ALL WRAPPED UP IN IMPEACHMENT — Marilyn Armstrong

11/19/201911/17/2019 / Marilyn Armstrong / 13 Comments

I have to admit that we are hooked. We are both news junkies and though Garry tried denying it, one day he just broke down and it’s been news ever since. He is particularly incensed at the way the press is getting beat up.

The news was his life. This isn’t casual chatter to him. He has three Emmy’s and dozens of other awards for his work in the business. To Garry, this is personal. Very. Personal.

So, that’s what we are doing. We are watching. The last time I was this enthralled politically was Watergate. I was working as a writer and editor at Doubleday Publishing in New York. I carried a little radio and earplug with me so I wouldn’t miss a moment of testimony. Then, when I got home, on went the television.

I was thrilled when Nixon resigned, but I missed the hearings. It was as if they had canceled a favorite drama.

I think this is probably what I’m going to be doing as long as these hearings last. I thought we were the rare Americans watching this, but these hearings are getting huge ratings. Apparently, everyone is glued to their televisions.

Things that have gotten to me: McCaine’s daughter saying how deeply shocked and horrified she is by the spineless Republican party and how ashamed she is of people she believed were family friends … interviews on the street and on the late-night comedy shows of people who were Republicans and now say they don’t even understand what has happened to their party and how humiliating it is.

I’ve never been a Republican, but I never thought that being a Republican meant being a traitor. We disagreed, sometimes angrily, sometimes with humor, but they were Americans. They believed in this country as I did, but their ideas of how to manage this country were different.

Now, they don’t even act like Americans. They don’t care about the American people. They have lost touch with what has made this country great. Now it’s entirely about money and greed.

Shame on them, and shame on anyone who voted for them. They are everything we have deplored through our years on this earth.

Aside from having a bloated moron as our president, this is the most shocking part of this entire process. That all these supposed honorable men have become spineless jellyfish, unwilling to stand up to this idiot president or their own beliefs, is nauseating.

DON’T READ MEDICAL ADVERTISEMENTS ON THE INTERNET – Marilyn Armstrong

11/04/201911/04/2019 / Marilyn Armstrong / 23 Comments

Every now and then, I get lured into reading some advertisement on a news item. This one was “The Four Worst BP Medications.”

Now, I always knew that one of them was funky because it did weird things to me and I stopped taking it. When my doctor said I should, I said “No, I shouldn’t,” and I stopped. Garry turned out to be highly allergic to it. After he stopped taking it, he stopped needing any blood pressure medication. He’s normal and doesn’t take any medications.

I’m a different story. And that was one of the really bad things about the article. First, it wasn’t written by a doctor. Okay, she is a nutritionist and specializes in Asian medicine … but she’s not an M.D. or even a nurse.

She goes under the assumption that all blood pressure issues are the same and they most assuredly are not. Garry briefly had high blood pressure after he stopped working and quit drinking. It took his body a while to adapt to the changes, and then he went back to normal.

My problem is a (probably) a genetic version of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. It’s not a reaction to stress, but a reaction to a malformed heart that apparently I had from when I was born. It didn’t “do” anything to me until much later in life and might well have been triggered by the drugs I took for breast cancer. You have to make choices. You know the drugs for cancer are powerful and no doubt causes problems in other parts, but the alternative is death. So you deal with it.

Some people are born with my heart issue and live with it. It never seems to cause them any problems. Maybe without the other medications, it would have gone that way for me too … but it didn’t.

A special diet won’t cure it. Telling people that a special diet can cure all blood pressure problems is the kind of thing that kills people. Very few non-medically trained people have any idea what causes high blood pressure. Most people don’t know anything about how their hearts work.

I’m sure the right diet can help some people, but we aren’t all the same. When you’ve got implanted valves, a Pacemaker on which you depend 100% to have any heartbeat, and thickened heart walls that won’t change, you’re stuck using the best drugs available. Moreover, you can’t cure every heart problem. Some things are chronic and the best you can do it control them. Carefully, cautiously.

I’m pretty sure that it was advertisements like this one that got so many moronic parents to stop vaccinating their children. If “natural immunity” were all that common, we’d never had needed vaccination in the first place. We’d never have had the Black Plague, cholera, whooping cough, polio, or smallpox. And thanks to our overall ignorance and faith in whatever is posted on the Internet, we have most of these things back in our world, even though we thought we’d cured them.

The pressure in the arteries increases when the heart beats and decreases while it is resting.

So are these people trying to save us or helping to kill us off? What do you think?

Oddly enough, this was also the subject of Samantha Bee’s show yesterday. It wasn’t a brand new show — maybe a week or so old — but what she said was exactly what I said. People die from these ads and while there are laws against them, there aren’t enough humans to monitor all the ads on the Internet. They rely on us — you and me — to report these false and/or insufficient advertisements.

Consider this a warning. I tried to find the ad that triggered this post and I couldn’t find it. The advertisements rotate on the Internet, so when you see something and it needs to be reported, write the information down. I’m not sure to whom you are supposed to report it. It’s one of the federal agencies, but which one? When I have a chance, I’ll try to track it down.

In the meantime, if you read it on the Internet and you have no other source of information, DO NOT follow it. Some of it may be okay, but much of it is rubbish or much worse than that.

THE WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT GOOGLE – Marilyn Armstrong

11/01/201911/01/2019 / Marilyn Armstrong / 16 Comments

I woke up this morning with an earworm. Not your normal earworm. Mine was a 1920s earworm. It was a song my mother sang often and for once, she actually got the words right. Ask any member of my family and they will assure you: my mother never ever remembered the words to any song — except this one. She would sing words from other songs to whatever melody was bouncing around in her head.

So I get up this morning and this is what I’m hearing, but without the scratches:

And by golly, the words I had in my head were dead on. Next, the obvious question arises:

How did Google get its name? – Mobilis In Mobile

The mysterious mysteries of the Internet!

You may have read this kind of “official answer: “Google derived its name from the word “googol”, a term coined by then nine-year-old Milton Sirotta, nephew of the American mathematician Edward Kasner. … Google was named after Barney Google.”

Barney Google – The History

But will you ever feel the same way about Google again? I bet you won’t! And it all began with an early morning earworm!

AMERICA FIRST IS RACISM FROM OUR PAST – Marilyn Armstrong

10/26/201910/24/2019 / Marilyn Armstrong / 7 Comments

This post is primarily composed of quotes from HuffPost and other sources. “America First” has a rather long and ugly history … and it started long before Donald Trump.

If anyone thinks what Trump is doing is new, it isn’t. This is Fascism on the rise. It’s easy to suddenly discover that “free” now means “people who agree with The Leader.” We are far too close to that now. I’d hate to see what a second term would accomplish.

Democracy is a slippery slope. Ours is covered in ice.

Dr. Seuss Cartoon from 1941 on antisemitism. The old story, just updated with a red hat.

Trump Was Not First To Use The “America First” Slogan. It has a long history.

In his Inaugural Address, President Donald Trump repeated a theme from his Presidential Campaign, telling the world: “From this moment on, it’s going to be America First.” Many Trump critics point to the fact that this was a watchword for those who opposed U.S. intervention in WWll before the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor. Actually, the phrase has a longer history.

President Woodrow Wilson, a hardened internationalist, ironically coined the term today associated with Nationalism. In 1916, Wilson was running for re-election by promising to remain neutral in WWl. His campaign slogan was: “He kept us out of War, America First.” Once Wilson was safely re-elected, he ordered troops into what was, at the time, called “The Great War.” My mother who had the “luck” to live through both world wars always called it “The Great War.”

Once the U.S. was enveloped in the war, newspaper Publisher William Randolph Hearst, a vociferous critic of Wilson, used the slogan against the President.

Hearst was sympathetic to Germany and warned the U.S. not to aid the allies in the fight against Germany. Hearst exclaimed: “Keep every dollar and every man and every weapon and all our supplies and stores at home, for the defense of our own land, our own people, our own freedom, until that defense has been made absolutely secure. After that, we can think of other nations’ troubles. But until then, America first!”

This slogan soon became an imprimatur for non-interventionists in both major political parties. Once WWl ended, the Americans became wary of foreign intervention. Wilson failed in his efforts to garner the requisite two-thirds majority needed in the U.S. Senator to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, which included allowing the U.S. to join a collective security alliance called “The League of Nations.”

Some Senators would have supported the agreement if the President agreed to certain reservations. However, the bi-partisan group that steadfastly opposed the treaty came to be known as “the irreconcilables.”

Complete post: TRUMP WAS NOT THE FIRST TO USE AMERICA FIRST” – Huffpost

THE UNIMPEACHMENT NON-EVENT – Marilyn Armstrong

09/03/201909/03/2019 / Marilyn Armstrong / 20 Comments

I keep reading about how Trump is going to be impeached. Or at least, SHOULD be impeached. Needs to be impeached. On this, I tend to side with Nancy Pelosi: I don’t want to see him impeached. I want to see him in prison. For life.

Two presidents have been impeached: Andrew Johnson and William J. Clinton. Neither was removed from office. It was more like a bad mark on their permanent record than getting expelled. They were harder on Harry Potter than either impeached President.

This doesn’t mean I had or have anything against Bill Clinton. I liked him a lot except the thing about men and their zippers and how come they can’t keep them zipped. He could at least have kept it zipped until he left office. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

Would it really kill men to not screw someone inappropriate for a few years? Men can be such pigs.

I do not think Trump will be impeached. “Why not?” you ask.

The Senate doesn’t want to do it and even the House isn’t sure about it. Also, why does everyone assume impeachment would unseat Trump? It didn’t unseat the two presidents who were impeached.

The only things that can unseat a president are high crimes and misdemeanors for which there exists no clear, modern definition. Although if any president has committed them, I’m sure Trump is The Man.

Moreover, a GOP-dominated — or even a Senate with a substantial percentage of them — does not have to act on impeachment. Regardless of the outcome of any investigation, now or in the future, there is no mandate to do anything about it. Yet, despite the ineffectiveness of previous impeachment procedures, everyone is convinced that this time, it will be different.

It won’t be different. It will be exactly the same.

What would make this time different than before? What new law is on the books? What new interpretation of “crimes the president can/can’t commit” exists? As far as I know, we have made zero legislative progress in Congress and we seem unlikely to see any before 2020.

And also, please note that no matter WHAT the House of Representatives does or tries to do if the Senate (McConnell) refuses to bring the issue to the floor, it’s not even a slap on the wrist. All it will do is raise the ratings on late-night television and miscellaneous news outlets.

HEY DAD! WE FIXED IT! – Marilyn Armstrong

08/28/201908/27/2019 / Marilyn Armstrong / 13 Comments

Oh, how wonderfully familiar this looks. The cast of miscreants so cute you can’t yell at them … so destructive it takes your breath away! They’re worse when they work as a pack.

But they love you, they really, really love you.

BUT NOT REALLY FUNNY – Marilyn Armstrong

07/24/201907/24/2019 / Marilyn Armstrong / 11 Comments

The last couple of years have been hilarious if you prefer very dark humor. It was a big year for late-night comics but it was depressing for regular people. Like us.

We laughed because comics are funny and it was easier emotionally to get our news from comic writers on late-night TV, but we weren’t really laughing.

Wrapped around the humor was the realization we weren’t going to get out of this mess for years to come. Two years if we do it right. Much more if we get it wrong.Remember way back in 2016 when Clinton said, “Look, I respect his children. His children are incredibly able and devoted, and I think that says a lot about Donald.” She was lying. I knew it. You knew it. I suppose it was the best she could do. She still thought she had to be polite.

We have learned otherwise in the years since. His children are as awful as he is, though they have a better education and at least seem able to read and probably aren’t demented.

Yet somehow, they are still stupid. I didn’t know you could get that much education and remain stupid. Perhaps it’s closer to ignorance — and unwillingness to learn.

In 2016, I could still remember the high points of the previous year. I don’t believe there were any high points in 2017 or 2018, except that Roy Moore wasn’t elected to the Senate and Democrats took over the House of Representatives. Otherwise, it’s been a down and dirty year with more on the way. I’m trying to feel better about it but the disorganization and confusion of the Democrats are not buoying my spirits.

This year may turn out to be hilarious at some point in the future when the world has gone around the sun a few more times, maybe it will be very funny. If I live long enough, it might be ROTFL for me and mine.

But not yet. I think my sense of humor needs an attitude adjustment.

This is my current theme song. I’m counting on something more upbeat for the future.

Lyrics: WE DIDN’T START THE FIRE

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio

Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe

Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, “The King and I” and “The Catcher in the Rye”

Eisenhower, vaccine, England’s got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye