Chickens are good people

1 = 1 =5. Perfect math for these disconnected times. It comes from a meme that really rang true for me. If you want to believe 1+1 does equal 5, I’m not going to try to dissuade you as I’ve come to realize what folly that truly is. People are arguing on social media based on emotions and the confirmation of their preferred narrative not the facts.

Where do you start? So many things to be mad about but I fear for my overtaxed outrage, The Texas anti-woman crusade? Uncle George Carlin from almost twenty years ago put it right

Pretty much says it right,

We do seem to be a pattern of instead of addressing an issue proactively, we seem to fight about it. That law is about control, not about actual behavior, the healthcare, but control. The need of some backwards cromudgeonly cromagnon old white guys (who as George notes, nobody wants to mess with anyway) asserting control in an area where the governor wants ignore the pandemic. Apparently the virus has more rights in Texas than the female citizenry.

You wouldn’t think people would have the capacity to not see the wrongness here, but somewhere, somehow, there are jugheads arguing about it. Gp get ’em, Merrick Garland. This needs repair not pointless internet arguing.

We don’t look for facts, we look for preferences.

It’s not Facebook’s fault that people aren’t getting covid shots, but that does seem to be a battle front where the line between barstool philospher and infectious disease expert seems to be pretty hazy (maybe that is a side effect). A year and a half into the pandemic, nobody really has an absolute. We all just think we do. What I think, getting vaccinated doesn’t necessarily absolutely cure or keep Covid completely away, but it seems a good step to take to reduce the severity if it landed, a good step to take, but you do you, or don’t.

I can’t help but wonder if there has been a bit of ripple effect in the workforce from 700,000 people dying from Covid. People have fought about nobody wanting to work because of the supposed great living you made during the expanded unemployment benefits when those were around. Sure, there are folks gaming the system. I can think of 535 of them in the house and senate. Given the extraordinary nature of the pandemic where nobody could be certain of anything, maybe folks reprioritized, maybe some postings were exposed to not be that great, maybe some employers aren’t worth hiring, maybe years of being in hospitality didn’t prepare you for being a mask or vaccination police person (see that poor woman attacked by customers at her NYC restaurant for doing her job), maybe years as a flight attendant didn’t prepare you for self-righteous buffoons attacking each other and you in flight, and maybe some places are depending on the vicissitudes of hiring algorithms to fill postings. I’ll check my resume for keywords. Anyhoo, it’s a complex situation that doesn’t have easy answers that will never get properly addressed in any facebook status update arguments.

I’d rather my city have a mayor with a few parking tickets than one whose office gets raided by the FBI. And while I am at it, socialist programs do not mean Trotsky is a coming. Most of the new deal was socialist programming. Social security, farm price supports, unemployment, bank deposit insurance, streets getting repaved, hell, anytime government does something for anybody fits the definition. People are running from a word without bothering to look it up. Perhaps they can research it while they are looking up their vaccine research.

I can’t help but wonder if anybody is even doing that, researching their vaccine, and if they did, do they know what they are looking at? Unlikely, but give em a meme to post and they will admonish anybody who doubts.

Witness the all the partisians on facebook now that are choosing sides as Congress continues to screw around with bills that are designed to help people, keep social security payments, pay the military, trivial stuff like that, invest in roads and bridges and each party is so hell bent on screwing the other, it is going to be the citizenry who is going to lose, yet apparently the country came here for an argument once more.

We aren’t fixing anything. With so much broken you’d think that might be job one, but no, it’s easier to throw spitballs from the back of the internet, shouting your possibly baked notion louder than the next, not to any real end other than to be louder than what you don’t want to hear.

It reminds me of the belligerently written posts to raise awareness or post this on your wall or I know real friend will posts, I hate those things they do nothing than serve as vehicles for attention. Everybody likes to posit that social media is an evil, but never stopping to consider a paraphrase of Pogo: “We have seen the enemy and it is us.”

Let’s fix something. Get it fixed and at the bar when the job is done we can toast how it should have been.

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Political Pandemic Blues.

I have had my fill. The pandemic has warped all our intellects. I’m weary, I mean like working at home. Between projects today, I got chores done. It would occasionally be good to go for a bike ride with somebody else. I miss concerts, hugs and overpriced beer with good friends. My granddaughter is 10 months old and I’m pretty sure thinks that there is a definite limit of people in her world, somewhere around 20 of us. There is a very fine line between solitude and isolation. With the numbers significantly worse than last spring when this started, I remain resolute. I thought I had a grasp on it all, but the days are getting weirder. Strange Days indeed as the Erie County Comptroller is taken to caring about what the County Executive is doing for a half hour on Sunday morning? I would have thought that would have been the weirdest thing I would I have heard in January, but instead it’s not even close. That’s a little bizarro, shouldn’t the comptroller be comptrolling something. I guess we deserve it. In the last election, the choice was an experienced financial professional and him. His nose seems to extend into the business of those of who don’t blanket agree with him. It’s been revealed the poor devil shows up for work in his office as much as 5 days a month. Must be exhausting.

In an ongoing attempt to fix anything by slapping a fee on it, the City of Buffalo installed cameras near five schools to monitor motorists’ speeds during school hours. We need a new mayor. Initially they were supposed to run all day, then during school arrival and dismissal hours. Apparently functioning at all is a tall order. The mayor insists this isn’t a cash grab. Respectfully, I disagree. We need a new leader at the top. I picked my candidate. I think it is an effort to shore up the books on the backs of city residents that may have been overextended. The books are definitely overextended thorough reserve use. The citizens definitely. We need to live within our means, so should our municipality. The most efficient thing to do at this point would seem to admit failure and perhaps throw in the towel, that along with quit trying to fix everything with a new fee.

Charge SENS. CRUZ, JOHNSON AND HAWLEY UNDER 18 US CODE 2385. We have laws against trying to overthrow the government by advocating things like the extra-constitutional “Emergency Audit” @TedCruz proposed. When it is close, you get your recount. When it isn’t close, you don’t. There are no mass accusations of fraud, there are no disputed states. There is a lopsided pile of lawsuits that died because of lack of evidence. Sedition from supposed public servants. 59 lawsuits filed with just one victory. These self-absorbed “Patriots” need to rethink this. This isn’t about serving the people or making sure 70 million people are heard (they were, Senator Hawley, they were). It is all about stealing the election and lighting a corner of the constitution ablaze to stay in power which wasn’t earned. As this movement has nothing, literally nothing, it would wonderous if they knew how much they should be paying attention to Georgia instead of nonsensical gestures like this one. The events of January 6th are at their feet. Now if we could just figure out why they keep getting elected when they deliver so little for the people they supposedly represent. People drank some Kool-Aid hard. I don’t know what it is about the hate-yam’s yammering other than it has been a project prior to his winning in 2016. These jamokes had me agreeing with Mitt Romney, that is weird. Makes me crazy that after the GOP riot/flawed coup, the Mittster was the voice of reason. Tell us the truth? Crazy talk. Crazier still when you consider how many would prefer not to hear it. I liked Angry Mitt.

Same thing with Hawley. If you voted to overturn the results of a certified election with zero evidence, stop whining about unity. You’re traitors.

I felt the need to include the above because somehow being removed from Twitter is being construed with freedom of speech. Anybody who signs up on a service (like this one) is subject of the rules of that service. If the President really wanted to talk, there is a whole press room within walking distance of his office that could have lapped up the day’s lies, fabrications and insults with great ease.

Something else that has been bothering me. When Mr. Trump was elected, those extremely on the left started up with “He’s not my president.” Bad news for you folks, he was. He was the president, got to run the show. The same thing goes with the new administration. Regardless of how you feel about him, he is running the show.

I still can’t help but wonder what people saw in him. I understand your party is your party, but what exactly was there. The very words from then Press Secretary Sean Spicer was a daring to pick a fight with the White House Press Corp about the size of the Trump inaugural crowds.

I’m sure President Biden will do something or somethings to displease me, but he does seem to get that the Presidency is a public service job, not for a personal profiteering notion. In addition to jumping on Mr. Biden for sporting a Rolodex watch and owning a Peloton, the New York Times did stop to discover that much of the funding for organizing of the January 6th riots came from the Trump campaign.

As perhaps my favorite voices and writers (Bruce Springsteen) noted on his radio show this week noted:

“Now, I’m curious: What kind of narcissist are you that thinks you have the right to trash our People’s House, stop the wheels of our democracy, while we are in the process of performing one of our most sacred duties, the peaceful transfer of power, in the most powerful nation on Earth, and to act based on a cheap, easily disproven lie of a stolen election, a lie that has been reviewed, disproven, debunked and rejected by every court in the land, including our own Trump-filled Supreme Court. I mean, who do you think you are to desecrate the halls of our democracy purely on the word of a delusional, broken carny barker of a president, who knows allegiance only … to himself. He is a dime store seditionist and a low-rent traitor to the Constitution, and to the United States of America.

“I ask my good American brothers and sisters to value yourselves and your allegiances more deeply. Donald J. Trump does not deserve your good soul and your honest and heartfelt commitment. Your country, your real country, awaits and needs you. So I say this with pain and love in my heart: Don’t waste your compassion on those who do not deserve it. You are better and worth much more than that. In this world, God’s world, no infallible truth resides in just one man. There is only one truth, God’s truth, and it is a truth of deep inquiry, humility in the face of facts, and it is grounded in the faith and love and respect you carry for your neighbors and your country. Let us all pray to God we have the strength to see clearly with our mind, heart and eyes, and that we may hold our faith high, humbly, and in service of our country and the truth.”

Well said, Boss. An extremist couple, of course, armed with recording cell phone accosted Mitt Romney in an airport wanting to know how he was going to vote in Electoral College certification (something they likely didn’t know about four years previous) and got abusive when the Senator didn’t give them the answer they wanted. 1999 Lindsey Graham said that if we support Trump we deserve our end. It’s too bad he didn’t give 2021 Lindsey the news. Cruz, Graham, Rubio, Hawley sold their souls for somebody who didn’t give a crap about theirs. They are all so hellbent to stay in power, not to represent, but to stay in power, witness how none of them have said boo about the covid situation getting worse. Hopefully the new senate will be forced into working together. There are no guarantees, no assured successes, but it feels a little more like, i don’t know, the folks at the top aren’t there to fill their larters.

Boss gets the last word

525.00

If you get the tax taken out from the enhanced unemployment, that is what you get. This program has been one of the few good ideas to come out of the government during the Covid 19 pandemic.

While some senators would already have way too much vacation voiced that “it’s a disincentive to get people to work,” as you might expect I don’t share that opinion. I’ve been the recipient of two confidence shaking furloughs and am not quite out of the woods a third. That extra bit has kept me in my home, paid bills, bought groceries and gone BACK INTO THE FLIPPING ECONOMY!!!

The senators (let’s call them McConnell and Graham) think in stupidly general terms instead of doing what is right and just for the people they supposedly represent. It’s money I’ve been paying into since I started working at age 15.

Regular unemployment benefits don’t do it. These chuckleheads seem to think it is coming out of their pockets. What good is propping up cruiselines (THAT PAY NO TAXES!!!) when nobody can afford to partake.

I’m not saying we should be cruising but when government forces a shutdown, this is what you run budgets up for, not for when tax  rolls don’t favor your friends enough. There has been complaints that this had underminded folks desire to work. I don’t agree. I was on the program for a few weeks and I paid the rent, car and pushed it all back into that economy that will suddenly be without a lot of spending if this deadline goes by the way side, which should be a concern for those wanting the economy to move again. This has larger ramifications that morons saying get a job on facebook posts. To those morons, yeah, everybody should be working indeed and I’m sorry you didn’t get rewarded as your job didn’t end, but have you tried to apply for something when you are over age say, 35, it gets tougher. A manufacturing union rep looking for workers says the benefits are over a $1000 a week and he can’t compete with that. That has the benefit of not being true.

Sure, a few played the system like every government program ever, but can you imagine if you are a restaurant worker and your place has reduced capacity, so you are making minimum and because that reduced capacity, you aren’t going to clear as many tips, and you have to take on sanitizing and mask policing, I’m not going to lie, that does slow your roll a bit.

But unemployment does want you to be looking. My time down? That’s all I was doing. These are unprecedented times and we do need to not be so selfish when folks are squirming because of circumstances forced upon them.

As has been often said, “nobody wins, unless everybody wins.”

 

Only A River…

It seems every commercial these days seems to start out with “In these challenging times” and each restaurant and car dealer wants me to know the steps they are taking to stay clean along with every news outlet tells me I’m getting the facts (when you think about it, it isnt the best disclaimer.).

While staying home is something my introverted side has trained for forever, occasionally, you need to sooth your soul while avoiding anyplace too “peoplely.” To paraphrase 80s favorites Simple Minds or one of my favorite singers, Billie Holiday, I like to cover the waterfront. The sounds and sites are soothing. You can be out and breathe without having to circle City Hall.

Richard Avedon has nothing to fear from me. I think I have an eye, maybe not talent but an eye. The Unity Island is a great spot to watch the sun check out, international waters rip by, trains overhead and traveling canadians on the horizons, but mostly a good spot to stop and be.

I have come three straight days and got this one. I was thinking about on the first visit and seized the moment this eve.

Happy places are where you make em in this socially distant world. A little further down river and mother nature shows off against the industrial background. Wander but stay 6 feet away.

Tell the patient to be patient

You are all concerning me a bit.

I mean, I’d like our existence to be a little more open. I don’t want to say normal as I’m not sure what we were doing was normal, but I’d like to see my kids, my granddaughter, my mom and dad, my significant other and be able to touch, hug and generally be.

But as the nursing home next to my building afforded a grave reminder, Covid is everywhere, taking four people who shouldn’t have had to wage that particular fight.

As I watched the parade of morons block up Niagara Square in Buffalo with their pleas of haircuts, work, etc, while heavily armed (curiously, everything is a second amendment issue), it angered me that these jamokes think everybody is expendable. There are government officials who think people are expendable. Clearly the president just wants to move on from covid. I half expect him to next recommend windex for everything like the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

The leaders in Georgia, Tennessee and Las Vegas are anxious to get people out. Everybody wants out, but for the mayor of Las Vegas to recommend her city as a “Control Group” was beyond stupid.

For the mayor in Jacksonville to want his beaches open so badly with no regard for consequence, I can’t help but wonder how these buffoons get elected.

I think we need to chill on our quest for normal, but I’m pretty sure that we aren’t on the downward slope. Because the federal response has lagged and because testing is so fractional of the bigger picture, I don’t think hitting a plateau is anything to get to excited about. When the death tally is a maybe a dozen less than the day before, that isn’t a good thing. It’s a less horrible thing.

I don’t know when bowling got to be at the head of the class in terms of things to open first. I mean everybody, me included, wants to open up. I want to share the experience of a Rolling Stones concert with my son, but I’d rather him healthy and well and me too. Jumping the gun is so unbelieveabily risky.

Nobody is expendable or a casualty of the price you pay for “fighting a war.”

Nor should this be the case for profiteering. I was gobsmacked that Rose’ Chris steakhouse got funding, that Harvard got funding, but I guess I shouldn’t be shocked.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/firms-trump-links-or-worth-100-million-got-small-business-n1190741?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma

50,000 people have died and people are protesting to get a haircut. Work has been cutback everywhere and Lindsey Graham (a guy who should be out of work) thinks we are enabled to sitting at home. Mitch McConnell (I wish somebody would tear him down and put up a human being) doesn’t want to help you at all if you live in the wrong state, despite his never delivering for his own.

(from WBFO’s web page)

Yes, it is an inconvenience, but we don’t know where we accurately are currently. What the yahoos in the picture above don’t know is that in their quest to resume life as it was in February is that they don’t know where the Covid is hiding (Psst, short answer, everywhere).

I don’t want anymore presidential sarcasm, denying of science, musings at to what might cure when it could fool around and come right back to us.

We all want to resume our lives, nobody disagrees with that all, I just want to be around to enjoy it.

Proceed with caution

 

Mad World

To say that we are living in strange times at the moment thanks to Covid-19 would be dramatically understating the current state of affairs in daily life. New terms of entered the daily lexicon and I’m pretty sure I hate all of them.

“The New Normal” crops up in pretty much every newscast and it bothers me as none of this is normal. There isn’t normal in being able to ride down two of the main streets of the city like I did the other night on my bike during the dinner hour unencumbered by actual traffic. There isn’t anything normal being able to drive the outline of the island of Manhattan in 45 minutes like a good friend of mine did this past weekend. The twisted shopping patterns employed by some when launching an offensive on their grocery store is not normal. When I was a kid, my dad worked a job that paid him once a month. With four kids at home, the folks didn’t have as much stuff as I’ve seen people loading up on in recent weeks. Let’s call it what it is. It’s now, nothing more, the bleak, depressing now that we all have to power through. There is nothing new or normal about it. It’s just now.

Fluid situation and practicing social distancing aren’t too far behind. The language behind it is to blame. With the sake of just being alone, are you practicing for a time when it is real? Nope, you are just doing it.

But semantics aside, it needs to be done. In an era, where everybody on social media is an instant constitutional scholar, infectious disease expert, master strategist, shut it and hide

I worry. We haven’t been able to see my mom for almost a month as her assisted living facility closed the doors under state order. While that is understandable, she is less than adept with a cellphone so keeping the ties that bind bound are a challenge. My brother is an intellectually challenged guy who resides in a group home and I believe he is understanding the virus outbreak and the means needed to get it under control.

As the U.S. “leadership” was finally detecting a problem, I happily became a grandpa. My daughter and son-in-law have smartly limited the people coming into the home, so It means I haven’t seen much of them either in the past three weeks.

It’s tough. I watched the panic buying of Toilet Paper and other commodities that solved nothing but an unneeded, unwarranted strain on things. If you truly needed that much TP, Covid-19 might be the least of your problems.

Now, is it the President’s fault that the virus got here? Of course not, viruses can’t be slowed by walls. But you want more from your leaders, you want to believe they are leading in stead of concerned with ego and profiteering. Andrew Cuomo doesn’t need to move at this point for to get my vote again. Anybody who rolls up their figurative sleeves and literally says he doesn’t care about reelection (I saw him say it) has a proper grasp of the issue and sees the whole catastrophic board.

I appreciate the Governor’s forthrightness, his honesty, his willingness to say I don’t know and to call out the hypocrisy in getting things done. He understands his is a public service job first and foremost. He’s trying to solve a problem.

That is laudable. Being close the Canadian border, I’ve been reading a lot about the monthly stipend that the Trudeau government has put Canadian citizens on. I’m fortunate that my job has stayed in tact, despite me working from home, but I know many who aren’t so lucky. I’m not thoroughly versed in Justin Trudeau’s regular policies and I suspect that there are things I might disagree with, but in this instance, he is making Canada great again by putting stock and investing in Canadians.

He sees the whole board. Now I’m not an acolyte for either man, but I admire how they are responding to the matter at hand.

Every economic blowhard booked to talk about jobs always says we should have three months of salary stashed in cash of job loss. It’s pretty lousy advice in this paycheck to paycheck world and I guess it doesn’t apply to airlines or cruise lines. Let’s help the workers of an american hospital prior to the cruise line that pays no taxes. Let’s help the people who have to spend their money after spending time with that hospital before helping the cruise that isn’t registered here.

Any leader, especially a President, has to make untenable, undesireable decisions, that if we were privy to them, we might rethink support. A voice I admire a lot once cautioned that “Blind Faith, in your leaders, in anything, can get you killed.”

As I write this, almost 8000 residents of New York State have died from Covid 19. I don’t have across the nation statistics in front of me, but there is no way to be at peace with that number.

Is it the President’s fault that Covid 19 got to America’s shores? Like I said earlier, of course not, but the disorganized, meandering, bellligent, ambien-popping, reporter-berating, all about me response most definitely is.

From ignoring intelligence, slashing CDC budgets, closing many offices including one in China, to dismissing the virus as a democratic hoax, to generally insuring we could not be worse preparared, that sit at his strangely empty desk. For nightly briefings that began with every speaker professing his or her adoration to Dear Leader to swatting away guestions when he given the softest of softball questions, to the pot shot taking at governors trying to help and the pats on the pack for those who put their citizens at risk, it has been a flop, a failure, a compounding of disaster spoken in mostly pronoun terms.

“Let’s see what happens” (you have no idea, do you sir)

“Everybody is waiting to…” (who, exactly?)

He says we can’t lose the airlines in defending bailing them out. You know what would help, is making it easier for customers to afford to fly, i.e. put the money in the hands of the people who will spend it, instead of dumping the people charged with overseeing stimulus funding. If a cruise line that doesn’t pay taxes here want aid, make registration here a condition of that age.

Instead of touting an unproven medicine as a cure because of an investment, instead of complaining about the nation’s governors looking to Washington for some assistance instead of shunning 1 million tests from the World Health Organization, instead of complaining about the questions asked at press briefings, it would be great if he saw the whole board, but time and time again, he does not, he’s too busy looking in the mirror.

Government should be a place where everybody comes together, and nobody gets left behind