Hard Ice and Hungry Birds

 

by Pa Rock

There is a hard coating of ice on the ground, and not much traffic putting up and down my quiet country lane.  The birds, primarily cardinals, are all over the feeders and will have them emptied in a couple of hours.  And when their feed is gone, it truly will be gone - because I am hunkered down inside and afraid to go out.

I am reminded of that cheerless little ditty that used to be featured regularly on "'Hee Haw:"

"Gloom, despair, and agony on me

Deep, dark depression, excessive misery

If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all

Gloom, despair, and agony on me

(Sorry, but that's the best I can do for today!)

Another Day, Another Broken Arm

by Pa Rock

Clumsy Oaf

On the last day of May in 2020 as the pandemic was running wild in the streets, I fell while stepping backward out of an elevated flower bed and managed to break my right arm just below the shoulder.  This morning, on the next to the last day of January in 2023, I again fell - this time on a slanted wooden surface that had a fine sheen of ice - and managed to break my left arm just below the shoulder.

Advanced age and stupidity are dangerous co-morbidities which can be very harmful to one's health and well-being.  Please take my word for it.

Sales Taxes are not Fair Taxes

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

I remember listening to a very well heeled community leader speaking ad nauseam to a group of cornered listeners one evening at a football game regarding his contention that sales tax was the only fair tax - because everybody paid it.  Yes, everyone does pay it, but the poor, who must spend a greater percentage of their income in order to just survive than their rich counterparts do, obviously feel more actual pain from sales taxes.  Taxes on the sales of goods and services place a far greater actual burden on the poor than they do on the rich.  That is why sales taxes are regarded to be "regressive" taxes - and it is also why the rich and comfortable tend to look favorably on the idea.

Republicans see a need for government, whether they will admit it or not.  They need a strong military to defend the nation that allows them to create wealth.  They need police to protect their property and things which they have accumulated, and they need roads, bridges, rail lines, airports, harbors, and many other forms of infrastructure to bring raw materials to their factories and to get their assembled products to market,  And they even need prisons to warehouse people who might otherwise interfere with the free flow of commerce.

 Government is essential, and even Republicans know it - but they just don't like paying for it.

Finding more and more ways to shift the burden of financing government onto the backs of the poor has long been a GOP wet dream, and one proposal for doing that is a national sales tax.  

HR25, the "Fair Tax Act," is a plan that would eliminate most federal taxes and replace them with a national sales tax - and in the process would also eliminate a need for the GOP's favorite boogeyman, the Internal Revenue Service.  The proposed national sales tax would be 23%, though many economists argue that when implemented it would actually come closer to being 30 percent.  Some GOP legislators have been introducing this bill since 1999, but it has never been given a floor vote.  Some of those same politicians now feel that with Kevin McCarthy's tenuous hold on the House speakership, this may be the year that the merits of a national sales tax will at last be debated publicly and presented for a vote on the House floor.

One feature of this year's proposed national sales tax is a monthly "prebate" where every household would get a set amount ahead of time to cover taxes on essentials like groceries and medicines - every household, from the poorest to those of billionaires - "fair."

The idea won't pass, at least not this year, but Republicans are planting a seed, creating a talking point that sales taxes are the fairest taxes, and some day they hope to bring in that harvest.

But for the time-being, the idea that sales taxes are fair, especially to the working poor, still looks, smells, and tastes like baloney.

Republicans Vote to Keep Losing

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

A coach who joins a team after a winning season can expect a great deal of pressure to keep winning, and if that coach can't keep those wins coming, he or she can expect to be fired - perhaps even at mid-season, or at the end of the first losing season, or definitely by the end of the second losing season.

That's the way it works in athletics, but coaching in politics is apparently governed by a different set of principles.  Yesterday Ronna Romney McDaniel, a wealthy white woman from Michigan, was elected to her fourth two-year term as Chair of the Republican National Committee - after leading her party in three consecutive national failures at the polls.

Ms. Romney McDaniel initially won the leadership of the party in January of 2017 after receiving the endorsement of Donald Trump, the man who had just shocked much of the nation by winning the presidency on a Constitutional technicality known as the Electoral College provision.  The country had also elected a Republican House and Senate, and many believed that the GOP was once again on the rise and that things were coming up roses for the party of privilege.

In 2018 the Republicans strengthened their advantage in the Senate by a couple of seats, but somehow managed to lose control of the House of Representatives - bigly - with the Democrats picking up a net gain of 41 seats.  That was a major and stunning loss for the GOP, and it came in the middle of Donald Trump's term as President.

Then, of course, in 2020, the Democrats not only kept control of the House, but managed to win back the presidency  as well as control of the Senate by scoring fifty seats in that chamber.  Losing control of both the House and the Senate as well as the Presidency should have been enough to end the career of any coach, yet somehow Ronna Romney McDaniel managed to tenaciously cling to power like a barnacle refusing to give up its grip on on the hull of a stately private yacht.

And now 2022 has come and gone and things still remain grim for the Republican Party.  Yes, the GOP did take back the House, barely, while political analysts felt they should have done much better, but the Republicans also managed to lose a seat in the Senate which allowed the Democrats to claim a clear majority in the upper chamber.

Ronna Romney McDaniel had presided over three losing cycles for her party, and yet she still wanted to be its leader.  This time, however, some in the Republican Party had grown tired of the losing, and an opposition candidate arose from the ranks.  Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer from California, mounted a vigorous campaign to take down Romney McDaniel.  Yesterday, after a somewhat poisonous campaign (some Republicans, being Republicans and unable to control themselves, had mounted a "whisper" campaign about Ms. Dhillon'ss Sikh religion), Ronna Romney McDaniel managed to prevail in a secret ballot and maintain control of the GOP for another two years.  The final vote was 111 for Romney McDaniel, 51 for Harmeet Dhillon, four for sleeper candidate Mike Lindell, and one for former New York Congressman Lee Zeldin.  

To Ronna's credit, she says that the upcoming term as leader of the Republican Party hierarchy will be her last.  She is probably right about that.

Thanks for hanging in there, Ronna.  Me and my Democratic friends appreciate you.  See you in the funny papers!

Dogsport

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Last Saturday morning two young men were headed home after a morning of hunting when one was shot and killed - not by another hunter, or an angry husband, but by a dog who was a passenger in the back seat of their vehicle.  The shooting occurred in a rural area south of Wichita, Kansas, and the victim was a thirty-year-old male who was riding in the front passenger seat.  The shooter was a dog riding in the back seat of the vehicle who apparently stepped on the rifle's trigger causing it to fire through the seat and into the back of the victim.  

I have a good friend who has said on many occasions that deer hunting will never be a "sport" until the deer are armed.  I don't know what this particular pair of hunters were after, but I'm sure that my friend's "humor" could be extrapolated to cover whatever type of game was involved. (Duck hunting will never be a sport until the ducks are armed, for instance.)

But death is not funny and it does not lend itself well to humor.  The dead man was somebody's husband, father, son, brother, lover, or just a good friend, and his loss is being grieved by someone, perhaps many.

In reading about this incident, I quickly found links to several other stories where dogs had accidentally shot humans, something that should be of interest to anyone who hunts with the assistance of a dog. According to a story in the Washington Post in October of 2015,  at least ten people were shot by dogs the United States between the years 2004-2015, and several others are known to have been shot by canines since then.

One of the more famous cases of a man being shot by a dog occurred on December 28, 2018, when Matt Branch, a former football player at LSU, was on a duck-hunting outing with friends near Eagle Lake, Mississippi, when a friend's dog jumped into the bed of a pickup truck being used by the hunting party and stepped on a hunting gun disengaging the safety and tripping the trigger.  Branch was hit in the left thigh in an injury so severe that his leg had to be amputated.

Two months earlier another man who was hunting jackrabbits in New Mexico with three dogs in the cab of his truck was shot and severely injured when one of the dogs stepped onto his shotgun and got his foot in the trigger mechanism - causing the gun to slip off of the backseat and fire as it did so.  The shotgun fired through the back of the front seat striking the driver and causing numerous injuries.

During that same month and year a duck hunter in Iowa was shot as his retriever dog was climbing back into the boat and hit the trigger of the hunter's shotgun with his foot.

And there are other hunting stories in this vein shotgunned across the internet.  Hunters need to act responsibly with their guns as well as with their hunting companions, even if those companions are canine.  Guns should be unloaded except when they are being carried in the actual act of hunting, they should be inaccessible when not in use (in the trunk or a special compartment), and the safety's should be on at any time when game is not being engaged. 

The more those commonsense rules are ignored, the more likely it is that hunting will evolve into a true sport - one in which all parties have a decent shot of winning.

Semi-Automatic Weapons Marketed to Children

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

When I first read about the "JR-15,"  a child-sized semi-automatic weapon that fires 22-caliber bullets, I  assumed that it was a story from The Onion which had somehow managed to make it into the national press - so I held my incredulity in check until I could see whether Snopes.com verified this horror story or not.

That now has happened and Snopes is out with an affirmation stating that this new low in parenting is "true."  The gun, which is modeled on the AR-15, the murder weapon of choice for mass shooters everywhere, is really out there and it is being marketed toward children!  The manufacturer's website states that the JR-15 "looks, feels, and operates just like Mom and Dad's gun."

According to Snopes, the owner of the company that manufactures the JR-15 describes it as a "scaled down AR-15," hence, one supposes, the alliteration in the naming of the new weapon.  The company's website also, according to Snopes, notes that the JR-15 has "blow-back semi-automatic action."  Wow, just wow!

According to a current article in Barron's magazine entitled "US Gunmaker Unveils Semi-automatic Rifle Marketed to Kids,":

"The JR-15 is only 31 inches (80 centimeters) long, weighs less that 2.5 pounds (one kilogram) and comes with magazines of five or 10 rounds of 22 caliber bullets.  It was released in mid-January with a price tag of $389."

So with the massacre of the fourth graders at Uvalde less than a year in our national rearview mirror of shame, and the killings of the first graders at Sandy Hook Elementary less than a decade past, this is where we are as a nation.  

How sad and shameful is that?

Rusty Pails #57: The Foolbox

 

by Rocky Macy

(Today marks the return of an old friend to this blog.  Rusty Pails, the bard of Sprung Hinge, is back after an absence of several years with another of his tales of life in the slow lane.  Rusty has been a part of my life for almost forty years, ever since he made his first appearance in the premier issue of "The Elk River Current," a weekly newspaper out of Southwest City, Missouri, which I helped to establish in the late 1980's.  All of Rusty's past adventures appear in earlier postings in this blog, even the ones that initially ran in The Current and a few other local newspapers.  It was good running into Rusty again, and I suspect more of his stories will appear in Pa Rock's Ramble in the coming months!)

I found the big pine box at an auction last fall and even though I had absolutely no idea what I would do with it, I knew that I had to have it.  But leave it to Esther Pearl to try and bust my happy bubble.  As I stood admiring the handcrafted thing of beauty, she stepped up behind me and said, “You do know that’s a coffin, don’t you.”

 

“Of course I know it’s a danged coffin!  Do you think I’m as dumb as one of Gladys Clench’s chickens?”

 

Right on cue, Glady’s sashayed by and threw her two-cents worth into what was otherwise intelligent discourse – for Sprung Hinge.  “At least my girls earn their keep by laying eggs.  That’s more than can be said for some of the men in this town.”   Gladys talks high and mighty, but she would grab any man she could catch.  She even settled for Shadetree Mike once, ‘til he managed to escape!

 

When Gladys had strolled on out of earshot, Esther turned real serious and said, “Rusty is everything alright?”

 

“What?” I snapped.  Then, when she nodded at the coffin, I added, “It’s a well-made wooden box, and I can think of several good aboveground uses for it.”

 

“Uh huh.”

 

“Right now I’m thinkin’ toolbox.”

 

“And right now I’m thinkin’ foolbox,” Esther said over her shoulder as she headed to catch up with Gladys for lunch at the Weenie Wagon.    

 

Fortunately coffins weren’t much in demand that day, and I managed to buy it worth the money.  Heck Frye and Judge Rufus T. Redbone helped me to load it in the bed of my old pickup, the "Rust  Bucket," while Shadetree Mike supervised.   Somehow we managed to the big pine box home to my cabin where my crew and I set it upright on the porch next to the front door - and I managed to forget about it until Halloween.

 

I usually don’t get many little goblins coming around for tricks or treats on Halloween, but this year the boys and I decided to be ready with both.  We had a domino party that night with plenty of "Rustwiches" (baloney and onion sandwiches on grilled rye bread with horseradish mustard) and cold root beer, but before our fun started inside, we dressed Truman Treetopper up like a zombie in clothes that were a little more ragged than the ones he had worn to the party, and smeared lard mixed with green food coloring on his hands and face.  Then we gave our friend a bucket of horehound candies and told him to open the lid to the coffin and throw a few whenever her heard kids on the porch.  Truman was eating his second Rustwich and drinking a cold root beer as we shut him in.

 

Truman’s act ended when one of the mothers, who either didn’t like the gag or didn’t like the candy, put a big rock in front of the coffin and blocked it closed.   After awhile Truman, who doesn’t speak, gave up trying to get out and went to sleep standing up – and I guess the rest of us forgot about him

 

But I remembered Truman the next morning when I woke up to my mail lady, Raquel Rainwater, screaming on the front porch like the cabin was on fire.  She had stepped onto the porch to deliver a package when she heard a commotion in the coffin and realized that someone or something was trapped inside,  When Raquel pushed the rock aside, the lid to the coffin flew open and my silent buddy, Truman Treetopper, fell out onto the porch covered in green lard and baloney, onion, horseradish, and horehound vomit.

 

The smell was so bad that the EPA sent a feller around a day or two later to see if I qualified for a superfund cleanup – but the smell drove him away before he could write a check!

 

I’m not sure why Raquel was so danged upset, but for the next week I had to go.to the post office to pick up my mail.  Finally, I got a letter from the postmaster telling me that they would resume delivery, but that if I ever attacked another carrier with a vomit-covered zombie, I would have to start delivering my own danged letters.

 

The postmaster's letter arrived postage due!

 

The Electric Power Grid: A Weak Link in Our National Defense

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Back in early December I wrote about a shooting at two electric substations in rural Moore County, North Carolina.   The shootings, sprays of semi-automatic gunfire, occurred late in the night on December 3rd and resulted in both substations going off-line and a power outage for 45,000 customers that lasted up to four days for some of the users.

The attack on the electric substations in Moore County, North Carolina, was actually the second such attack in the same state in less than a month.  On November 11th, a substation was attacked in Jones County, NC, that left 12,000 customers without power.  The effects of that attack were short-lived, and power was restored in a couple of hours.

Now there has been a third attack in as many months at yet another electric substation in the state of North Carolina.  Last Tuesday night a power substation in Randolph County was attacked by gunfire.  The plant's owner, EnergyUnited, quickly got control of the situation and was able to keep the facility operational without a loss of power to any of its customers.

Three attacks in three counties in three months - all in one state. - with no arrests.   Local law enforcement as well as the FBI are involved in the investigations and search for the culprits.

During the same time period there have also been a string of attacks on electrical power grid installations in Washington and Oregon.  Four power substations in Washington state were attacked on Christmas Day, and between mid-November and December 8th there were at least six other attacks on substations in Washington and Oregon.  Two men, ages 32 and 40, from Puyallup, Washington, were arrested in connection with the four Christmas Day attacks.  The damages at those plants, which left thousands of people in the dark and cold over the holiday, are reportedly in the millions of dollars.

Electric substations are not aesthetically pleasing and consequently are seldom found in safe and affluent communities.  They are often outside of populated areas - in the boonies - where they are out-of-sight and out-of-mind, and where they also make easier targets for domestic terrorists.  Errol Southern, a professor of national and homeland security at the University of Southern California summarized the vulnerability of the nation's power grid in remarks to National Public Radio (NPR):

"The (electric) grid is extremely large.  It has about 6,400 power plants across the country, some 55,000 substations, and over 450,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines serviced by 3,000 companies. . . It's extremely challenging to monitor and protect.  And many of these places are very remote, and so officers have to get there.  And by the time they do, the attackers are already gone." 

Clearly those whose goal is to foment revolution and do our nation harm have found its soft underbelly.  Until our country's power grid is made considerably stronger, we can expect the treachery and blackouts to continue.  

At some point we must confront this very weak link in our national defense.  

Pinball Wizardry

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

In a spirit somewhat reminiscent of the hysteria that Professor Harold Hill stirred up in River City, Iowa, as he educated the good people of the rural community of the dangerous impact that the game of pool could have on the lives and spiritual well being of their young people, there are some good people in South Carolina today who are equally intent of keeping their state's children safe from the immoral influences of pinball.

At one time in the previous century pinball machines were seen primarily as devices for gambling, close cousins to slot machines.   A person put in a coin, and depending on where the ball landed, either received a payout of a few coins - or ponied up another coin to drop into the slot.  There was no skill involved, except for the occasional jostling of the machine by anxious players, and the result was strictly random, with the odds, of course, being in favor of the house.

But as more people began playing the machines, enhancements were added to make it feel more exciting.  Things like lights, bumpers, and colorful illustrations helped to create excitement and draw in more players.  Then, in 1947, flippers were also added, something which gave players more control and  quickly turned the machines into games of skill rather than just dumb chance.

When the machines had been based on chance and were solely for the purpose of gambling, many states made them illegal, but as they evolved into games of skill, those gambling restrictions began to be dropped.  Today pinball is legal in every state with one very noticeable exception.  In South Carolina it is still illegal for children under the age of eighteen to play the game.  The state has tried twice in the last decade to repeal the anachronistic law which is generally ignored by the public and law enforcement, but both of those efforts failed in the legislature.  A third effort to make playing pinball legal for everyone in the Palmetto State, regardless of their age, is currently underway.  

(There are some new and very nice pinball parlors in the touristy areas of South Carolina, and the owners of those establishments would like to insure that Elliot Ness and his men never come bursting through the doors with their Tommy guns a-blazing!)

My parents and aunt and uncle owned and ran a truck stop in rural Missouri when I was young.  There were three or four pinball machines and a juke box in the cafe side of the business.  Music on the juke box was a nickel a song, or six songs for a quarter, and a game of pinball (five balls) was also a nickel or six games for a quarter.  Once a person put their money in the juke box, it was gone, but an investment in the pinball machine, even though it had flippers and was primarily a game of skill, could pay a profit.  A person could sell their wins to the house. Being a child I don't remember exactly when that ended, or why, but I do remember one time a pinball machine went on the fritz and was producing too many winners.  It was quickly unplugged!

But that was then and this is now - and now we are focused on South Carolina, perhaps the last bastion of decency and morality in all of North America.  Will South Carolina finally join the rest of the world and let its children wallow in the sin and degradation of pinball?  Or, if South Carolina had acted sixty or seventy years ago when other states were succumbing to the lure of the silver ball, would the movie "Tommy" today been known as "Lindsey?"

Life is such a crap shoot.

Pinball Wizard

by The Who

Ever since I was a young boy
I've played the silver ball
From Soho down to Brighton
I must have played 'em all
But I ain't seen nothing like him
In any amusement hall
That deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball

He stands like a statue
Becomes part of the machine
Feeling all the bumpers
Always playing clean
He plays by intuition
The digit counters fall
That deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball

He's a pinball wizard
There has got to be a twist
A pinball wizard's
Got such a supple wrist

How do you think he does it? I don't know
What makes him so good?

Ain't got no distractions

Can't hear no buzzers and bells
Don't see no lights a-flashin'
Plays by sense of smell
Always gets a replay
Never seen him fall
That deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball

I thought I was
The Bally table king
But I just handed
My pinball crown to him

Even on my favorite table
He can beat my best
His disciples lead him in
And he just does the rest
He's got crazy flipper fingers
Never seen him fall
That deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball

Pa Rock's Bunnies

 

by Pa Rock

Proud Grandpa

Today marks the beginning of the Lunar New Year, a day celebrated by billions of people around the globe as the official start of yet another year, this one based on cycles of the moon rather than orbits around the sun.  The Year of the Tiger ended yesterday, and today marks the beginning of the Year of the Rabbit.  This year is especially meaningful to me because three of my six grandchildren - Boone, Olive, and Willow - were born during the Year of the Rabbit.  

Boone will be twenty-four this year, so he is officially entering his third Year of the Rabbit today.  Olive and Willow will both turn twelve this year, so it will mark their second cycle through the Year of the Rabbit.

Rabbits are regarded as gentle, clever, and quick, and all of those qualities are thought to be  represented by those who have the good fortune to be born during the Year of the Rabbit.  It is also thought that those qualities will extend to life in general during each year that is represented by the Rabbit.

I would add that all three of my Rabbit grandchildren, my bunnies, are musical, so perhaps that another quality of children born under this particular lunar sign.

Pa Rock is not musical.  He is, alas, a Rat!

Happy Lunar New Year!

A Nun at Rest and at Peace

 

by Pa Rock

Septuagenarian

I read somewhere recently that as the average lifespan grows longer, it is possible that the first person to live to be one-hundred-and-fifty may have already been born.  (I am fairly certain that person is not me.)

Last Tuesday the world's oldest person, Sister Andre of Toulon, France, passed away at the age 118 years and 340 days, less than a month before her 119th birthday.  Sister Andre had been born in France as Lucille Random on February 11th, 1904.  She had been recognized as the planet's oldest human since the death of another woman, Kane Tanaka, who passed away in her native Japan at the age of 119 in April of 2022.

Sister Andre, who died this past Tuesday, looked after children during World War II, and then spent nearly thirty years taking care of orphans and elderly people at a French hospital.  At the time of her passing she was the oldest known nun to have ever lived, and the world's oldest COVID survivor, having tested positive for the disease a few weeks before her 117th birthday in 2021.

The oldest person whose birth and death are a matter of public record was also a French woman, Jeanne Louise Calment, who was born on February 21, 1875, and lived to the ripe old age of 122 years and 164 days.

With the passing of Sister Andre, the title of world's oldest human shifts to another woman, Maria Branyas Morera of Spain, who was 115 and 320 days old on last Wednesday.

Current research places the United States 45th in the world with regard to human longevity.  A male child born today in the Chinese Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong can expect to live to be 82.9 years of age, and a female born in Hong Kong can expect to travel around the sun eighty-eight complete cycles.  In the United States that figure is 74.5 years for men and 80.2 years for women.  In addition to gender, race and educational level also seem to be important indicators in how long a person will live.

Research indicates that only one in five thousand people in the United States currently live to be centenarians (age 100), and eighty-five percent of those are women.  Scientists believe that part of the reason women live longer than men is that the estrogen levels in their blood combat conditions such as heart disease by helping to reduce circulatory levels of harmful cholesterol.   It is also commonly believed that women have stronger immune systems than men.

Whatever biological factors and medical advancements led to Sister Andre's long life, she certainly honored her time on the planet by doing good works.   Thank you, Sister Andre, for choosing to spend your time in the service of others.  Be at rest and at peace.

Republicans Expand Their "Freedom" to Smoke in the Capitol

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Some Republican politicians have been loud and vocal the past couple of years in their anger over mandatory inoculations against COVID - such as with the US military - and being told that they must wear face masks in certain settings and situations.  They felt those moves were an attack on their "freedom," while others saw all of the right-wing noise as some sort of demand that they be allowed to maintain the "freedom" to infect others and keep the pandemic going.

As the new US House of Representatives organizes, the Republican Party, currently in the majority, gets to establish the rules for how the House operates.   Apparently one of the new rules established by the GOP is an expansion of public areas within the Capitol building where people may smoke.   Paul Ryan, a former Republican Speaker of the House, had complained about how smoking in the Capitol made the place stink, and his successor in the speakership, Nancy Pelosi, had limited the public spaces in which people were allowed to smoke.

But all of those complaints and limitations sounded more like "woke" culture to certain GOP lawmakers than it did efforts to remove obnoxious odors and create a healthy environment for lawmakers, their employees, and tourists.

Congressmen had always been allowed to smoke and to allow smoking in their offices - that had never changed - but certain Republican congressmen wanted the "freedom" to smoke in other areas of the Capitol as well, so the new Congress quickly expanded the areas in which smoking was allowed.

There used to be a belief among many that one person's rights ended where those of another began - or, you are free to pursue your life choices until they interfere with the rights of others.  Today that seems to no longer be the case.  Today we are dealing with a class of people who believe their "rights" in every area are absolute, and screw you if that's a problem.

The new Congress has removed the metal detectors from the entryways into the House Chamber which cleared the way for guns to be carried onto the House floor.  It has also lifted face mask requirements and even expanded the areas in the Capitol in which people may smoke, both moves which increase the likelihood of harm to members and others in the chamber.    The righteous members who have forced these moves on their colleagues are obviously not "woke," in fact, they are textbook examples of being asleep at the wheel.  If they have no qualms about treating themselves and their colleagues that way, just imagine the horrors that they have in mind for the rest of us!

Amazon Drops Its Smile

 

by Pa Rock

On-Line Shopper

Amazon.com sent around a notification a couple of evenings ago saying that it would be dropping it's charitable-giving program, AmazonSmile, on February 20th.  The giant retailer said in its death notice for the program that while the company will continue to support many worthwhile projects of a charitable nature, it was supporting too many causes through AmazonSmile, and the charitable effort had been spreading itself too thin - whatever that means.  (I suspect that most of the charities being unplugged by Amazon would be happy to take any donations, "thin" or otherwise.)

(To the company's credit, Amazon did state that it would provide a parting donation to each charity equal to three months of benefits from the program that each had received in 2022.)

I joined Amazon Smile when the program first began in 2013.  There was no cost for being a member.  People who joined just had to do their Amazon shopping by accessing the shopping site through smile.amazon.com rather than just through Amazon's regular web portal.  New members were offered many choices of charities to support, and I selected the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.   

Over the years that I have been in the program, I have made 199 eligible purchases and donated a total of $29.99 to my charity, the ASPCA.  That same charity has received a total of over $15.7 million from AmazonSmile during the same period.  Thirty bucks isn't much, but I hate to see that effortless (on my part) giving go away - and I am sure that America's mistreated dogs and cats hate to lose that funding stream as well.

Overall, AmazonSmile has donated just over $400 million to US charities, and just under $450 million to charities worldwide.

But times are tough and Amazon.com just cannot afford to be as charitable as it once was.

Of course, MacKenzie Scott might disagree.  What a shame she is not running the company!

Santos Steals from Homeless Veteran's Dog

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Some would consider it a daunting task to find someone - anyone - who lies more than Donald John Trump, but somehow Trump's own Republican Party has managed to do just that.  George Santos, a newly elected Republican member of Congress who serves a district from New York's Long Island, has been in the news almost daily since the New York Times revealed last month that much (almost all) of Santos's resume is fiction.  The lies are coming so fast, in fact, that few can keep up with, or much less know, who the new congressman really is.

Despite the pile of falsehoods that helped to elect George Santos to Congress, the Republican Party, which currently controls the House of Representatives, is loathe to do anything which would result in his being ejected from that august political body.  The Republicans have a bare majority in Congress, and they feel a strong need to tenaciously hang onto every single one of their members, even those who happen to be as odious as George Santos.

No, George Santos had not attended or graduated from Baruch College.  No, he also had not worked for Citigroup or Goldman Sachs - in any capacity.  No, his mother had not been in the World Trade Center on 9/11, and she was, in fact, in Brazil on that day.  No, George Santos is not Jewish, nor did his family escape the holocaust.  

And yes, there were 37 expenditures of $199.99 listed on his campaign finance forms - each just one penny below the $200 threshold that would have required that he produce receipts for those expenses.  The comes to a total of just 37 cents shy of seven thousand and four hundred dollars - all without receipts.

But yesterday a story broke that put all of that other stuff to shame.  Two veterans of the US military have come forward with an allegation that back in 2016 the future congressman, using an assumed name, helped to raise money on-line, around $3,000, for life-saving surgery on a dog belonging to one of them - a vet who was homeless and living in a tent at the time. The two men, one of whom is acting as a representative for the other, allege that a supposed charity run by Santos managed to accumulate around $3,000 in donations for the dog's surgery, but that Santos then absconded with the money.

The dog, a honey-colored pitfall but by the name of Sapphire, died as a result of not being able to get the surgery. Sapphire's owner and best friend had this to say:

"Little girl never left my side in ten years.  I went through two bouts of seriously considering suicide, but thinking about her without me saved my life.  I loved that dog so much."

Stealing the medical fund set up for the benefit of a dog belonging to a homeless veteran - and causing the dog's death because of that theft - should be about as low as it is humanly possible to go.

This week, instead of moving to expel George Santos from Congress, or at least speaking out forcefully against him, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican Kevin McCarthy, dutifully doled out a couple of committee assignments to the freshman congressman from New York.   Santos apparently meets the standards of the Republican Party for serving in Congress, but he probably should not expect to be invited to any of their parties, especially the ones like those that former Congressman Madison Cawthorn told us about!

Republican politicians, after all, have standards.  (Wasn't it Donald Trump who said that?)

Armed Attacks on American Democracy

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

When the votes were counted in last November's election for the state representative position from New Mexico's 14th house district, there really wasn't much of a surprise.  The district, which had a long history of being a Democratic stronghold, re-elected the Democratic incumbent, Miguel Garcia, by a very wide margin.  Garcia, in fact, has held that position for the past twenty-six years.  The final vote totals were Miguel Garcia (the Democrat) 5,588 votes or 73.6% of the total vote, and Solomon Pena (the Republican) 2,005 votes or 26.4% of the total vote.

Democrat Garcia creamed Republican Pena by over 47 percentage points!   The Democrat received more than two-and-a-half votes for every one that the Republican got.

It wasn't even close!

So, of course being a die-hard Trump Republican, the losing candidate immediately hit the streets of Albuquerque complaining that he had been cheated and the election had been rigged.  Pena's primary argument for backing up those claims was based on what he said were large numbers of people who had told Pena that they would vote for him.

Surely nobody would lie to a politician!

Solomon Pena (age 39) may have felt some personal animosity toward his Democratic opponent because during the campaign Rep. Garcia had brought up Pena's past criminal history including a conviction for a "smash and grab" burglary, but a court had decided that felony convictions in New Mexico did not disqualify candidates from being on the ballot.  (The Albuquerque Journal has reported that Pena had 19 criminal convictions, including for burglary and larceny, and that he had served seven years in prison.)

Now it appears as though the unsuccessful political candidate may be headed back to prison.  This past Monday Pena was arrested for hiring individuals to fire guns into the homes of four New Mexico elected officials, all Democrats,  including two country commissioners and two state representatives.  One of the representatives reported that bullets had gone through the bedroom of her sleeping 10-year-old daughter.  Police are also investigating two other politically-related shootings in the Albuquerque area but have not, as yet, tied those to Pena.

A report by National Public Radio (NPR) alleges that Pena paid four men $500 each to shoot into the homes of the Democratic politicians, and that in at least one instance he had done some of the shooting himself.  

According to information in the criminal complaint, a confidential witness had given detectives from the Albuquerque Police Department information that Pena had been unhappy with the first three shootings because they had taken place too late at night and had struck the homes too high - and that he had "wanted them to aim lower and shoot around 8 p.m. because the occupants would more likely not be laying down."  That same witness went on to say that the more aggressive approach made the gunmen uneasy because that would be more likely to cause death or injury.

Pena's complaint about a "rigged" election is, of course, a straight-line extension of Donald Trump's attack on the Democratic process by claiming that his presidential election loss had been due to a stolen election.  There was no physical evidence to back up Trump's claim, and there was none in Solomon Pena's case either - nor has there been any compelling evidence brought forth in Republican Kari Lake's claims that she was cheated out of the governorship in Arizona.  Claiming election fraud seems to be just one more box that GOP candidates feel they need to check when they lose an election, an act that aligns them even more tightly with Donald Trump.

But now, with gunfire, election-denying has reached a higher, and far more dangerous, level.  Albuquerque's mayor, Tim Keller, said:

"I know that fundamentally, at the end of the day, this was about a right wing radical, an election denier, who was arrested today, and someone who did the worst imaginable think you can do when you have a political disagreement, which is turn that to violence."

Armed criminals threatening and intimidating poll workers and elected officials do not bring about fair elections.  They are agents of chaos who aim is to stoke fears and prejudices and to subvert democracy - and when democracy dies, so too will our freedoms.

This fight is too important to ignore.

Snow Crash

 

by Pa Rock

Reader

Author Neal Stephenson's science fiction "classic," Snow Crash, was first published just over thirty years ago in 1992, and I bought a copy when the book came out.  My copy, sadly, somehow wound up in a book case instead of in the read pile that I keep next to my bed, and it wasn't until just a few weeks ago that it finally resurfaced.  Over the ensuing three decades since I purchased the volume, I have seen it referenced many times in reviews of works by other authors, and knew that the book had set a standard of sorts among science fiction writers, so when I came across the book while in a frenzy of downsizing, I decided that I should read the novel that had such an impact on the genre of science fiction literature.

It was time well spent.

Snow Crash is a story set in a dystopian present - or the present of thirty years ago - and while many things are readily recognizable - highways and traffic, communities and cities, business organizations and institutions - they have  a noticeably twisted quality that makes them far different in many ways from the way the world actually is - or was.

In Stephenson's world major religions and military organizations are privately owned and operated, businesses are more powerful than governments - and governments are sometimes represented as businesses, and the mafia runs a major pizza chain that guarantees delivery in twenty minutes or less.  The United States pictured by Neal Stephenson has devolved into a few large federal office complexes where most of the work is probably meaningless, and the President of the United States is so insignificant that he has to introduce himself to the other passengers when he boards a corporate jet.

But perhaps the most significant aspect of the dystopian present created by Neal Stephenson is the existence of the Metaverse, a cyberspace community which is accessed with special goggles and computer connections and is populated by the personal avatars of the people who are sitting at computer terminals in reality with their feet up and their goggles on.  The denizens of the Metaverse are the avatars of computer programmers, hackers, and gamers - the people who have built the structures of the Metaverse - like buildings, roads, the monorail - and who live a big portion of their lives operating in that artificial environment.  Many of the issues and problems of the real world also make their way into the Metaverse.

There are several major characters in this novel, with the first and foremost being Hiro Protagonist, whose name obviously indicates the prominent role that he will play in this tale.  Hiro is one of the world's best hackers and he has been personally responsible for many of the major features of the Metaverse.  His avatar is also the best swordsman in the Metaverse.  But on the reality side of the spectrum Hiro is a pizza delivery man for the Mafia's pizza business, and he prides himself on never being late with an order.  

As the story opens Hiro is rushing to deliver a pizza that was given to him late by the local franchise.  All pizza boxes have a timer and if it reaches twenty minutes, the pizza is free.    But as Hiro is literally flying along the streets of Los Angeles in a delivery car owned by the Mafia, his vehicle his suddenly harpooned ("pooned") by a "Kourier," a young person who makes deliveries while riding a skateboard. The pooning device, a cable with a magnet, helps Kouriers make good time on their deliveries, but Kouriers are considered by many drivers to be parasites.  As Hiro maneuvers trying to shake the parasite, he somehow manages to navigate his Mafia car into an empty private swimming pool.

The Kourier, a 15-year-old girl named Y.T., volunteers to finish his delivery and does it barely within the 20-minute standard, thus earning her the friendship of the twenty-something Hiro as well as the admiration of Uncle Enzo, the Mafia chieftain.  Y.T. becomes the second major character in this story.

The third major character is Raven, a brutal and very dangerous Native American of the most remote part of the Aleutian Islands, an island that had been used for an atomic bomb test by the US government  in the early 1970's.  Raven can be exceedingly deadly both in reality as well as in the Metaverse,  but he has a certain charm and develops feelings for Y.T.

And the most villainous character in the novel is L. Bob Rife, an entrepreneurial minister who, through archaeological endeavors in the Middle East, has unearthed clay tablets which explain how to program people using simple syllabic voice commands.  L. Bob runs a major chain of churches where worshipers pay in advance in the lobby before being allowed into the church to worship.  He also purchased the USS Enterprise (the aircraft carrier) as his personal yacht.

It is L. Bob Rife and his team of researchers and hackers who manage to develop "Snow Crash," a virus that, if released in the Metaverse, will have the power to destroy the avatars and the minds of all of the people who are goggled-in and witnessing the release.

Even though I cannot pretend to grasp all of the religious history and computer science presented in Snow Crash, it is all set forth in a way that in generally understandable and totally engrossing.   Stephenson's book shows the contemporary world through a viewfinder that is just a degree or two off-center.  Many things are different, yet eerily recognizable.

If Virtuality Reality (VR) is your thing, you have probably already read Snow Crash, and anyone who has had even an inkling of interest in what life could be like on the other side of the cyber line should read it.  

I am glad that I did.

Monday's Poetry: "Pullman Porter"

 

by Pa Rock

Poetry Appreciator

Over the years I have featured the earthy and colorful narrative poetry of the English-born Canadian poet Robert W. Service in this space at least a half-dozen times.   Service's tales told of hard lives, well-lived, and often used the Alaskan "gold rush" of the late 1890's as the backdrop for his humorous character studies.  

The poem which I have selected to highlight today is "Pullman Porter," a self-deprecatory piece in which the poet's ego bubble is popped by a porter whom he encounters on a train.   It not only shows how our tastes change as we age, it also gives some insight into train travel back during its heyday.

Today would have been the 149th birthday of Robert W. Service.  Please enjoy this travel back in time as we prepare to disembark the train in Montreal.

Pullman Porter

by Robert W. Service

The porter in the Pullman car

Was charming, as they sometimes are.

He scanned my baggage tags: “Are you

The man who wrote of Lady Lou?”

When I said “yes” he made a fuss —

Oh, he was most assiduous;

And I was pleased to think that he

Enjoyed my brand of poetry.

He was forever at my call,

So when we got to Montreal

And he had brushed me off, I said:

“I’m glad my poems you have read,

I feel quite flattered, I confess,

And if you give me your address

I’ll send you (autographed, of course)

One of my little books of verse.”

He smiled — his teeth were white as milk;

He spoke — his voice was soft as silk.

I recognized, despite his skin,

The perfect gentleman within.

Then courteously he made reply:

“I thank you kindly, Sir, but I

With many other cherished tome

Have all your books of verse at home.

“When I was quite a little boy

I used to savour them with joy;

And now my daughter, aged three,

Can tell the tale of Sam McGee;

While Tom, my son, that’s only two,

Has heard the yarn of Dan McGrew ....

Don’t think your stuff I’m not applaudin’ —

My taste is Eliot and Auden.”

So as we gravely bade adieu

I felt quite snubbed — and so would you.

And yet I shook him by the hand,

Impressed that he could understand

The works of those two tops I mention,

So far beyond my comprehension —

A humble bard of boys and barmen,

Disdained, alas! by Pullman carmen.

First Sleep, the Watch, Second Sleep

 

by Pa Rock

Seasoned Sleeper

It's early morning and dark outside.  It will be dark for another thirty minutes or so.  I am up, semi-prepared for the day ahead, and yet it is still dark.  That's the way I roll.  I got to bed early, almost literally "with the chickens," and I rise-and-shine early - ahead of the chickens.  Often now, due to natural conditions associated with aging, I also wake during the middle of the night and spend a couple of hours lying sleeplessly in bed or puttering around the house.  

That may not sound like a normal sleep routine to the many (I wish!) who are reading this, but it is surprisingly normal from a historic perspective.  Over the past several decades there has been much discovered about the sleep habits of our more ancient ancestors.  This new focus on yet another aspect of human history and development originated with the gradual increasing perusal of medieval texts and legal documents which revealed that sleep by the ancients was broken up into segments.

A "normal" evening's rest consisted of a "first sleep" of two or three hours not long after dark, a period of wakefulness of one or two hours (sometimes called "the watch"), and then another segment of a "second sleep" which lasted a couple of hours.  That was a normal routine, so normal, in fact, that those terms made their way into literature, court documents, and even personal correspondence of the times.  It was the nighttime routine and it appeared to be fairly universal.

The most interesting part of the normal, pre-industrial, nighttime routine was the middle segment, or "the watch."  It was when people were awake that they had the opportunity to get things done.  During "the watch" people would often take care of unfinished chores, take medications, chat, have sex, and even conduct criminal activities in the cloak of darkness.  "The watch" would have also been the time to be alert and "watch" for criminals.

The old standard of segmented sleep apparently ended with the advent of the industrial revolution and with it the implementation of long, hard workdays and evenings that were becoming increasingly lit up.  As the world brightened at night, our circadian rhythms were affected and old sleep patterns began breaking.  There is some modern research showing that when exposed to prolonged periods of darkness, as in the days of old, the old sleep patterns of segmented sleep begin re-emerging.

Could that be why ghosts are thought to walk at midnight?

While reading through some old articles on the subject of "when" people slept in olden times, I also came across material which talked about "how" they slept.   The very poor would often bed down on the ground or on the dirt floors of their hovels - if they are fortunate enough to have hovels.  Some with more means had a mattress ticking which they would fill with leaves, and if they were exceedingly wealthy, with feathers.  One mattress would often accommodate an entire family, with the oldest daughter sleeping on one edge with younger sisters nestled in next to her.  Next to them would be the mother, the father, and then the sons - with the oldest son being on the other far edge.  Company also shared the mattress if there was room.  Overnight guests at roadside inns would often share a mattress with other guests, whether they knew them or not.  Common etiquette dictated that once you laid down for the night you remained relatively quiet and in one position so as not to disturb others.

All of that put me in mind of a friend from high school who always took a roll-away bed with him on campouts.  My friend would not have enjoyed the Middle Ages!  And that thought put me in mind of a former history professor who always referred to the Middle Ages as "500 years of camping out."  But I digress - it must be from a lack of sleep!

Missouri House Toughens Dress Code, but Only for Female Members

 

by. Pa Rock

Missouri Voter

This past week the Missouri House of Representatives passed a rules package that toughened its dress code, but only for the female legislators.   The heavily male-dominated legislative chamber (116 men versus 43 women) did try to take some of the sting out of the measure by finding a female GOP House member to introduce it onto the floor for a vote as an amendment to the rules package, but that charade did little to make the gender power-play more palatable.  The amendment passed on a voice vote and the entire rules package passed on a vote of  105 to 51, with pushback from Democratic legislators.

The Missouri Legislature, which has a history of being antagonistic toward some women's issues, voted for a total ban on abortion in 2019 which was to go into effect - and did - when the Supreme Court reversed itself on Roe v Wade, a decision which ultimately made by the Court last summer.    

The new dress code, which did not impact the existing male dress code,  added the requirement of an outer piece of clothing to cover women's shoulders.   Now, in addition to the shirt or blouse that they happen to be wearing, women will be required to also wear "a jacket like a blazer, cardigan, or knit blazer."  There was also a flap over whether to allow cardigans or not, but that was accepted based on the argument that blazers could present issues for legislators who happened to b pregnant.  

State Representative Peter Meredith, a Democrat, refused to even vote on the measure, but he had plenty to say about it:

"I don't think I'm qualified to say what's appropriate or not appropriate for women, and I think that is a really dangerous road for us all to go down . . . Y'all had a conniption fit the last two years when we talked about maybe, maybe wearing masks in a pandemic to keep each other safer.   How dare the government tell you what you have to wear over your face?  Well, I know some governments require women to wear things over their face, but here, oh, it's OK because we're just talking about how many layers they have to wear over their shoulders."

Democratic Representative Ashley Aune derided the debacle from the House floor:

"Do you know what it feels like to have a bunch of men in this room looking at your top trying to determine if it's appropriate or not?"

Representative Aune later emphasized that she felt the House should be focusing on "important issues."  Perhaps she had in mind things like adequately funding public education and social services in the state, things which the legislature regularly ignores as it instead works diligently at creating tax breaks for millionaires, billionaires, and big corporations.

Missouri public schools are dangerously underfunded, child protection in the state is a mere shadow of what it was two decades ago, hospitals are closing, roads are crumbling, bridges are failing, and our legislators rage over dress codes.

How pathetic.

Hillbillyx

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

In a stunning and brazenly political move that put her intellectual heft on full display, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the newly crowned governor of Arkansas, quickly announced on Day One of her administration that the term "Latinx" would henceforth no longer be used on any official state documents.

Why?  Because Sarah said so, that's why!

"Latinx" is a gender-neutral term that is growing in popularity as a replacement for the terms "Latina" which refers to a female of Latin American descent, and "Latino" which denotes a male who family origins are also rooted in Latin America.  But Huckabee Sanders, the daughter of former governor and Baptist Bible-thumper Mike Huckabee, was not having any of that gender-neutrality stuff on her watch as governor - no-siree-bob she was not!

By coming out against the term "Latinx" Sarah was able to take a decisive swing at not only the whole concept of gender-neutrality and all of its politically sensitive tangentials, she also managed to disparage many of the minimum wage and sub-minimum wage individuals who make poultry processing the jewel of Arkansas's economic crown.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a person who rose to national prominence by repeating the lies of an incessant liar, probably wishes the world was not so complicated, and that she did not have to take time from her busy day to tell people what words they can and cannot use in doing business with the state.  Why did Spanish have to be so danged complicated by having all of those male and female words?  Why couldn't they all just speak regular American - like her?

I guess it's a mercy that "hillbilly" is already gender-neutral and Sarah won't have to deal with charges of being a culturally insensitive "hillbillyx!"

OMG! Biden Is Coming for Our Gas Stoves!

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

The ultra-right, ultra-white, lunatic fringe of the GOP has been fear-mongering over guns for several decades with declarations that some un-American Democrat is coming to take your guns.   At first it was Bill Clinton, then Obama, the Hillary Clinton, and now Biden.  It has never happened, of course, but fear is a great motivator and a pot that GOP party bosses and their propaganda arm, Fox News, are always eager to stir.

This week the Paranoia Chorus has added another song to its repertoire and is now singing a bluesy alarm about Biden coming to take your gas cooking ranges.  That straw man was quickly crafted by right-wing politicians and journalists after reports from the Institute for Policy Integrity and the American Chemical Society surfaced which said that natural gas stoves emit air pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and fine particulate matter at levels which the US Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization have both said are unsafe and linked to respiratory illness, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and other dangerous health outcomes.

Additionally, in peer-reviewed medical research released just last month, it was also revealed that 12% of childhood asthma cases can be traced back to gas stoves.

But red-white-and-blue-blooded Americans who do most of their shopping and socializing at Walmart ain't having it.  In fact, many believe that the whole thing smells more than a little like Fauci.

In addition to harming humans, gas-powered stoves are also bad for the environment, producing carbon dioxide which warms the environment, and constantly leaking methane which warms the earth even faster than carbon dioxide -  but conservatives won't believe that is a problem until Mar-a-Lago goes under water.

The US Product Safety Commission will seek public comments on the matter later this winter, and a national ban on gas stoves could result - but it won't happen nationally anytime soon.  (However, California and New York, a pair of well known health and environmental leaders, are already making bold moves toward the eventual elimination of gas stoves.)

But, in the meantime, be on the lookout for men with moving dollies in pickup trucks circling through your neighborhoods - because Biden is definitely coming for your gas stoves!!!

(Personal Note:  I switched from a gas range to an electric one two years ago - and I had to pay to have my old stove hauled off.  I WISH Biden would have come for it!)

Run, Ronna, Run!

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Ronna Romney McDaniel, a Michigan princess who next week will have served as Chair of the Republican National Committee for six full years, is in the running for yet another term as the GOP's Big Kahuna.  This time, however, after three less-than-stellar election cycles for Republicans, Ms. Romney McDaniel is facing some serious opposition and could conceivably lose her privileged perch within the party apparatus.

Ronna, a granddaughter of former Michigan governor and failed GOP presidential aspirant George Romney - and a niece to Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, may find that her family's coattails won't carry her to another term as party chair as she faces her first serious opposition to retaining that title.  This year she is being opposed by fellow conservative Republican national committeewoman, Harmeet Dhillon, who was formerly the vice-chair of the Republican Party of California.

Both Ms. Romney McDaniel and Ms. Dhillon claim an unswerving fealty to Donald Trump, seemingly the number one requirement for leading the "modern" Republican Party.  ("My Pillow" guy, Mike Lindell, is also apparently running for GOP party chair.)

While Ronna Romney McDaniel has a prodigious record for raising large amounts of cash for the GOP, lots of which was funneled back to Trump through the party's direct hiring of members of his staff - and hosting large, lavish GOP events at Trump properties, she has not been nearly as accomplished when it comes to leading the party to election victories.

Since Ronna was first elected to lead the national GOP six years ago, she has presided over the loss of seven Republican governorships, three US Senate seats, nineteen seats in the House, and the Presidency.  And now, God love her, she wants two more years at the helm to continue her work with the party.  Others, however, particularly GOP committee people from the American South, seem to be developing doubts about Romney McDaniel's ability to ever lead the party to a significant victory.

Today's Republican Party may not stand for anything other than overt racism, homophobia, misogyny, and the denial of healthcare to working class Americans - and especially the denial of healthcare to women, but they do stand tall when it comes to representing their base - America's richest families and corporations.  

 Ronna Romney McDaniel is the epitome of today's Republican Party and she deserves the right to finish pushing it into the abyss.

Run, Ronna, Run!  You have my complete and enthusiastic support!