Well…as the details become available on the bills wending there way through congress, one thing is clear…seniors get screwed again. Where the initial bill started out with dental, vision, and hearing being added to Medicare coverage…the version of the bill that is going to pass has none of those in it…they may include an 800 dollar “voucher” to cover some dental work but I think they will probably sacrifice that to Manchin and Sinema since they are so in the pocket of big business that don’t want anything good for the people of the country if they can’t make a profit from it. They have no problem giving the Pentagon 46 billion dollars they don’t even want, but they can’t get seniors out of dental pain or pay for community college for our kids….this is such a slap in the face for everyone on Medicare and I hope the dems will use the repub opposition to everything in this bill to beat them over the head with it in 2022…if two fricking repubs would have negotiated in good faith, we could have taken care of a wide swath of the country and made their lives better…made my life better…now, I can afford to spend a couple of thousand on the dental work I need, but the majority of seniors can’t and it is just sick to make them suffer to avoid taxing the rich just a tiny little bit…god, I hate these people….geez….
Category Archives: Politics
Why hasn’t he been arrested yet?
Well…I’m getting pretty tired of rich people getting to do all kinds of crimes and then just walk away tra la la….and you’re probably tired of me talking about the idiot trump but damn, another instance of tax fraud at one of his golf courses was just reported yesterday and there appears to be enough evidence to indict the criminal for the same damn thing he has been doing all of his life….inflating the worth of his golf course to get bigger loans and then deflating it when he was paying taxes on it…this is felony tax fraud and he has done it on every property he has ever owned and yet no indictment, no arrests, no consequences….I wonder why he never has to get an appraisal to get loans…is that just for the little people? I know I had to get one when I got the loan for this place…or I wonder if he has appraisers who are in on the scam? Whatever the case, these simple actions are against the law but not one damn prosecutor has the guts to charge this asshole…and the corrosive effect on the rule of law is seen every damn day…and the repubs are the ones who are doing it…they are even trying to protect Steve Bannon to keep him from being held accountable for plotting the January 6th insurrection by blocking his arrest for ignoring the house subpoenas…this bullshit never would have happened when I was younger…but the modern repubs are truly the party of lies and cheating and they are going to kill this country…geez…
Some thoughts…
Well…just got finished for the day and thought I’d just muse a little on some thoughts I had on the bike…you know, the idiot trump really doesn’t know how anything works…especially the government…and he has some really dumb lawyers…just earlier in the week, idiot boy sued the January 6th committee citing “executive privilege” on “his” records dealing with the insurrection….man, I’m just sitting here shaking my head about that one….first, not one damn piece of these records are “his”…they belong to the US government and his ability to claim executive privilege ended when he was no longer the executive…that belongs to Biden now and he has control over the records and has said that the committee can have anything they want to be able to do their jobs and figure out who was responsible for the attack…and to that end the committee has voted to hold Steve Bannon in contempt of congress for refusing to provide the records they have subpoenaed…and idiot boy has told him that he doesn’t have to using the same bogus claim of “executive privilege” the he is trying to use to keep his ass out of jail….so there is some movement…finally…to hold the people responsible for the insurrection accountable…it’s about damn time…geez..
Oleg Deripaska got raided…
Well…okay, you can be forgiven for not knowing who this guy is but you should when it comes to the idiot trump’s criminality…..Oleg is one of Putin’s buddies and has been involved with all of Putin’s election interference and money laundering, and is one person who is linked to trump in multiple ways…oh, and ole Mitch, too…when idiot boy removed the sanctions that Oleg’s business had on it so he could build an aluminum plant in Kentucky…and even repubs said the whole thing reeked of corruption. So today, the FBI raided his house in DC and the interesting thing is that the raid is said to be related to a case being pursued in the SDNY where there are at least two investigations of idiot boy going on right now…so, we can only hope that this is related to one of them and Oleg starts to sing to stay out of prison and takes trump and McConnell down with him….an interesting development to say the least….
Let’s talk about JIT…
Well…damn, just crashed the bike but that’s for the next one…right now, I want to talk about the right’s latest bogeyman, JIT. As you know, there have been some pretty big supply disruptions with lots of container ships stuck outside of the major ports here in the US…and warnings that you should be shopping for christmas now so you will be able to get presents…and, of course, the right wing media is blaming the whole thing on Biden for reasons that make absolutely no sense….but that doesn’t matter to them. What everyone has to understand is that the bottlenecks are caused by a little thing in the supply chains called JIT…or just in time production. Back about 30 years or so, people started to notice that there was lots and lots of inventory and work in progress in their warehouses and factories that was costing them tons of cash to just store….and the production and other processes worked to estimates of what would be needed since that was the only information they had and most businesses and warehouses had months of production and stock just sitting there…but then new ideas started to form about making processes more efficient and only making goods that you have orders for…the idea of just in time started to be adopted across the world to squeeze every penny out of the supply chain. As it became more and more efficient, it also became more and more susceptible to disruption as the chain balanced on a knife edge with no tolerance for problems in any part of it. When the pandemic hit and closed factories accross Asia and everywhere else, and shut down ports and other transport systems necessary to move goods, the finely balanced house of cards fell apart since there were no warehouses full of goods to cushion the shocks, and the result was bare shelves across the country. But what Biden has to do with it, I don’t know…these are private, capitalistic systems that have been built to profit the owners and no one else…so tell me the actions he has taken that disrupted this house of cards? No…yeah, didn’t think there were any….is Biden hiding shipping containers at the WH? Is he telling truck drivers to quit since they are being paid less now than they were 40 years ago? Did he offshore all of American manufacturing so good have to be shipped from Asia? I think the repubs really are too stupid to understand the pitfalls of JIT…as an ME, I built many of these systems at the furniture manufacturer I worked for and lived the chaos when they crashed…this is just on a much bigger scale…geez…
Still looking for a topic…
Well…as I sit here waiting for the rain to stop so I can get on the bike, I thought I’d come here and do one of these…but a good topic escapes me…oh, here’s one…do all repubs not pay their debts? We all know that the idiot trump stiffs everyone that works for him…and after one time, I wonder why anyone would work for him…he still owes money on his casinos that have been torn down and people continue to give him more money for some reason…but, he’s not the only repub that doesn’t pay his bills…just today it was reported that ole Newt still owes almost 5 million bucks from his failed run for president in 2012…and he has no intent to pay any of it back…even though he could afford it with the millions he makes from fox news…this is the rot that has infected the modern repub party…I remember when they were fiscally responsible folks…but maybe they never were…I mean I’m an old guy and maybe my memory is crappy….don’t think so, though….geez…
We can’t afford it?
Well…the whiners on the right are trying to torpedo the infrastructure bill that the dems are negotiating with them for by saying that “we can’t afford it” and the 350 billion dollar a year pricetag is just too high….to put that in perspective, we just have to look at the amount of money that billionaires have made in the last two years of the pandemic. It was reported just yesterday that these folks net worth increased by almost 1.9 trillion dollars…yep, that’s trillion with a t and that is just sick….look, if we just taxed these people at the rate that regular people pay, around 20 percent, the whole bill would be paid for with an extra 30 billion left over…and that doesn’t even include what could be done if we finally has a minimum corporate tax rate of say 15% which would bring in another 100 billion a year at least…so, again, the repubs are lying when they say “we can’t afford it”…we CAN afford it, if they would just get out of the way and let government work for the people for a change….geez…
Weird elections out here…
Well…with the rain continuing, I have a morning to fill so I thought I’d come here and do one of these after fixing the mower…as I get ready to fill in my absentee ballot for the election next month and read about the candidates who are running for city commission and mayor, I find it odd that the entire election is supposed to be non-partisan…which means none of the candidates can say whether they are a dem or repub…so that makes it a little more difficult for me to make sure I don’t vote for a repub…but, luckily, some of the candidates have gotten pretty clever in listing their endorsements that send a clear message of what party they belong to….and I have mailers for every one of them laying on my coffee table to read and their websites, too, I mean would a repub ever be endorsed by the dem progressive caucus? Pretty sure they wouldn’t and there are others who want to make sure that everyone’s voice is heard…and others who are “business” minded…and you can pretty well guess what party he belongs to…it’s a little odd to have to do this deep dive to figure out who to vote for…but, I have the time and I know who I want to work with to continue the progress up here…now I just need to drop the ballot off this week….
They lied about unemployment, too….
Well…I’m sure you’ve heard all of the stories pushed by the repubs in the spring and summer the the “generous” unemployment benefits of 300 dollars a week were keeping the lazy workers from looking for work and there was a “labor shortage” because of it…never mind that employers that started caring about their workers and raised what they paid were swamped with applicants…the only shortage appears to be with employers who want cheap labor for their jobs that doesn’t pay enough to live on. With the reporting on the jobs reports that repubs said would be enormous after cutting of the unemployment benefits, and it wasn’t, we really do see that they were lying about why people weren’t going back to the crappy jobs with low pay and benefits….and that cutting unemployment was no incentive to work when people are still worried about the pandemic or child care, or the health problems that makes it dangerous for some unemployed to go back to work for employers who do nothing to protect them. Just like everything in economics, the repubs don’t care about facts, especially when it gets in the way of their preferred lies that they use to hurt people every day….so I wonder what the new lie is going to be? We’ll see tomorrow….geez…
What the hell is wrong with these people?
Well…with schools starting up and the responsible ones mandating masks for kids and teachers, of course the right wing assholes spurred on by tucker carlson and the kochs, are standing outside schools screaming at children to take off their masks and that masks are just like “raping” children and are filing bogus child abuse charges against these schools and in some cases even parents. What the hell is wrong with these people? In what universe is it okay to attack a 6 year old for following the rules? It was found the other day that the koch right wing networks of think tanks and websites have been sending out instructions to their followers how to attack school boards that mandate masks and other mitigation measures to keep children safe…shouldn’t this be a crime? It should be if is isn’t…these are assaults and these brainwashed assholes need to be held accountable…and especially tucker who daily exhorts his watchers to violence against anyone who would take away their “freedoms”…but, as all of the right these days, the hypocrisy runs high in ole tucker, he and every one at fox “news” has to be vaccinated or they can’t get in the building…seems like a “mandate” to me…I wonder why tucker isn’t walking a picket line outside his studio to protest? We all know the answer to that…they love manipulating the rubes that watch their crappy shows and get their jollies from them being assholes to other Americans who are doing the right things in the pandemic…and that is what’s wrong with these people…geez…