Small Bites, Edition 3, April 23, 2021

 So, I took an unexpected break.  I have bosses who need to use vacation time.  Vacation time for bosses, means more working hours for me.  I don't mind, I have great bosses, and they richly deserve all their time off.  However, when I'm working all those hours, I don't have time for much else.  I'm trying so hard to make this more regular, I promise.  On that note, here's your third edition of Small Bites.

This week, a jury convicted Officer Derek Chavin of one count of second degree murder, one count of third degree murder, and one count of manslaughter.  The third degree murder charge, per Minnesota standards didn't even apply, but hey, whatever.  Derek Chauvin should go to prison.  I don't believe he was the sole cause of the death of George Floyd, but he was partly responsible.  What do I mean?  He didn't inject Floyd with a lethal overdose of fentanyl.  He didn't block his coronary arteries either.  He did however fail to address the obvious medical issue Floyd was having, and that makes him complicit in the man's death.  For that, he should be going to prison.  However, some of our more vocal citizens may have made that not possible.  Maxine Waters should have stayed home, instead of going to Minnesota and inciting violence.  The Minneapolis Star Tribune should have avoided printing nameless in depth biographies of the jurors in their newspaper on the very day the jury was to start deliberating.  BLM shouldn't have threatened to burn down the city if they didn't get the verdict they wanted.  All of those things could give the defense the opportunity to appeal for a mistrial.  The judge in the case even said as much.  And at least one juror has said "I didn't want the city burning down again.  I was afraid they would come after me."  Yikes.

Apparently Loudon County in Virginia is going to do away with advanced math classes for anyone under 11th grade.  No more honors math for your kids!  Way to deprive math geniuses of their chance in the STEM fields, especially female kids.  All this is supposed to be in the name of equity.  Here's the thing. Not every kid, no matter how smart, is good enough in every subject to take advanced classes.  The ones who are should have the opportunity to do so.  Depriving them of that opportunity in the name of equity is just plain stupid.

I have a message for certain members of our elite, and by elite I mean, politicians, actors, and CEOs.  (I use elite in the loosest way possible, since I don't truly believe those people are better than me.) Stop telling black people they are too dumb, backward, poor or whatever, to do simple things.  It's denigrating, even when you clothe it in kente cloth, kneeling, and anti-racism.  You can't buy alcohol without ID.  You can't board a plane without ID. You can't buy a gun without ID.  You can't go visit the White House...oh wait, nevermind, you can't do that anyway because it's behind a fence.  My point is, you can't get through life without a photo ID.  So claiming that needing one to vote is somehow racist, is pretty much claiming that living life is racist.  And claiming that, particularly, minority people are unable to do something required to participate in life is just... well, it's racist.  So please, stop.

Lebron James targeted a police officer, and then deleted the tweet, when it caused more hate.  Duh.  It's obvious King James was drafted right out of high school, because I would hope a college attendee would realize that posting a picture of a police officer saying "you're next" is inviting the kind of hate one purports to be against.  That is to say, hate not involving hating on white people, cops, and anything the Chinese government hates.  Chinese government hate is good.  It wasn't hate that was being spread by the way.  It was people calling out James because apparently he cared more about the knife wielding criminal then the poor black girl about to be gutted.  Tweet deleted, but not before everyone basically called him the fool that he is.  

Which leads me to a reflective moment.  Why do we care so much what actors, sports stars and mediocre pop singers think?  These are people who pretend to be someone else, play a game, or get auto-tuned for a living.  They aren't better than us just because they have their mug on our TV screen.  They aren't more altruistic or morally superior.  They are there to entertain us, not to educate us.  Pardon me for sounding like a horrible person, but I don't want them educating me.  Most of them just aren't that smart.  Yet we have made them our de facto spokespeople.  Why?  It's sad that they think they have the ability to influence the way we think, or maybe it's sad that we actually let them influence the way we think.  

Yeah, that's it from me.  Until next time....

Postponement of Edition 3 of Small Bites and New Endeavors

 

I know, I'm failing.  I have bosses who have massive amounts of use it or lose it holiday/comp time.  They are being forced to take whole weeks off, which means, I have to step in and play boss.  This translates to Amy is not overly available for anything but work.  My poor chinchilla has had to postpone his moving plans (from a cozy cottage to the penthouse suite) because mom doesn't have time to put his new house together.  There's a 200 pound cage in my dayroom, still in the box. My middle daughter has had to pick up the slack, doing many things I should be doing, but can't, because well..work.

So while I have a few minutes I thought I would take a moment to put together a post to tell you all about a new endeavor said middle daughter and I are trying out.

We've noodled the idea around for a year, but have finally decided to give a weekly podcast a try.  We will most likely attempt to run it through Facebook or Youtube, but the odds of us getting jailed are pretty astronomical.  We won't toe the acceptable line on what you can speak about these days.  We aren't known for that.  Heck, my American flag is still being flown upside down.  

It doesn't yet have a name, but our first episode will be immigration centered.  The current crisis, and yet is is a crisis, on the southern border, enabled by the words of our current President* and his administration deserves some illumination, not just about the crisis, but about immigration policy as a whole.  So, hopefully, you will see us live on Friday evening.  After 9 pm.  When the the little ones are in bed.

Oh, and also, small bites will return this Friday/Saturday.

Small Bites, Edition 2: March 12, 2021

 As I stated last week, this will become a regular feature.  There are several reasons for that.  One is that I don't have the time to write up a full length blog on one subject every week.  I may still write one occasionally, but the research required for those is a lot harder than plucking a few headlines and writing a paragraph about each.

This week Congress finally got around to passing the stimulus bill that was so important during the election.  They had to impeach the former President first for a riot he didn't start and then they had to take a short vacation.  Turns out there is less stimulus and more giveaways.  We are bailing out underfunded union pension funds, New York City and San Francisco, art museums (again), and various other things that have little or nothing to do with COVID and the American people.  That is not to say that some of these things shouldn't be taken up, as a matter of course, just that cloaking them in COVID relief is kind of...icky.  There were some tears over the removal of the $15 an hour minimum wage, and few more tears by some group naming themselves "Evangelicals for Biden" for the taxpayer funding of abortions, but both of those wish list items were dead on arrival.  Anyone who thought differently is living under a rock.

Minneapolis now looks the same as Capitol Hill, in other words like the DMZ, due to the trial of Derek Chauvin.  He's the police officer who is being tried for murdering George Floyd.  Apparently, there's still some question as to whether Mr. Floyd died from being strangled or if he died from a lethal dose of Fentanyl.   I have no opinion, at this point.  I do know something I'd like to share with you all.  You are less likely to die at the hands of a police officer if you 1) don't commit crimes, 2) if you do commit crimes don't resist arrest.   Those two things can save a life, no matter what your skin color.  

President Joe Biden* apparently gave a speech on Thursday night.  It wasn't a great speech.  I'm not sure, despite reading several comparisons, that it was as bad as Jimmy Carter's malaise speech, but it also wasn't very positive.  Telling your country that they "might" be able to have a small gathering in July if they are vaccinated doesn't quite rise to the level of inspiring.  I want to make sure I'm not being unfair to the President*.  He struggles with words, and reading, and remembering where he is, so it might not be entirely fair to criticize a speech he probably won't remember tomorrow.  

Harry and Meghan are in the news.  Why?  Because apparently the royal family is full of rabid racists who did horrible things and made Meghan want to kill herself.  For the record, little Archie was not entitled to a...title.  At least not at this present moment.  No one was taking away his title because he's 1/4 black.  Harry and Meg chose to leave the royal family,and whatever their reasons, when they chose to do that the left behind the trappings, but also the wealth of the royal family.  Lest you think they live in poverty, they are living in a 14 million dollar mansion, have multi-million dollar deals with Disney, Netflix and Spotify, not to mention the 25 million Diana left to Harry.  They aren't poor.  I have come to the conclusion that the Brits have finally found a way to pay us back for 1776.  

Finally, I have a message for the wokinistas.  You are not smarter than me.  You have no business telling me how I should live my life.  You overestimate my ability to care what you think.  Let me clue you in:  none, zero, zip, nada.  That is my ability to care.  You are more than entitled to your opinions, but you are not empowered to make me care what you think of me.  You may call me simple minded, or crazy, that's fine, because as I have already stated, I don't care.  You see, every day, I get up and go to work, and I deal with a public that is frustrated, lonely, cut off, and tired of being told they can't live their lives because if they do, they don't care about their fellow man.  But who cares about them?  We are so busy trying to keep people from dying of COVID, that we've stopped caring about everything else, except maybe white privilege and gun control, neither of which is going to help the people I see every day.  You purveyors of woke thinking don't care.  You just pronounce your moral superiority, and you feel good in your warm gooey places.  Which is good for you, but pretty darn crappy for the fellow man you claim to care so much about. So go ahead, cancel me.  I don't care.  I have only three little words left for you....Go Pound Sand.

Until Next Time....

Small Bites, Edition 1

It's morning, and the odds of me finishing this post before I have to go unload a 420 case truck are slim and none.  I'm not even sure what I'm writing about other than the news tidbits over the last few days.  What I do know is that many Biden supporters should be scratching their head right now.  So let's take on just a few of the things in the news.

Dr. Seuss, or at least some of his books, have been cancelled.  "I think I saw it on Mulberry Street" is going for the affordable price of $1600 on Amazon last time I looked, but my guess is, it will be banned from sale on Amazon like other books recently.  Want to make a book no one was talking about popular?  Ban it from Amazon.  Currently, "When Harry Became Sally" has a hold line longer than Harry Potter when it first came out at my local library.  If the goal was not to let people read the book, it failed.  I imagine in the next few weeks, Dr. Seuss books will be raking in the dough as people clamor to purchase as many as they can.  Who thought we'd be living in "Fahrenheit 451"?

Among other things currently hiding in our latest stimulus bill is up to 21,000 dollars for federal employees who can't go to work because their kids can't go to school.  That's per employee.  Sorry to you other poor slobs who have to go without a paycheck because your kids can't go to school, even though there is no scientific evidence that schools are super spreader environments for COVID.  I'd like to remind all our petrified teachers that I've been working, with the public, since June 9th.  All I do is feed people's alcohol addiction.  I'm trying to figure out how my job is more important than the education of young minds, but so far, I haven't really come up with a good reason.  Also, I haven't caught COVID.

Recently, I was made aware that I no longer have to quarantine for close contact with a COVID infected person if I'm fully vaccinated.  Fully vaccinated apparently means 2 weeks after the second dose of a two dose vaccine, but not more than 3 months since the second dose of a two dose vaccine.  So, the vaccine is good for 10 weeks.  Yep, I'm clamoring to go get 2 needle sticks that last me 10 weeks.  Antibodies from the infection last longer than that....

QAnon has turned into some mythical monster with the ability to pronounce on the internet that they are going to do something everyone knows they aren't going to do, and yet manages to get the center of a national government locked down for 2 more months.  Meanwhile Antifa is still trying to burn down Portland. Eventually they will succeed, since even if arrested, they are back on the street the next day trying again.  

Apparently it's neanderthal thinking to not fine or jail people for not wearing masks, but it's okay to release COVID positive illegal immigrants into a population.  A funny thing happens when you say you won't deport anyone for 100 days.  They realize you won't deport them so they run across the border as fast as they can, and they really don't care if we are in the middle of a pandemic.  Our current President* seems to think Americans can't make basic decisions about their health and well-being, but who gives a crap if we just let a bunch of people not from our country run around free and clear to spread the 'Rona.  People want to know why New Zealand had success?  They DIDN'T LET ANYONE IN!  Of course, that's easier to do when you are an island surrounded by water on four sides, which I said from the beginning, but at least now we have our progressive friends admitting that too, so I guess that's something.

Andrew Cuomo is on the hot seat for sexually harassing at least 3 women.  It's good cover for the fact that he killed 15,000 grandparents with his insane nursing home policy.  He wasn't the only one.  More than half of all COVID deaths in my state, Pennsylvania, can be attributed to congregate care facilities.  Good thing Dr. Rachel* Levin moved her mama into a posh hotel before the Wolf Administration's own death policy.  If they were using federal guidance, which some of them have claimed they were doing, why did 45 other states not follow the same policy?  There are only two answers.  1) there was no federal guidance for them to mandate COVID positive patients go back to nursing homes, or 2) 45 other administrations were far smarter than them.  You pick which one.  It doesn't matter which one you pick, because it's all being obscured by Cuomo's creepy Joe Biden-like behavior.

I've decided to make this a weekly thing, so you have now read the first edition of Small Bites.  See you next week!

P.S. - I finished this post on Friday, March 5th.  As predicted, I didn't have time to finish it before that 420 case truck.

Congratulations, from the other side.

 

"Why do I keep hitting myself with a hammer?  Because it feels so good when I stop."

I don't know who said that, but that's what I'm doing today. I keep looking at the news and reading the stories, because when I stop it feels good.  I have a lot to say, and I have a feeling people will disagree.  If you want to call me names, I don't care.  If you want to question my character and morals, I don't care.  And yes, people are doing that.  Here's just a few quotes:

 “(Bobby) Orr inflamed one of the most grievous if underappreciated wounds of the Trump era: the sad discovery for so many of us over the past four years that so many of our friends, neighbors, business partners and heroes are not who we thought they were.”  -Andrew Cohen, The New Republic

“Sadly, the voters who said in 2016 that they chose Trump because they thought he was ‘just like them’ turned out to be right. Now, by picking him again, those voters are showing that they are just like him: angry, spoiled, racially resentful, aggrieved and willing to die rather than ever admit that they were wrong. . . . It’s clear now that far too many of Trump’s voters don’t care about policy, decency or saving our democracy. They care about power.” -Tom Nichols, The Atlantic

So our heroes are only our heroes if they agree with what we do.  They aren't our heroes because of their great sports accomplishments. As for the second quote, I'd like to break that down.  Angry:  Four years... four years of anger directed at a President, his supporters, and anyone he came in contact with.  Spoiled:  Four years of NOT getting your own way.  Racially Resentful:  I'm sorry, but which organization is actively setting fires, damaging property and looting over racial resentment? Aggrieved and willing to die rather than admit they were wrong:  Um, which aggrieved democrat has apologized for the hundreds of news shows they went on SWEARING they had hard evidence of Russian Collusion that never materialized?  All of those things describe the party who hasn't been in the executive branch the last four years.

The idea, that something has to been done about "Trump supporters" should strike terror in the hearts of every citizen in this country.  There are people calling for truth and reconciliation committees to fix Trump Supporters.  We just moved from The United States of America to the starring role in a production of Orwell's 1984.  We get to disagree, and we don't get to decide that we have to form committees to, I don't  know, re-educate those who don't agree with us.  

Let me explain something loud and clear.  Those statements up there?  They are the reason we ended up with Trump in the first place.  Apparently, no one got that message.

I didn't support Trump in 2016.  I didn't vote for him. Forced between two equally horrible choices, I chose to write-in, for the first time since I was 18.  Then I stood back and watched the left eat it's own, and the right fight a civil freaking war between the "Trumpies" and the "Never-Trumpers".  It was fun, let me tell you.  Then I started to read what no one was talking about.  A salacious, unverified, patently false dossier had been used to obtain FISA warrants to spy on a member of the Trump campaign.  That dossier was paid for by the Clinton Campaign.  The full power of the Intelligence and Federal Law Enforcement communities was unleashed on one party's political opponent.  Remember Watergate?  This was worse, way worse.  From the same administration that used the IRS as a weapon, it's not a stretch to believe that James Comey appeared to be the reincarnation of J. Edgar Hoover.  And the more these people, Comey, Brennan, Clapper, McCabe, and our friend Adam Schiff appeared on news shows to crow about the hard evidence they had that never turned up, the more angry I got.  I didn't vote for the man.  I don't like the man.  This was wrong.  

I'm tired of having my moral character questioned, because I wasn't running around saying "Orange man bad" all the time.  I'm tired of being told I'm a racist, I was born a racist, and I will always be a racist (see Critical Race Theory), because I was born with white skin. I'm tired of being told that I need to sit down and shut up, because I have the wrong opinions.  I'm tired of family and friends deleting me from facebook, because I don't agree with them.  (I don't agree with them, they have said some horrible things about people like me, and yet I never deleted them.)  I have been personally attacked.  One person called me old and outdated.  And you see, this is how you get a Trump Supporter.  I don't like the man, and I voted for him in 2020, and all of you out there who made me feel less than human for my beliefs need to look in the mirror.  YOU are the reason I voted for Trump.  YOU made me a Trump supporter.  You want to fix that?  Then I suggest you look in the mirror.  It took you four years, but by golly, you managed to make me pull the lever for a man I really don't like.  Congratulations.  Hope this is what you wanted.  As I read this morning from someone on Twitter... you reap what you sow.  Hope you're ready for it.  

No Sports Zone

   Every year, at some point, a sports related blog shows up here.  In the past I've tackled Bob Costas and his annoying political rants during half-time, the sports team formerly known as the Washington Redskins and their embattled name, and the ridiculousness of the franchise tag in football.  I watch sports, a lot, and so I have opinions on things that happen that are sport related.  This post is to let you all know that, with the return of all major sports, there will be no sports writing, because I am giving them up, with the exception of the NHL, and that's still up for debate.  Why?

   I watch sports to escape reality.  Everywhere I go, every time on turn on the tv, every time I log into a streaming site, every scroll of Facebook and Instagram, I am pummeled by the reality of what is happening right now.  Commercials about how we are all in this together, documentaries on race in America, Black Lives Matters banner on every social media and streaming site, COVID-19 warnings on everything, and I haven't even talked about the news.  Sports is an escape from that.  It's a few hours to forget the very real problems of the world and just be entertained.  A long fly ball that goes over the fence, the buzzer beater in the final seconds of the fourth quarter, the five minute race to score a goal in overtime, the two-minute warning.  They are all moments that make you forget, even if for only a little while, the reality outside your door.  Except, now, they aren't.  They have brought that reality into the games we watch for fun.

  I am not advocating for fans in sports stadiums.  That isn't going to happen.  At this point, unless every city signs on for some level of fan attendance there should be no fan attendance.  I don't care that the NBA is playing in a Florida bubble, or that the NHL has retreated to finish it's season in the frozen tundra of our northern neighbor.  (Honestly, it's July, it's 95 degrees.  No amount of air conditioning makes it cold enough for ice.  The frozen tundra is the only place you should play hockey in the summer.)  Empty baseball stadiums are fine, and with baseball's fan base, most of these teams will be playing to something only slightly emptier than usual.  Football will take a hit with fan attendance (most teams), but they'll survive.  It's a multi-billion dollar industry.  They can make it one season.  

   What I'm advocating for, or most likely, simply refusing to participate in, is the politicization of sports.  Sports are meant to entertain.  They entertain across a wide diversity of people.  Different colors, genders, political affiliations, religions, sexual orientations.  Sports should be, and always has been, the greatest way to unite people.  Maybe not Eagles and Cowboys fans, but most Eagles fans I know would defend their fellow black, gay, transgendered, wiccan Eagles fan against any Cowboy fan.  United, not divided, in their hatred for all things silver and blue and from Dallas.  But not now.

   Sports leagues have decided that in order to appease the rich, white, grievance mongers, they need to play along.  So now, we have Black Lives Matter painted on basketball courts, white people kneeling for the national anthem in solidarity, and the NFL allowing social justice slogans (except for ones defending police, innocent unborn lives, and gun rights), on helmets where two years ago the wrong color shoes to honor a dead parent was a reason for a fine.  They have opened the door and allowed politics to invade the very space people go to escape politics.  They have damaged my calm.  

   There will be no sports blogs, no score posting, no Facebook posts gloating about a win, because there will be no sports.  I will find a good book, a good puzzle, a good afghan pattern, and I will be doing something else with my time.  Think I'm just blowing hot air?  I gave up football for 5 years to protest bad coaching and a washed up quarterback.  That was nothing compared to my safe place being invaded by all the things I wish to leave on the other side of the door for 3 hours.  I'm done.  I devote half of my day to the real world, 8 hours to sleep and 3 hours to not dealing with the read world, because I need a break.  If my escape insists on shoving it in my face, I will remove that escape and find another.  If more people do this, sports will get the hint and go back to entertaining us.  If people keep  watching regardless?  Well, I guess sports and I will have reached an impasse and I'll officially file for divorce.

**The NHL has, so far, kept itself out of the political fray, but I suspect that will change.  For now, I withhold judgment on that.


   

The Nuance of History

  "The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history."  ~Georg Hegel

   Today in the United States of America, as people dismantle statues and monuments of our history, that quote seems appropriate.  We seemed to have learned very little from history, and I'm wondering if we even bother teaching real history anymore.

   You see, history is more nuanced than boiler plate slogans.  It's not all black and white.  People go to war for something, but they don't all do it for the same reason.  There was this show that aired on one of those channels... National Geographic, History, Discovery.. I can't remember which one.  It was called Seconds from Disaster.  It's tagline red "Disasters don't just happen.  They are a chain of critical events. Unravel the clues and countdown those final seconds from disaster."  That's history.  It's not one event, but multiple events, some happening years, even decades, before, that lead to that moment we all remember.  And we try to boil it down to one thing, maybe because it's easier to understand.  It's easier to understand the Revolutionary war in the context of Stamp Acts and Tea Acts.  It's easier to understand the Civil War in the context of slavery and abolition.  It's easier to view World War I as an event caused by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.  It's easier to blame World War II on Hitler and the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.  None of those things accurately describe all the events and issues that lead to the final outcomes.  

   So I'm back to, do we even teach real history anymore?  Real history requires more than one year to study.  It's the only way to grasp the complexities that resulted in the fall of the Roman Empire.  For a long time, Spain was the naval powerhouse of the oceans.  When did it switch to the British Empire and why?  You might think that's not all that important, but that rise of the British Empire is the reason we have a country today.  Understanding that, and the Spanish conquests, are our history.  Does anyone know why Napoleon decided to sell of what would become known as the Louisiana Purchase?  Today we wouldn't call it such, but Alaska was once known as Seward's Folly.  Turned out that 50 some odd years of cold war with the Soviet Empire (and that's what it was), made Seward look like a genius.  Do people realize that New York abolished slavery before England did?  That great British Empire didn't fully abolish slavery until 1833, some 30 years before the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.  Funny enough, they allowed slavery to continue in areas controlled by the East India Company.  

   World War II was a direct result of the Treaty of Versailles.  That treaty beat down the German people and their economy so badly that they were ripe for a savior, and Hitler convinced them he was exactly that.  Pearl Harbor is what dragged the Americans, kicking and screaming, into the war, but that was a war that was predestined from the moment Versailles happened, twenty years before the German invasion of Poland that set off World War II.  

   Nuance.  Details.  Little tidbits of this and that.  They count down the seconds from disaster and the seconds to glory.  We've lost them.  As we watch people tear down more and more statues and monuments, we are losing more of them.  Monuments aren't always pretty.  They don't just lift up our finer moments.  They remind us of our darkest ones.  We have them so we never forget.  Auschwitz is still standing today, a horrific monument to mass genocide. Dachau is also.  My son visited Dachau.  He said he felt sick the whole time.  It's not something he'll ever forget.  People say the same when they visit the Holocaust Memorial, the battlefield at Gettysburg and the beaches in Normandy.  Monuments to horrific times in our history.  

   If a statue has the power to offend you, we better start tearing down every single statue in our country,because I'm positive it offends someone.  You can let it control you and you can tear it down, or you can stop and see how far we've come.

   For one moment I'd like to speak directly to my bothers and sisters through Jesus Christ.  People are flawed.  Even great people.  Moses, David, Solomon, Peter, Paul.  These men, great giants of the Bible, were all flawed, deeply flawed.  Should we erase them from our Bible?  Do they no longer deserve a place in our religious heritage?  If they still deserve that place, is it possible that our great, but deeply flawed founding fathers also still deserve a place?  Or are they relegated to the dustbin of history, because we suddenly in the past 5 years, realized how flawed they were.  If you didn't know that already, you've just learned the best argument against government control of education, because I learned that in a Christian School.

   History can't be the thing we never learn from, because if it truly is that, then we are doomed to repeat it, again and again.  More slavery, more genocide, more human rights violations.  Taking down statues doesn't erase what happened, but it can erase it from the minds of the people who need most to remember where we were and how far we've come.  People who need the nuance, the honest conversations, the uncomfortable truth.  

   History can't be....