Month: May 2022

As I was reading a recent piece by Victor Davis Hanson my mind drifted to the 1975 movie, The Stepford Wives, which was based a 1972 satirical novel by Ira Levin. FYI, The Stepford Wives concerns Joanna Eberhart, a talented photographer, wife and young mother who suspects the submissive housewives in her new idyllic Connecticut neighborhood may be robots created by their husbands.

Hanson’s piece on Rip McIntosh’s “Rip’s Newsletter” is titled “American Greatness,” and it starts out,

“If an administration deliberately wished:

-to case havoc on the border,

-to ensure that fuel was nearly unaffordable,

-to create a crime wave,

-to spark 1970s hyperinflation,

 and

-to rekindle racial tensions

what would it have done differently than what Joe Biden has done?”

Think about that for a second. Whereas every rational American would agree that all of the above are bad for our country and it’s citizens, the question that pops into my mind is whether J.B. has been acting all along to intentionally cause all of this chaos. Could it possibly be that instead of a semi-senile old man occupying the Oval Office, we have a Stepford President?

Theoretically, if an enemy of the U.S. wanted to institute the advent of dramatic changes in the U.S., would it not be wise to do it from within?Could there be a better way than to do it from within the Oval Office itself via a Stepford President?

Think a bit more about the possibility of having a robot like person in charge. First, obviously, there could be no physical exam or health status update of a Stepford President, since the presence of any small controlling implanted microchip might be discovered. Many times in the past after watching J.B walk, I have asked myself, “what does his gait reminds me of?” As his knees do not seem to bend naturally, Parkinson’s Disease has crossed my mind, but then again … how does a robot walk?

When J.B. said, “they do not want me answering any questions,” who exactly is “they?” Who could be doing the actual controlling?

In the Stepford Wives, who did the actual controlling of the robot-like women? Was it the husbands ? Since I do not plan on ruining it for you, I guess you will just have to rewatch that movie.

5/31/22

On this Memorial Day most everyone would agree that a tribute to our American flag is appropriate in order to pay our respects to those who have died defending our country. What about a Thin Blue Line American flag? Can it also be a tribute?

From BlazeMedia:

Tom DiSario has flown a Thin Blue Line American flag on his Ohio property since 2017. DiSario has been flying the Thin Blue Line flag in his front yard ever since his son Steven Eric DiSario — the newly appointed Kirkersville police chief — was gunned down May 12, 2017. DiSario’s son was only 38 years old and a father of six — with a seventh on the way — when he was killed. 

Last week DiSario received a letter from Omni Community Association Managers saying the “political sign in the form of a flag must be removed from your property.” The HOA letter read, in part, that “the flag on your pole is not a United States flag. It is a political statement. Please remove the flag from your property.”

But DiSario told WCMH he “spent 23 years in the military, and there’s no way, shape, or form that flag is being flown disrespectful at all. It has a 4-by-6 American flag above it, and the police flag is … 3-by-5 below it. It is not bigger than the top flag.”

“It represents my son and nothing else,” he added to the station. “So I don’t know why everybody is now harassing me that I have to take it down.”

David Dye, Omni Community Association Managers president, told the station the HOA received a complaint about the flag and then sent the letter to DiSario instructing him to take down the flag.

 DiSario said that he “spent 23 years in the military, and there’s no way, shape, or form that flag is being flown disrespectful at all. It has a 4-by-6 American flag above it, and the police flag is … 3-by-5 below it. It is not bigger than the top flag.”

“It represents my son and nothing else,” he added. “So I don’t know why everybody is now harassing me that I have to take it down.”

What was the response of DiSario’s neighbors in that same community?

It would appear that the HOA now has a few more letters to mail, as a dozen Thin Blue Line flags were flying in the Cumberland Crossing neighborhood after a few days.

“We support DiSario’s decision,” neighbor Lori Shoemaker — a new flyer of the Thin Blue Line flag — “I I don’t see this flag as being political.”

Neighbors Wally Baumbusch and Matt Westlake agree, telling WBNS radio the flag isn’t political.

“I did not have it in my yard before, but when the controversy arose, we ordered one,” Baumbusch added to the station.

Westlake has family in law enforcement, and he noted to WBNS that DiSario’s Thin Blue Line flag is no different than making a rock garden for a deceased loved one.

For Baumbusch, it’s a matter of civic duty.

“At the end of the day, I’m an American first,” he told WBNS, adding that flying the Thin Blue Line flag is a constitutional right worth defending.

“We have to protect it,” he noted to the station. “And if that means we got to do a little head-butting with our HOA, then I guess that’s what we’ll do.”

So here we have it … David Dye, a woke Community Association Managers president is caving to a single woke resident who has apparently suddenly decided that he/she didn’t like DiSario’s tribute to his son. Mr. Dye then proceeded to go through a bunch of mumbo-jumbo attempting to explain why this Thin Blue Line flag was a sign.

To me the amazing part of this story is that this could have totally avoided if the HOA manager, David Dye, had told the woke complainer to “shut up and stuff it.” … however, Mr. Dye apparently is short in the cajones department.

5/30/22

They say that one can tell a lot about someone’s character by observing how that individual acts when no one is watching. Don Gardner is a sanitation worker in Utah. Two days after a particularly horrific storm, two children observed something at their curb that they had never seen before.

Their mother, Brooke Crowley, later related the following:

“They asked what the garbage man was doing,” said Brooke. “I looked out the window and he had gotten out of his garbage truck, he was taking our flag off of the flagpole, and then he started to fold it.

“It took him over 10 minutes to fold that flag. He did something that he didn’t have to do, and he did it when [he thought] nobody else was watching.”

After painstakingly folding the flag, he placed it on the passenger seat of his truck, and continued on his route.

Again from Brooke Crowley:

“It was April 19. The night or the weekend before that we had a severe windstorm. It actually destroyed our shed on the side of our house, and it spilled some of our garbage, and that’s when it broke our flag.”

She added, “I was cleaning up our yard and trying to pick up all of the debris, and I picked up the flag and the pole, wasn’t thinking, and threw it in the trash.”

Brooke’s shock and embarrassment turned to admiration when she realized what Don Gardner was doing. The former Marine, who’s collected trash in Emery County for 11 years, was retiring the flag in honorable fashion. Tossing the flag was a mistake, she admits, so she filmed his dutiful act to share on social media as a lesson for others.

Don Gardner later told Fox News, “I took an oath once to defend this country and our flag, and I still do.”

To repeat, a true judge of someone’s character is what he/she does when no one is watching. To me without question, Don Gardner is a man with upstanding character … truly someone we can all admire and adulate.

FYI: Old or damaged flags can be properly burned, buried, or recycled by the American Legion or Boy and Girl Scout groups in flag retirement ceremonies.

BTW: I need to correct one thing … there is no such thing as a “former marine” … as “once a marine, always a marine!” 

5/29/22

For those of you who have following my blogs, you are already aware that I was against the concept of Zoom schooling from the very beginning. This was because children were at very very low risk from Covid, and in addition, the concept that on-line schooling could come close to in-person schooling in terms of the children learning was … to put it politely … poppycock, nonsense, malarkey, or just plain B.S.! And this lost learning is continuing to take its toll on children across the nation. Nuff said!

However, this Covid school nonsense is taking its toll elsewhere, notably on teachers.

From the Epoch Times:

With the end of the academic year in sight, an overwhelming number of educators are planning to close the book on their teaching careers.

Much of this stems from post-pandemic classroom behavioral challenges with students and ongoing staff shortages that create excessive workloads for teachers.

Many educators who have 25 years or more under their belt are opting to retire, but even less seasoned ones are walking away and choosing different career paths.

A RAND study from January 2021 showed nearly a quarter of those surveyed expressed the desire to quit after just one year of teaching during the pandemic.

Two years of excessive screen time at home and the disengagement of online learning have left students struggling, falling behind, and adrift in a sea of depression. COVID-19 and its subsequent restrictions created a mental health crisis for youth, which is now manifesting as aggressive or excessively troublesome behavior in the classroom.

Yet the struggle to keep existing educators and hire new ones is only half the battle. A new report from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education indicates that university students pursuing teaching degrees are declining.

In 2019, U.S. colleges awarded fewer than 90,000 undergraduate degrees in education. That’s down from nearly 200,000 a year in the 1970s. Over the past 10 years alone, the number of people completing traditional teacher preparation programs has dropped by 35 percent.

“This is a five-alarm crisis,” said NEA (National Education Association) president Becky Pringle.

If, in fact, the above projections are anywhere close to reality, the future of public education in the U.S. is in jeopardy. In many states what is sure to happen is that parents will become more vociferous as the public schools increasingly cannot adequately educate their children. The logical result will be school choice, which is good for the children and bad for the NEA. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

May those Teacher’s Union bastards rest In peace … not!

5/28/22

From Jason Whitlock on  Blaze media:

“Yesterday, Barack Obama wrote and published the dumbest tweet in the history of Twitter. The former president stood George Floyd on the dead bodies of 19 slaughtered children.”

Obama tweeted:

‘As we grieve the children of Uvalde today, we should take the time to recognize that two years have passed since the murder of George Floyd under the knee of a police officer. His killing stays with us all to this day, especially those who loved him.’

“President Obama wasn’t done. He went on: ‘In the aftermath of his murder, a new generation of activists rose up to channel their anguish into organized action, launching a movement to raise awareness of systemic racism and the need for criminal justice and police reform.’”

For the record, Jason Whitlock is black and played offensive line at Ball State back in his college days. For those not familiar with Jason Whitlock! he is an American sports journalist, columnist, and podcaster. He hosts a program for the media company Blaze Media, where he hosts the show Fearless with Jason Whitlock. Whitlock is a former columnist at the Kansas City Star, AOL Sports, Foxsports.com, and ESPN.

In addition for those not familiar with Jason Whitlock … he does not mince his words. He continued:

“What happened in Uvalde, Texas, is no different from what has been going on in America’s major cities in the aftermath of George Floyd. Police officers are reluctant to engage with criminals, and violent crime has skyrocketed because of it.

“As Barack Obama pretends to grieve for the children in Texas, he should make time to recognize that America’s emotional and immature reaction to George Floyd contributed to the slaughter of 19 little kids.”

Wow! Jason Whitlock is not shy as he comes out guns ablasin’.

As most of you are aware I have no time for either B.O. or J.B., and somethings do not change. Whereas J.B.’s initial comments on this Robb School massacre were nothing but an unfeeling politicized rant, to me it is over the top to blame B.O. for the actions of a mentally deranged individual in Texas.

5/27/22

To say that the score was actually 1-0, would be kind to JG, as JG got pummeled regularly throughout the contest on 5/19. The venue was Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, with Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm (JG) attempting to answer questions from Missouri Senator, Josh Hawley (JH).

From Townhall:

“On 5/19 in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm(JG) repeatedly refused to acknowledge that the Biden administration’s war on U.S. energy had caused gas prices to rise since the president took office and started cracking down on domestic energy production.

Even after Republican Senator Josh Hawley (JH) of Missouri laid out the proof of the Biden administration’s anti-fossil fuel policies that have limited supply and driven up costs, Granholm still wouldn’t accept any responsibility for the soaring cost of gas as the national average for regular unleaded hit another all-time high on that morning.”

JG repeatedly attempted to blame everything on Putin, Ukraine, etc, but JH wasn’t buying any of her drivel.

Oh nonsense,” Hawley interjected. “With all due respect, Madam Secretary, that’s utter nonsense.”

“In January of 2021, the average gas price in my state was $2.07,” Hawley reminded Granholm. “Eight months later, long before Vladimir Putin invaded, that price was up 30 percent and has been going up consistently since. What are you doing to reverse this administration’s policies that are drawing down our own supply of energy in this country, that are throttling oil and gas production in the United states of America – what are you doing about it?” he asked. 

“From January to August, the price of gasoline was up over 30 percent in my state alone,” he reiterated. “It has been a continuous upward tick since then, and here’s what your president did when he first came to office. He immediately reentered the Paris Climate Accord, he canceled the Keystone Pipeline, he halted leasing programs in ANWR, he issued a 60-day halt on all new oil and gas leases and drilling permits on federal lands and waters — that’s nationwide, that accounts, by the way, for 25 percent of U.S. oil production — he directed federal agencies to eliminate all supports for fossil fuels, he imposed new regulations on oil and gas and methane emissions,” Hawley noted. “Those were all just in the first few days, are you telling me that’s had no effect on our energy supply?” he questioned.

JG did not have any logical answer to JH’s questions, and she kept referring to a survey of oil and gas executives by the Dallas Fed.

“I’m not interested in opinions of these people, I’m interested in the facts,” Hawley said. “Are you telling me that these policies had no effect…Madam Secretary, are you telling me, under oath, that these policies had no effect?” he asked again. 

“I’m telling you that 94 percent of the oil and gas industry executives said that they had no effect, so no they did not,” Granholm stated again. 

JG is a graduate of Harvard Law. It had always been my impression that Harvard Law thoroughly went over “perjury.” Has JG forgotten what she should have been taught? Perhaps she was absent from class that day!

5/26/23

Those of us who are paying any attention at all are cognizant of some of the long term issues with electric vehicles. Those who are over the top EV enthusiasts either aren’t aware of some of these issues, such as future battery disposal and costly replacement, or more likely take the “ignore, and it might go away” approach. Today I happened upon another issue with EVs that has the potential to bend the curve.

From BlazeNews:

“A new study is attracting widespread attention online by highlighting the surprising way in which electric vehicles are still pumping loads of climate-harming pollutants into the environment — and in many cases, at much higher rates than gas-powered cars.

The study, published recently by Emissions Analytics, a U.K.-based emissions testing firm, found that under normal driving conditions, particulate emissions from tires are an eye-popping 1,850 times greater than from a tailpipe of a gas-powered car.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency defines particulate matter as ‘solid particles and liquid droplets found in the air’ that are ‘so small that they can be inhaled and cause serious health problems.’”

I cannot imagine that real environmentalists will be too thrilled about this! 

However, it gets worse as this “tire pollution” gets worse as the weight of the vehicle gets more.

Again from BlazeNews:

“The revelation raises a particular problem for EVs, which typically weigh significantly more than their gas-powered counterparts thanks to the heavy battery packs that allow for longer-distance driving. The more a car weighs, the greater pressure it puts on its tires, leading to more tire emissions.

‘Half a ton of battery weight can result in tire emissions that are almost 400 more times greater than real-world tailpipe emissions, everything else being equal,’ Emissions Analytics claimed.

And the trend is heading in the wrong direction, so far as tire emissions go. EVs continue to get heavier and heavier as a result of consumer demand for longer travel times in between charges. Conversely, as newer cars have become more efficient, tailpipe emissions in gas-powered vehicles have decreased.”

What is the chance that Pete Buttigieg will mention this as he tries to sell everybody a new EV? … Zero chance!

What are the odds that you will read about this in your local liberal “newspaper?” …  not quite zero, but very low odds!

5/25/22

Sometimes when there is an overwhelming issue that is the main news issue of the day, I feel compelled to comment on it. However, with respect to the latest newsy issue, I feel no such compulsion … in other words, “no me importa!”

The following is a tweet from Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone on 5/20/22:

“After numerous attempts to speak with Speaker Pelosi to help her understand the grave evil she is perpetrating, the scandal she is causing, an the danger to her own soul she is risking, I have determined that she is not to be admitted to Holy Communion.”

Again … “no me importa!”

Nancy Pelosi is a resident of San Francisco which is the same territory overseen by Archbishop Cordileone. As each bishop has authority over his diocese in this matter, he finally acted after Ms. Pelosi has basically ignored his warnings. Cordileone has been outspoken on the issue of politicians and their support of abortion. He has advocated that politicians who openly support abortion be refused Communion.

To my way of thinking, support or non-support of abortion is a personal and private matter. Whether John Doe supports abortion or not … I could care less (no me importa), as this is between Mr. Doe and his God. However, to me the situation with politicians is quite different as there is a huge difference between personally supporting abortion, like John Doe, and advocating abortion like Nancy Pelosi and other self-proclaimed Catholic politicians, including Joe Biden. 

To me, Ms. Pelosi has a decision to make. However, I will not wait with bated breath for that moment as I am fairly certain that Ms. Pelosi cannot and will not outwardly change her stance on this issue. However with the risk of repeating myself … “ no me importa!”

5/24/22

As I was recently listening to one of my all time favorite songs, I was reminded of something that I said concerning Joe Biden’s presidency  way way back on that first fateful day when he initially occupied the Oval Office. Back then I vowed that if J.B. did anything g good, I would commend him for it. As all rational Americans are painfully aware, it has been a drought for any Biden commendations, as catastrophe after Biden catastrophe has happened. Without going into the specifics of each of Biden’s poor policies, each of his poor judgements, and his individual malaprops, suffice it to say that saying something favorable about J.B. has been ne’er to impossible. 

Oops, got distracted … the song was American Pie by Don McLean. The introductory verse is:

“Long long time ago, I can still remember

How that music used to make me smile

And I knew if I had my chance

That I could make those people dance

And maybe they’d be happy for a while”

I knew that if I had my chance, I could make those on the left happy for a while. Well today I have my chance as J.B. has finally done something good.

From Townhall:

“The first international shipment of specialty baby formula has arrived in the United States by a military plane, enough for more than a million and a half bottles. 

The first flight of “Operation Fly Formula” landed in Indianapolis weighing more than 78, 000 pounds, as part of the Biden administration’s ongoing efforts to address the baby formula shortage. 

According to the White House, the formula brands that the shipment includes is: Alfamino Infant, Alfamino Junior, and Gerber Good Start Extensive HA, and will be distributed to medical offices and pharmacies, but not store shelves. 

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who greeted the plane on the tarmac, said the shipment will feed about 9,000 babies.”

So true to my word …”Kudos to J.B. for his action on the Baby Formula shortage.” 

Hopefully, he will be able to sustain this initial effort.

5/23/22

As is my custom on Sunday the following is about someone we should praise and admire. Today’s story is taken from the Epoch Times. 

Texas A&M University student Maria Balboa, 19, had been working at an H-E-B grocery store for fewer than two months when an older Hispanic woman and two children approached her checkout on March 28. The check-out cost for the her groceries was $137.

“At the time, I did not know they were her grandkids,” Maria told The Epoch Times. “She was using a SNAP [government assistance] card to pay for the groceries, and it stated it only had $19 left on it.”

Hearing this, the woman was completely unaware and shocked to know that she had only that much money left on her card.

“She said she would have to put all the groceries back, besides a few items for dinner,” Maria said.

Despite the fact that the sum was a stretch for her. “l felt something telling me to pay,” Maria recalled. “My heart hurt for this woman and especially the two kids. I wanted them to have groceries.”

Initially, the woman was embarrassed and reluctant to accept help, but Maria insisted, settled the bill, and bagged the groceries, which included bread, butter, fruit, a rotisserie chicken, and snacks for the kids.

After paying for the woman, Maria went on with her day and never expected to hear from her again. She also didn’t tell anyone about this encounter as she was just happy to have helped someone.

However, a few days later, unbeknownst to Maria, the grateful customer had sent in a survey to her bosses. Amid praise for Maria, the grateful grandmother told of her encounter with Maria, and had written, “God put this young lady at [the] bagging area for us.”

After reading the customer survey letter, the bosses were impressed and reimbursed Maria the $137.

Reflecting back on her kind act, she shared: “I have done other kind things in the past, even paid for other people’s groceries, but after that, I don’t know what happens to them.

“This time, I got the privilege of knowing what happened to the woman and her two grandkids.”

Kudos to the grandma for filling out the customer survey, and mucho-kudos especially to Maria Balboa.

5/22/22