it would be nice to see some of the same personalities return for another season. Binge, baby, binge!
The missus will be paying her friend in Massachusetts a visit tomorrow. This is the same individual whose home we visited recently, where the missus and I helped to set up his new iMac. I'll not be going along for the ride this time around, so I asked that she show him how to do a few things that should go a long way toward helping him to get up to speed in using his new device. Little things like knowing how to restart your computer somewhat regularly will help keep things up to snuff. If I've told the missus once, I've told her a thousand times, when things don't do what they are supposed to do on your computer, restarting your device usually fixes the problem. I also suggested that she revisit with him the issue of how to resize his windows when he has multiple windows open on his desktop. I added the application "Mission Control" to his list of applications in the dock that basically does the same thing, but I'm less than convinced that he's going to remember how to use that app. There are other things that I'm sure she can show him but not without running headlong into what is more commonly referred to as "The law of diminishing returns."
Oh, yes. The tree. We bought our Christmas tree yesterday. The lot in North Hampton had maybe four trees left when we drove by so that came as a bit of a surprise. It's only December 10th for chrissakes. What's the rush? The calculation we should be making is, how many weekends do we have left between now and Chrsitmas? We had no business going out on a weekend to buy our tree but there we were along with everyone else looking for that last minute beauty of a six-foot Blue Spruce or Balsam to bring home and put up in our living room. We were a little surprised to see so many trees still for sale in the lot in front of Planet Fitness when we had just came from the lot in North Hampton where they were sold out in short order. It wasn't long before we realized why. The trees in the lot in front of Planet Fitness were about the scrubbiest trees I've ever seen. The tallest tree we could find was barely over 5-feet tall and they looked to be very young if not immature. You could pick up any one of the trees with one hand without breaking a sweat. Truth be told, it was a little weird. Thankfully, we found one to our liking.
I've got my eye on the weather this morning. We've had maybe a flurry thus far in the last few weeks but we might get a coating to an inch or so today if the forecast holds true. Ordinarily, I don't get terribly excited about a bit of snow but the missus is driving into Massachusetts today so it's all hands on deck. It looks like she'll avoid it all if she can get out of town and back on the road by late afternoon or so. It's all wishful thinking at this point. If the forecast called for anything more than a flurry or so she would not be making this trip. My missus is a white-knuckle driver when it comes to driving in the snow. The route she drives is hellacious enough with adding snow to the mix. Here's hoping that there is sufficiently little snow such that it doesn't stick to the roadway due to the constant flow of traffic even if it does start to come down as forecasted.
We got a voicemail yesterday informing us that we''d won the lottery. All we needed to do now is to arrange to pay the taxes in advance of collecting our windfall. There was some additional messaging about providing our bank account information. Do you suppose some people think that this sort of offer is on the up and up? How many people found this sort of thing in their inbox? Is it simply a game of averages? You send it to a million people and a handful of those recipients end up giving away their information? I can see the elderly, the infirm, and the demented, you know, the Joe Biden's of the world, giving it a second look. Even then, it seemed a little brazen. Being the life-long grifter that he is, Bumbles would have recognized the scam even through the haze of his advanced dementia. It is sad, though, when you think of it. These scam arists preying on the weakest and frailest amongst us during the holiday season. Do they have no fucking shame? And don't give me any bullshit about robbing Peter to pay Paul. This ain't no Robinhood fantasy. It's criminal and they know it.
I was on Twitter yesterday when I came across a video posted by Tucker Carlson. It was a roughly eight-minute video of an on-air conversation that Tucker had with James Woods, the actor. I've seen a lot of posts (Tweets) on Twitter over time from James Woods that were critical of the establishment, and more often than not, he was taking the Biden Administration to task for this or that alleged malfeasance. Politically speaking, Mr. Woods has always struck me as a hardcore conservative in terms of the tweets that he posted. In fact, I was in agreement with the sum and substance of most of the tweets that he posted, so I wasn't surprised in the least when the fascistic whores of the old Twitter silenced his voice by banning him from the platform.
God forbid that someone like James Woods, with maybe millions of followers, should have a voice that was free to criticize and excoriate the likes of Joe and Hunter Biden for their alleged crimes and misdeeds while in office. His was one of many voices banned and silenced by the leftists at Twitter prior to Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter and in collaboration with governmental officials from every agency within our government. Elon Musk has now laid bare this poisonous conspiracy by releasing a tranche of e-mails and tweets between the parties involved. What I hadn't known, until I listened to the video posted by Tucker, was the extent of the efforts by the left to silence James Woods. The leftists in Hollywood, and now the leftists at Twitter, saw to it that James Woods would never work another day in his beloved craft that he had perfected over the course of some forty years. I could hear the tears welling up in his eyes as he recounted events. It was just so sad. Sad and powerful at the same time.
It's no fucking wonder that Hollywood is putting out so much schlock these days. If they are nothing more than a cauldron of communists, or a den of leftists if you will, what chance do we conservative types have of seeing something that isn't pure unadulterated propaganda from the left that pushes their filthy and perverted values on those of us who have the stomach to sit through one or more of their productions. Hope springs eternal, as they say, so you keep watching until you can't watch anymore. Maybe you start listening to podcasts or, if you have a good satellite radio service to listen to, you start listening to some conservative talk show hosts like Dennis Prager and others like him. In a pinch, you can listen to Sean Hannity or some of the other dolts that profess to be carrying water for the conservatives, when in fact, they are establishment shills and ratings whores at the end of the day. Where the hell is Rush Limbaugh when we need him?
I don't usually wake up with a hair across my tuckus like this, but I guess I wasn't wrong about the impact that the James Woods interview had on me. Does any of this have anything to do with our visit to see the Ev man yesterday? I'm talking about the tone of my writing. It has a certain down-for-the-count feel to it to me. You know, throwing in the towel and all the rest. It's what you see is what you get. I'm looking for a little light at the end of the tunnel, but I ain't seeing it. The missus and I paid the Ev man a visit, and we lent him a hand in sprucing up his joint. I told him to tell Brittany that this is how he wanted her to remember him. She's moving on to other things, and she would probably like nothing better than to remember the Ev man sitting pretty in his place, all tidied up and ready for whatever inspection might come his way. That's not how we found his place when we arrived, but it is certainly how we left his place by the time we closed the door behind us some two hours after we arrived. Mission accomplished.
I'm getting out of bed later than usual this morning. It's a very different vibe. I don't know that it lends itself to writing in this here blog so let me just put that out there. The day feels "underway," if you know what I mean. Like maybe I ought to be getting on to other things instead of sitting here trying to fill in the blanks in my blog. The missus is going off to her thing in Portsmouth soon, so maybe that will help. What about breakfast? Should I eat and then sit back down here and finish whatever it is that I'm trying to cook up? I'm listening to "My Girl" by the Temptations, and it's helping, but I'm not sure how much. Did I mention that Kirstie Alley died yesterday? You know, Kirstie Alley of "Cheers" fame. She died of complications from cancer. Who knew? She was another brave soul in Hollywood speaking truth to power when it came to her politics. A died-in-the-wool conservative, for what it was worth. Godspeed, Kirstie!
It is true, isn't it? If it had been Donald Trump Jr. who had dropped off his laptop and forgotten about it only to see it turn up in the news as a laptop filled with compromising materials involving drug deals, pay-to-play arrangements with the Communist Chinese Party, and pornographic pictures of underage girls, the media wouldn't be pushing the Russian disinformation card. They would be calling for the indictments and arrests of Don Jr and his father for collaborating with America's enemies to enrich themselves and their families. It would be non-stop. It would be "let's get the cuffs on them" 24/7. The Never-Trumpers would be wetting themselves with anticipation of a televised morning raid at Mar-a-Lago with CNN camera crews not far behind. It would be the mother of all clusterfucks. But, when it comes to the Biden Crime Family and our equally corrupt Intelligence agencies, it's fucking crickets. Or, it's Russian disinformation. It's "nothing to see here, folks." "Move along."
Whoa. Where did the rain come from? I always feel like I'm getting a day off when I wake up to a day when rain is in the forecast. Well, a day off from exercising anyway. Then again, I have a nice raincoat now, so can I really still take the day off from taking my usual bike ride? I'm going to play this one by ear. The Ev man is coming over today, so he and I may have a few things to take care of before we call it a day. I hope he's up for doing what I think we need to do. He is not always in the proper frame of mind to get things done, so, yes, that's a thing. Speaking of weather, I see that snow is in the forecast for next Monday. Forecasts can be a little tricky, but this one, if it comes to fruition, will deliver some 2-7 inches of snow. I'd better check my snowblowers.
The 2022 senatorial run-off election in Georgia has come and gone. Not to steal my own thunder but, wait for it, the Democrats stole another one. If you think I'm making this stuff up, answer this question: Why is it that the heavily democratic areas are always the last to report their vote counts on election night? I'll tell you why. It's because they have perfected the steal. All they ever need to do is to manufacture just enough votes to put their candidate over the top. They wait until the rest of the state's results are in, and, then, voila, they "find" the votes they need for their candidate. I'm not sure which area in Georgia pulled this off to put the wife-beating Marxist, Warnock, over the top because I could see it coming, and I just went to bed rather than stay up waiting to hear about his so-called "win." When will the Republicans wake up?
There are a lot of democratic senate seats coming up for re-election in 2024. So many, in fact that the Republicans are expecting to take back a few and regain a majority in the Senate. It already feels to me like a rehash of what just happened in the mid-terms when the Republicans were expecting to win way more seats than they actually did. The opposing party in the House and Senate always wins big in the mid-terms. Right? This time around, not so much. The problem for the Republicans, come 2024, is that they have failed to call out the democrats for the cheating thieves that they are, and they have effectively lost the moral ground to challenge any thievery, no matter how blatant and in your face, in 2024. I don't know how they catch any of these cheating mother fuckers red-handed so they can put them behind bars where they belong. Were you to ask a democrat why they steal so many elections, they might well tell you with a straight face that it's a small price to pay for saving our democracy.
The missus did a nice job shopping for her anonymous recipient this year. The recipient of her munificence this holiday season is a fifteen-year-old boy. That's all she knows about the lad. Oh, aside from some general information she needed before placing her orders online, that is. All I can say is, he was lucky to get my missus as his holiday benefactor. His mom will probably pass it all off as her gift to her son, and that's fine too. Or, maybe he still believes in Santa. His preferences, as provided by the people managing the secret Santa gig this year, seemed to suggest to me that the young man had a hankering for things that a young person half his age might ask for. That's okay too. It's not for us to judge. His mom requested a winter coat for the lad, but the missus could only muster up a warmish hoodie when all was said and done. It should suffice for all but the coldest of days. He may not even notice since he'll be knee-deep in unwrapping everything else my missus purchased on his behalf. File this under, "The Lord works in mysterious ways."
What's the deal with this FTX guy, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF)? Can someone tell me why this guy isn't in jail already? He ran what was effectively a Ponzi scheme if we're to believe what we see in the media. And then there was something about his co-mingling of customer funds which is a huge no-no in the world of finance. What about the countless people who lost their entire life's fortune investing and trading on Bankman-Fried's FTX platform? Do they not have a voice? As it turns out, SBF contributed to a lot of politicians over the past few years who would now be responsible for dragging his sorry ass before Congress. At a minimum, you might think that Congress has some responsibility to find out what happened to FTX under the mismanagement of Sam Bankman-Fried so they can pass reforms or whatever to protect investors going forward.
So, that's just how the system works. You grease enough palms in and around Washington, and you render yourself essentially untouchable. There is no question that SBF ingratiated himself with the Washington politicians to the tune of billions of dollars. We're not talking chump change here, folks. Bernie Madoff would more than likely be the toast of the town these days had he contributed to more politicians back in the day when he was stealing money left and right from unsuspecting family and friends. Just sayin'. Maxine Waters, that dimwit of a Congresswoman and Chairman of the Banking Committee from California, announced yesterday that she would not be subpoenaing Bankman-Fried for any hearings. Wut? She is also on video blowing kisses to this Wunderkind during one of his more recent trips to Washington. You can't make this stuff up.
Are we going to have a damn Santa Claus Rally in the stock market this year, or not? I mean, what the fuck. And now, we're starting to see even more evidence of financial ruination beneath the surface. Ordinarily, when Treasury yields come down, that's good for the stock market. The ten-year yield went from 3.6% to 3.4% yesterday, and that's a pretty good move as moves go for Treasuries. Yet, the NASDAQ continued dropping. There was a massive number of new lows and nary a new high in the NASDAQ yesterday. None of it portends good things for the stock market. Oh, and oil prices are coming down nicely, so that should help the stock market. People have more money to spend, and that's good for retailers. Right? I mean, who wants to buy stocks in this environment? The proverbial bottom is about to fall out of the market, or at least that's the prevailing sentiment. Isn't that the best time to buy stocks?
I'm hitting a wall this morning. What else can I write about? Man, was yesterday the very definition of dreary or what? It was non-stop rain and fog the entire day. I had a few errands to run, so I was going here and there throughout it all. I had Christmas presents to drop off for the missus, so I took care of that by the dropoff cutoff at three in the afternoon. I brought the Ev man back to his place at Exeter but not before taking him grocery shopping. I wasn't about to have him sitting around at home without the means to go out and get himself some food if that was what he wanted to do. His car was going into the shop, so Ev was probably better off sitting around at his house than ours while waiting to hear back from the shop. The missus informed me when I got back home that Ev had forgotten his backpack in my car when I dropped him off. He had stuff in there that I knew he didn't want to be without, so back to his house, I went. While en route, the missus texted me that her mom needed a few things, so I stopped off in Exeter to do her bidding. I was a busy little bee!
Bumbles worked his magic behind the scenes and got the lesbian WNBA basketball player, Griner, out of the hoosgow in Russia just in time for Christmas. You know, that cunt who took a knee every time they played our national anthem. Never mind that Russia was holding a marine of ours and another person who might have qualified for an exit from that shithole of a country if only someone had asked. Bumbles never asked. No one in the Democrat party asked. Not one of the people working to secure the release of our Americans on Biden's team asked. It was so important that America, the greatest country on the face of God's green earth, work overtime to release a prisoner being held by the Russians that we were willing to hand over an arms dealer of significant ill repute. Let me be clear: He's a fucking killer. And we're trading this monster for a lesbian basketball player? This makes the Bo Bergdahl trade look like the best deal since, well, ever. It makes me sick and sad at the same time. It's just more bullshit coming out of our beloved White House with that fucking dolt, Biden, sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office.
I'm shocked, I'll tell you. Shocked! Just shocked. I went to pick up the Ev man's car from the shop last night, and the bill was just shy of $2k. Wut? I was so stunned that I didn't even ask why it was so expensive. I suppose I'll get around to looking at it someday but not now. Curiosity might finally get the best of me, and I'll be interested to know how much of the $2k bill went to parts and how much went to labor. Don't get me wrong; I trust the guy I'm dealing with, so that's not the issue. Yes, it's that damn check-engine light problem again. The car won't pass inspection unless I fix whatever it is that is triggering the light. He doesn't think the check-engine light has anything to do with my catalytic converters, so I thought he was going to fix the less costly of the two problems, and he'd send me on my way with a lovely new inspection sticker. Little did I know that the less costly option would be so expensive. The bad news is, I now have to drive the car around until the light comes back on, or doesn't come back on, to see if what he fixed needed to be fixed or was that just an uber-expensive way of narrowing down the things that really need to be fixed.
The backdrop to this story is that I had the dealership look at the car. They gave me an estimate of $11k to replace the catalytic converters. When I told my guy about that estimate, he told me that he didn't think it had anything to do with the converters and that I should bring it in and have him replace the oxygen sensors. He never told me how much that was going to cost me, and maybe he should have. It would have lessened the shock of getting a $2k bill just before Christmas. Is it possible that he charged me an arm and a leg and just disconnected the check-engine lights behind closed doors? I guess anything is possible. Maybe he knows that the lights are never going to come back on but can't tell me that because he'd be tipping his hand. That's me thinking happy thoughts because paying $2k to fix the problem without having to pay even more to fix the real problem, that is to say, the problem that he didn't maybe properly diagnose, would be just fine with me.
The missus told me that someone will be asking for my financial advice. I think the question will be about what to do with a sum of money. The person asking the question, as I understand it, typically chases stocks that are currently in an uptrend. She sees something going up, and it's all about wanting to get on that train before it leaves the station. Never mind that the stock she wants to buy is in a sector that is typically quite volatile and not for the faint of heart when all is said and done. The bigger picture these days, of course, is not a pretty one when it comes to the stock market and making investment decisions in general. Where do you put your money when most indices have lost 20-30% YTD, and the Fed is still trying to sort out how many more interest rate hikes are in the future? One piece of advice that she might not be expecting to hear me give is that gifting monies to her children and grandchildren might be the way to go. If she doesn't need the money, and if these monies will ultimately be left to her children someday, why not gift them the money and let them choose how they want to invest it?
I hate these mornings when I get up way too early. I'm constantly feeling the need to go back to bed, and maybe that doesn't go away until I either go back to bed or have a nap somewhere along the way. I also don't know what, if anything, this is going to do to help me get on with my blogging business this morning. Will I have the oomph to stay the course? Is there enough muddle between my ears to make sense one way or another of anything that I think I might like to put down on paper? Let's say that I'm just putting my best foot forward. Maybe having something to eat would help. And maybe it's just another distraction. Something to keep me from doing what I'm trying to do. I'm not sure that I have anything in the refrigerator that I want to snack on, so there's that. There's a reason that people don't typically eat things like turkey meatloaf for breakfast. I've got some of that, which was surprisingly good, by the way, but I'll not have it for breakfast. Not on your life.
The missus and I watched season one of the series "The White Lotus," and we're now in the middle of watching season two. It's the kind of show that reminds you how good it feels to have a good belly laugh. This show could have easily gone with ten episodes, but alas, there are only six. Six or fewer episodes work well when you're taking in a European murder mystery, but it works less well when you have a robust comedy on your hands that has viewers wanting more of the same with each passing episode. We're on episode five with one episode to go, and I have no idea how they are going to wrap it up in a nice little package. I hear that they are starting work on season three, so maybe wrapping it up ain't all that necessary. You do need to leave enough breadcrumbs on the forest floor, metaphorically speaking, so your audience can find their bearings when they sit down to a new season. For example, the guest list at the Villa in Palermo doesn't have to be the same, but it would be nice to see some of the same personalities return for another season. Binge, baby, binge!
The missus will be paying her friend in Massachusetts a visit tomorrow. This is the same individual whose home we visited recently, where the missus and I helped to set up his new iMac. I'll not be going along for the ride this time around, so I asked that she show him how to do a few things that should go a long way toward helping him to get up to speed in using his new device. Little things like knowing how to restart your computer somewhat regularly will help keep things up to snuff. If I've told the missus once, I've told her a thousand times, when things don't do what they are supposed to do on your computer, restarting your device usually fixes the problem. I also suggested that she revisit with him the issue of how to resize his windows when he has multiple windows open on his desktop. I added the application "Mission Control" to his list of applications in the dock that basically does the same thing, but I'm less than convinced that he's going to remember how to use that app. There are other things that I'm sure she can show him but not without running headlong into what is more commonly referred to as "The law of diminishing returns."
Oh, yes. The tree. We bought our Christmas tree yesterday. The lot in North Hampton had maybe four trees left when we drove by so that came as a bit of a surprise. It's only December 10th for chrissakes. What's the rush? The calculation we should be making is, how many weekends do we have left between now and Chrsitmas? We had no business going out on a weekend to buy our tree but there we were along with everyone else looking for that last minute beauty of a six-foot Blue Spruce or Balsam to bring home and put up in our living room. We were a little surprised to see so many trees still for sale in the lot in front of Planet Fitness when we had just came from the lot in North Hampton where they were sold out in short order. It wasn't long before we realized why. The trees in the lot in front of Planet Fitness were about the scrubbiest trees I've ever seen. The tallest tree we could find was barely over 5-feet tall and they looked to be very young if not immature. You could pick up any one of the trees with one hand without breaking a sweat. Truth be told, it was a little weird. Thankfully, we found one to our liking.
I've got my eye on the weather this morning. We've had maybe a flurry thus far in the last few weeks but we might get a coating to an inch or so today if the forecast holds true. Ordinarily, I don't get terribly excited about a bit of snow but the missus is driving into Massachusetts today so it's all hands on deck. It looks like she'll avoid it all if she can get out of town and back on the road by late afternoon or so. It's all wishful thinking at this point. If the forecast called for anything more than a flurry or so she would not be making this trip. My missus is a white-knuckle driver when it comes to driving in the snow. The route she drives is hellacious enough with adding snow to the mix. Here's hoping that there is sufficiently little snow such that it doesn't stick to the roadway due to the constant flow of traffic even if it does start to come down as forecasted.
We got a voicemail yesterday informing us that we''d won the lottery. All we needed to do now is to arrange to pay the taxes in advance of collecting our windfall. There was some additional messaging about providing our bank account information. Do you suppose some people think that this sort of offer is on the up and up? How many people found this sort of thing in their inbox? Is it simply a game of averages? You send it to a million people and a handful of those recipients end up giving away their information? I can see the elderly, the infirm, and the demented, you know, the Joe Biden's of the world, giving it a second look. Even then, it seemed a little brazen. Being the life-long grifter that he is, Bumbles would have recognized the scam even through the haze of his advanced dementia. It is sad, though, when you think of it. These scam arists preying on the weakest and frailest amongst us during the holiday season. Do they have no fucking shame? And don't give me any bullshit about robbing Peter to pay Paul. This ain't no Robinhood fantasy. It's criminal and they know it.