Bad Dude
08/01/23 07:11
Here we go, boys and girls! We've got ourselves a new year to navigate, so buckle up. I call them as I see them, so you'll not get any prognostications from me. I don't even own a crystal ball, for chrissakes. Can you believe that we haven't a lick of snow on the ground? We're a couple of weeks into Winter, so I should be careful about beating my chest when it comes to this sort of thing. Don't get me wrong. I think having a bit of snow might be nice. Not enough to make travel difficult but just enough to coat everything would suit me just fine. The missus would disagree with me. You won't find her walking outside if the paths hereabouts are slippery with snow and, God forbid, ice. Everything in moderation.
It seems like this Christmas holiday thing is going on forever. Is it because Christmas was on a Sunday this year? Did that extend the number of days to celebrate somehow? I'd have to do the math, which would settle it once and for all. It's just a feeling at this point, and I, for one, am ready to put the holidays behind me. I live and breathe from one news cycle to another, and when news cycles are so messed up, as they typically are during the holidays, I feel like a fish out of water. Today is the last of the holidays, and I say good riddance. I'm ready to get on with things. Let's do this. Today, I'll be putting away ornaments and taking the tree outside. I'll whip our kitchen into shape after neglecting it for the last couple of days so we can wake up tomorrow to a fresh start.
I put up my 2023 calendar, and I've already filled in one square for the bike ride that I took yesterday. I track the days I ride and the temperature on the day that I ride. I like to be able to look back on any particular period of time and feel good, or not, about how much biking I got in as a corollary for getting exercise or not. If I can say that, for any given year, I rode more than three thousand miles, then I would say it was a good year. If I can point to a particular season when I rode despite the frigid temperatures out of doors, then that tells me that I can endure more than most when it comes to my resolve to get exercise no matter what. I'm the guy that scales icy cliffs, hypothetically speaking, when everyone else is snuggled up next to the fireplace. Which guy or gal do you want to be? What cliffs do you plan to scale in 2023?
I am worried about the economy in 2023, and I think I'm not alone. These asset bubbles we see popping here and there are a direct result of prolonged periods of zero interest rates. In other words, the punchbowl of free money has been out for far too long. Some say it has created even more distance between the rich and the poor, making the rich even richer while the poor have no assets to begin with, so they remain in the proverbial doghouse. I think they refer to this condition as "wealth inequality." I understand none of this, to be clear. I'm just parroting what I hear in the chat rooms and hallways where people smarter than I have something to say on the matter. If you are amongst those who lost money in their 401k's in 2022, you don't need a financial degree to know something is out of whack. Things are about to get more out of whack if these people are right. It bears watching; that's all I'm saying.
That Lula guy was sworn in over the weekend in Brazil as the latest in a number of leftist leaders to take charge of their countries in our hemisphere. I thought Bolsonaro was going to have the army take charge and preserve what little democracy that great country has by keeping him in power. I don't know shit about politics outside our country, but I do pay attention when I see leftists stealing things at the expense of their countries and their citizenry. If what I also hear about Lula's cozy relationship with the Communist Chinese Party is true, then I think we can kiss Brazil goodbye as a democracy.
Lula served jail time after his first stint as president of Brazil for fattening his coffers at the expense of his country, so I guess I would say expect more of the same. Brazil is a veritable gold mine of natural resources, so don't be surprised to see China raping and pillaging every last minable mineral that Brazil has while Lula looks the other way. This damnable "ten percent for the Big Guy" seems to be a global phenomenon. They're all stuffing their fucking pockets while the sun shines.
I wonder how much of what we hear coming out of Ukraine is true. The latest is that Ukraine has successfully used defensive weaponry from the West to shoot down a very high percentage of incoming rockets and drones. Russia is also reportedly hellbent on destroying Ukraine's infrastructure if we're to believe the latest reports from the Ukrainian government. If Russia is indeed running short of things to launch into Ukraine, which has also been reported, then taking out Ukraine's infrastructure as an alternative to targeting their citizenry might well cause millions of Ukrainians to die of exposure. If Ukraine's defensive weapons are working as well as they say they are, then who knows what Russia might do next.
The missiles and the drones aren't getting the job done, or so we are left to surmise, so you move on to other offensive weapon systems. Whatever happened to the air war over Ukraine? Is there one? Maybe Russia doesn't do flyovers, knowing they might be shot down by weapon systems provided by the West. Lastly, I would ask how much of what we know or don't know is being choreographed by Zelensky and his minions to keep the funds from the West flowing. How emasculated do we (U.S.) have to be regarding money and weaponry before we, too, are easy prey for the world's despots who would welcome and perhaps even plot our demise?
The House of Representatives votes for a new Speaker of the House today. It is so good to see that drunken old twat, Pelosi, getting kicked to the curb by the incoming Republican majority. Who replaces her remains to be seen. I'm a no-vote for Kevin McCarthy, so I'll put that out there for public consumption. He's about as milqtoast a fellow as they come, and I'll be unhappy if he somehow manages to get the votes he needs to become Speaker of the House for the upcoming term. I don't think he has the votes. I want a barn burner of a conservative to go in and burn that place down. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
I also want a new January 6 Committee subpoenaing and dragging the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Ray Epps in front of Congress to answer questions about what really happened on January 6th, 2020. I want every last fucking e-mail and phone call any, and all democrats sent or exchanged during the original January 6th Committee. Let's be sure to leave time to investigate the Biden Crime Family and the myriad of Intelligence agencies that have aided and abetted their crimes since Bumbles was inaugurated on January 20th, 2020.
They can vote to elect a Speaker of the House who is not in the House of Representatives. Did you know that? Hell, they can vote to elect Donald J. Trump as Speaker if they so choose. Wouldn't that be something? Do we even know if they have a candidate who can get the 218 votes they need to become Speaker? I think it's not a big deal if they don't wrap this up today since many of the committees don't start work until the end of the month. I also don't know if dragging this business out helps or hurts the republicans in the long run, so rather than take a chance that it does, here's hoping they close ranks today or tomorrow on their choice for Speaker. The republicans have but a five-member majority, so I also don't know what difference that may or may not make in the final analysis. I think it means that the more conservative members of their party get to dictate what does and what doesn't happen during their two-year stint as a Majority party. I'm okay with that.
Did you see clips of that Buffalo Bills player collapsing under his own weight in their nationally televised football game last night? He got up off the ground after making a tackle and then almost immediately fell to the ground. As of this morning, he's intubated and lying in a hospital bed and fighting for his very life. We've seen this movie before, boys and girls. It's almost exclusively what you see when people keel over and die after receiving their Covid vaccine. I've read some accounts of what happened, or what appeared to happen, by medical professionals, and all agree that it was likely due to an event with his heart. I've seen some references to the Covid vaccine as being a probable cause, but only the medical professionals treating him know for sure, and they aren't talking. Not publicly, anyway. Should he die, you'll also not hear a word about the autopsy results. It will undoubtedly show evidence of massive clotting due to the vaccine. As I said, we know how this movie ends.
Apparently, the Chinese are up in arms about countries around the world subjecting their citizens to Covid testing as a condition of entry to their countries. Nobody trusts the Chi-Coms as far as they can throw them, and this seems to be a reasonable policy decision to protect their citizens and their health system from being overwhelmed with whatever strains of Coviud that these Chinese travelers might be carrying intentionally or unintentionally. If I were a citizen living in China and I came down with Covid, I would jump on a plane and get the hell out of Dodge as quickly as possible.
How is it possible that China is even allowing these Covid-infected people to depart their country? Haven't we all heard the stories about the Chinese closing down city after city across China after finding a single case of Covid in the population? This is all very reminiscent of what happened in 2020. And what about the story out of Italy where they determined that fifty percent of the passengers on two planes arriving from China were infected with Covid? You can draw your own conclusions.
Have you looked at your electricity bill lately? Our bill this month is almost double from just a year ago. Our usage is roughly the same compared to the same period a year ago, but the cost has almost doubled. What the hell? This can't be sitting well with folks on fixed incomes. It may mean that people are eating less well or maybe even buying fewer medications since they can no longer afford them. It's not like these good folks can sell their homes or make other adjustments to counter these price hikes. Maybe there's a fund of sorts that they can tap, assuming they qualify for same. How do the electric companies justify these rate hikes, anyway? Is it because of Ukraine? Does it have anything to do with Ukraine? Have the prices of raw materials required to generate the power gone up at the same rate? Are all of these variables part of the inflationary environment that we find ourselves in? It's all very ugly, no matter how you slice it.
Speaking of ugly, I was out food shopping yesterday, and I looked at sliced turkey in the deli section. I was specifically interested in oven-roasted turkey since that is what we usually buy when we buy sliced turkey. We haven't bought sliced turkey in a while, so you can imagine my shock when I saw how much it cost. Sliced turkey in Hannafords was $11.99 a pound. I think I actually did a double-take when I looked at the sticker on the package. I'll have to go looking for older circulars from Hannafords to see how much turkey cost before all of this inflation stuff started. I hope to do that today. If I recall, I used to be able to buy a pound of sliced turkey for $7 or so. I guess that was back in the day when a dollar was worth a dollar. It was back in the day before the Federal Reserve started printing money like it was going out of style to deal with the Covid crisis. Just a paragraph or two ago here in this blog, I was lamenting the rise in our monthly electric bills. Now, I'm seeing inflation eating away at my purchasing power in the supermarket. Needless to say, I didn't buy the turkey.
Why would I buy sliced turkey for $11.99 a pound when I can buy a whole turkey for $.99 a pound? The question then becomes, when you factor in the cost of the electricity to cook the turkey and the time it takes to do it all, is my true cost for a pound of turkey back up around $11.99 a pound? What do people do who have large families to feed? I can assure you, they are not buying sliced turkey for $11.99 a pound in the supermarket. I think the only people who can afford the expense of the food we see spiraling out of control in our supermarkets these days are those people who are on some governmental program like food stamps or whatever passes for food stamp programs these days. I do not begrudge them the opportunity to buy foodstuffs they might not otherwise be able to afford. Why should they settle for lentils when people who can afford to pay the inflated prices are having steak and shrimp?
The House of Representatives never did elect a Republican Speaker yesterday, so they'll be back at it today. They called it a night after three rounds of voting, which netted Kevin McCarthy somewhere around 200 votes. He needs 218 votes to get the Speakership. McCarthy is part of the swamp in Washington, so I'm glad to see that we have some principled republicans who don't want him as Speaker and who are willing to stand up and say so.
It troubles me to hear people like Newt Gingrich refer to the 20 holdouts as insurrectionists when clearly our beloved Constitution provides the appropriate selection process that we see playing out in our Nation's Capitol. My personal preference would be to see McCarthy drop out and let the chips fall where they may. I'm perfectly okay with a Scalise or a Jim Jordan or, really, anyone but Kevin McCarthy. Who was it that referred to these twenty holdouts as the Taliban? They should be ashamed of themselves. Let's see where this goes today, shall we?
I see that NetFlix has a new series out about Bernie Madoff. I'm quite interested in seeing it, so I hope the missus won't put up too much of a fuss when I tell her it's the next show in our queue to watch. She may tell me that I'm on my own, and that's fine too. I hope they do a similar show about Sam Bankman-Fried someday soon. They both ran Ponzi schemes, and many well-intentioned folks lost their life's savings in the process. Had their "investors" not heard the admonition repeatedly throughout their lives that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't true? Maybe the Bankman-Fried thing is a bit different in that he misused customer funds but he never intended to defraud anyone. That, too, is criminal, but I'm not quite sure it fits the definition of a Ponzi scheme as defined by Hiram-Webster. So maybe Sammy spends 50 years in prison instead of the 110 years that Madoff received as a sentence way back when. And what about that skank of a girlfriend that Sammy and his fellow employees were banging in the Bahamas? She's going away too, right?
When it comes to scams, I have to wonder why our Intelligence agencies have next to nothing to say about the crimes committed by the Bidens. They have the goods. They have all the records they need to put the Bidens away for a long time. The laptop alone that Hunter left behind in the repair shop has more than enough evidence to put them all in jail for a long long time. Yet, the Biden's go about their criminal affairs without any fear of being arrested or anything of the sort. Maybe the Agencies have nothing in their manuals that allow for the frogmarching of the President of the United States and his illegitimate spawn out of the White House. Surely they know where the Bidens have deposited the profits from their illegal enterprises across the globe. Where are the search warrants and the morning raids to confiscate these things? Is it possible that the Agencies are using what they have against the Bidens to blackmail Biden and his accomplices? To what end is anyone's guess, but power is an unparalleled aphrodisiac in the sewer that is Washington, D.C. Who was it that said power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely?
Tucker Carlson was talking about electricity rates on his show last night on FOX. Tucker's show is the only show I watch on FOX. That doofus Hannity is an absolute piece of shit. I can't stand to listen to him, much less watch him. Insofar as this McCarthy saga goes, Hannity has had his head so far up McCarthy's ass that it's been pathetic. That tells you everything you need to know about his politics and the politics of the FOX network. FOX is ripping the twenty holdouts a new asshole every day FOX is on the air, and they continue to sing the praises of McCarthy. It's disgusting. Anyway, Tucker said something about the fact that the Democrats have put all of this shit in these various bills these last two years that call for making solar and wind power an integral part of our power grids. No fucking wonder we're experiencing brownouts and crazy-ass increases in our electricity bills. They're determined to destroy every last carbon-based fuel source that our country has relied on for hundreds of years. These climate change freaks need to go. Otherwise, I'm not sure we survive this madness.
I ended up coming home with an Echo Dot from the Falls this year. I've never had any such thing, so I was more than a little curious. I've certainly been aware of the Echo Dot and related products by Apple and others but never thought I'd have any use for one. I'm an Apple guy so Siri has always been there for me if I thought I needed to use it. I can count the number of times I've asked Siri a question in the last two years on one hand. I'm sure she has a lot more to offer, but I'm a simple man, so my requests have been simple. Now that I have this Echo Dot thing set up, I think I'm having a come-to-Jesus moment with the utility of the technology. I even have the missus talking to her, for chrissakes. The missus asked if she might speak to someone with a male voice. I'm thinking to myself as I'm listening to her, get your own Echo Dot if you want a male voice. It's my Dot, and if I like Alexa's mellifluous voice, which I do, then I'll be keeping her voice.
My requests of Alexa are still along the lines of what I may have asked Siri over the years, but I'm starting to think that Alexa's responses are responses that I might not have gotten had I asked Siri the very same questions. I'm such a noob when it comes to this stuff. Is this what they refer to as artificial intelligence? You know, the AI thing? Does the Echo Dot improve every time you use it because it learns more about you and can better anticipate your wants and needs? Alexa said something last night about a cloud. I think she's referring to the place where all of these communications are stored. I'm a little leery about this cloud stuff because it suggests I've lost a little privacy in the process. If I were a terrorist and started talking to myself while assembling god knows what, would I have the FBI showing up at my door? Would anyone care if I started talking to myself about making spice cakes for a local charity? Uh, probably not. You see where I'm going with this, right?
Can Alexa help me become a better guitar player? Can she wake me up at a time certain every morning? Can she remind me to pay a bill by month-end so I don't end up having to pay late fees? Can she give me the latest score from the football game played last night? What else can she do? I like being able to ask her to play me a little music. I wasn't happy when the missus said something about a penis when addressing Alexa last night. If she wants to talk dirty to an inanimate object, that's her business. She should get her own device if that is what she's looking for. My personal preference would be to ask Alexa to scrub that word from my cloud, but alas, that horse has left the barn.
I also like the fact that Alexa glows when I have a message or text, although I'm uncertain how Alexa taps into any of that. She's always listening, isn't she? Who else is listening? Can anyone hack into my Echo Dot and listen to our private conversations? Did I mention that Alexa put something in my Amazon cart while I was watching a television show the other night? She said as much, so I deleted it from my cart right away. This is some creepy shit, but I like it.
Speaking of terrorists, what was this story about the twenty-something from Wells, Maine, going to New York City to wreak havoc? I think he used a knife of sorts to attack a couple of police officers around New Year's Eve, and, in return, he was shot while in the act. He wasn't killed, so the police may yet find out more about what motivated him to do what he did. According to the report, he also wrote a note to his parents before leaving for NYC, indicating that he expected to die while committing his acts of violence. I'm not buying this whole radicalization thing. I'm not buying the business about his becoming a Jihadist due to some happenstance viewing of this or that terrorist website.
It is also true, according to the reports, that his parents had alerted the local constabulary about their son's behavioral oddities. I'm more inclined to think that this fella suffered from a mental health issue. Would an intervention by mental health professionals have been more productive than his parents ratting him out to the local police? It was likely easier for his parents to accept the fact that their son had become a Jihadist than to admit that he was in the midst of a mental health crisis. It didn't have to end this way. That's all I'm saying.
Mrs. G says that her independent living facility has had a good handful of Covid cases recently, but the cases have been mild, and none has resulted in anyone being hospitalized. They are going to Defcon five by insisting that everyone don their masks again while traversing the hallways and that all of the residents take their meals in their apartments instead of eating in the main dining room. I'm hearing nothing in the local media about "two weeks to stop the spread" or any other of the types of nonsense that we saw hereabouts in 2020.
Does any of this have anything to do with the stories we've heard over the last couple of weeks about Covid-carrying Chinese nationals traveling to countries worldwide? Not sure, but if people aren't dying by the boatloads due to a more transmissible but less dangerous strain of Covid, should we even care? How does any of this square with what we see in the media out of China, where families are burning their dead relatives in the streets due to a lack of facilities to house and store their dead? I prefer to think that not wearing a mask allows my body to do what it does naturally, which is to say it confronts these viruses and then responds in kind by strengthening my immunity to Covid and other bad actors. Immunologically speaking, of course.
We listened to an update yesterday from the doctors treating the football player who collapsed on the field in Cincinnati last week. It seems like he's progressing well, and it was something of an upbeat assessment in the final analysis. The missus and I found it interesting that not one reporter of the twenty or so reporters asking questions asked if the Covid vaccines played a role in the player collapsing in the field on that fateful day last week in Cincinnati. Asking questions like that, as we all know, can be a career-limiting move these days since Big Pharma has so much power over the media and institutions when it comes to what does and what doesn't get into the mainstream media when it comes to anything related to the Covid vaccines.
I suspect that this blackout of sorts applies to the treating physicians as well, although they are better suited by virtue of their profession to talking their way out of any absolutist positions one way or another as it relates to causation. They were equally evasive about any proposed return to the field, absurd as that sounds right now, although that didn't stop anyone from probing that seemingly remote possibility. He can move his arms and legs, and that's as good a sign as we can hope for right now.
I'm waking up this morning to hear that this rat bastard, McCarthy, won the Speakership after fifteen rounds of voting. He's a fucking snake, and everyone knows it. The principled holdouts, twenty in all, got whatever concessions they were looking for, and that's, as they say, all she wrote. It won't be long now before he's rubbing up against the left and doing their bidding as well. To call his support in the conference tepid would be an understatement. These conservatives now have him by the grapefruits, and that's a good thing. What I don't get is how it is that there are so many moderates in the conference after most of them came to power during Trump's era. Why are they bending over for the likes of McCarthy, who everyone knows would sell them down the river in a New York minute? He's no conservative. Maybe what they say about the democrats and the republicans being a uni-party, which is to say they vote in the interests of the swamp and not their constituents, is true.
I was telling the missus just before bedtime last night that I had forgotten, or maybe I never paid that close attention back in, just how long Bernie Madoff had been pulling off his Ponzi scheme (40 years) before he was caught. I also mentioned that I didn't know there was so much money involved. All of that happened back in the day when a million dollars was worth a million dollars. I think Madoff's tally was something like twenty billion or so, involving investors from 125 countries. I also never considered the fact that some investors knew what Bernie was doing, and they still gave him money.
They knew he was running a fucking Ponzi scheme! He never showed any losses on the fraudulent statements he mailed out so who wouldn't want to go with Madoff? And Bernie was a coy one, he was. A real tricky Dick. He told prospective investors "no" often enough that they wanted to give him even more of their money after he finally "relented." The other thing I found out by watching the series on NetFlix is that Madoff never traded any stock. He just took people's money and did the Ponzi thing for years and years. He destroyed a lot of lives. The missus and I disagree on the extent of his wife's involvement or not. I can see him keeping her at arm's length for her own protection. Then again, he was a bad dude.
I was telling the missus the other day that the next time we go to see Mrs. G, we should bring over a bottle or two of the red wine that she likes. Let's not wait until she asks us to do just that. I don't want her worrying about coming across as an alcoholic looking for a fix if she has to ask us to replenish her red wine stores every time we pay her a visit. I'm probably right about none of this, and we may never know since died-in-the-wool alcoholics have no shame and would sell their souls for a drink under the right circumstances. In other words, she could probably give a flying fuck what we or anyone else thinks about what she drinks, whether she drinks, how much she drinks, or who she drinks with. That is one of the benefits of surviving as long as she has and doing it her way every step of the way. Anyway, maybe we do it my way out of respect for the woman. I don't give two hoots about what or how much she drinks, but I do know she prefers the twist-top bottles of wine to the corked ones.
What do you think about Nancy Pelosi's replacement? He (Hakeem Jeffries) strikes me as a radical's radical. He's the kind of guy you would expect to see Sunday after Sunday sitting in the front row of Obama's pastor's church, belting out the hate for America and all she represents. Who thought handing the gavel to this clown was a good idea? He's the worst that America has to offer, but you might well say that about all the democrats on that side of the political aisle in Washington, D.C. And, what the hell kind of name is Hakeem? Has anyone asked whether or not he's been radicalized? That's what I took from his speech last night. He's going to take that adoring lot of his in Washington even further to the left if I had to guess. Is that even possible? How long will it be before they're referring to him as HJ, you know, like AOC? The first order of business for the Republican majority should be to get the FBI file on this guy. Let's find out who or what we're dealing with straight away.
It seems like this Christmas holiday thing is going on forever. Is it because Christmas was on a Sunday this year? Did that extend the number of days to celebrate somehow? I'd have to do the math, which would settle it once and for all. It's just a feeling at this point, and I, for one, am ready to put the holidays behind me. I live and breathe from one news cycle to another, and when news cycles are so messed up, as they typically are during the holidays, I feel like a fish out of water. Today is the last of the holidays, and I say good riddance. I'm ready to get on with things. Let's do this. Today, I'll be putting away ornaments and taking the tree outside. I'll whip our kitchen into shape after neglecting it for the last couple of days so we can wake up tomorrow to a fresh start.
I put up my 2023 calendar, and I've already filled in one square for the bike ride that I took yesterday. I track the days I ride and the temperature on the day that I ride. I like to be able to look back on any particular period of time and feel good, or not, about how much biking I got in as a corollary for getting exercise or not. If I can say that, for any given year, I rode more than three thousand miles, then I would say it was a good year. If I can point to a particular season when I rode despite the frigid temperatures out of doors, then that tells me that I can endure more than most when it comes to my resolve to get exercise no matter what. I'm the guy that scales icy cliffs, hypothetically speaking, when everyone else is snuggled up next to the fireplace. Which guy or gal do you want to be? What cliffs do you plan to scale in 2023?
I am worried about the economy in 2023, and I think I'm not alone. These asset bubbles we see popping here and there are a direct result of prolonged periods of zero interest rates. In other words, the punchbowl of free money has been out for far too long. Some say it has created even more distance between the rich and the poor, making the rich even richer while the poor have no assets to begin with, so they remain in the proverbial doghouse. I think they refer to this condition as "wealth inequality." I understand none of this, to be clear. I'm just parroting what I hear in the chat rooms and hallways where people smarter than I have something to say on the matter. If you are amongst those who lost money in their 401k's in 2022, you don't need a financial degree to know something is out of whack. Things are about to get more out of whack if these people are right. It bears watching; that's all I'm saying.
That Lula guy was sworn in over the weekend in Brazil as the latest in a number of leftist leaders to take charge of their countries in our hemisphere. I thought Bolsonaro was going to have the army take charge and preserve what little democracy that great country has by keeping him in power. I don't know shit about politics outside our country, but I do pay attention when I see leftists stealing things at the expense of their countries and their citizenry. If what I also hear about Lula's cozy relationship with the Communist Chinese Party is true, then I think we can kiss Brazil goodbye as a democracy.
Lula served jail time after his first stint as president of Brazil for fattening his coffers at the expense of his country, so I guess I would say expect more of the same. Brazil is a veritable gold mine of natural resources, so don't be surprised to see China raping and pillaging every last minable mineral that Brazil has while Lula looks the other way. This damnable "ten percent for the Big Guy" seems to be a global phenomenon. They're all stuffing their fucking pockets while the sun shines.
I wonder how much of what we hear coming out of Ukraine is true. The latest is that Ukraine has successfully used defensive weaponry from the West to shoot down a very high percentage of incoming rockets and drones. Russia is also reportedly hellbent on destroying Ukraine's infrastructure if we're to believe the latest reports from the Ukrainian government. If Russia is indeed running short of things to launch into Ukraine, which has also been reported, then taking out Ukraine's infrastructure as an alternative to targeting their citizenry might well cause millions of Ukrainians to die of exposure. If Ukraine's defensive weapons are working as well as they say they are, then who knows what Russia might do next.
The missiles and the drones aren't getting the job done, or so we are left to surmise, so you move on to other offensive weapon systems. Whatever happened to the air war over Ukraine? Is there one? Maybe Russia doesn't do flyovers, knowing they might be shot down by weapon systems provided by the West. Lastly, I would ask how much of what we know or don't know is being choreographed by Zelensky and his minions to keep the funds from the West flowing. How emasculated do we (U.S.) have to be regarding money and weaponry before we, too, are easy prey for the world's despots who would welcome and perhaps even plot our demise?
The House of Representatives votes for a new Speaker of the House today. It is so good to see that drunken old twat, Pelosi, getting kicked to the curb by the incoming Republican majority. Who replaces her remains to be seen. I'm a no-vote for Kevin McCarthy, so I'll put that out there for public consumption. He's about as milqtoast a fellow as they come, and I'll be unhappy if he somehow manages to get the votes he needs to become Speaker of the House for the upcoming term. I don't think he has the votes. I want a barn burner of a conservative to go in and burn that place down. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
I also want a new January 6 Committee subpoenaing and dragging the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Ray Epps in front of Congress to answer questions about what really happened on January 6th, 2020. I want every last fucking e-mail and phone call any, and all democrats sent or exchanged during the original January 6th Committee. Let's be sure to leave time to investigate the Biden Crime Family and the myriad of Intelligence agencies that have aided and abetted their crimes since Bumbles was inaugurated on January 20th, 2020.
They can vote to elect a Speaker of the House who is not in the House of Representatives. Did you know that? Hell, they can vote to elect Donald J. Trump as Speaker if they so choose. Wouldn't that be something? Do we even know if they have a candidate who can get the 218 votes they need to become Speaker? I think it's not a big deal if they don't wrap this up today since many of the committees don't start work until the end of the month. I also don't know if dragging this business out helps or hurts the republicans in the long run, so rather than take a chance that it does, here's hoping they close ranks today or tomorrow on their choice for Speaker. The republicans have but a five-member majority, so I also don't know what difference that may or may not make in the final analysis. I think it means that the more conservative members of their party get to dictate what does and what doesn't happen during their two-year stint as a Majority party. I'm okay with that.
Did you see clips of that Buffalo Bills player collapsing under his own weight in their nationally televised football game last night? He got up off the ground after making a tackle and then almost immediately fell to the ground. As of this morning, he's intubated and lying in a hospital bed and fighting for his very life. We've seen this movie before, boys and girls. It's almost exclusively what you see when people keel over and die after receiving their Covid vaccine. I've read some accounts of what happened, or what appeared to happen, by medical professionals, and all agree that it was likely due to an event with his heart. I've seen some references to the Covid vaccine as being a probable cause, but only the medical professionals treating him know for sure, and they aren't talking. Not publicly, anyway. Should he die, you'll also not hear a word about the autopsy results. It will undoubtedly show evidence of massive clotting due to the vaccine. As I said, we know how this movie ends.
Apparently, the Chinese are up in arms about countries around the world subjecting their citizens to Covid testing as a condition of entry to their countries. Nobody trusts the Chi-Coms as far as they can throw them, and this seems to be a reasonable policy decision to protect their citizens and their health system from being overwhelmed with whatever strains of Coviud that these Chinese travelers might be carrying intentionally or unintentionally. If I were a citizen living in China and I came down with Covid, I would jump on a plane and get the hell out of Dodge as quickly as possible.
How is it possible that China is even allowing these Covid-infected people to depart their country? Haven't we all heard the stories about the Chinese closing down city after city across China after finding a single case of Covid in the population? This is all very reminiscent of what happened in 2020. And what about the story out of Italy where they determined that fifty percent of the passengers on two planes arriving from China were infected with Covid? You can draw your own conclusions.
Have you looked at your electricity bill lately? Our bill this month is almost double from just a year ago. Our usage is roughly the same compared to the same period a year ago, but the cost has almost doubled. What the hell? This can't be sitting well with folks on fixed incomes. It may mean that people are eating less well or maybe even buying fewer medications since they can no longer afford them. It's not like these good folks can sell their homes or make other adjustments to counter these price hikes. Maybe there's a fund of sorts that they can tap, assuming they qualify for same. How do the electric companies justify these rate hikes, anyway? Is it because of Ukraine? Does it have anything to do with Ukraine? Have the prices of raw materials required to generate the power gone up at the same rate? Are all of these variables part of the inflationary environment that we find ourselves in? It's all very ugly, no matter how you slice it.
Speaking of ugly, I was out food shopping yesterday, and I looked at sliced turkey in the deli section. I was specifically interested in oven-roasted turkey since that is what we usually buy when we buy sliced turkey. We haven't bought sliced turkey in a while, so you can imagine my shock when I saw how much it cost. Sliced turkey in Hannafords was $11.99 a pound. I think I actually did a double-take when I looked at the sticker on the package. I'll have to go looking for older circulars from Hannafords to see how much turkey cost before all of this inflation stuff started. I hope to do that today. If I recall, I used to be able to buy a pound of sliced turkey for $7 or so. I guess that was back in the day when a dollar was worth a dollar. It was back in the day before the Federal Reserve started printing money like it was going out of style to deal with the Covid crisis. Just a paragraph or two ago here in this blog, I was lamenting the rise in our monthly electric bills. Now, I'm seeing inflation eating away at my purchasing power in the supermarket. Needless to say, I didn't buy the turkey.
Why would I buy sliced turkey for $11.99 a pound when I can buy a whole turkey for $.99 a pound? The question then becomes, when you factor in the cost of the electricity to cook the turkey and the time it takes to do it all, is my true cost for a pound of turkey back up around $11.99 a pound? What do people do who have large families to feed? I can assure you, they are not buying sliced turkey for $11.99 a pound in the supermarket. I think the only people who can afford the expense of the food we see spiraling out of control in our supermarkets these days are those people who are on some governmental program like food stamps or whatever passes for food stamp programs these days. I do not begrudge them the opportunity to buy foodstuffs they might not otherwise be able to afford. Why should they settle for lentils when people who can afford to pay the inflated prices are having steak and shrimp?
The House of Representatives never did elect a Republican Speaker yesterday, so they'll be back at it today. They called it a night after three rounds of voting, which netted Kevin McCarthy somewhere around 200 votes. He needs 218 votes to get the Speakership. McCarthy is part of the swamp in Washington, so I'm glad to see that we have some principled republicans who don't want him as Speaker and who are willing to stand up and say so.
It troubles me to hear people like Newt Gingrich refer to the 20 holdouts as insurrectionists when clearly our beloved Constitution provides the appropriate selection process that we see playing out in our Nation's Capitol. My personal preference would be to see McCarthy drop out and let the chips fall where they may. I'm perfectly okay with a Scalise or a Jim Jordan or, really, anyone but Kevin McCarthy. Who was it that referred to these twenty holdouts as the Taliban? They should be ashamed of themselves. Let's see where this goes today, shall we?
I see that NetFlix has a new series out about Bernie Madoff. I'm quite interested in seeing it, so I hope the missus won't put up too much of a fuss when I tell her it's the next show in our queue to watch. She may tell me that I'm on my own, and that's fine too. I hope they do a similar show about Sam Bankman-Fried someday soon. They both ran Ponzi schemes, and many well-intentioned folks lost their life's savings in the process. Had their "investors" not heard the admonition repeatedly throughout their lives that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't true? Maybe the Bankman-Fried thing is a bit different in that he misused customer funds but he never intended to defraud anyone. That, too, is criminal, but I'm not quite sure it fits the definition of a Ponzi scheme as defined by Hiram-Webster. So maybe Sammy spends 50 years in prison instead of the 110 years that Madoff received as a sentence way back when. And what about that skank of a girlfriend that Sammy and his fellow employees were banging in the Bahamas? She's going away too, right?
When it comes to scams, I have to wonder why our Intelligence agencies have next to nothing to say about the crimes committed by the Bidens. They have the goods. They have all the records they need to put the Bidens away for a long time. The laptop alone that Hunter left behind in the repair shop has more than enough evidence to put them all in jail for a long long time. Yet, the Biden's go about their criminal affairs without any fear of being arrested or anything of the sort. Maybe the Agencies have nothing in their manuals that allow for the frogmarching of the President of the United States and his illegitimate spawn out of the White House. Surely they know where the Bidens have deposited the profits from their illegal enterprises across the globe. Where are the search warrants and the morning raids to confiscate these things? Is it possible that the Agencies are using what they have against the Bidens to blackmail Biden and his accomplices? To what end is anyone's guess, but power is an unparalleled aphrodisiac in the sewer that is Washington, D.C. Who was it that said power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely?
Tucker Carlson was talking about electricity rates on his show last night on FOX. Tucker's show is the only show I watch on FOX. That doofus Hannity is an absolute piece of shit. I can't stand to listen to him, much less watch him. Insofar as this McCarthy saga goes, Hannity has had his head so far up McCarthy's ass that it's been pathetic. That tells you everything you need to know about his politics and the politics of the FOX network. FOX is ripping the twenty holdouts a new asshole every day FOX is on the air, and they continue to sing the praises of McCarthy. It's disgusting. Anyway, Tucker said something about the fact that the Democrats have put all of this shit in these various bills these last two years that call for making solar and wind power an integral part of our power grids. No fucking wonder we're experiencing brownouts and crazy-ass increases in our electricity bills. They're determined to destroy every last carbon-based fuel source that our country has relied on for hundreds of years. These climate change freaks need to go. Otherwise, I'm not sure we survive this madness.
I ended up coming home with an Echo Dot from the Falls this year. I've never had any such thing, so I was more than a little curious. I've certainly been aware of the Echo Dot and related products by Apple and others but never thought I'd have any use for one. I'm an Apple guy so Siri has always been there for me if I thought I needed to use it. I can count the number of times I've asked Siri a question in the last two years on one hand. I'm sure she has a lot more to offer, but I'm a simple man, so my requests have been simple. Now that I have this Echo Dot thing set up, I think I'm having a come-to-Jesus moment with the utility of the technology. I even have the missus talking to her, for chrissakes. The missus asked if she might speak to someone with a male voice. I'm thinking to myself as I'm listening to her, get your own Echo Dot if you want a male voice. It's my Dot, and if I like Alexa's mellifluous voice, which I do, then I'll be keeping her voice.
My requests of Alexa are still along the lines of what I may have asked Siri over the years, but I'm starting to think that Alexa's responses are responses that I might not have gotten had I asked Siri the very same questions. I'm such a noob when it comes to this stuff. Is this what they refer to as artificial intelligence? You know, the AI thing? Does the Echo Dot improve every time you use it because it learns more about you and can better anticipate your wants and needs? Alexa said something last night about a cloud. I think she's referring to the place where all of these communications are stored. I'm a little leery about this cloud stuff because it suggests I've lost a little privacy in the process. If I were a terrorist and started talking to myself while assembling god knows what, would I have the FBI showing up at my door? Would anyone care if I started talking to myself about making spice cakes for a local charity? Uh, probably not. You see where I'm going with this, right?
Can Alexa help me become a better guitar player? Can she wake me up at a time certain every morning? Can she remind me to pay a bill by month-end so I don't end up having to pay late fees? Can she give me the latest score from the football game played last night? What else can she do? I like being able to ask her to play me a little music. I wasn't happy when the missus said something about a penis when addressing Alexa last night. If she wants to talk dirty to an inanimate object, that's her business. She should get her own device if that is what she's looking for. My personal preference would be to ask Alexa to scrub that word from my cloud, but alas, that horse has left the barn.
I also like the fact that Alexa glows when I have a message or text, although I'm uncertain how Alexa taps into any of that. She's always listening, isn't she? Who else is listening? Can anyone hack into my Echo Dot and listen to our private conversations? Did I mention that Alexa put something in my Amazon cart while I was watching a television show the other night? She said as much, so I deleted it from my cart right away. This is some creepy shit, but I like it.
Speaking of terrorists, what was this story about the twenty-something from Wells, Maine, going to New York City to wreak havoc? I think he used a knife of sorts to attack a couple of police officers around New Year's Eve, and, in return, he was shot while in the act. He wasn't killed, so the police may yet find out more about what motivated him to do what he did. According to the report, he also wrote a note to his parents before leaving for NYC, indicating that he expected to die while committing his acts of violence. I'm not buying this whole radicalization thing. I'm not buying the business about his becoming a Jihadist due to some happenstance viewing of this or that terrorist website.
It is also true, according to the reports, that his parents had alerted the local constabulary about their son's behavioral oddities. I'm more inclined to think that this fella suffered from a mental health issue. Would an intervention by mental health professionals have been more productive than his parents ratting him out to the local police? It was likely easier for his parents to accept the fact that their son had become a Jihadist than to admit that he was in the midst of a mental health crisis. It didn't have to end this way. That's all I'm saying.
Mrs. G says that her independent living facility has had a good handful of Covid cases recently, but the cases have been mild, and none has resulted in anyone being hospitalized. They are going to Defcon five by insisting that everyone don their masks again while traversing the hallways and that all of the residents take their meals in their apartments instead of eating in the main dining room. I'm hearing nothing in the local media about "two weeks to stop the spread" or any other of the types of nonsense that we saw hereabouts in 2020.
Does any of this have anything to do with the stories we've heard over the last couple of weeks about Covid-carrying Chinese nationals traveling to countries worldwide? Not sure, but if people aren't dying by the boatloads due to a more transmissible but less dangerous strain of Covid, should we even care? How does any of this square with what we see in the media out of China, where families are burning their dead relatives in the streets due to a lack of facilities to house and store their dead? I prefer to think that not wearing a mask allows my body to do what it does naturally, which is to say it confronts these viruses and then responds in kind by strengthening my immunity to Covid and other bad actors. Immunologically speaking, of course.
We listened to an update yesterday from the doctors treating the football player who collapsed on the field in Cincinnati last week. It seems like he's progressing well, and it was something of an upbeat assessment in the final analysis. The missus and I found it interesting that not one reporter of the twenty or so reporters asking questions asked if the Covid vaccines played a role in the player collapsing in the field on that fateful day last week in Cincinnati. Asking questions like that, as we all know, can be a career-limiting move these days since Big Pharma has so much power over the media and institutions when it comes to what does and what doesn't get into the mainstream media when it comes to anything related to the Covid vaccines.
I suspect that this blackout of sorts applies to the treating physicians as well, although they are better suited by virtue of their profession to talking their way out of any absolutist positions one way or another as it relates to causation. They were equally evasive about any proposed return to the field, absurd as that sounds right now, although that didn't stop anyone from probing that seemingly remote possibility. He can move his arms and legs, and that's as good a sign as we can hope for right now.
I'm waking up this morning to hear that this rat bastard, McCarthy, won the Speakership after fifteen rounds of voting. He's a fucking snake, and everyone knows it. The principled holdouts, twenty in all, got whatever concessions they were looking for, and that's, as they say, all she wrote. It won't be long now before he's rubbing up against the left and doing their bidding as well. To call his support in the conference tepid would be an understatement. These conservatives now have him by the grapefruits, and that's a good thing. What I don't get is how it is that there are so many moderates in the conference after most of them came to power during Trump's era. Why are they bending over for the likes of McCarthy, who everyone knows would sell them down the river in a New York minute? He's no conservative. Maybe what they say about the democrats and the republicans being a uni-party, which is to say they vote in the interests of the swamp and not their constituents, is true.
I was telling the missus just before bedtime last night that I had forgotten, or maybe I never paid that close attention back in, just how long Bernie Madoff had been pulling off his Ponzi scheme (40 years) before he was caught. I also mentioned that I didn't know there was so much money involved. All of that happened back in the day when a million dollars was worth a million dollars. I think Madoff's tally was something like twenty billion or so, involving investors from 125 countries. I also never considered the fact that some investors knew what Bernie was doing, and they still gave him money.
They knew he was running a fucking Ponzi scheme! He never showed any losses on the fraudulent statements he mailed out so who wouldn't want to go with Madoff? And Bernie was a coy one, he was. A real tricky Dick. He told prospective investors "no" often enough that they wanted to give him even more of their money after he finally "relented." The other thing I found out by watching the series on NetFlix is that Madoff never traded any stock. He just took people's money and did the Ponzi thing for years and years. He destroyed a lot of lives. The missus and I disagree on the extent of his wife's involvement or not. I can see him keeping her at arm's length for her own protection. Then again, he was a bad dude.
I was telling the missus the other day that the next time we go to see Mrs. G, we should bring over a bottle or two of the red wine that she likes. Let's not wait until she asks us to do just that. I don't want her worrying about coming across as an alcoholic looking for a fix if she has to ask us to replenish her red wine stores every time we pay her a visit. I'm probably right about none of this, and we may never know since died-in-the-wool alcoholics have no shame and would sell their souls for a drink under the right circumstances. In other words, she could probably give a flying fuck what we or anyone else thinks about what she drinks, whether she drinks, how much she drinks, or who she drinks with. That is one of the benefits of surviving as long as she has and doing it her way every step of the way. Anyway, maybe we do it my way out of respect for the woman. I don't give two hoots about what or how much she drinks, but I do know she prefers the twist-top bottles of wine to the corked ones.
What do you think about Nancy Pelosi's replacement? He (Hakeem Jeffries) strikes me as a radical's radical. He's the kind of guy you would expect to see Sunday after Sunday sitting in the front row of Obama's pastor's church, belting out the hate for America and all she represents. Who thought handing the gavel to this clown was a good idea? He's the worst that America has to offer, but you might well say that about all the democrats on that side of the political aisle in Washington, D.C. And, what the hell kind of name is Hakeem? Has anyone asked whether or not he's been radicalized? That's what I took from his speech last night. He's going to take that adoring lot of his in Washington even further to the left if I had to guess. Is that even possible? How long will it be before they're referring to him as HJ, you know, like AOC? The first order of business for the Republican majority should be to get the FBI file on this guy. Let's find out who or what we're dealing with straight away.