Saturday, November 26, 2016

What the CIA couldn't do old age did

Socialists are in mourning today. Former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro dead at the ripe old age of 90. In this fast-paced and ever-changing world we're definitely talking a retro channel in History here, pre-Internet dictator, blast from the past cigar-chomping revolutionary. I had to laugh at an Onion parody once where they had "Candid Camera" host Allen Funt calling up John F. Kennedy saying the Cuban Missile Crisis was all a hoax and the photo of JFK all relieved. Castro outlasted the power of what 10 U.S. presidents? Political tortoise crawling through the ages, a perennial figure in the pages of the past all yellowed and tattered. I know Michael Moore has said the Cuban healthcare system is the best in the world. I guess you don't get a bill in the mail for colonic polyp lab analysis, dunno. All those Hollywood celebs who hate Trump here's a great place to shuffle on over;)

Sunday, November 20, 2016

So why is Hollywood so almost monolithically liberal?

The Hollywood mass trauma over Donald Trump's victory continues, the mass hemorrhaging.  I'm not mad about this but it is curious.  Of course they are entitled to their pov but why is it always the same?  Actress Jennifer Lawrence recently penned a major essay saying we should all feel enraged and other hyperventilations.  I disagree alot with many of Rush's theories and opinings, haven't listened to him in years but the only thing I can come up with is as he once said.  Modern-day actors and actresses are so incredibly wealthy that deep down they actually feel guilty about it:)

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Protesting Trump

So here's the difference between them and us (I realize I'm not supposed to use such dichotomous language, no microaggression intended). If Hillary had won we would not have taken to the streets. We're too busy watching old All in the Family reruns at night, maybe a little PBS action and then a shot of whatever and then it's off to bed. Worst-case scenario lots of us might even publish hate-filled and vituperative anti-Hillary blogposts every third day for the duration of her term (imagine that). Sure the liberals would get on our case but we're too law-and-orderish to cause major mayhem in our nation's metropolises. On my way to work this morning heard of some major anti-Trump protests/social disruptions in at least seven major cities from LA to Chicago, Boston and Manhattan and places in between and what are they protesting exactly? His stance to get tough on illegal immigration? His early on words about the general character of Mexican illegals coming into this country? Observations about radical Islam and the threat it poses and the need to heavily vet refugees? His purported groping of women, his potty mouth and his past feud with Rosie? or (all of the above)? Remember when Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot by some lone nut the Left lectured the Right to rein in the rhetoric lest it lead to violence and they did this whenever some tragedy happened in the news that could even be vaporously associated with the Right. Rush Limbaugh causing all the problems. Are they now lecturing their own Left, these large groups of anti-Trump protesters to watch the hate-filled rhetoric lest something happen to Trump? Let's put it squarely here Mr. Trump is every secret service's worst nightmare. He's hated by millions and the people who hate him really hate him. Gerald Ford or Jimmy Carter never inspired this passion. Even the Bush Jr. protests were peaceful and restrained by comparison. I'm waiting for the Left to call for civility, to dial down the vitriol, to disassociate from the fringe......(crickets)......

Wednesday, November 09, 2016

The World Series of politics

Waking up the morning after a critically important Election Night is like waking up after a colonoscopy. Your first reaction is was it good or bad so you gauge faces, expressions, vibes and in this case tepidly turn on the news early the next day since you didn't stay up all night 'cause of work the next day. I didn't vote on principle but Hil was my logical prediction. I never understood geo-voting, why folks in most of the northeastern states overwhelmingly vote Democrat while Dixie goes Republican and lots Midwestern states went Trump and CA goes for Hillary. You have a political herd mentality just based on your geographical location? Don't get it. I think Hillary felt entitled to the presidency, a kind of logical thread in the fabric of time, a foregone conclusion (first black president/now woman), a political inevitability so she didn't put her heart and soul into it which goes a long way explaining why she had a major fireworks display set to go off over the Hudson around 9:30 last night. I said I wasn't gonna watch but channel-surfed other stuff and up pops an electoral map on some Spanish station and Trump was doing not bad, good even so I switched around. I saw aging commentators like Charlie Gibson and Jeff Greenfield like they seemed fairly young and flush only a few years ago. WHERE IS THE TIME GOING??? The Ole Gray Lady recently likened FBI director James Comey to J. Edgar Hoover for going after Hillary over the remaining 650,000 emails but a more mundane explanation might be he's only doing his job. Relax Gray Lady editorial board, do a group yoga thing maybe. Brokaw said people are more agitated than they realized but the msm needs to get out more imo. Putin called President-elect Trump already and some people at work looked dismayed and downcast today.

Saturday, November 05, 2016

The $15 minimum wage

Not being a doctrinaire hardcore conservative/libertarian the idea of some kind of minimum wage always made sense to me but with this liberal consensus of late that it should be raised to $15/hour across-the-board I'm tempted to chuck the whole thing out and leave employers the hell alone. This is what happens when you try to intellectually compromise with liberals ("yeah some kind of mandatory bottom makes sense") but you're thinking very low and go slow over time and eventually they want everyone to make what a bus driver makes. Entry-level burger flippers at McDonald's: $15/hour and so we'll see how many clerks your local McDonald's franchise hires. Fair to strong bet longer and slower lines, angrier customers and some places closing down altogether. It's not an idea whose time has come, it's an idea whose time should never come.

Friday, November 04, 2016

Thoughts on the Mandela Effect

The Mandela Effect - Quick definition: when a large group of people all share the same details of a fundamental misremembering of a basic fact, many times a major news or historical event (e.g. the faulty memory of many people of Nelson Mandela dying in prison sometime in the 80's) and the theories run the gamut from the psychological (e.g. confabulation) which is the consensus to quantum physics and even the paranormal. I paused doing an exclusive post on this because of the obvious tinfoil hat implications but can reality be altered? Honestly that's up to God but as of now it's still all theory and speculation and megaboards on reddit and sites devoted exclusively to debunking every Mandela Effect that commenters post and everyone has an opinion. So the founder of D-Wave Quantum Computers, Geordie Rose in a noted lecture mentioned in passing harnessing the power of parallel universes and we got Stephen Hawking talking about stuff and so the layman or laywoman comes along and adds his or her two cents. Things seem to change over time imo. In the old campy horror movie Frogs (1972) I remember as a kid the old lady chasing a butterfly in the woods dies in quicksand, in the dvd she gets bit by a rattlesnake and dies. Actually you can see a bit of the quicksand scene in the trailer and it also comes up in a Google image search. Growing up I and a few others always thought of the colon as the lower part of the large intestine, the part that connects to the rectum so imagine my horror and dismay when my doctor explained about the rest of the plumbing involved in the colonoscopic experience. For years since I can remember Haddaway sings "what is love? lady don't hurt me" because he's aching about an unrequited love but quite alot of people always heard it as "baby" and so there's a thread about that. OK not earth-shattering and we have an important election coming up but I think different philosophies drive the various forum members passionately devoted to the topic. The official skeptics see their role I guess as to shoot down any and all new M.E.'s readers post about. I think the attitude on the part of the rationalists is our reality may be horrible but it's our reality and we're used to it. The paranormalists for lack of a better word post about anything and everything to make it ripe for an Onion parody: Thread - First Star Wars movie came out in 1947 and starred Humphrey Bogart. The shrink class while enlightening also can't explain how a mass of people actually once upon a time mass hallucinated or visually confabulated actual news coverage of Mandela dying in prison in the '80s and the whole funeral and aftermath. C'mon I know memory is fallible, complex and tricky and all that but this is kind of unsettling, unnerving and creepy to many people. Any Mandela Effects of your own?