Thoughts on a Sunday morning

I haven't kept track of the number of Republican candidates for the office of President in 2024. Not that it matters. Soon they will start dropping out one by one. DeSantis has plateaued and is on his way down. Christie, who is my choice for the Republican nominee is last in the polls, I believe largely because he is taking the wrong strategy. You don't win by attacking Trump. Doing that just provides more fodder for his followers. I don't think that there is a strategy that would influence the Trump faithful. They're not interested in truth. What they want to hear is rhetoric that supports what they want to believe. Civility, reason and objective thinking have no part in the present political climate.  

All Trump has to do is say something, anything, whether it makes sense or not and the faithful nod their heads, wave their arms and erupt in wild agreement. He proclaims that the ballots were fake, the election was rigged and the crowd shouts in angry agreement. He says that "I am being indicted for you" (this is a characteristic of the Savior/Jesus Complex) and the crowd becomes wildly indignant. As for all the noise being made about his present legal issues, I think it is just that...noise, that will fizzle out and disappear.  

On November 18, 1978 James Jones, an American preacher who moved his temple from San Francisco to Jonestown, Guyana called on his followers to commit mass suicide before killing himself. Authorities found 909 bodies; men, women and children. How to explain the hold that Jones had on his followers? What would happen if Trump told his followers to arm themselves and march on the Department of Justice? Sounds far-fetched...until you consider that many on the far right are calling the present divisiveness in the country a cultural 'war', and there were cries to "hang Pence" during the January 6th insurrection, as well as self-proclaimed freedom fighters decked out in tactical clothing with weapons in the crowd.

My guess is that the names on the ballot in 2024 will be Biden/Harris and Trump/?. Margorie Greene is working awful hard to ingratiate herself to Trump, McCarthy and others. She is such a loose cannon that I doubt if even Trump would select her as a running mate but I wouldn't be shocked if it happens.

Another four years of Biden/Harris concerns me. The blatant moves toward socialism are upsetting. I don't want to see student loans forgiven. I don't want to see illegal immigrants coddled. I don't want to pay reparations to blacks whose ancestors were slaves. Most of all I don't want to see Biden die or be unable to perform his duties. In a Kamala Harris administration there would be no room for straight white male conservatives. Her whole deal is apologizing to minorities of all flavors. 

As I stroll through antique/junk shops I continue to look for a Barry Goldwater campaign button. I voted for him 60 years ago in 1964 and as it stands now he'll get my vote in 2024.

The Waiting Room

 Let's get one thing straight right off the bat; sitting in a waiting room ain't fun. Don't make no difference if you're waiting for your own name to be called or the name of someone whose with you or if your waiting for someone who has already been called in to come out. Or maybe you're at an airport waiting for the announcement that your flight will begin boarding shortly or that you got lucky and your name was called from the stand-by list. Waiting just ain't fun.

Waiting rooms come in all shapes and sizes. Some waiting rooms are big and impersonal like at an airport of a county court house. Others verge on tiny with maybe 5 or 6 chairs like at the clinic that I just left. It was a physical therapy clinic. It was tastefully decorated as far as that goes but that doesn't help with the feeling that if I'm sitting there doing nothing a portion of my life is slowly fading away. 

I was waiting for Maribel who has a problem with her shoulder. A  doctor in Chattanooga says the problem is what's called 'frozen shoulder'. A doctor in Peru diagnosed it as tendonitis. Both prescribed physical therapy. It doesn't help the situation with me not being a fan of physical therapy. I rank PT right up there with chiropractic, acupuncture and voodoo as effective medical treatment. I firmly believe that anything that PT might help would have cured itself in time. 

One thing that waiting rooms all have in common is people, and more precisely people with cell phones. Some have it to their ear but most are scrolling or typing. Of the 4 people in the afore mentioned waiting room 3 had cell phones in their hands. Not me. And I didn't have one in my pocket. I don't now and never have owned a cell phone. No reason to get into why.

That doesn't mean my hands are empty. I know that someday a young person will approach me in a waiting room and say..."Mister, can I ask you what that is you have in your hand?" And I will reply..."This is called a book." I'll go on to explain that it has pages made of paper, that it has words printed on that paper, that a person wrote those words, that a publisher published it, and that books have souls. I will also show to the inquirer the book marker I use to keep track of where I left off reading. It's an elongated plastic marker blue in color with a pair of dolphins on the front and Barnes & Noble on the back. It has a tassel, also blue, on the top. It is cracked in several places and is held together with transparent tape. It has been my constant companion for at least 25 years. 

I imagine that the inquirer will probably return to their chair and Google 'book', and will read that books, like newspapers are extinct artifacts that previously were used to convey written information. I doubt that the article will mention that books also served a useful purpose in waiting rooms.

Trump Shows no Fear

 Trump is not afraid to take on anybody. Now he's added the mutants to his enemy list as having a hand in the recent indictments. I think he probably knows that it is risky to piss off mutants...those people have really wicked powers, but he's willing to take that risk because he has seen that no matter what he says or does, his fund raising and support from the MAGA group increases. Look for Marjorie Greene, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert and Kevin McCarthy to spearhead a War on Mutants soon. 

There is an unsubstantiated rumor that Trump's next target will be the ALHP...Association of Left Handed Plumbers, because a poll from an obscure university showed that a majority of said plumbers living in Driggs, Idaho do not believe that the election was rigged. A militant group of MAGA folks dressed and equipped with tactical gear are reportedly in route to Driggs to peacefully protest against those heathen plumbers. Which will raise more campaign funds and support for Trump. 

These are crazy times.

Pushing back against Father Time

 The photo below from a previous post has drawn several comments about my physique. The photo came about because there are at least three gray squirrels with blond tails in the neighborhood. I have never seen a blond-tailed squirrel before and I assume they are not common. Anyway, Maribel was trying to get a photo of the three together but was not successful, however she did manage to snap this photo of a sweaty, stubborn, 82 year old man mowing grass in 90 degree weather. When I saw the photo it provided the idea for the post about why I don't wear shorts. The physique issue will take a little more explanation, and I guess is another example of my stubbornness. 

When the human body has passed the age of thirty it begins to lose muscle mass. By the age of eighty 50% of the muscle mass is lost. A scale may not show it because the muscle weight loss is often replaced by fat. The missing muscle contributes to the increased difficulty with age of getting into and out of a car, a chair, bending, climbing stairs, doing simple everyday tasks and maintaining balance while walking. I am determined to do whatever I can for as long as I can to delay that happening to me. The two options that are within my control to help me do that are diet and exercise. Diet is simply a matter of paying attention to what and how much I eat.

As for exercise, every morning I ride a stationary bike for thirty minutes at ten miles per hour on a medium resistance setting. I used to use a heavier resistance setting but my legs won't let me do it anymore for the full 30 minutes. What the bike does for me beside burning calories is to help maintain calf and thigh muscles as well as providing cardio exercise.

To maintain upper body muscle mass I have a weight lifting routine. I use two 15lb dumbbells to do four simple exercises. I start with overhead lifts, then immediately follow with shoulder shrugs, bicep curls and finish with chest flys. Each exercise is done to failure. I rest for five or six minutes and then repeat the exercises until I have done five repetitions. The total time takes about 45 minutes. The weight lifting I do every other day, to let the muscles recover. On alternate days I do kitchen counter push ups at random times.

And that's it. There is nothing exceptional or special about me...anyone could do the same thing. The biggest obstacle is staying with it. There are days when I blow it off, when I feel lazy and invent an excuse not to do it, but I always feel guilty and make sure that I don't miss it the next day. 

What motivates me more than anything else is the thought of Maribel having to take care of me, or worse, living in an assisted living complex. If a program of diet and exercise can add a few more years of physical independence to my life, it's more than worth the time and effort.

I Don't Care!...I Won't Do It!

 It's hot outside. We set a record temperature for our area yesterday (92) and might do the same today. Still, I had made up my mind to mow the back yard lawn today because in some places the grass is mid-calf high and there is rain predicted for the next four days. Some of my neighbors will probably mow later today; others not. We've all got different philosophies on how and when to cut grass. There's a couple of other differences between me an them. They've all got riding mowers. I don't. They all wear shorts. I won't. I don't care if it's a 120 out there, if I'm stupid enough to be cutting grass I'll be doing it in jeans. 

My attitude toward shorts has about 75 years of history behind it. In the late 40s and early 50s on Milwaukee’s South Side we all wore shorts, because our mothers made us. We didn’t want to, but come summer vacation out came the shorts. “You’ll feel cooler, and besides they look good on you” was the explanation we’d get in response to our protests. We knew the real reason was that there were no knees to wear out and they stayed cleaner a little longer. It was these same unreasonable mothers who made us wear rubber boots at the first hint of a snowflake, and not only wear them, but completely buckle them up which eliminated any chance of salvaging a cool guy image. The only situation that could possibly be worse would be shorts and rubber boots. Nobody could have survived that humiliation. You’d have to move to like Idaho, or someplace like that. 

The above photo taken of me in 1946 is what I'm talking about. I was probably kneeling down to make it look like I was wearing long pants. That obviously didn't work. Could I look any more like a geek? I guarantee that if I'd had long pants on I would have been standing tall with my best tough guy look on my face. That's what wearing shorts did to us guys.

I think mothers felt it was their duty to make our lives miserable when we were under 10 to 12 years old. Maybe they viewed it as character development. The problem with shorts is they made you look and feel like a sissy. I’ll bet in those days shorts were the reason for more bloody noses than anything else. We didn’t have any problem within our gang, because me, Ed, Baldy, Eddie, Pinky, Norb and Eugene were near the same age and all in shorts. It was when we crossed paths with some other gang who had slightly older guys wearing long pants that the insults would come and the fists start flying. If you were in shorts you almost automatically got called a ‘twerp’ by other guys. “Your mother dresses you funny” was a standard taunt. You could either take it and be labeled a sissy, or you started throwing punches. Even if you lost the other guy was less likely to mess with you next time you met. It’s probably not possible to understand the resentment we felt toward shorts if you weren’t there at that time.

We’d see photos in magazines like National Geographic of teenage guys in England, France, and Germany wearing shorts and laugh our heads off. Teenagers!! How could they expect a girl to even look at them without laughing? We thought mothers must be really strict over there! And then one day we saw photos of British soldiers fighting in Africa. They were wearing shorts. Soldiers in shorts! Can you imagine John Wayne leading his platoon in an attack on an enemy beach...in shorts? Forget the beach...can you even imagine John Wayne in shorts!? Or Wyatt Earp facing a dozen outlaws at high-noon on main street in Tombstone...in shorts? The outlaws would have been rolling on the ground laughing so hard that the gunfight at the OK Corral would never have happened! One of us suggested that maybe the British government issued shorts to make the soldiers mad and fight harder, but we finely decided that the war was causing shortages of everything and probably they didn't have enough material to make long pants for all of the soldiers. We felt sorry for the guys who were issued short pants.

Going from shorts to long pants was sort of a rite of passage. There wasn’t anything that triggered it. It wasn’t like...”Okay, you’ve reached a certain age or height so now you can wear regular jeans.” It was just…one day a guy would show up in jeans, and you knew he’d crossed over. In our gang Norb was the first. Nobody said anything and nothing really changed but things were never quite the same. If I remember right the following year Ed was next, followed soon after by Eugene and then Baldy. Then there were only three of us left – each of us hoping it would happen to us early next year because none of us wanted to be last. I don’t remember how it worked out. All I remember was there came a time in my life when I was finally through with shorts; an attitude and feeling that remains with me to this day. I could not force myself to go out in public wearing shorts.

Now, I do have a couple of pairs of Reebok shorts with matching tank tops that I wear for my morning exercise workout. And sometimes I'll wear them in the house if I'm just lazing around watching tv or whatever, but to wear them outside?...never! I know damn well that if I did that I'd hear voices from the past shouting, "Hey twerp - your mother dresses you funny!"

Christmas comes early!!

 My wish in my previous post has come true. Tucker Carlson is gone! One of THE WORST causes of divisiveness in this country will not be spewing his misinformation and outright lies in the evening on the FOX network. One can only hope that he will not resurface on another media platform. 

And Santa has given us a bonus. Don Lemon...Tucker's spin doctor left wing counterpart on CNN was also canned. It seems almost too good to be true. Could these moves away from extremists on both sides be a prelude toward a centrist movement, where truth, reason and civility reside? 

What will the MAGA crowd do now without Tucker? Who will tell them what to think? Sure, I know that there are plenty of  right-wing extremists, each churning out their pet conspiracy theories and character assassinations but Tucker is the king, and the king has fallen. The Emperor has no clothes!

Now, if only Chris Christy would step up to the plate.....

Way to go Dominion!!

 There hasn't been a lot to feel good about lately. Broadcast news is a parade of depressing reports...senseless shootings, countless numbers of illegal border crossings, the political arena is still a game of party over priorities, nurse shortages, drug use skyrocketing, teacher strikes, confidential secrets being leaked (defended by Marjorie Green as a patriotic act), the war in Ukraine, and Biden and the Dems going mostly in the wrong direction. 

There is one small ray of hope. There is the possibility that Chris Christy might run for president in 2024. He is a rare politician; a person who looks at issues from an objective perspective and applies reason versus party position to form his opinions. He would be a candidate that, for the first time in many years I could vote for and feel good about it. The problem is that I don't think that he's electable. He doesn't fit the mold that we've come to expect from candidates. He's not a speech maker nor a slogan machine. He's the 'guy next door' who speaks his mind without fanfare and fluff. And in my opinion what he says makes sense. For those reasons and others the Republican Party heads would not rally behind him. Trump would insult and denigrate him which would cost Christy the votes of those who still cling to the notion that the election was stolen and that Trump is the greatest president this country has ever had.

Speaking of the stolen election, it was with a glad heart that I learned that FOX had thrown in the towel in the Dominion defamation law suit. I don't think that $787.5 million will have much of an effect on Fox, but any reasonable person is going to know that the settlement is an admission of guilt. I would have liked to see the settlement include an apology from FOX stating that the network knowingly perpetuated false information, but the Smartmatic defamation suit against FOX is still out there so maybe an apology will result from that. 

Also in the settlement I would like to have seen a stipulation that Tucker Carlson had been removed from his television show and had been appointed head of janitorial services at the network headquarters. That would be a good fit, because there is a certain similarity between the content of his show and the content of toilets.