I often think 45 has no concept of where the money comes from. Like it just “pops up” from the soil like weeds? We spend billions on a useless wall to make sure we have an even more ignorant population than we already do. I have lost my ability to even talk about this without getting crazy!
Last Friday afternoon, The Shinbone Star took a quick shot at Dangerous Donald’s alarming order to misappropriate congressionally mandated funding from allegorical Peter to pay undeserving Paul.
But what really stood out was Trump-appointee Secretary of Defense Mark Esper’s decision to deny American military dependent children living overseas a decent education in order to deny brown children a chance for a better life. His disgraceful decision typifies the venality of the Trump regime.
In this event, pitiful Peter is trapped in the arbitrary Pentagon money pit while predatory Paul lounges against Trump’s disastrous wall. In between are the children of powerless young service members living life overseas in near Spartan conditions.
It’s a particularly rotten deal for the kids, whose pennies their soulless president has purloined from their housing and school budgets to pay for his pretentious wall.
Since Thursday, after Trump’s fixation with weather forecasting waned, reports of Trump…
Yeah, the slide into Hell is going so smoothly — unless you are one of the people being dragged down there with your foot grasped firmly by a red demon. Then, maybe NOT so easy.
“I’m not sure that I’ve ever even heard of the Category 5. I knew it existed, and I’ve seen some Category 4s — you don’t even see them that much, but the Category 5 is something that I don’t know that I’ve ever even heard the term other than I know it’s there. — President Donald J. Trump 9/1/19
They’re testing us and we’re failing miserably.
A little more than half of the country does not want Donald Trump impeached and removed from office. The fact we’re talking about how the economy will affect his chances for re-election while he and the GOP donor class are wrecking the nation is a statement on just what the average American will accept if they don’t feel it in their wallet.
Consider:
“Separating families at the border for no good reason?” Shrug.
“Holding babies in cages?” “Their parents shouldn’t have put them in…
A quote from the weather bureau. A real quote. I am not making this up:
IDIOTS SHOULD BE WARNED NOT TO GO OUT INTO THE STORM.
I’m not sure why we name hurricanes. I have no idea how the names get picked. I could Google it and maybe find out, but I’m too lazy to bother right now.
Regardless, I think all hurricanes should be named Darwin. Why?
Because nothing weeds out the gene pool and brings out the stupid in people like a hurricane. The bigger they are, the dumber they get. As I’m writing this, Hurricane Dorian, or what I call it, Hurricane Darwin the 2nd (Irma was the 1st), having wreaked havoc on the Bahamas is approaching southern Florida.
The Weather Channel
The worst is yet to come. I’m watching the coverage, which is the exactly the same on all the networks. An anchor, who makes millions of dollars a year, is sitting in a warm cozy network studio. (Except for Lester Holt who was out there in the wind and rain just like a real reporter.)
He’s talking to the poor schmuck who drew the short straw and is standing in the middle of the hurricane telling everybody how dangerous the hurricane is and how nobody should be out in it. Except of course for him and his crew.
Now, granted, I know that they aren’t in as much danger as it seems. I worked for CBS News for 40 years and I know they set up in safe spots outside the wind. They only need one shot where the wind is howling and it looks like they are hanging on for dear life. When the live shot is over they all go back inside, smoke cigarettes, have lunch, play Candy Crush on their phones and wait for the next live hit.
I know Garry is nodding and laughing right now. (Note from home: Garry is laughing because he isn’t the schmuck out there in the storm.)
The really stupidest are the people who think they can ride these things out. I watched a news report a few days ago where they interviewed two people who planned on riding out Dorian from a trailer park.
Excuse me? Did you just say A TRAILER PARK??? One guy said he already lost his mobile home two weeks ago in a run off the mill flood. They happen there all the time.
His plan was to stay with a friend in another mobile home. They expected it to be destroyed too. What was their Plan B? To hang out in a temporary construction trailer! Mobile home lite!
I’m looking at the screen screaming “Are you nuts? Don’t you know hurricanes and tornadoes hate mobile homes?! A tornado will go around an entire town to get at just ONE TRAILER PARK!!”
To a hurricane, mobile homes are tasty little snacks! I know it’s much more complicated than this. Some people can’t get out for valid reasons — lack of anywhere to go or no vehicle or destitution.
But, for the guy who goes surfing as the hurricane hits, and dies then dies, well …
And, the guy who is kite surfing as the hurricane hits …
Oh Boy! I’m heading right toward the tornado! Cool!
And, the family on the beach with their kids taking videos of the guy kite surfing …
And, the poor schmuck interviewing them … who I should note has no choice because his idiot news director told him to do it or else …
I hope you all survive Hurricane Darwin the 2nd.
That wasn’t so bad.
I wish Mother Nature could come up with a less catastrophic method of weeding out the gene pool.
BOSTON (CBS) – The state’s Department of Public Health has confirmed a third human case of Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE), this one from northern Franklin County.
Mosquito spraying in Worcester Country begins today depending on the weather. There will probably be several spraying, again depending on the weather. Avoid going outside at dusk and dawn.
Wear long sleeves, long pants, and use DEET. It can be lethal to humans. Dogs are less likely to get it than people or horses — and when they do, it tends to be milder. It can kill horses as well as llamas and alpacas. There is no human vaccine, but there is a vaccine for horses. This situation will continue until hard frost.
We need a cold winter with less rain.
The latest victim is a man older than 60.
Massachusetts has not seen a human case of EEE since 2011 until this summer when now-three people contracted the virus.
The risk level in the towns of Heath and Colrain in Franklin County has been raised to critical.
A horse in Mendon and a horse in Uxbridge, both towns in Worcester County, have also tested positive for the EEE virus. The risk in those towns has also been raised to critical.
Massachusetts EEE risk levels as of Aug. 19 (WBZ-TV)
The threat caused Mendon to cancel Saturday night’s “Mendonfest” because it’s scheduled during peak biting hours.
“2019 is really turning out to be not just an active year, but a very active year,” said state epidemiologist Dr. Catherine Brown.
Dr. Brown said several factors are contributing including changing temperatures and precipitation along with the shifting types of mosquito species.
“Because we’re seeing an increase in the populations of the mammal biting mosquitoes, we think that might be one of the reasons that the cycle is changing a little bit as well,” Dr. Brown said.
Earlier this week, DPH and the Department of Agricultural Resources said aerial spraying in specific areas of Worcester and Middlesex counties is scheduled to begin Sunday, Aug. 25. As a result of the elevated risk in several communities, the spray zone has been expanded. The additional communities either partially or fully in the spray zone are Blackstone, Douglas, Dudley, Holliston, Hopedale, Mendon, Millville, Oxford, Uxbridge, and Webster.
In total across Massachusetts, there are 23 communities now at critical risk, 22 at high risk and 52 at moderate risk for the EEE virus. So far, EEE has been found in 330 mosquito samples this year, many of them from species that can spread the virus to humans.
EEE symptoms can range from a stiff neck, headache, and lack of energy to dangerous complications like inflammation and swelling of the brain.
The risk of EEE will remain until the first killing frost.
You can’t live without news, but no one can live with it either.
I don’t know how currently active reporters manage to cope with the news these days. It used to be a job. A hard job, an active and sometimes even significant job. Now, it’s like being on the front lines in a war zone. A constant nonstop war zone.
I’ve never been so glad that Garry is retired. It’s bad enough as it is, but if he had to go out there and personally deal with the maniacs and morons running our world? I’m sure he’d wind up crazier than they.
Sometimes, I really wish the news was reallyfake. That we wish it away. Throw a spell over it and turn it into toads. Then we would not have to deal with reality and its effect on our lives.
If only.
Maybe that’s how the crazies who howl at Trump manage to do it. If the real news is fake, then the yelling, screaming, chanting — it’s like going “nah, nah, nah” when someone is saying something you don’t want to hear. They are making it go away by making a noise and they won’t have to deal with what it will do to them. Or how it will affect their children and grandchildren. If it’s not real, it can’t hurt anyone, right?
Somehow, I suspect all the screams and howls prove they do know it’s real. Like two-year-olds, they think a tantrum will make it vanish.
It didn’t work when they were two and it’s unlikely to work now. But hey, a good shriek probably feels good.
Bu Mickey Paraskevas
I think I’ll go do some keening and maybe a little high-pitched ululation. Perhaps the dogs will join me. Maybe we should all do it together. Set up a time and place and everyone can scream, screech, yowl, howl, yelp, and bay into the air and the wind will carry it around the world.
I watch way too much cable news. Which is odd because I don’t really like the news. I worked for CBS News for over 40 years. I had to watch the news. I was making the news shows. It was my job.
If I had a choice, I would rather watch the cartoon network But now I watch cable news all the time. I seem to be morbidly fascinated with the steady decline of America and what the ass-hole-in-chief did today.
I have noticed one interesting thing. Well, interesting to me.
Only old people watch cable news.
How do I know this? Simple. The commercials. They’re the same. Fox, MSNBC, CNN and for the most part CBS, NBC, and ABC.
By “all the same.”I mean the same advertisers. They break down into a few categories: drugs, medical products, drugs. Medicare supplement plans, drugs. Life Insurance and annuities, drugs, walk-in bathtubs, stair lifts and, oh yeah, drugs.
Every last one of them is depressing as hell. Most of them, I simply don’t understand.
Let’s start with a drug supplement that is supposed to help your brain think better. Why does it make your brain better? Well, they proudly tell you it’s because of an ingredient found … wait for it… in JELLYFISH!
Yes, jellyfish.
Because, you know, when I think of something that involves brains and intelligence, the first thing I think of is a jellyfish! Billion-year-old multi-cellular organisms who float in the ocean waiting for food to become entangled in their floaty dangling tentacle-like thingies. Also, they have no brain.
Then I got to thinking about it and maybe I have it all wrong. Maybe jellyfish are the most intelligent, intellectual philosophical thinkers on the planet. You know, like those advanced omnipotent species that show up on Star Trek.
I mean, what else do they have to do all day? They just float around.
JELLYFISH 1: I think, therefore, I am.
JELLYFISH 2: Free will is an illusion.
JELLYFISH 3: Hey! Some food just bumped into my tentacle thingies!
Next, reverse mortgages.
This is where if you own your house you can sell it back to the bank. They pay you a monthly payment until they buy your house back. Then you have no place to live. So, you’re betting you die before you become homeless. And older.
Is that a bet you want to win?
Then there are all the companies that want to buy your life insurance policy. The pitch goes something like this: “We needed more money for our retirement. We found out we could sell our life insurance policy. Now we are set for life.”
UNTIL ONE OF YOU DIES and the survivor has no life insurance to collect and live off of!!! Isn’t that the reason you bought life insurance??
Isn’t that what happens when the person holding the policy dies??
I guess you could room with the guy who just became homeless. Except, oh yeah, he doesn’t have a home.
Then there are the catheter commercials almost always being hawked by a guy who looks like a middle manager for an insurance company.
Actual catheter guy. And they all have the same mustache.
They all start out with the guy saying, “I don’t like pain when I cath.”
WHAT? Are there people out there who like pain when they cath? And when the hell did “cath” become a verb?? If you don’t know what a catheter is, Google it. I’m not going to explain it.
Having said that, here’s a true story.
Back when I was a college freshman I worked as an orderly and an ER technician for a hospital. One of my jobs was catheterizing patients. I had only done the procedure on old guys who were unconscious or in a coma.
One day the head nurse gave me a cath kit and told me to do it to a 45-year-old wide-awake guy who was being prepped for surgery. I walked in the room and said I had to catheterize him. He asked me what that was. I explained it to him. When I finished there was a really long pause. All he said was, “You gotta be kidding me.”
It was at that point I realized that:
I had never explained the procedure out loud to anyone before. And —
He had a point.
So I went back to the head nurse and said “Not doing this one. You’re on your own.”
Finally, drug commercials.
Lots and lots of drug commercials all of which are incredibly annoying because they take a beloved song from my youth and pervert it into shilling their drug. They all tell YOU to ask your doctor if whatever drug they’re selling is right for you.
Shouldn’t your doctor already know that? If he doesn’t, have you considered getting a new doctor?
Here’s the main take away from all drug commercials.
DON’T TAKE ANY OF THESE DRUGS!!!
For God’s sake, listen to the list of side effects they describe in each of them.
Explosive diarrhea!
Sudden stroke!
Sudden death!
Rectal itch!
There’s actually a commercial for an anti-depression drug where one of the side effects is suicidal depression!
The drug side effects are worse than the disease you’re trying to treat. Except maybe for the one with rectal itch. I just don’t remember what disease it was treating.
So, to all you young folks out there. If you want to see where your life is going to end up, watch a cable news station for a day.
Me, I think I’m going to go back to watching the cartoon network.
Jon Stewart’s rant at the Senate a couple of days ago is still all over the news. This is unusual insofar as he has beaten the “news cycle.” Lots of other things have happened, but he didn’t get forgotten. I think in part, he has not been forgotten because he was and is a particularly eloquent speaker and a very professional handler of news, microphones, and politicians and even after all these years, I miss him. No matter how many times he said “I’m just a comedian,” we all knew that was not true.
He may have started out in comedy, but he ended up as good a newsman as I have seen. Rather better than most.
So, for anyone who might have missed it, here it is again:
Also, if you get a chance to take a look at, “Teach Your Children Well,” please watch the CSN&Y video. The artwork is heartbreaking and brought me to tears.
On reflection, some things news stories do last beyond their time as does some music. These are two of them.
To participate in the Ragtag Daily Prompt, create a Pingback to your post, or copy and paste the link to your post into the comments. And while you’re there, why not check out some of the other posts too!
And, the guy who is kite surfing as the hurricane hits …
