Just Sayin'
15/05/22 07:09
It's a chilly one out there this morning. I checked the thermometer and it's 34 degrees at 6 in the morning here on the seacoast. Good thing I haven't put my tomato plants in the ground. I haven't even bought them yet so no worries there. I have to be careful not to wait until Memorial Day weekend to go looking for the plants that I want. They will be picked over and I'll no doubt end up with the runts off the litter with my luck. I think I'll drop by Home Depot or Lowes today just to have a look-see at the stock available. I might even snag a couple of plants if the snagging looks good. You know what I mean.
I noticed the other day that diesel gasoline is now something like $6 a gallon. I'm thinking that the folks running their rigs down the highway and the commercial enterprises operating their fleets of vehicles these days are spending big bucks on gas. I don't know what trucking budgeting looks like but this has to be a big problem when it comes to paying the bills and staying competitive. Is it possible that the end-game here is to put these owner-operator vehicles out of business? Does the fact that Bill Gates of Microsoft fame has been buying up farmland across our great country have anything to do with any of this? Just in case you were wondering why you're paying more for every product under the sun, now you know. It's likely to get worse before it gets better.
I woke up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night the other night when I came to the realization that I had been out to one of our favorite coffee joints earlier in the day and I left the place with coffee and scone in hand but I hadn't paid. This is the second time that something like this has happened and it was no less startling to me when it happened the second time around. Startling in the sense that I'm somehow mindlessly and subconsciously syncing up to the activity on my iPhone in the middle of the night without the usual user inputs that one engages with when checking one's transactions. Sure enough, I checked my iPhone and confirmed that I had indeed not paid for the purchases. Holy cow!
I'm now left with the very real prospect of returning to said establishment and fessing up to my "oversight" with the owner. It may be sufficient to simply say the obvious part out loud. It might well leaving her scratching her head as to how me or any customer could end up doing what I did. That is to say, making a purchase and end up walking out the door with those purchases in hand but never tendering payment. I don't know that I know her well enough to share the "waking up in the middle of the night" nonsense but I might well straddle the edges of that conversation if no other reason that to show that I had the best of intentions but I somehow fell short of the mark. For all I know, she also found out after the fact that I hadn't paid and is, even as I sit here this morning, formulating her own response.
She may decide that rather than accuse me of whatever you call walking out of a business with a scone and a coffee without paying, that she's better off not broaching the subject at all. It's better to let bygones be bygones and maybe she can take a lesson from the experience without alienating a customer who, while not a frequent customer, does come in on occasion and spends a little money and even leaves a tip on occasion. Guilty as charged, your honor. I'll have to beat her to the punch. Knowing what I know about small businesses and tight margins, I'll not have her bottom line suffering because a guy like me decided that saying nothing was better than saying something. There's something to be said for doing the right thing especially when no one is the wiser.
We had Mrs G out for a ride the day before Mother's Day. We took her down by the ocean to all of her favorite haunts where she had a chance to see things that she hadn't seen for a while. Some things had changed for the better and some for the worse. She loved looking out over the expanse of the ocean and remarked on the whitecaps which were numerous and willy nilly as far as the eye could see. Listening to her talk about the things that caught her attention told me, or maybe reminded me, of the things she used to love to do when she and her husband lived along the coast for some 25 years. Our goal was to travel the same roads she traveled, see the same things she likely saw, and do the same things she likely did back in the day. All she had to do was to sit back and enjoy the scenery. It was a ride for the ages.
Mrs G will be heading home today after a few weeks of rehabilitation in the wake of her accident. To say that she's looking forward to being home again is an understatement. To say that she's chomping at the bit to get back home might be a bridge too far. She's not quite up to snuff just yet but well enough certainly to get out of rehab and back to her own apartment where she can continue her recovery. I've always thought that the facility could have done a better job of preparing her mentally for resuming her life once out of rehab. As it is, she is a bit apprehensive about being up to the task of going it alone after weeks of hand holding and being waited on hand and foot. The perks of being in rehab will soon be in the rear view mirror but I'm certain Mrs G will be just fine. I don't think she knows the meaning of the word "failure."
Speaking of rehab, did I mention that the Ev man has Covid-19? And, no, he's not in rehab. It started out with a few unusual aches and pains but never progressed much beyond that. He never developed any respiratory related issues which is a good thing. He always sounded ok when we spoke to him on the phone but admitted to feeling a bit fatigued here and there and he was sleeping more than usual. He never lost his sense of taste or smell and his appetite was holding up reasonably well. The missus and I dropped off some groceries for him the other day and we'll probably do another drop later today so he can stay hunkered down until his self imposed quarantine period is over. This is playing out as I suspected it would. He never got the vaccination due to his being young and more than capable of fighting it off if and when he got the virus so here we are. He's on the mend and he'll have an ample store of antibodies for future reference. Long Covid aside, that's how you do it.
It was another rocky day in the financial markets yesterday. Everything, and I mean everything, was down. That's how it works. When they finally come for everything, every asset class under the sun is in play. I'm not sure that we're in the "coming for everything" mode just yet, but we seem to heading in that direction. The selling was relentless and there were but one or two moments during the sell-off when it looked like buyers were attempting to step in only to see the selling start up again in earnest. The NASDAQ was down over 4% and the S&P down over 3% for the day. That has the NASDAQ down some 28% on a YTD basis and the S&P down some 17.5%. I saw one tweet that went as follows: "Good morning to anyone with anything left in their 401k's." With interest rates rising, this could well be the beginning of the end for the housing market as well. Like I said, every asset class under the sun. Nothing will be exempt.
There are primaries in Nebraska and West Virginia today so that should be fun. We'll see if Trump's unbeaten streak of endorsements can continue. He's 55-0 thus far so let's see if his congressional and gubernatorial candidates can get over the finish line. Nebraska is a couple of time zones behind us here on the East Coast so I'm not sure if I'll be awake to see how that one turns out. Trump was in Nebraska within the last two weeks holding a rally for his candidates there so that can't hurt. Senator Joe Manchin and the Governor of West Virginia have endorsed the other republican in the race so we'll see who the real 800-lb gorilla in the race is when all is said and done. I'm not a betting man but my money is on Trump's candidate for what it's worth. Git er done!
I'm getting little tired of hearing about our country sending billions and billions of this and that to war-torn Ukraine. We've got a damn 30-something trillion dollar deficit to begin with so suffice it to say we can't afford to be sending money to anyone much less a country in which we have zero security interest in. You know those monies are ending up in the pockets of billionaires and other fat cats who couldn't care less about the long term prospects of Ukraine. Does Ukraine even have a sustainable infrastructure anymore after months of indiscriminate bombardments by Russia? Truth be told, this is looking more and more like a proxy war between the US and Russia with each passing day. All this while the Europeans sit back and let the US shoulder the brunt of the expense of the war on their continent. They're no fools. This is not their first rodeo and it won't be their last.
You have to ask yourselves, why would the United States and the Biden Administration have any interest in waging a war of any kind with Russia? Does Biden think that getting into a war with Russia will help his flagging approval ratings? Is there anyone you know, aside from these ass clowns in the Biden Administration, who want to run the risk of getting into a nuclear war with a country that has enough nuclear warheads to destroy our country several times over? Whatever the motivation, none of we mere mortals on the outside looking in have a clue as to where we're going with all of this. I'm assuming that the military industrial complex could not be happier. They've never met a war that they didn't love. With ten percent off the top for the big guy, and I'm not sure that hasn't changed with inflation, the Biden Crime Family is making hay while the sun shines. The Biden Crime Family has always made hay while the sun was shining. When the sun stops shining, they'll be in the bunker beneath the White House and we'll be none the wiser because we'll all be dead. Bastards.
The big news today on the economic front will be the monthly CPI number which is a measure of this and that basket of goods which tells us where inflation rates are heading. My Twitter feed is blowing up this morning ahead of the release of the CPI number with this and that prognostication and what it all means for the stock market. Is this the beginning of the end for the skyrocketing inflation that we've seen? A slowing of the rate might be just what the financial markets need to bounce back from an otherwise seriously oversold condition. Then, there are others who are not quite as optimistic. I don't have a horse in the race one way or another but I know people who do so I'll be hoping that this is where the markets bottom and start their slow drift northwards.
I heard something recently about the "destruction of the middle class" as it relates to everything that seems to be blowing up around us. In what universe is the destruction of the middle class here in America a good thing? Is it all about making us more and more dependent on government? If we can no longer afford to put gas in our cars or food on our tables because everything has become over-the-top expensive then that might well create the existential crisis they need to get this done. The Federal Reserve, known more affectionally as the "Fed", has always had our back as middle class investors. When times got tough we got another injection from the Fed of quantitative easing (QE) to grease the skids and soften the landing. The Fed now seems impotent to offer any relief to the markets in the way of additional QE because of the fear of further increasing inflation. Maybe there's something to this 'destruction of the middle class' thing.
One of my neighbors commented a few months ago that the fella who comes up from Florida every summer to spend the summer with her was worried about what he was seeing in the stock market. It was the classic example of what everyday Americans are faced with when you have nowhere to go but the stock market since it's the only game in town. If you have your money in a bank, you're getting close to zero interest. That's just not tenable for a retiree who relies on growth in his or her portfolio to pay the bills and feather their nest for their remaining days. I don't pretend to know what he was invested in but the average stock in the NASDAQ is now down some 50% or more. Did I mention that he drives a truck that burns diesel gas? The poor guy has to be feeling the crunch. If I told you that I've seen this very same fella recently and he's walking a little slower, holding his head a little less high, and hunching over a little more than I recall from past years, would you believe me?
Is it me or are we hearing about more and more cases of labor unions getting a foothold in well established businesses these days? Recent cases in the news include Starbuck's and Amazon. I have no use for unions and I believe all the stories I've heard over the years which portray them as parasitic enterprises which can suck the very lifeblood out of a business if left to their own devices. You know that unions are "owned" lock, stock, and barrel by the democrat party. Right? If what I'm hearing about Starbuck's and Amazon resisting these efforts to unionize their shops, I say good for them. Resist them with every fibre of your being and spare no expense in ousting them from your organization. Tear them out root and branch as they say. The employees who want to swear allegiance to the unions can go find employment elsewhere. The fortunes of any organization should rise or fall on the merits of their own teams and, should those teams not perform, then they deserve to fail. If push comes to shove, close the damn shop and open another around the corner. See how that works?
I filled up at the local petrol station in town yesterday and I paid $5.09 a gallon. It was the first time in my life that I've paid that much for a gallon of gas. This fucking Biden Administration has got to go. I was paying maybe $2 a gallon when The Donald was in office in 2020. And this morning, I'm reading articles where the Biden Administration is making it even more difficult for domestic companies to get oil out of the ground here in the United States. I mean, you can't make this stuff up. Add to it the shortage of baby formula that mothers and caretakers are having difficulty finding and we have ourselves a fucking catastrophe in the making, You can bet your sweet arse that the babies of illegal aliens coming across our southern border in the tens of thousands are not going without baby formula. Oh, no. Not on Biden's watch. That would be inhumane.
It gets worse. I was listening to this one fella tell the story about how he and his wife had been ordering baby formula from overseas due to the shortage of formula here in the states. Their last two orders had been confiscated at the border by agents working for the the US Agriculture Department. So, Biden is not only working to cut off the supply of baby formula here in our country, but he's now preventing our citizens from procurring supplies from other countries. Can that bastard be any more spiteful? When Trump was not commandeering domestic companies to manufacture supplies like masks when we were deep into the Covid bullshit, Biden used it as a cudgel to beat Trump like a rented mule. Where is Biden now that the mothers in our country are desperate to feed their children. He's nowhere to be fucking found.
Oh, and about that CPI (Inflation) number that I referred to a couple of paragraphs back. It came in hot but you would never know it reading certain articles or headlines in the newspapers and online. The liberal media was desperate to put a positive spin on a shitty result just to help their buddy, Joey Bumbles Biden, in the White House. Or, should I say, in OUR White House. When I say that it came in hot, I mean that it came in worse than expected. That's not what these liberal rags wanted the public at large to see. They needed to put lipstick on this pig and that is precisely what they did. I was so disgusted by the misleading headlines that I couldn't bring myself to read the articles themselves. The financial markets started off in the green but quickly turned beet red once the facts were out in the open. It was yet another shitty day in the markets. Buddy, can you spare a dime?
We've seen so many down days these last few weeks in the stock market that I think I can actually tell when the stock market is up or down by the amount of traffic on the roads. Maybe it's my imagination. That said, it does seem busier out and about when the stock market is up for the day and it seems less busy on the roads when the market is down for or during the day. I know it's a shaky hypothesis but it's one that seems to be true based on my observations. That's objective, right? It's not some wild-eyed theory of mine that I'm just putting down on paper for the heck of it. Well, there is that. In a roundabout way, its symptomatic of the wealth effect that you get when you have a surging stock market. When you start to cut into that wealth effect with endless days of red ink in the stock market, people start spending less, going out less, and it becomes a vicious cycle. If you're looking at something like consumer confidence, you're likely to not like the resulting trend line.
They have yet to find this person who leaked the draft of the Roe v Wade decision a few weeks back. The case is not actually Roe v Wade just so you know. Was it a conservative who wanted to blunt the effect of the decision once it comes out closer to the elections in November? Was it a lefty who wanted to rally their base early on to see if they couldn't get one or two justices to change their minds and vote against the decision when it was finally released? That aside, the lying and hyperbole from the left is beyond the pale. Who knew? Oh, the next thing the Court will be coming for is our rights to have interracial marriage! They're coming for our rights to have same-sex marriage! The blather, the lies, and the deceit by the left is just over the top. Whatever it takes to radicalize their base. Not that they aren't radical to begin with but you can never be too radical as a leftist. You know, I'm talking about the clowns with the Molotov cocktails and the pink hats. Yeah, them.
Every once in a while you hear someone talking about breaking up our country into states based on the politics of their citizenry. The liberals can all move to the blue states and the conservatives can all move to the red states. We already know which states are which although there are some states that switch back and forth from time to time. You have to admit, that would make for an interesting experiment. What would we do with people in the middle? You know, the independents. Would that further polarize our peoples or would that make for a more enduring democracy? Is it just human nature to have differences within populations of any species? Some people prefer chocolate ice cream and some people prefer vanilla ice cream. I don't know where I'm going with all of this. Maybe it would be a dreadful bore were I to be surrounded with people who always agree with me. I'm thinking I should be careful what I wish for. Maybe that light at the end of the tunnel coming in my direction is a locomotive. Feets don't fail me now!
The missus and I went shopping at Whole Foods yesterday. We didn't need anything in particular. It was something to do on a Thursday afternoon when we had nothing better to do. You figure if you look around long enough you'll find something that you didn't know you needed. The minute we pulled into their parking lot we were quite surprised at how few cars there were in the lot. Whole Foods is not an inexpensive place to shop so we wondered if the pissy stock market as of late had anything to do with the scarcity of shoppers. How else could you explain what we were seeing? It wasn't that much of a reach to see this place shuttering their doors if the economy/stock market worsens any more appreciably than it already has. This is part and parcel of the wealth effect that I've referred to here and there. The good news was that we had a better all around shopping experience thanks to the fact that there so few people in the store. You know how the missus hates crowds.
We picked up a caesar salad for the Ev man at Whole Foods. He's had Covid for the last week or so but he'll likely be looking to get out and about now that he's feeling better. We'll be prepared if he stops by. I'm not sure how I feel about his coming over so soon after having Covid. The missus says that you can test positive for a long time after contracting the virus even though you've survived the five day quarantine period recommended by the CDC. Are we tempting fate to have him come over so soon? Will his salad go bad between now and the time it takes him to stop by? I decided not to buy a latte while in Whole Foods since I could just as easily have one at home. Maybe that's my way of watching my pennies. I'm just as happy these days with a poor man's latte which is three quarters of a cup of cold brew and a splash of cold milk. I don't need any stinking' ice either. De-Lish!
My peeps back in the Falls celebrated my seester's birthday this past weekend. I couldn't make it so my brother from another mother was good enough to send me a few pictures. One picture in particular was quite nice. Everyone was smiling and it was nice to see the people in the picture all together in one place, on one day, and posing as they were for the picture. It was one of those pictures the likes of which once you see it you can't imagine it not framed and hanging on a wall for all of eternity. It was something that I immediately wanted for my seester since, after all, it was a picture of her and her children. Did I mention that? Maybe it's the gift that I was meant to give to my seester but could only do so after the fact since I was not otherwise in attendance. The Lord works in mysterious ways. Whatever. The missus liked the idea of the frame and all but we disagreed on how much to spend on getting it all done. "Can you put a price on what we're trying to do here", I queried incredulously. You can see where all of this is going. Let me spell it out. N-o-w-h-e-r-e.
The Pennsylvania primary is next Tuesday. On the republican side of the ledger, we have three candidates: Dr Oz, Cathy Barnett, and a guy named McCormick. Oz and McCormick have spent some 50 million between them thus far while Barnett is operating on a shoestring budget. Oddly enough, Barnett is polling even with her two opponents. The other odd thing about Barnett is that nobody knows much about her. She's been vague to say the least about her past experience and that has a lot of people thinking that she's a wolf in sheep's clothing or maybe a Trojan horse or worse. They say that she can't possible beat her democratic opponent in the general election so it would be a mistake for people to vote for her in the primary next Tuesday. Trump has endorsed Oz so maybe Oz gets the bid at the end of the day. We conservatives need that damn senate seat so let's not fuck this up, folks. We can't take back the senate in November without the seat. I'm not sure what the right answer is but I think Barnett could fuck it all up with a win. For better or worse, that's what I'm thinking this morning.
It does make you wonder if Biden and his cast of cretins occupying our White House are actually creating the problems that they now profess to want to fix. We're talking baby formula here. I'm learning that one of Biden's henchmen in one or more of his departments went in and closed down the company (Abbot) that makes most of the baby formula for our nation's children. I'm sure it was done using some flimsy pretext in order to shut down the factory and, in the process, create a crisis where a crisis heretofore did not exist. It would result in hordes of Americans moms looking to the Biden Administration for relief in what could only be described as an untenable situation. No one in the Biden Administration counted on pictures and stories getting out about the pallets of baby formula being delivered to our southern border to feed the infants of illegal aliens. Investigations are, no doubt, underway by Biden's Justice Department into who leaked what and when.
Joey was likely planning to take a victory lap in the Rose Garden while announcing that he was enacting the Defense Production Act in order to put our country's factories back to work producing the very infant formula that he and his people acted in concert to stop producing. He would surround himself with smiling moms and dads all on hand to sing Uncle Joey's praises for his courage and his commitment to our nation's families in their time of need. With any luck, this act of beneficence on the part of our fearless leader would unlikely be forgotten by the time the Midterm elections rolled around and that was the plan. If any of this were true, it would be music to the ears of moms and dads coast to coast. Unfortunately, the only words coming out of the White House are, and I quote, "Contact your physician if you can't find formula for your children." No Spanish translation will be forthcoming (nor is it necessary.)
I noticed the other day that diesel gasoline is now something like $6 a gallon. I'm thinking that the folks running their rigs down the highway and the commercial enterprises operating their fleets of vehicles these days are spending big bucks on gas. I don't know what trucking budgeting looks like but this has to be a big problem when it comes to paying the bills and staying competitive. Is it possible that the end-game here is to put these owner-operator vehicles out of business? Does the fact that Bill Gates of Microsoft fame has been buying up farmland across our great country have anything to do with any of this? Just in case you were wondering why you're paying more for every product under the sun, now you know. It's likely to get worse before it gets better.
I woke up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night the other night when I came to the realization that I had been out to one of our favorite coffee joints earlier in the day and I left the place with coffee and scone in hand but I hadn't paid. This is the second time that something like this has happened and it was no less startling to me when it happened the second time around. Startling in the sense that I'm somehow mindlessly and subconsciously syncing up to the activity on my iPhone in the middle of the night without the usual user inputs that one engages with when checking one's transactions. Sure enough, I checked my iPhone and confirmed that I had indeed not paid for the purchases. Holy cow!
I'm now left with the very real prospect of returning to said establishment and fessing up to my "oversight" with the owner. It may be sufficient to simply say the obvious part out loud. It might well leaving her scratching her head as to how me or any customer could end up doing what I did. That is to say, making a purchase and end up walking out the door with those purchases in hand but never tendering payment. I don't know that I know her well enough to share the "waking up in the middle of the night" nonsense but I might well straddle the edges of that conversation if no other reason that to show that I had the best of intentions but I somehow fell short of the mark. For all I know, she also found out after the fact that I hadn't paid and is, even as I sit here this morning, formulating her own response.
She may decide that rather than accuse me of whatever you call walking out of a business with a scone and a coffee without paying, that she's better off not broaching the subject at all. It's better to let bygones be bygones and maybe she can take a lesson from the experience without alienating a customer who, while not a frequent customer, does come in on occasion and spends a little money and even leaves a tip on occasion. Guilty as charged, your honor. I'll have to beat her to the punch. Knowing what I know about small businesses and tight margins, I'll not have her bottom line suffering because a guy like me decided that saying nothing was better than saying something. There's something to be said for doing the right thing especially when no one is the wiser.
We had Mrs G out for a ride the day before Mother's Day. We took her down by the ocean to all of her favorite haunts where she had a chance to see things that she hadn't seen for a while. Some things had changed for the better and some for the worse. She loved looking out over the expanse of the ocean and remarked on the whitecaps which were numerous and willy nilly as far as the eye could see. Listening to her talk about the things that caught her attention told me, or maybe reminded me, of the things she used to love to do when she and her husband lived along the coast for some 25 years. Our goal was to travel the same roads she traveled, see the same things she likely saw, and do the same things she likely did back in the day. All she had to do was to sit back and enjoy the scenery. It was a ride for the ages.
Mrs G will be heading home today after a few weeks of rehabilitation in the wake of her accident. To say that she's looking forward to being home again is an understatement. To say that she's chomping at the bit to get back home might be a bridge too far. She's not quite up to snuff just yet but well enough certainly to get out of rehab and back to her own apartment where she can continue her recovery. I've always thought that the facility could have done a better job of preparing her mentally for resuming her life once out of rehab. As it is, she is a bit apprehensive about being up to the task of going it alone after weeks of hand holding and being waited on hand and foot. The perks of being in rehab will soon be in the rear view mirror but I'm certain Mrs G will be just fine. I don't think she knows the meaning of the word "failure."
Speaking of rehab, did I mention that the Ev man has Covid-19? And, no, he's not in rehab. It started out with a few unusual aches and pains but never progressed much beyond that. He never developed any respiratory related issues which is a good thing. He always sounded ok when we spoke to him on the phone but admitted to feeling a bit fatigued here and there and he was sleeping more than usual. He never lost his sense of taste or smell and his appetite was holding up reasonably well. The missus and I dropped off some groceries for him the other day and we'll probably do another drop later today so he can stay hunkered down until his self imposed quarantine period is over. This is playing out as I suspected it would. He never got the vaccination due to his being young and more than capable of fighting it off if and when he got the virus so here we are. He's on the mend and he'll have an ample store of antibodies for future reference. Long Covid aside, that's how you do it.
It was another rocky day in the financial markets yesterday. Everything, and I mean everything, was down. That's how it works. When they finally come for everything, every asset class under the sun is in play. I'm not sure that we're in the "coming for everything" mode just yet, but we seem to heading in that direction. The selling was relentless and there were but one or two moments during the sell-off when it looked like buyers were attempting to step in only to see the selling start up again in earnest. The NASDAQ was down over 4% and the S&P down over 3% for the day. That has the NASDAQ down some 28% on a YTD basis and the S&P down some 17.5%. I saw one tweet that went as follows: "Good morning to anyone with anything left in their 401k's." With interest rates rising, this could well be the beginning of the end for the housing market as well. Like I said, every asset class under the sun. Nothing will be exempt.
There are primaries in Nebraska and West Virginia today so that should be fun. We'll see if Trump's unbeaten streak of endorsements can continue. He's 55-0 thus far so let's see if his congressional and gubernatorial candidates can get over the finish line. Nebraska is a couple of time zones behind us here on the East Coast so I'm not sure if I'll be awake to see how that one turns out. Trump was in Nebraska within the last two weeks holding a rally for his candidates there so that can't hurt. Senator Joe Manchin and the Governor of West Virginia have endorsed the other republican in the race so we'll see who the real 800-lb gorilla in the race is when all is said and done. I'm not a betting man but my money is on Trump's candidate for what it's worth. Git er done!
I'm getting little tired of hearing about our country sending billions and billions of this and that to war-torn Ukraine. We've got a damn 30-something trillion dollar deficit to begin with so suffice it to say we can't afford to be sending money to anyone much less a country in which we have zero security interest in. You know those monies are ending up in the pockets of billionaires and other fat cats who couldn't care less about the long term prospects of Ukraine. Does Ukraine even have a sustainable infrastructure anymore after months of indiscriminate bombardments by Russia? Truth be told, this is looking more and more like a proxy war between the US and Russia with each passing day. All this while the Europeans sit back and let the US shoulder the brunt of the expense of the war on their continent. They're no fools. This is not their first rodeo and it won't be their last.
You have to ask yourselves, why would the United States and the Biden Administration have any interest in waging a war of any kind with Russia? Does Biden think that getting into a war with Russia will help his flagging approval ratings? Is there anyone you know, aside from these ass clowns in the Biden Administration, who want to run the risk of getting into a nuclear war with a country that has enough nuclear warheads to destroy our country several times over? Whatever the motivation, none of we mere mortals on the outside looking in have a clue as to where we're going with all of this. I'm assuming that the military industrial complex could not be happier. They've never met a war that they didn't love. With ten percent off the top for the big guy, and I'm not sure that hasn't changed with inflation, the Biden Crime Family is making hay while the sun shines. The Biden Crime Family has always made hay while the sun was shining. When the sun stops shining, they'll be in the bunker beneath the White House and we'll be none the wiser because we'll all be dead. Bastards.
The big news today on the economic front will be the monthly CPI number which is a measure of this and that basket of goods which tells us where inflation rates are heading. My Twitter feed is blowing up this morning ahead of the release of the CPI number with this and that prognostication and what it all means for the stock market. Is this the beginning of the end for the skyrocketing inflation that we've seen? A slowing of the rate might be just what the financial markets need to bounce back from an otherwise seriously oversold condition. Then, there are others who are not quite as optimistic. I don't have a horse in the race one way or another but I know people who do so I'll be hoping that this is where the markets bottom and start their slow drift northwards.
I heard something recently about the "destruction of the middle class" as it relates to everything that seems to be blowing up around us. In what universe is the destruction of the middle class here in America a good thing? Is it all about making us more and more dependent on government? If we can no longer afford to put gas in our cars or food on our tables because everything has become over-the-top expensive then that might well create the existential crisis they need to get this done. The Federal Reserve, known more affectionally as the "Fed", has always had our back as middle class investors. When times got tough we got another injection from the Fed of quantitative easing (QE) to grease the skids and soften the landing. The Fed now seems impotent to offer any relief to the markets in the way of additional QE because of the fear of further increasing inflation. Maybe there's something to this 'destruction of the middle class' thing.
One of my neighbors commented a few months ago that the fella who comes up from Florida every summer to spend the summer with her was worried about what he was seeing in the stock market. It was the classic example of what everyday Americans are faced with when you have nowhere to go but the stock market since it's the only game in town. If you have your money in a bank, you're getting close to zero interest. That's just not tenable for a retiree who relies on growth in his or her portfolio to pay the bills and feather their nest for their remaining days. I don't pretend to know what he was invested in but the average stock in the NASDAQ is now down some 50% or more. Did I mention that he drives a truck that burns diesel gas? The poor guy has to be feeling the crunch. If I told you that I've seen this very same fella recently and he's walking a little slower, holding his head a little less high, and hunching over a little more than I recall from past years, would you believe me?
Is it me or are we hearing about more and more cases of labor unions getting a foothold in well established businesses these days? Recent cases in the news include Starbuck's and Amazon. I have no use for unions and I believe all the stories I've heard over the years which portray them as parasitic enterprises which can suck the very lifeblood out of a business if left to their own devices. You know that unions are "owned" lock, stock, and barrel by the democrat party. Right? If what I'm hearing about Starbuck's and Amazon resisting these efforts to unionize their shops, I say good for them. Resist them with every fibre of your being and spare no expense in ousting them from your organization. Tear them out root and branch as they say. The employees who want to swear allegiance to the unions can go find employment elsewhere. The fortunes of any organization should rise or fall on the merits of their own teams and, should those teams not perform, then they deserve to fail. If push comes to shove, close the damn shop and open another around the corner. See how that works?
I filled up at the local petrol station in town yesterday and I paid $5.09 a gallon. It was the first time in my life that I've paid that much for a gallon of gas. This fucking Biden Administration has got to go. I was paying maybe $2 a gallon when The Donald was in office in 2020. And this morning, I'm reading articles where the Biden Administration is making it even more difficult for domestic companies to get oil out of the ground here in the United States. I mean, you can't make this stuff up. Add to it the shortage of baby formula that mothers and caretakers are having difficulty finding and we have ourselves a fucking catastrophe in the making, You can bet your sweet arse that the babies of illegal aliens coming across our southern border in the tens of thousands are not going without baby formula. Oh, no. Not on Biden's watch. That would be inhumane.
It gets worse. I was listening to this one fella tell the story about how he and his wife had been ordering baby formula from overseas due to the shortage of formula here in the states. Their last two orders had been confiscated at the border by agents working for the the US Agriculture Department. So, Biden is not only working to cut off the supply of baby formula here in our country, but he's now preventing our citizens from procurring supplies from other countries. Can that bastard be any more spiteful? When Trump was not commandeering domestic companies to manufacture supplies like masks when we were deep into the Covid bullshit, Biden used it as a cudgel to beat Trump like a rented mule. Where is Biden now that the mothers in our country are desperate to feed their children. He's nowhere to be fucking found.
Oh, and about that CPI (Inflation) number that I referred to a couple of paragraphs back. It came in hot but you would never know it reading certain articles or headlines in the newspapers and online. The liberal media was desperate to put a positive spin on a shitty result just to help their buddy, Joey Bumbles Biden, in the White House. Or, should I say, in OUR White House. When I say that it came in hot, I mean that it came in worse than expected. That's not what these liberal rags wanted the public at large to see. They needed to put lipstick on this pig and that is precisely what they did. I was so disgusted by the misleading headlines that I couldn't bring myself to read the articles themselves. The financial markets started off in the green but quickly turned beet red once the facts were out in the open. It was yet another shitty day in the markets. Buddy, can you spare a dime?
We've seen so many down days these last few weeks in the stock market that I think I can actually tell when the stock market is up or down by the amount of traffic on the roads. Maybe it's my imagination. That said, it does seem busier out and about when the stock market is up for the day and it seems less busy on the roads when the market is down for or during the day. I know it's a shaky hypothesis but it's one that seems to be true based on my observations. That's objective, right? It's not some wild-eyed theory of mine that I'm just putting down on paper for the heck of it. Well, there is that. In a roundabout way, its symptomatic of the wealth effect that you get when you have a surging stock market. When you start to cut into that wealth effect with endless days of red ink in the stock market, people start spending less, going out less, and it becomes a vicious cycle. If you're looking at something like consumer confidence, you're likely to not like the resulting trend line.
They have yet to find this person who leaked the draft of the Roe v Wade decision a few weeks back. The case is not actually Roe v Wade just so you know. Was it a conservative who wanted to blunt the effect of the decision once it comes out closer to the elections in November? Was it a lefty who wanted to rally their base early on to see if they couldn't get one or two justices to change their minds and vote against the decision when it was finally released? That aside, the lying and hyperbole from the left is beyond the pale. Who knew? Oh, the next thing the Court will be coming for is our rights to have interracial marriage! They're coming for our rights to have same-sex marriage! The blather, the lies, and the deceit by the left is just over the top. Whatever it takes to radicalize their base. Not that they aren't radical to begin with but you can never be too radical as a leftist. You know, I'm talking about the clowns with the Molotov cocktails and the pink hats. Yeah, them.
Every once in a while you hear someone talking about breaking up our country into states based on the politics of their citizenry. The liberals can all move to the blue states and the conservatives can all move to the red states. We already know which states are which although there are some states that switch back and forth from time to time. You have to admit, that would make for an interesting experiment. What would we do with people in the middle? You know, the independents. Would that further polarize our peoples or would that make for a more enduring democracy? Is it just human nature to have differences within populations of any species? Some people prefer chocolate ice cream and some people prefer vanilla ice cream. I don't know where I'm going with all of this. Maybe it would be a dreadful bore were I to be surrounded with people who always agree with me. I'm thinking I should be careful what I wish for. Maybe that light at the end of the tunnel coming in my direction is a locomotive. Feets don't fail me now!
The missus and I went shopping at Whole Foods yesterday. We didn't need anything in particular. It was something to do on a Thursday afternoon when we had nothing better to do. You figure if you look around long enough you'll find something that you didn't know you needed. The minute we pulled into their parking lot we were quite surprised at how few cars there were in the lot. Whole Foods is not an inexpensive place to shop so we wondered if the pissy stock market as of late had anything to do with the scarcity of shoppers. How else could you explain what we were seeing? It wasn't that much of a reach to see this place shuttering their doors if the economy/stock market worsens any more appreciably than it already has. This is part and parcel of the wealth effect that I've referred to here and there. The good news was that we had a better all around shopping experience thanks to the fact that there so few people in the store. You know how the missus hates crowds.
We picked up a caesar salad for the Ev man at Whole Foods. He's had Covid for the last week or so but he'll likely be looking to get out and about now that he's feeling better. We'll be prepared if he stops by. I'm not sure how I feel about his coming over so soon after having Covid. The missus says that you can test positive for a long time after contracting the virus even though you've survived the five day quarantine period recommended by the CDC. Are we tempting fate to have him come over so soon? Will his salad go bad between now and the time it takes him to stop by? I decided not to buy a latte while in Whole Foods since I could just as easily have one at home. Maybe that's my way of watching my pennies. I'm just as happy these days with a poor man's latte which is three quarters of a cup of cold brew and a splash of cold milk. I don't need any stinking' ice either. De-Lish!
My peeps back in the Falls celebrated my seester's birthday this past weekend. I couldn't make it so my brother from another mother was good enough to send me a few pictures. One picture in particular was quite nice. Everyone was smiling and it was nice to see the people in the picture all together in one place, on one day, and posing as they were for the picture. It was one of those pictures the likes of which once you see it you can't imagine it not framed and hanging on a wall for all of eternity. It was something that I immediately wanted for my seester since, after all, it was a picture of her and her children. Did I mention that? Maybe it's the gift that I was meant to give to my seester but could only do so after the fact since I was not otherwise in attendance. The Lord works in mysterious ways. Whatever. The missus liked the idea of the frame and all but we disagreed on how much to spend on getting it all done. "Can you put a price on what we're trying to do here", I queried incredulously. You can see where all of this is going. Let me spell it out. N-o-w-h-e-r-e.
The Pennsylvania primary is next Tuesday. On the republican side of the ledger, we have three candidates: Dr Oz, Cathy Barnett, and a guy named McCormick. Oz and McCormick have spent some 50 million between them thus far while Barnett is operating on a shoestring budget. Oddly enough, Barnett is polling even with her two opponents. The other odd thing about Barnett is that nobody knows much about her. She's been vague to say the least about her past experience and that has a lot of people thinking that she's a wolf in sheep's clothing or maybe a Trojan horse or worse. They say that she can't possible beat her democratic opponent in the general election so it would be a mistake for people to vote for her in the primary next Tuesday. Trump has endorsed Oz so maybe Oz gets the bid at the end of the day. We conservatives need that damn senate seat so let's not fuck this up, folks. We can't take back the senate in November without the seat. I'm not sure what the right answer is but I think Barnett could fuck it all up with a win. For better or worse, that's what I'm thinking this morning.
It does make you wonder if Biden and his cast of cretins occupying our White House are actually creating the problems that they now profess to want to fix. We're talking baby formula here. I'm learning that one of Biden's henchmen in one or more of his departments went in and closed down the company (Abbot) that makes most of the baby formula for our nation's children. I'm sure it was done using some flimsy pretext in order to shut down the factory and, in the process, create a crisis where a crisis heretofore did not exist. It would result in hordes of Americans moms looking to the Biden Administration for relief in what could only be described as an untenable situation. No one in the Biden Administration counted on pictures and stories getting out about the pallets of baby formula being delivered to our southern border to feed the infants of illegal aliens. Investigations are, no doubt, underway by Biden's Justice Department into who leaked what and when.
Joey was likely planning to take a victory lap in the Rose Garden while announcing that he was enacting the Defense Production Act in order to put our country's factories back to work producing the very infant formula that he and his people acted in concert to stop producing. He would surround himself with smiling moms and dads all on hand to sing Uncle Joey's praises for his courage and his commitment to our nation's families in their time of need. With any luck, this act of beneficence on the part of our fearless leader would unlikely be forgotten by the time the Midterm elections rolled around and that was the plan. If any of this were true, it would be music to the ears of moms and dads coast to coast. Unfortunately, the only words coming out of the White House are, and I quote, "Contact your physician if you can't find formula for your children." No Spanish translation will be forthcoming (nor is it necessary.)