Slammed
22/05/22 07:23
Let's get this party started! I don't know where we're going this week but I guess we'll find out. We've got Supreme Court announcements today, gubernatorial, congressional, and senatorial primaries in Pennsylvania and in the Carolina's on Tuesday, and who knows what else. The Ev man just texted me complaining about having ordered a drink at Aroma Joe's and, as he put it, she "screwed him over" with a sugary drink. I'm guessing that means they added sugar to the coffee that he ordered. He never has sugar in his coffee so that's probably what he was complaining about. I told him to "cut her some slack." I'm sure it was nothing personal.
Some loon went into a supermarket in Buffalo, New York over the weekend and killed a bunch of people. He was white and most of his victims were black so the media is playing the whole white supremacist thing to the hilt. They are dragging social media into their dystopian hysterics for their part in radicalizing this killer. Make no mistake about it, the social media part is all about indicting Elon Musk and his buyout of Twitter which is the left's go-to application for their army of nitwits and influencers. Now that Elon is in charge, and now that he's opening the doors to millions of more reasonable voices on the platform, it's time for the left to "level" the playing field once again by shutting down free speech since it doesn't conform to their idea of "free speech."
Who was it who once said, "Never let a crisis go to waste?" It really is just shameless how the democrats never miss a chance to politicize these types of events. It's all about whipping up sentiment in this or that community in order to create a constituency around a topic that is near and dear to their hearts like gun control, abortion, etc. Put more simply, without an energized citizenry willing to get out and vote in local or national elections, they lose political power which is the lifeblood of the democrat party. To the extent that these types of events help them achieve their goals, it pains me to say it but I think they welcome them with open arms. The ends justify the means.
This is one of those days where I'm chomping at the bit to get to the end of the day so I can see who will win this and that primary election. I don't really have any horses in any of the races so I'm just more curious than not about how they are going to turn out. If Trump's pick's win, that's fine. If they don't, that's fine too. I'm not in the camp that says that if his picks don't win he's toast come 2024. I am in the camp that says the more wins he has the better his chances are of winning in 2024. I do hope that Pennsylvania comes to their senses and votes in republican governors and senators in November although I'm not sure which candidate(s) would be best positioned to do that against the democrats.
If the Oz guy pulls this one out tonight in Pennsylvania, it will give us a little more insight into what it means to be endorsed by Trump. It will tell us that the J.D. Vance thing wasn't a lark since J.D. came from the back of the pack after being endorsed by Trump to the front of the pack and ultimately won the primary in Ohio. Oz is not currently at the back of the pack and, by all reports, he's running ahead ever so slightly of both McCormick and Cathy Barnett. Did I mention that the leading democrat in the Pennsylvania senatorial primary had a stroke a few days back? They say it won't dampen his prospects so we'll see if that holds true as the votes come in tonight. He'll still be in the hospital when all the votes are tallied at the end of the day.
I did such a nice job cleaning up all the deck furniture this Spring. That said, I might have been a little too hasty in putting it all together because the glass table top needs a good cleaning. I shouldn't have assembled everything until I got that done. That might be a good project for today since I'll want to busy myself with this or that task until I get to break out the popcorn later this evening to watch the votes come in. I've also got some staining to do so that's on the list as is cleaning the garage. I tend to drag my feet on the more demanding tasks but, as I've learned over time, that only makes it more difficult when all is said and done. That reminds me. I need to paint the Ev man's room. Well, the spare room that he calls home when he's home anyway.
It's looking like we're going to have a dandy day here on the coast weather-wise. It's totally sunny and the temperatures should get to the low seventies which is just ideal this time of year. Add low humidity to the mix, and we are off and running. I'll see if I can't get in a good bike ride and maybe a little nap too if the good Lord's willing and the creek don't rise. The nap should take a bit of the edge off of any anxiety I might have as a result of my wanting this election thing to come to pass. When you know yourself well enough to know what you're going to do from time to time based on this or that external event, it makes for more reliable outcomes. More reliable outcomes makes for fewer surprises.
The Ev man is doing better now that he's a week or more into his bout with Covid. It wasn't a big deal so that's a relief. He keeps taking the test every day with the hopes that the lines indicating a positive test on the testing strip will sooner or later fade away to nothing. They're not gone completely so we're all wondering if his is the one case where the lines never go away or maybe go away after an extended period of time. He's been out and about in the community after the five or so days recommended by the CDC although he's done a pretty good job of masking up in order to minimize any unnecessary contact/spread. He's been nothing if not responsible during his sickness so kudos to him. You done good, Ev man.
Here we are the morning after the election and the Oz and McCormick thing has yet to be settled. Madison Cawthorn got the boot in North Carolina and another of Trump's picks went down defeat in Indiana. I'm looking at the map of Pennsylvania and who won what counties and Oz doesn't seem to have a lot of strength in the areas that he'll need to win in November if he's going to take the senate seat in the race against the democrat, Fetterman. I'm referring to the more rural counties in Pennsylvania which ran up the votes in 2016 to give Trump the win. Maybe they have some affection for McCormick that I'm unaware of that put him over the top in those counties. If Oz does prevail, he has his work cut out for him. Barnett garnered some 23% of the vote which, if I'm not mistaken, is somewhat less than most people thought she might get.
Who does and who doesn't have bragging rights this morning? I wish I knew a little more about turnout in past senatorial races so I'd have a better idea as to whether or not one party or the other has the upper hand in terms of voter enthusiasm. This stroked out Fetterman guy who is a big Bernie Sanders lefty sure got a lot of votes for someone who spent election night in the hospital getting a pacemaker implanted in his chest. Just when I thought the progressives were down for the count, this guy pulls one out of the hat for his team. I guess that's a good thing if come November the middle-of-the-road citizenry decides that what the progressives like Fetterman are selling is just a bridge too far. I have to be careful here since the same might be said for Mastriano, the republican gubenatorial winner. He might be trumpier than Trump.
I feel pretty good about the fact that I got most of what I wanted to do yesterday done with time to spare. I pushed myself but the tasks that I had assigned to myself required a little pushing so that worked out well. I got the painting done that I wanted to do; I cleaned certain gutters; I washed the glass table top for the table on our patio; and I got my bike ride in. Did I mention that the missus and I went to Whole Foods in the evening where we bought a couple of lilac bushes? The joint was not that busy and I continue to think that if traffic doesn't pick up there I think we're going to see them close up shop. When I think of all the fresh food that goes to waste in that store because of the lack of patronage it's just a little distressing.
The republican gubernatorial winner in Pennsylvania last night, Mastriano, gave an interesting victory speech. He made a few what I would call off-colored remarks about Rachel Levine, the transexual, who now works in the Biden Administration. He's a bit of a laughingstock, I'll admit, so I got a bit of a chuckle out of Mastriano's comments. Levine is almost a caricature of himself running around our nation's capitol wearing a dress and eyeliner but making disparaging remarks about someone's sexual preferences or predilections these days seems, even for someone as trumpy as Mastriano, a bit of a reach. It was hard to tell how it went over at Mariano's headquarters so there's that. Maybe it was just Mastriano being Mastriano. And, yes, he's Trump-endorsed.
Mastriano made a few promises during his victory speech that sounded interesting. He said something about no more lockdowns. He said something about reinstating members of Pennsylvania's National Guard who had been fired because they refused to get the jab. He promised that only biological females will play female sports and bathrooms across the state will be utilized based on biology and not what users think they might feel like on any particular day of the week. Oh, and he said there will be no CRT in schools on his watch. He also said something about Pennsylvania becoming once again a major producer of energy that it once was under Trump before Biden stepped into the fray and fucked things up. Those are my words, not his. Sounds like a winning hand. No?
Just when you thought that the financial markets were oversold and you might get a bit of a countertrend or relief rally, it got slammed yesterday. The countertrend rally was what, three days? It did what countered rallies do. It sucked people back into the market and then killed them all over again with a 4 and 5 percent drop in the S&P and Nasdaq respectively. We're in a bear market, folks. Sit tight and let the market do what markets do in bear markets. It's a process and it's going to take time to play out. How long and how far down the market goes is anyone's guess. To all of you 401k watchers out there, stop it. This is no time to get all emotional about your portfolios. It just isn't.
The missus and I will try to get our new lilac plants in the ground today. Rain is in the forecast for this afternoon so that makes the missus very happy. She loves to get her plants in the ground in the Spring before the rain comes along and laments the fact that she's missed the opportunity when rain comes and goes and she never got to plant her plants. Does any of that make any sense? Our tomato plants will have to wait until after Memorial Day to go into the ground. As long as there is an outside chance that we might get frost overnight, the plants will go unplanted. If that means that I'm dragging them in and out of our garage every day and night, so be it. Just so you know, I bring them into the garage at night so they don't get eaten or otherwise destroyed during the overnight hours.
I messaged my brother from another mother yesterday about the precipitous drop in the stock market. I said something about it being a "brutal" day. He never responded. I've messaged him here and there throughout this rout and he's always responded one way or another. He sounded angry on one occasion and I thought his anger was directed at the clowns in charge in Washington, DC. In other words, Joey Biden was responsible for all of the doom and gloom he was seeing day in and day out in his portfolio. I'm not sure how to read his not responding to my message yesterday. If he's lost his sense of humor, that's not a good thing. Keep your chin up, bro! I'm here for you. Better days are ahead.
Maybe today will be a good day to get started cleaning out our garage. I've been putting it off because it's typically a big job. Big jobs take time and more than a little effort so I've wanted to wait until I got a bit of a head of steam up before starting the job. By "head of steam", I'm talking about the kind of momentum you get when you've checked off a few things on your to-do list and each of the tasks you get done is bigger and more satisfying than the previous task you checked off. The big enchilada, of course, is painting the Ev man's room. I'll get to that after I do the garage. It will be the cherry on top. The piece de resistance. The mother of all accomplishments. The biggest of big enchilada's.
I've been seeing more and more posts in my Twitter feed from people like Jeff Bezos and others of his ilk as of late. They are, to a person, going after Joe Biden for his policies on this, that, and the other thing. Most of their vitriol has to do with Biden's economic policies, or his failure to act on things like inflation, which is doing real harm to Bezos's businesses like Amazon, Whole Foods, etc. Bezos is amongst the wokest of the woke so it's notable that he's taking the gloves off when taking the gloves off against the left can attract the crazies like swarms of locusts right out of the Old Testament. And now, Elon Musk says that he'll be voting Republican in the fall. He says that the democrats have become "the party of division and hate." Me thinks we're just waiting for the fat lady to chime in here.
I'm beginning to think a little bit about this coming winter and what it's going to cost to heat our home if oil prices double or triple from where we are today. Even if prices don't go up another nickel, heating oil is now around $5 a gallon and that's nothing to sneeze at. Prices really just started to surge in the last couple of months this past winter so we never felt the full brunt of paying $5 a gallon during the coldest months of the year. Quite frankly, it was more painful watching the prices go up day after day than anything else since we had already filled up our oil tank when prices were in the $2 range. So, where do we go from here and what do we do if prices double or triple?
I suppose we could grin and bear it. Or, we could buy a cord or two of wood and put our wood stove to work instead of turning up the thermostat on those really chilly days and nights. It's been a few years since I've used our wood stove so there's that. There's a lot of work involved in feeding and keeping a wood stove running so there's that too. Our neighbor took down a tree in his yard recently and it looks like he's prepping to burn that wood so maybe we should be thinking about doing the same. The time to order the wood is now so I should look into it sooner rather than later. I think I paid about $250 a cord back in the day so that's probably my low water mark when it comes to pricing. I'm afraid to think about what the high water mark looks like. As a supplemental source of heat, I think one cord should do the trick.
What is this I'm hearing about Bumbling Joey Biden selling out our country's medical sovereignty to the World Health Organization (WHO)? Who the fuck does he think he is? Trump got us out of that god awful organization and when Joey got into office he got us right back into it. We're literally a couple of weeks away from this happening and it's just now coming into focus for the American people thanks to people like Tucker Carlson (FOX) and other media outlets. This has been on the radar of other outlets like Steve Bannon's War Room for a while so he's been doing the Lord's work in getting the news out. This treaty literally cedes our nation's medical rights to a global organization in the event of certain pandemic-like breakouts. And, you guessed it, they decided what does and what doesn't constitute a "pandemic."
I just don't see how this flies knowing what I know about our Constitution. And don't treaties need to be ratified by our Congress? I also don't see states and governors like DeSantis from Florida sitting around waiting for instructions from the WHO if and when a pandemic comes along in his state. And, I don't see the Supreme Court signing off on ceding any part of our sovereignty to an organization external to the United States. Well, at least not as long as the conservatives are in the majority, that is. If this smacks of Joey Biden getting in bed with the Chinese, then it tells us a lot about what we already suspected when it comes to the Biden's and the Communist Chinese Party (CCP.) Oh, and the World Health organization is seen as being a wholly owned subsidiary of the CCP so it's all very incestuous. This baby has to be killed in the crib.
What the fuck is Monkeypox? Is this the next "pandemic" to come down the pike? I've seen the pictures and they are not pretty. It looks a little like measles or smallpox but the pustules are bigger, uglier, and more plentiful. Mortality rates seem to be about one-in-ten or ten percent if my math is correct. Every day I'm reading a new account which involves cases in countries that heretofore had zero cases. How contagious is this Monkeypox thing? How is it transmitted? Do we have the proper drugs or therapies in place to combat large scale breakouts? I hear the Uk has stocked up on this or that drug in anticipation of their country being on the frontlines of the Monkeypox pandemic when, not if, it arrives on their shores. Do I need to ask the obvious question? Where is fucking Joey Biden?
Is it me or does it seem like Joey Biden and his minions don't have the interests of the American people in mind when he and his people are crafting whatever policies they seem to be crafting these days? It actually seems like they are doing what they're doing to harm or impair our country's progress and, worse yet, the dreams and aspirations of our nation's citizenry. How else do you explain the fact that our southern borders are completely open, the fact that we're subject to the dictates of despotic global oil barons when it comes to being able to heat our homes, the fact that he's allowed inflation to take hold in our country which is effectively impoverishing millions of god loving Americans, that he uses the media as his propaganda tool to push his leftist hate and division in order to consolidate political power? And to think that this demented ass clown ran for the presidency on bringing our people's together after four years of Trump.
I hate it when that happens. The financial markets were in for another shitty day yesterday (Friday) and in the last 30-45 minutes leading up to the four o'clock close the Central Banks stepped in and pumped up the market and the market closed almost even for the day. I think it ramped up the Dow some 400 points. The Central Banks simply didn't want John Q Public going into the weekend with a crappy day in the financial markets after suffering a crappy week overall. The main indices here in the US were all down some 3-4% for the week. The S&P actually tipped into bear market territory (-20%) before the ramp up into the close. Why don't they let the markets do what the markets want to do?
I'm all for markets bouncing but not when the Fed tips the scales to achieve a particular outcome. The Fed warned us that raising rates over whatever timeframe was going create some pain for investors. I figured that what I was seeing yesterday in the markets, until they tipped the scales into the close, was just more of the pain that the Fed had promised. The idea, as I understand it, is to lessen demand and thus bring down inflation. With inflation currently at 8.5%, and in many sectors of the economy even more than that, we all know how critical it is to get inflation under control. Quantitative tightening is supposed to start in a week or more and printing less money will help. Raising rates again will also help but it will not help anyone tied into a variable rate loan, etc. Layoffs, bankruptcies, and business closures can't be far behind.
Mrs G is settling in to her post-recovery period pretty well. She is a little upset about this and that schedule that doesn't seem to be coming together as promised and was lamenting just yesterday how she is spending an inordinate amount of time on the phone dealing with these issues. I didn't say so but I was thinking to myself as she was going on and on that it was probably giving her something to do with herself while she was in the process of getting back on her feet again. It's true that she's less mobile these days so that is leaving her, no doubt, feeling cooped up and isolated. The missus and I need to step up our game and get her out of the house to see the sights in and around town as much as possible. Too much introspection is never a good thing so let's do this. That's me talking to myself.
I don't honestly know what she can and can't do physically so it's hard to make plans of any kind. Is she up to taking her walker up and down the aisles of the local liquor store to look for her favorite wine? Is that something she might enjoy? Maybe she can get around using a cane and that would make matters easier for her. Or, maybe she would be perfectly content to sit in the front seat of the car and take in the sights as we drive here and there and God only knows where else. She said something recently about laying off the coffee nips so Walgreen's is probably not going to be the destination of choice as it was just six months ago. That reminds me. Are there things that she does that she might prefer we do for her? You know, shopping, cleaning, banking, going to the recycling center, dropping off dry cleaning, etc.? All things are possible.
Poor Elon Musk. No, really. The guy moves his Tesla headquarters from California to Texas to escape the craziness of everything you can imagine in California. The next thing you know he's making a bid to buy the social media giant, Twitter. Oh, and before I forget, he's tweeting up a storm on Twitter about everything from free speech to blasting Biden and his minions on their inability to get the job done. The next thing you know, he's out there tweeting about voting republican in the mid term elections. That was apparently the straw that broke the camel's back. The left lost their shit when that happened. It wasn't bad enough that Elon took over their social media platform and turned it into a respectable electronic town hall. He's now abandoning the left and that is something they cannot and will not tolerate. Who thinks that the stories we are now hearing about Elon and his sexual shenanigans aren't the product of a vengeful left? They're coming for you, Elon.
Let's keep an eye on the Georgia primary this coming Tuesday. We republicans need to unseat Kemp, at a minimum. But, if not, we need to keep him under fifty percent so Perdue can get him to a runoff. The thinking is that Perdue can beat Kemp in a one-on-one race. That, obviously, remains to be seen. I'm hearing that the votes coming in are up significantly and a lot of those votes are coming from first time voters. That suggests that a lot of those new voters are "MAGA." I'm expecting Herschel Walker to run away, pun intended, with the senatorial primary win. Whatever happens, we republicans need to beat that cow, Stacy Abrams, come November. While we're at it, we need to send pastor Warlock packing along with any number of other democrats who currently hold congressional seats in Georgia. It sounds like a heavy lift, and it surely is where Abrams is concerned, but the wind is at our backs thanks to bumbling Joe and his cast of cretins in Washington. America has had a bellyful.
The Ev man is in the house! Oh, and let's give a shout out to Carli in the Falls! She graduated yesterday from Skidmore College in Saratoga, New York. That's what we're talkin' bout, girl! The world is your oyster! Despite her stated desire to dabble in a career in forensics, me thinks her real love is working with animals. Anyway, she has plenty of time to sort all of that out. As for the Ev man, he's back in the house after a two week hiatus due to his having survived Covid-19. I wasn't ready for the fist bump he was offering when he came through the door a few minutes ago so I hope he doesn't take it personally. We'll have plenty of time for fist bumps. He looks and sounds good and he seems to be in excellent spirits. That might be the caffeine talking but so be it. All is good in Ev-man land. When he's good, we're good. It's that simple.
Some loon went into a supermarket in Buffalo, New York over the weekend and killed a bunch of people. He was white and most of his victims were black so the media is playing the whole white supremacist thing to the hilt. They are dragging social media into their dystopian hysterics for their part in radicalizing this killer. Make no mistake about it, the social media part is all about indicting Elon Musk and his buyout of Twitter which is the left's go-to application for their army of nitwits and influencers. Now that Elon is in charge, and now that he's opening the doors to millions of more reasonable voices on the platform, it's time for the left to "level" the playing field once again by shutting down free speech since it doesn't conform to their idea of "free speech."
Who was it who once said, "Never let a crisis go to waste?" It really is just shameless how the democrats never miss a chance to politicize these types of events. It's all about whipping up sentiment in this or that community in order to create a constituency around a topic that is near and dear to their hearts like gun control, abortion, etc. Put more simply, without an energized citizenry willing to get out and vote in local or national elections, they lose political power which is the lifeblood of the democrat party. To the extent that these types of events help them achieve their goals, it pains me to say it but I think they welcome them with open arms. The ends justify the means.
This is one of those days where I'm chomping at the bit to get to the end of the day so I can see who will win this and that primary election. I don't really have any horses in any of the races so I'm just more curious than not about how they are going to turn out. If Trump's pick's win, that's fine. If they don't, that's fine too. I'm not in the camp that says that if his picks don't win he's toast come 2024. I am in the camp that says the more wins he has the better his chances are of winning in 2024. I do hope that Pennsylvania comes to their senses and votes in republican governors and senators in November although I'm not sure which candidate(s) would be best positioned to do that against the democrats.
If the Oz guy pulls this one out tonight in Pennsylvania, it will give us a little more insight into what it means to be endorsed by Trump. It will tell us that the J.D. Vance thing wasn't a lark since J.D. came from the back of the pack after being endorsed by Trump to the front of the pack and ultimately won the primary in Ohio. Oz is not currently at the back of the pack and, by all reports, he's running ahead ever so slightly of both McCormick and Cathy Barnett. Did I mention that the leading democrat in the Pennsylvania senatorial primary had a stroke a few days back? They say it won't dampen his prospects so we'll see if that holds true as the votes come in tonight. He'll still be in the hospital when all the votes are tallied at the end of the day.
I did such a nice job cleaning up all the deck furniture this Spring. That said, I might have been a little too hasty in putting it all together because the glass table top needs a good cleaning. I shouldn't have assembled everything until I got that done. That might be a good project for today since I'll want to busy myself with this or that task until I get to break out the popcorn later this evening to watch the votes come in. I've also got some staining to do so that's on the list as is cleaning the garage. I tend to drag my feet on the more demanding tasks but, as I've learned over time, that only makes it more difficult when all is said and done. That reminds me. I need to paint the Ev man's room. Well, the spare room that he calls home when he's home anyway.
It's looking like we're going to have a dandy day here on the coast weather-wise. It's totally sunny and the temperatures should get to the low seventies which is just ideal this time of year. Add low humidity to the mix, and we are off and running. I'll see if I can't get in a good bike ride and maybe a little nap too if the good Lord's willing and the creek don't rise. The nap should take a bit of the edge off of any anxiety I might have as a result of my wanting this election thing to come to pass. When you know yourself well enough to know what you're going to do from time to time based on this or that external event, it makes for more reliable outcomes. More reliable outcomes makes for fewer surprises.
The Ev man is doing better now that he's a week or more into his bout with Covid. It wasn't a big deal so that's a relief. He keeps taking the test every day with the hopes that the lines indicating a positive test on the testing strip will sooner or later fade away to nothing. They're not gone completely so we're all wondering if his is the one case where the lines never go away or maybe go away after an extended period of time. He's been out and about in the community after the five or so days recommended by the CDC although he's done a pretty good job of masking up in order to minimize any unnecessary contact/spread. He's been nothing if not responsible during his sickness so kudos to him. You done good, Ev man.
Here we are the morning after the election and the Oz and McCormick thing has yet to be settled. Madison Cawthorn got the boot in North Carolina and another of Trump's picks went down defeat in Indiana. I'm looking at the map of Pennsylvania and who won what counties and Oz doesn't seem to have a lot of strength in the areas that he'll need to win in November if he's going to take the senate seat in the race against the democrat, Fetterman. I'm referring to the more rural counties in Pennsylvania which ran up the votes in 2016 to give Trump the win. Maybe they have some affection for McCormick that I'm unaware of that put him over the top in those counties. If Oz does prevail, he has his work cut out for him. Barnett garnered some 23% of the vote which, if I'm not mistaken, is somewhat less than most people thought she might get.
Who does and who doesn't have bragging rights this morning? I wish I knew a little more about turnout in past senatorial races so I'd have a better idea as to whether or not one party or the other has the upper hand in terms of voter enthusiasm. This stroked out Fetterman guy who is a big Bernie Sanders lefty sure got a lot of votes for someone who spent election night in the hospital getting a pacemaker implanted in his chest. Just when I thought the progressives were down for the count, this guy pulls one out of the hat for his team. I guess that's a good thing if come November the middle-of-the-road citizenry decides that what the progressives like Fetterman are selling is just a bridge too far. I have to be careful here since the same might be said for Mastriano, the republican gubenatorial winner. He might be trumpier than Trump.
I feel pretty good about the fact that I got most of what I wanted to do yesterday done with time to spare. I pushed myself but the tasks that I had assigned to myself required a little pushing so that worked out well. I got the painting done that I wanted to do; I cleaned certain gutters; I washed the glass table top for the table on our patio; and I got my bike ride in. Did I mention that the missus and I went to Whole Foods in the evening where we bought a couple of lilac bushes? The joint was not that busy and I continue to think that if traffic doesn't pick up there I think we're going to see them close up shop. When I think of all the fresh food that goes to waste in that store because of the lack of patronage it's just a little distressing.
The republican gubernatorial winner in Pennsylvania last night, Mastriano, gave an interesting victory speech. He made a few what I would call off-colored remarks about Rachel Levine, the transexual, who now works in the Biden Administration. He's a bit of a laughingstock, I'll admit, so I got a bit of a chuckle out of Mastriano's comments. Levine is almost a caricature of himself running around our nation's capitol wearing a dress and eyeliner but making disparaging remarks about someone's sexual preferences or predilections these days seems, even for someone as trumpy as Mastriano, a bit of a reach. It was hard to tell how it went over at Mariano's headquarters so there's that. Maybe it was just Mastriano being Mastriano. And, yes, he's Trump-endorsed.
Mastriano made a few promises during his victory speech that sounded interesting. He said something about no more lockdowns. He said something about reinstating members of Pennsylvania's National Guard who had been fired because they refused to get the jab. He promised that only biological females will play female sports and bathrooms across the state will be utilized based on biology and not what users think they might feel like on any particular day of the week. Oh, and he said there will be no CRT in schools on his watch. He also said something about Pennsylvania becoming once again a major producer of energy that it once was under Trump before Biden stepped into the fray and fucked things up. Those are my words, not his. Sounds like a winning hand. No?
Just when you thought that the financial markets were oversold and you might get a bit of a countertrend or relief rally, it got slammed yesterday. The countertrend rally was what, three days? It did what countered rallies do. It sucked people back into the market and then killed them all over again with a 4 and 5 percent drop in the S&P and Nasdaq respectively. We're in a bear market, folks. Sit tight and let the market do what markets do in bear markets. It's a process and it's going to take time to play out. How long and how far down the market goes is anyone's guess. To all of you 401k watchers out there, stop it. This is no time to get all emotional about your portfolios. It just isn't.
The missus and I will try to get our new lilac plants in the ground today. Rain is in the forecast for this afternoon so that makes the missus very happy. She loves to get her plants in the ground in the Spring before the rain comes along and laments the fact that she's missed the opportunity when rain comes and goes and she never got to plant her plants. Does any of that make any sense? Our tomato plants will have to wait until after Memorial Day to go into the ground. As long as there is an outside chance that we might get frost overnight, the plants will go unplanted. If that means that I'm dragging them in and out of our garage every day and night, so be it. Just so you know, I bring them into the garage at night so they don't get eaten or otherwise destroyed during the overnight hours.
I messaged my brother from another mother yesterday about the precipitous drop in the stock market. I said something about it being a "brutal" day. He never responded. I've messaged him here and there throughout this rout and he's always responded one way or another. He sounded angry on one occasion and I thought his anger was directed at the clowns in charge in Washington, DC. In other words, Joey Biden was responsible for all of the doom and gloom he was seeing day in and day out in his portfolio. I'm not sure how to read his not responding to my message yesterday. If he's lost his sense of humor, that's not a good thing. Keep your chin up, bro! I'm here for you. Better days are ahead.
Maybe today will be a good day to get started cleaning out our garage. I've been putting it off because it's typically a big job. Big jobs take time and more than a little effort so I've wanted to wait until I got a bit of a head of steam up before starting the job. By "head of steam", I'm talking about the kind of momentum you get when you've checked off a few things on your to-do list and each of the tasks you get done is bigger and more satisfying than the previous task you checked off. The big enchilada, of course, is painting the Ev man's room. I'll get to that after I do the garage. It will be the cherry on top. The piece de resistance. The mother of all accomplishments. The biggest of big enchilada's.
I've been seeing more and more posts in my Twitter feed from people like Jeff Bezos and others of his ilk as of late. They are, to a person, going after Joe Biden for his policies on this, that, and the other thing. Most of their vitriol has to do with Biden's economic policies, or his failure to act on things like inflation, which is doing real harm to Bezos's businesses like Amazon, Whole Foods, etc. Bezos is amongst the wokest of the woke so it's notable that he's taking the gloves off when taking the gloves off against the left can attract the crazies like swarms of locusts right out of the Old Testament. And now, Elon Musk says that he'll be voting Republican in the fall. He says that the democrats have become "the party of division and hate." Me thinks we're just waiting for the fat lady to chime in here.
I'm beginning to think a little bit about this coming winter and what it's going to cost to heat our home if oil prices double or triple from where we are today. Even if prices don't go up another nickel, heating oil is now around $5 a gallon and that's nothing to sneeze at. Prices really just started to surge in the last couple of months this past winter so we never felt the full brunt of paying $5 a gallon during the coldest months of the year. Quite frankly, it was more painful watching the prices go up day after day than anything else since we had already filled up our oil tank when prices were in the $2 range. So, where do we go from here and what do we do if prices double or triple?
I suppose we could grin and bear it. Or, we could buy a cord or two of wood and put our wood stove to work instead of turning up the thermostat on those really chilly days and nights. It's been a few years since I've used our wood stove so there's that. There's a lot of work involved in feeding and keeping a wood stove running so there's that too. Our neighbor took down a tree in his yard recently and it looks like he's prepping to burn that wood so maybe we should be thinking about doing the same. The time to order the wood is now so I should look into it sooner rather than later. I think I paid about $250 a cord back in the day so that's probably my low water mark when it comes to pricing. I'm afraid to think about what the high water mark looks like. As a supplemental source of heat, I think one cord should do the trick.
What is this I'm hearing about Bumbling Joey Biden selling out our country's medical sovereignty to the World Health Organization (WHO)? Who the fuck does he think he is? Trump got us out of that god awful organization and when Joey got into office he got us right back into it. We're literally a couple of weeks away from this happening and it's just now coming into focus for the American people thanks to people like Tucker Carlson (FOX) and other media outlets. This has been on the radar of other outlets like Steve Bannon's War Room for a while so he's been doing the Lord's work in getting the news out. This treaty literally cedes our nation's medical rights to a global organization in the event of certain pandemic-like breakouts. And, you guessed it, they decided what does and what doesn't constitute a "pandemic."
I just don't see how this flies knowing what I know about our Constitution. And don't treaties need to be ratified by our Congress? I also don't see states and governors like DeSantis from Florida sitting around waiting for instructions from the WHO if and when a pandemic comes along in his state. And, I don't see the Supreme Court signing off on ceding any part of our sovereignty to an organization external to the United States. Well, at least not as long as the conservatives are in the majority, that is. If this smacks of Joey Biden getting in bed with the Chinese, then it tells us a lot about what we already suspected when it comes to the Biden's and the Communist Chinese Party (CCP.) Oh, and the World Health organization is seen as being a wholly owned subsidiary of the CCP so it's all very incestuous. This baby has to be killed in the crib.
What the fuck is Monkeypox? Is this the next "pandemic" to come down the pike? I've seen the pictures and they are not pretty. It looks a little like measles or smallpox but the pustules are bigger, uglier, and more plentiful. Mortality rates seem to be about one-in-ten or ten percent if my math is correct. Every day I'm reading a new account which involves cases in countries that heretofore had zero cases. How contagious is this Monkeypox thing? How is it transmitted? Do we have the proper drugs or therapies in place to combat large scale breakouts? I hear the Uk has stocked up on this or that drug in anticipation of their country being on the frontlines of the Monkeypox pandemic when, not if, it arrives on their shores. Do I need to ask the obvious question? Where is fucking Joey Biden?
Is it me or does it seem like Joey Biden and his minions don't have the interests of the American people in mind when he and his people are crafting whatever policies they seem to be crafting these days? It actually seems like they are doing what they're doing to harm or impair our country's progress and, worse yet, the dreams and aspirations of our nation's citizenry. How else do you explain the fact that our southern borders are completely open, the fact that we're subject to the dictates of despotic global oil barons when it comes to being able to heat our homes, the fact that he's allowed inflation to take hold in our country which is effectively impoverishing millions of god loving Americans, that he uses the media as his propaganda tool to push his leftist hate and division in order to consolidate political power? And to think that this demented ass clown ran for the presidency on bringing our people's together after four years of Trump.
I hate it when that happens. The financial markets were in for another shitty day yesterday (Friday) and in the last 30-45 minutes leading up to the four o'clock close the Central Banks stepped in and pumped up the market and the market closed almost even for the day. I think it ramped up the Dow some 400 points. The Central Banks simply didn't want John Q Public going into the weekend with a crappy day in the financial markets after suffering a crappy week overall. The main indices here in the US were all down some 3-4% for the week. The S&P actually tipped into bear market territory (-20%) before the ramp up into the close. Why don't they let the markets do what the markets want to do?
I'm all for markets bouncing but not when the Fed tips the scales to achieve a particular outcome. The Fed warned us that raising rates over whatever timeframe was going create some pain for investors. I figured that what I was seeing yesterday in the markets, until they tipped the scales into the close, was just more of the pain that the Fed had promised. The idea, as I understand it, is to lessen demand and thus bring down inflation. With inflation currently at 8.5%, and in many sectors of the economy even more than that, we all know how critical it is to get inflation under control. Quantitative tightening is supposed to start in a week or more and printing less money will help. Raising rates again will also help but it will not help anyone tied into a variable rate loan, etc. Layoffs, bankruptcies, and business closures can't be far behind.
Mrs G is settling in to her post-recovery period pretty well. She is a little upset about this and that schedule that doesn't seem to be coming together as promised and was lamenting just yesterday how she is spending an inordinate amount of time on the phone dealing with these issues. I didn't say so but I was thinking to myself as she was going on and on that it was probably giving her something to do with herself while she was in the process of getting back on her feet again. It's true that she's less mobile these days so that is leaving her, no doubt, feeling cooped up and isolated. The missus and I need to step up our game and get her out of the house to see the sights in and around town as much as possible. Too much introspection is never a good thing so let's do this. That's me talking to myself.
I don't honestly know what she can and can't do physically so it's hard to make plans of any kind. Is she up to taking her walker up and down the aisles of the local liquor store to look for her favorite wine? Is that something she might enjoy? Maybe she can get around using a cane and that would make matters easier for her. Or, maybe she would be perfectly content to sit in the front seat of the car and take in the sights as we drive here and there and God only knows where else. She said something recently about laying off the coffee nips so Walgreen's is probably not going to be the destination of choice as it was just six months ago. That reminds me. Are there things that she does that she might prefer we do for her? You know, shopping, cleaning, banking, going to the recycling center, dropping off dry cleaning, etc.? All things are possible.
Poor Elon Musk. No, really. The guy moves his Tesla headquarters from California to Texas to escape the craziness of everything you can imagine in California. The next thing you know he's making a bid to buy the social media giant, Twitter. Oh, and before I forget, he's tweeting up a storm on Twitter about everything from free speech to blasting Biden and his minions on their inability to get the job done. The next thing you know, he's out there tweeting about voting republican in the mid term elections. That was apparently the straw that broke the camel's back. The left lost their shit when that happened. It wasn't bad enough that Elon took over their social media platform and turned it into a respectable electronic town hall. He's now abandoning the left and that is something they cannot and will not tolerate. Who thinks that the stories we are now hearing about Elon and his sexual shenanigans aren't the product of a vengeful left? They're coming for you, Elon.
Let's keep an eye on the Georgia primary this coming Tuesday. We republicans need to unseat Kemp, at a minimum. But, if not, we need to keep him under fifty percent so Perdue can get him to a runoff. The thinking is that Perdue can beat Kemp in a one-on-one race. That, obviously, remains to be seen. I'm hearing that the votes coming in are up significantly and a lot of those votes are coming from first time voters. That suggests that a lot of those new voters are "MAGA." I'm expecting Herschel Walker to run away, pun intended, with the senatorial primary win. Whatever happens, we republicans need to beat that cow, Stacy Abrams, come November. While we're at it, we need to send pastor Warlock packing along with any number of other democrats who currently hold congressional seats in Georgia. It sounds like a heavy lift, and it surely is where Abrams is concerned, but the wind is at our backs thanks to bumbling Joe and his cast of cretins in Washington. America has had a bellyful.
The Ev man is in the house! Oh, and let's give a shout out to Carli in the Falls! She graduated yesterday from Skidmore College in Saratoga, New York. That's what we're talkin' bout, girl! The world is your oyster! Despite her stated desire to dabble in a career in forensics, me thinks her real love is working with animals. Anyway, she has plenty of time to sort all of that out. As for the Ev man, he's back in the house after a two week hiatus due to his having survived Covid-19. I wasn't ready for the fist bump he was offering when he came through the door a few minutes ago so I hope he doesn't take it personally. We'll have plenty of time for fist bumps. He looks and sounds good and he seems to be in excellent spirits. That might be the caffeine talking but so be it. All is good in Ev-man land. When he's good, we're good. It's that simple.