Terror Over Tahoe

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

I have never skied, nor have I ever had a desire to ski.  Over the course of many years I have learned that I can break more than my share of bones simply by puttering around the yard.  I don't need the added drama and expense of going someplace exotic and participating in a daredevil activity just to acquire some body plaster for friends to sign.  

I did visit a ski center once and almost got on a ski lift to ride to the top of Mt. Schweitzer which overlooks the scenic small city of Sandpoint, Idaho, but was saved at the last minute from that terrifying prospect when my hostess, Cousin Joyce, offered an alternative activity.  The ski lift, which I viewed from below, looked like a an aluminum plank dangling below a cable and held in place by a piece of aluminum tubing similar to that which makes the frame for a webbed lawn chair.  The minimal lawn chair hanging from a cable might have held me, but I had my doubts.  We went boating instead.

That was my only experience with a ski "lift."  I did see photos of a ski "gondola," and they look far more comfortable and safer, yet they, too, dangle high above the rough terrain of ski slopes by cables.  The photos of gondolas that I saw looked as though they were completely enclosed and could hold perhaps four skiers or snowboarders and their equipment.

This past week, in a scenario that sounds like the opening scene of a horror movie, a young lady and some friends were staying at a resort in South Lake Tahoe, California, and spending their days out on the slopes snowboarding.  It was late in the day on Thursday when the woman rode the gondola back up the mountain for one final snowboarding run, but when she got to the top she realized that she was actually too tired for another run, and she asked one of the operators if she could instead just ride the gondola back to the base.  She got into a gondola at 4:58 p.m. and was only part way down the mountain when the ride shut down for the day.

When the car stopped and the captive in the airborne cable car realized what had happened. she yelled desperately to workers that she could see below on the mountain, but they could not hear her, and eventually she lost her voice.  The frightened individual did not have her phone with her, nor a flashlight, and no any way of signaling for help.    She spent a long and very cold night (the temperature dropped to the low 20's) in the gondola swaying in the breeze as she rubbed her hands and feet and tried to stay warm.

Her friends realized she was missing and made a report during the night, but apparently no one thought to check the gondolas.  She was discovered the next morning when the rides resumed.  A fire rescue unit was called and gave her a preliminary examination, but news sources said that she declined further medical follow-up at a hospital.

The resort where she was staying is conducting an investigation into how one of its guests could have been stranded overnight in a container dangling from a cable high above a ski slope.

It was undoubtedly a very harrowing night, but now the snowboarding tourist is back on solid ground, and she is safe.  Her next big challenge will likely be handling the hordes of personal injury lawyers who are no doubt lined up and clamoring to represent her in court.

Good luck with them!

My Last Broken Arm

 

by Pa Rock

Brittle Old Man

Today is the first anniversary of the day that I fell and broke my left arm just below the shoulder.  Less than three years before that, on May 31st, 2020, during the height of the pandemic, I had fallen and broken my right arm just below the shoulder, so when I fell last year I already knew the drill of what I was fixing to endure.

The first broken arm happened when I fell as I was backing out of a raised flower bed, not the smartest of moves.  The descent began with my feet already nearly two feet above the regular ground level, and as I fell backward toward the hard, unyielding earth, I knew that I had screwed up big time.  I watched the outdoor scenery drift along the edge of my vision in slow motion, and as I hit the ground I distinctly heard a bone break.  When I was finally able to right myself and get tot the house to retrieve my phone, I called for an ambulance and told them I had a broken arm.  I knew it for a fact.

I didn't actually hear the bone break when I fell a year ago, but I had been to the same dance before and knew, with absolute certainty, that I had broken the other arm - the one which, at the time, I called my "good arm."

The killer flower bed sits in my backyard about halfway between the house and two nice storage buildings that I had installed in 2019.  Last year when I fell it was early morning and I had been out to the chicken coop, also in the backyard, where I feed the neighbor's cat his daily breakfast.  It was just barely daylight, and after feeding the cat I walked over to check on the storage buildings.  My son uses one and I use the other.  Every day I open mine (it's an OCD thing) just to check and make sure that I haven't suffered vandals or thieves during the night.

On that morning, a year ago today, there was a heavy frost on the ground.  There are slightly sloped wooden ramps leading up to the doors of each storage building, making it easier to get large items in and out of the buildings.  I was wearing rubber-soled sandals, which I wear every day of the year, and carefully took the two or three steps up the ramp of my storage buildings to look inside, placing one foot in front of the other.  I reached the door, looked inside, closed the door, and was backing (again with the backing!) down the ramp when I suddenly thought that I needed to look in again (the OCD thing).  I reached for the door, opened it, and for some reason turned my body sideways as I looked in.  That turn placed my feet parallel to the building and put each foot on a separate, solid board - boards which had a thick coating of frost.

My feet flew out from under me, and I mean "flew!"   At one point as I began my slow-motion descent toward the ramp, I actually saw my feet in the air above my head.  When I hit I knew my left arm was broken - even without the soundtrack - and I began the slow, painful process of making my way back the hundred or more yards to the house where my phone sat safely on the kitchen counter.   Once I reunited with the phone, I called for an ambulance.  

(That feet-in-the-air thing was quite a physical achievement for me.  The only other time that I remember my feet being above my head was thirty years ago when a yoga instructor showed me how to stand on my head by backing up against a wall.)

My youngest son came down a couple of days later and took me to his home in the Kansas suburbs of Kansas City, and I spent the next couple of weeks recuperating there while being waited on hand-and foot by his wife, Erin, who is a saint.

This morning there was no frost on the ground, the neighbor's cat didn't show for breakfast (he is less regular now that we have a big dog in the household), and I again checked in my storage building and found everything there to be in order.  And, the phone was in my pocket!

If you are old, like me, and tend to wander, like me, carry your damned phone - and maybe wear a little extra padding, or some body armor!

Alexa Doesn't Know Everything, Yet

 

by Pa Rock

Constant Learner

I have always been an eager learner, and when I was younger I would rush to complete homework in class so that I could use my study hall time (our study hall was in the school library) to peruse the two or three old sets of encyclopedias that were on the library shelves.  I was fascinated with learning new things - and still am.

My quest for knowledge today is made much simpler by the internet. It is all right there, at my fingertips.  Google, ChatGPT, Wikipedia - somewhere on the internet is a ready answer to any question that flits across my mind, no matter how trivial.  And now, with smart speakers, I don't even have to be sitting at a computer or messing with my phone to access immediate knowledge.   I can be sprawled out on the couch, reading a book or dozing off to any music that suits my temperament at the moment and ask Alexa anything that flits into my mind.  She can spell, translate into different languages, calculate, and answer all manner of oddball questions.

Alexa is smart, a lot smarter than me, but she is also still learning and there are things she doesn't know - yet.  A couple of weeks ago, for instance, I heard that the price of postage on a first-class letter was rising to 68 cents.   Ever since the post office got smart and went to "forever" stamps where a stamp was good forever once you bought it - and the going postal rate was no longer printed on the stamps, it's been (intentionally) hard for Americans to keep track of just how much money they are paying to use the mail.  If the price was rising to 68 cents per letter, I wanted to know the amount from which it was rising.

So I asked Alexa about the cost of a first class stamp - and she told me 44 cents.   I knew that was wrong, so I asked again, but Alexa was insistent with her incorrect information.  (I learned later that the price at that time was 66 cents per first class stamp.)

The price of first class stamps rose to 68 cents a week ago yesterday, and yesterday morning I asked Alexa about the price of a stamp, and she told me it was 55 cents.  Overnight, someone must have juiced her circuits, because when I asked the same question this morning, she told me it was 68 cents.

Sometimes Alexa responds better depending on how a question is posed.  When I asked her for a five-digit prime number, she responded, "Sorry, I don't know that one."  So I regrouped and asked Alexa what a prime number was - and she gave me the definition.  Then I asked for examples of prime numbers and she listed the first ten:  2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, and 29.  So then I asked for an example of a five-digit prime number, and she responded:  "From answers.com, the largest 5-digit prime number is 99,991."    She knew one - a unique one.  Alexa still obviously does not know every prime number so far known to mankind, but she is capable of learning and will someday have that information.

She also does not seem to have the ability to calculate time spans in days.  I told her my birthday and asked her how old I was in days, and that stumped her.  There are day calculators available on the internet, so it is a calculation process that she could eventually incorporate into her "knowledge" base.

(The answer, according to a day calculator website, is that I am 27,706 days old - and I feel every one of them!  I have been working on this blog now 5,927 days, or 21.39 percent of my life.  By now I should be paying myself a pension - or going on strike!)

So far there is no "one source" for all knowledge, but it's coming - and it's coming damned fast!

(I would be surprised if my grandchildren even know what encyclopedias are!)

Jackie Robinson Suffers One More Indignity

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Jackie Robinson had an exceptionally distinguished college athletic record from his days at Pasadena Junior College and UCLA where he had lettered at both schools in baseball, football, basketball, and track and field well before he played his one season (1945) with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Baseball League - and certainly well before he broke the color barrier in 1947 when he signed to play Major League Baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers.  But even with a stellar record as an accomplished athlete, Robinson suffered many personal attacks and indignities as he struggled in demonstrating to the world - and especially to other players - his abilities in the game of baseball, all the while trying to hold the door open so that other athletes of color could join him at the show.

Robinson died of a heart attack more that fifty years ago at the extremely young age of only fifty-three.  The hall-of-famer had proven himself on the field having appeared in six World Series and six All-Star games during his ten years with the Dodgers, and, perhaps more importantly, he had successfully navigated the racially charged waters of professional sports and become an icon in the game of baseball - and he had become an inspiration for young athletes of color the world over.

Sadly, a half-century after the death of this baseball legend, one more indignity has been heaped atop a long list of personal affronts.  Last Thursday night a bronze, life-sized statue of Jackie Robinson, was severed at the ankles at a park in Wichita, Kansas, and hauled off in a truck by persons unknown to a destination and for a purpose also unknown.

The statue's monetary value was $75,000, but its emotional value to the children who visited the park and particularly to the members of League 42, a children's baseball league whose name is derived from Robinson's uniform number, is obviously incalculable.   

Rewards have been posted for information leading to the arrest of the thieves, as well as for the safe return of the statue.

McAdams Park, the place where the statue of Robinson recently stood, serves as a sports complex for youth teams from five to fourteen years of age.  Participants are primarily from low-income households, much like the household in which Robinson grew up.   The park has a focus of honoring individuals of color who had a strong impact on the community.

Local police are stressing a desire to get the statue back before Black History month begins on February 1st.    Donations have also been coming in for its replacement.

One local official described the theft of the Jackie Robinson statue as a "crime against children."  

All that remains of the replica of Jackie Robinson now are his bronze shoes standing atop home plate.  Those shoes form a reminder of the loneliness that Jackie Robinson must have felt on that April day in 1947 when he stepped onto Ebbets Field in Brooklyn and stood there bravely representing an entire subjugated race in the face of baseball as it had always been but no longer was.

Jackie Robinson was a beacon of hope for millions, and his statue helped to share his story and inspiration with the children of Wichita.   He is theirs, and he must be returned!

The High Cost of Name-Calling

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

When a jury makes a quick decision, it is usually a sign that they believe they are dealing with a very open-and-shut matter.  Yesterday it took a New York jury of nine individuals less than three hours to set an amount for damages in the second defamation suit that columnist E. Jean Carroll brought against Donald Trump.   The judge had already ruled Trump guilty of defaming the writer, and the jury's job was to hear the facts in the case and then make a determination as to the amount of damages which should be awarded.

Yesterday, after Trump had stormed out of the courtroom during closing arguments by Carroll's attorney, the jury, in private deliberations, quickly arrived at an amount:  $83,300,000.   The award includes $11 million for damages to the writer's reputation, $7.3 million for emotional harm, and $65 million in punitive damages.

Last May in a civil suit brought by Carroll, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing  the writer and awarded her $5,000,000 for the sexual assault and defamation.  That amount still stands as well, bringing Trump's current amount due to E. Jean Carroll to $88.3 million.

Donald Trump, who is very adept at using his many legal problems and courtroom appearances as campaign stratagems, was quickly on the social media platform, Truth Social, following the jury's decision regarding damages owed to E. Jean Carroll - and having already suffered two courtroom defeats for defaming her, Trump did not mention the columnist at all in the posting.  Now his target is Joe Biden, a public figure:

"Absolutely ridiculous!  I fully disagree with both verdicts and will be appealing this whole Biden-directed witch hunt focused on me and the Republican party.  Our legal system is out of control and being used as a political weapon.  They have taken away all first amendment rights.  THIS IS NOT AMERICA!"

Donald Trump was wise to not mention E. Jean Carroll in his latest posting.  She has already proven that she will sue - and she does hire very good lawyers!  If Trump could just be quiet and pay attention, he might actually learn something from her.

One former Republican operative was quoted in the media yesterday as saying, with regard to the latest verdict, "Donald Trump is going to have to sell a lot of hats."  Get those checkbooks ready, MAGA camp members!

Screed from a Mob Boss

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Donald Trump told a rally in Concord, New Hampshire, last Friday night that Nikki Haley had failed to secure the Capitol and use the (imaginary) reinforcements that he had offered to provide during the rioting of January 6th, 2021.   He was, of course, trying to use one of his old stand-up routines against former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but Trump was confused and using his old Pelosi material on Haley.  Haley had no role in government of January 6th, 2021, and was not at the Capitol or even in Washington, DC, when the Trump-fueled insurrection was taking place, yet in discussing the violence, Trump used Haley's name four times.  He was confused BIG TIME.

Nikki Haley, who had been almost pleasant to Trump of late, and had promised to pardon him for his involvement in January 6th if she was elected President, decided to take advantage of Trump's major prolonged brain fart and used it to question his "mental fitness" for office.

That was bad enough.

But then, when she lost the New Hampshire primary to Trump on Tuesday, she tweaked him again by refusing to drop out of the race and saying instead that she was in it for the long haul.  She said that one primary and one caucus should not speak for the entire Republican Party which is spread across fifty states and a couple of voting territories.

And Trump, in his usual fashion, exploded.

In a posting to his personal Truth Social account on Wednesday night, Donald Trump, who seemed to be channeling fictional mob boss Vito Corleone, made this very unstable threat:

"Anybody that makes a 'Contribution' to Birdbrain, from this moment forth, will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp.  We don's want them, and will not accept them, because we Put America First and ALWAYS WILL!" 

Well, sieg heil, good buddy!  Who knew that MAGA was some sort of exclusive, members-only club  and Donald Trump was in charge of membership.  I certainly didn't, but, in hindsight, the group's only obvious purpose seems to be to cheer on Trump and send him money.

But from that moment forth any of you stink-o, rat-bastard commies who send in even a dollar to Nikki Haley are going to are going to have your red MAGA ball caps snatched from your heads, your secret MAGA decoder rings wrenched from your fingers and never even stand the slightest chance of being allowed to lick Donald Trump's golf balls.  You will be totally eradicated from the movement.  Vito Donald has screed decreed it so.

I lean decidedly Democratic in politics, but after Trump's big-mouthed threat, I am tempted to send Nikki a couple of dollars - just to make sure that I, too, get "permanently barred from the MAGA camp."  

Does disbarment from MAGA come with a nice certificate, or a proclamation, or something that I can hang on the wall and show off to my friends?

Stand tall and tough, Nikki, and fight every day - all the way to the convention!

The Supreme Court Could Redeem Itself

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

I am not a big fan of Politico, the on-line political news and opinion source, but I do scan it daily just to get a sense of what Democrats who lean to the political right are thinking.  It's rare when I come across anything there that stays with me more than a few minutes.  Today, however, there was an opinion piece on Politico which I found quite provocative.   It was entitled "Trump's Supreme Court Justices Must Kick Him Off the Ballot,"  and it was written by Bruce Ackerman, a Sterling Professor of law and political science at Yale University.

Professor Ackerman argues in his opinion posting that the three Trump appointed justices - Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Coney Barrett - used "originalist" arguments when they voted to overturn Roe v. Wade and strip women of a constitutional "right" to an abortion, and based their decision in that case on what they saw as the original intent of the men who drafted the Constitution.  He then noted that the justices in the Colorado Supreme Court who voted to remove Trump from that state's ballot had also carefully researched the original intent of the men who penned the insurrectionist clause into the Fourteenth Amendment into the US Constitution, and that their careful work has been praised by other originalist scholars.  

And finally, Professor Ackerman argued that if the current justices on the US Supreme Court wish to remain true to their own established principle of adhering to originalist intent, then they necessarily should remove Trump from the current presidential race.

Trump is, of course, counting on Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and the three justices that he appointed to carry the day in his favor over the three liberal female justices and possibly Chief Justice Roberts as well.

But if Chief Justice John Roberts is concerned about the reputation and legacy of "his" Court, Ackerman feels that he could move to strengthen its legitimacy by voting to uphold the Colorado decision that removed Trump from its state ballot, and if he could bring at least one Trump-appointed justice along as well, they would carry the day.  With regard to the three Trump justices - Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Coney Barrett - the professor said:

"By affirming the Colorado decision, the Trump-appointed justices would make it clear that they are not merely rubber-stamps for the president who propelled them through the Senate - and that, despite prevailing public skepticism about the court, they are reaching out to their fellow justices in an on-going effort to decide hard cases on the basis of fundamental principles."

It is at that point where Professor Ackerman's political speculation gets really interesting.  He argues that if Trump is removed from the race and replaced with a younger Republican candidate, perhaps a "much" younger one, that would put pressure on 81-year-old Joe Biden, who at one point had seemed to argue that the was only running to stop Trump, to step aside and let the Democrats also nominate a younger individual.

The law professor from Yale argues that if the Supreme Court should actually uphold the Colorado decision and remove Trump from the race, the court should also issue an injunction moving Super Tuesday from March to early May in order to give new candidates time to campaign.

That, of course, is all speculation, and it is based on the premise of the Supreme Court behaving in an honorable and consistent manner, so those who are wise should probably not hold their collective breath.  Still, even just an outside possibility that the US Supreme Court could actually do the right thing and remove the insurrectionist Trump from the ballot is a spark of hope in an otherwise long dark night.

And it could even roll into a twofer.

A Great Noise Cometh

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

With the US Presidential race sticking tightly to the scripts put in play by backroom politicians and party bosses months ago, there really is no surprising "news" on the presidential race.  People are playing with the political cards which they have been dealt - from stacked decks - and feeling as though they have at least a bit of control over their own destinies.  Bless their hearts.

One of the more interesting real news stories which I have been following involves cicadas, those large, big-winged, hard-bodied insects that cut through the serenity of spring and summer nights with their screechy love songs and incessant chatter.  But those big bugs do more that just make a racket, they also shed their skins and leave their exoskeletons hanging from tree trunks, branches, and even the siding of houses in eerie, ghost-like, hard-skinned representations of themselves.  Cicadas are unusual creatures that often attract the attention of humans, especially kids.

My father and his generation called them "jar flies," and though I never definitively learned why, I suspect that a common childhood amusement during the era of the Great Depression, was to capture cicadas and keep them in jars - for the noise and maybe to watch them shed their skins.  I investigated the tern "jar fly" and learned that it is still relatively common parlance for a cicada.

Cicadas lay their eggs underground, and the larvae of the cicadas live underground surviving off of roots and things of that sort for years.  One very large "brood" of cicadas live underground for seventeen years before tunneling their way to the surface in the spring when the ground warms.  Another very large brood surfaces every thirteen years.   While they are on the surface of the earth, as mature cicadas, they hurry about signing their very noisy songs as they attempt to attract mates.  When they have managed to secure a mate, the females lay their eggs underground, the adults die, and the cycle begins anew,

When a major brood of cicadas hatch it is quite a noisy affair, but when two major broods hatch at the same time it will be . . . well, we don't know exactly how it will be because it last happened in 1803, back when Thomas Jefferson was President, and it is only every 221 years that the 17-year-cicadas and the 13-year-cicadas hatch at the same time - and that will be this year - starting in late April.  

The two groups don't inhabit exactly the same space, but there will be a small strip of land in Illinois where both groups are expected to emerge at the same time.  Also, much of their breeding areas are in close proximity to one another.

Scientists and "cicada tourists" are all anxious to see what happens.  Will the two groups get along, will they antagonize or attack one another, or will they get adventurous and do some cross-mating?  Spring and early summer across the United States this year will be very interesting - at least to entomologists and students of nature - and it will certainly be noisy!

But this spring and summer were going to be noisy anyway.

A Day the Ozarks Shook, Rattled, and Rolled

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Smaller quakes and rumblings had been occurring in the area of extreme southeastern Missouri and northeastern Arkansas since late in the preceding year, but around 9:00 a.m. local time on January 23, 1812, (212 years ago this morning,) a massive earthquake, subsequently called the "New Madrid Earthquake," rolled onto the scene and shook not only the area around the epicenter in the Missouri Bootheel, but was also felt as far away as the east coast of the United States.  It was the second of three major quakes to hit the area in an eight-week span, and by far the most severe.  Buildings toppled, fissures and cracks in the earth's surface developed, sand was forced up from underground that ruined crop fields for several years, and the Mississippi River developed temporary waterfalls and even flowed backward for a couple of hours.  The tremors continued for weeks.

Because the area where the quake activity was centered was sparsely at that time, there were thought to be only around a hundred people who were killed as a result of the seismic activity, and damage to existing structures was far lighter than it would have been in modern times.

A source which I read this morning said that the quake which happened 212 years ago today measured "nearly eight points on the Richter scale," a "fact" that I found interesting since the quake occurred long before the invention of seismographs which measure ground movement, and eighty-eight years before the birth of Charles Francis Richter, one of the developers of the Richter scale and the person for whom it was ultimately named.  

But, I digress.  Based on the ample anecdotal evidence, it was a really big damned earthquake, and it probably would have measured "nearly eight points on the Richter scale," if not more. 

The New Madrid fault is a 150-mile line of seismic instability that runs from southern Illinois down through the Missouri Bootheel, and into northeastern Arkansas.  It also touches on eastern Tennessee and Kentucky.  In 1990 a climatologist named Iben Browning created quite a stir when he predicted a major reoccurrence of the massive New Madrid earthquake, and he even went so far as to predict the exact dates that the new earthquake would happen:  December 2nd and 3rd, 1990.  Mr. Browning got the survivalists all stirred up, and he was responsible for the sale of many earthquake insurance policies, but his prediction was ultimately wrong - leading some to conclude that super computers abroad the UFOs that constantly hover above Earth had interfered with his calculations.

A recent academic study has postulated that the situation might actually be getting better due to a shift in an anomaly which effects the tectonic plates below New Madrid, and that as a result the plates are growing more stable - or not.

As someone who experienced several small earthquakes while living in Japan, I know this much to be true:  when the earth moves under your feet, it's not always due to love!

Elder Abuse: Bad Things Happen to Old People

 

by Pa Rock

Old Citizen Journalist

Yesterday there was a story on the internet about a married couple in Overland Park, Kansas, who are headed into court to face charges of stealing from a dead person.   They had apparently been living with the woman's father who passed away in 2016, but when he died the couple chose not to report the death because that would have stopped his pension and social security benefits, money which they continued to bank and spend. The deception was discovered in 2022 after the pair had spent over $200,000 of money that had been paid into the checking account of the deceased old man.

During those six years that they drew and spent his retirement benefits, they left the old codger's corpse in his bed where it eventually mummified.  

Perhaps that would be more accurately described as abuse of a corpse rather than of an old man, but if he was treated that egregiously by his deadbeat relatives after death, his quality of life toward the end probably left something to be desired.

That story put me in mind of an episode of the television show, "Shameless," the American version, where the Gallagher family had been living with an elderly aunt in a big house that she owned on Chicago's south side, and when she died, they buried her in the yard in order to keep residing in her house and drawing her benefits.

it also reminded me of an actual child abuse case that I worked as an investigator many years ago.  In the process of sorting through what was happening with the family, we quickly discovered a quite elderly great-grandmother who was being held captive - and had been for several years - by her children and grandchildren who were cashing her social security check as soon as it arrived every month.  She was "rescued" by the state, and people went to jail.

People become vulnerable as they age, and bad things happen to vulnerable people.   Check on your elderly neighbors, especially during bad weather.  Make sure they have heat, food, water, and a way to contact others.  Be on the lookout for mistreatment, and report concerns to law enforcement or social service agencies.

We are all getting older by the day, which means that elder abuse is a problem that could eventually affect us all.  Let's treat it with the attention and seriousness that it deserves.

Fighting the Furries

 

by Pa Rock

He, Him, and (occasionally) It

As a former school administrator of several years, I can say, without hesitation, that scandalous stories about the local schools are a staple in the mental cupboards of many small town gossips and busybodies.  One of the big scare stories back in the days when I was principaling was the continually circulating warning about the temporary tattoos on small slips of thin paper that children could wet and transfer to their skin.  About once a year an excited mother or three would call the school in a panic to warn that she had heard that some biker gang, or hippies, or commies were circulating temporary tattoos on paper that had been soaked in LSD.  

That was back in the days before the internet and social media.  The local gossips had to do their meddling in the education of other people's children the hard way:  door-to-door and by phone.  Today their children and grandchildren can do their fear-mongering with relative ease over platforms like Facebook, X, and TikTok.

With the advances in the methods of spreading wild rumors, the quality of stories has also improved.  Today one of big tales that keep making the rounds is that of the "furries."  This particular mass exaggeration appears to be rooted in the hysteria that conservative media whipped up a couple of years ago over people choosing to use pronouns that were reflective of genders other than the one listed on their birth certificates.

At some point a clever instigator wondered what would be the result if, instead of identifying as a different gender, people chose to identify as another species.   Someone developed that concept a bit further and imagined these human 'animals' going to school, and decided to call them "furries."  Bathrooms were already controversial, so why not stir that into the mix as well and have teachers providing littler boxes for their students who identified as "furries"?

It was a great story - an attack on pronoun usage, a slap at transgender people, another chance to stir some anger over school bathrooms, a way to express some outrage over "permissive" teachers - it just had everything and was too good not to spread.  And though is was total BS with absolutely no basis in fact, tales of "furries" and litterboxes in schools have spread coast-to-coast.

I am a 75-year-old retiree with absolutely no connection to the local schools, but over the past couple of years I have been told twice by local residents about the "furries" in our local school system and the litter boxes that the teachers are providing.   And after hearing about the "furries" that are being educated here locally, I had great concern regarding our area schools.  I knew the stories were malarkey, but my concern was that the local schools had produced the mental nincompoops who were spreading that nonsense.

Last Wednesday Justin Humphrey, a Republican state representative in Oklahoma, introduced legislation to address the very serious (and imaginary) problem of furries in the public schools of Oklahoma.   Rep. Humphrey's bill targets "students who purport to be an imaginary animal or animal species, or who engage in anthropomorphic behavior commonly referred to as furries at school."

Problem solved.  Praise Jesus!

One Year from Today

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

The next presidential administration will officially take office at noon one year from today.  The inauguration will be a ceremony steeped in pomp and and circumstance and history - and at the end of the affair an elderly white man will step forward, place his hand on the Bible, and swear to uphold the Constitution as he embarks on four more years of running one of the most powerful nations on earth.

I say four "more" years because regardless of which geriatric white man our citizens choose as their leader in general election, chances are almost certain - barring a medical crisis or a tsunami hitting either Mar-a-Lago in Florida or Rehoboth Beach in Delaware - the next President will be someone who has served in the Oval Office before.

The two national conventions that officially nominate the candidates of each party will not be held until this summer, but the primary processes by both parties have been carefully planned, the political decks stacked, and and the candidates are already known to all but the most naive of political prognosticators.

The major issues have also been identified and battle lines are being drawn.  The primary thrust of the Democratic campaign will be a woman's right to make her own health care decisions, and they will focus on turning out massive numbers of angry women in suburban communities in a handful of swing states.  Republicans will be trying to keep American goobers with guns riled up over the "invasion" of immigrants at our southern border.  Republicans will have better visuals, a distinct advantage in a society where significant numbers of individuals either can't or won't bother with reading. 

At a time when the world is beset with political and economic turmoil - and rapidly careening into the climate crisis of life-extinguishing proportions, the United States of America should be stepping forward with our best, brightest, and most vigorous leadership, but instead we are headed into four more years of concerns about comfortable footwear, lucidity, and incontinence.

Maybe if we had a nomination process that allowed for participation by all Americans, instead of just a select few who live in certain states, we could generate nominees who aren't well beyond their use-by dates and refugees from nursing homes.

Regional presidential primaries with all states participating would give us all a say in the process and some ownership in the results.  That almost sounds like real  democracy.

The current nominating system is a failure.   The proof of that will be on the ballot in November.

Pistol Packin' Mamas

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

A young woman I know who lives in an urban setting, at least a community that is more urban than where I live, came home from work after dark a couple of years ago, parked her car in her enclosed garage, and went into the house where she encountered a pair of thieves who had been patiently awaiting her arrival.  The woman, who was known for being fairly self-reliant, nevertheless acted extremely shook-up in front of the home invaders and undoubtedly shed some tears.  She had no money in the house, she told them, but she had cashed her pay check and left her money in the car.  The desperadoes followed her into the garage and then stood by as she climbed into her vehicle to get her wages which she would then politely hand over.

The potential crime victim reached under the seat, or into the glove box, or somewhere in the car where she had supposedly stashed her money, but instead of coming up with an envelope of currency, she produced a pistol and began firing.  As the panicked thieves bolted for the door and fled into the night, one yelled in absolute panic, "The bitch has a gun!"

A few evenings later the young woman's friends threw a party in her honor.  The theme was "The bitch has a gun!"

The point of that story, and it is a true one, btw, or at least the point in my telling it here is to illustrate the new reality that women in America are becoming serious about arming themselves.   Gun ownership is no longer a primarily white male domain, and other groups are getting in on the action - especially women.

In a recently accelerating trend, nearly half of all new gun owners in America since 2019 have been women,   A national firearms survey conducted in 2021 reveals that 4 million men became gun owners between 2019 and 2021, and 3.5 million women also became gun owners during that same period of time, and 21% of those were Black women, a fact which made them the fastest growing segment of new gun owners in the country.

The times, it would seem, are definitely changing.

A primary reason that women are choosing to arm themselves is for self-defense.  Women have long suffered the wrath and violence of self-absorbed, dangerous men, and many believe it's time to fight back.  Women are also choosing to own firearms for a sense of empowerment and independence.  They want to feel the self-assurance that comes from knowing that they have a deadly weapon within reach.

Certain women, like certain men, would no doubt enjoy exercising their blood lust in the killing of God's creatures, and others would get a kick out of going to the range and shooting paper targets.

Some women also see the possession of a firearm as an equalizer against the size and physical power advantage that most men possess.  A bullet delivered with exacting precision can stop a raging bull, or a raging man, in his tracks.  Others want to have a gun available for a sense of protection at home.

(There are, of course, strong arguments that having a gun in the home poses increased risks to the people who live there, especially if there is already a history of violence in the home, and guns also put curious children at risk.   Some argue that guns in the home serve to attract thieves rather than repulse them because they are easy to fence and turn into quick cash.)

But, putting those arguments aside, the reality is that more women, and particularly women of color, are buying guns than ever before, and men with a history of violence need to beware that their crimes may result in quicker and more deadly retribution.

Having more guns in society is not a good thing, and the National Rifle Association's long-standing claim that more guns make us safer, is, of course, bullshit.  But if society is going to be awash in guns anyway, maybe it's for the best that all quarters are armed.    Perhaps then the craziness will take care of itself.

But until that happens, it would be prudent to think long and hard before dragging some unwilling woman into a dressing room of a high-end department store, whether she's your type or not, for purposes of sexual assault.  She might damned well be packing!

US Senate Posts Its Honor Roll

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

In scenes reminiscent of LBJ being hounded by anti-war protesters back in the sixties, President Biden is also beginning to draw hecklers when he tries to speak at campaign events and public appearances.  Biden's hecklers are people who are angry about the US support of Israel during that country's unrelenting attacks on Gaza, attacks which have already killed north of 24,000 people, many of whom were non-combatant civilians and children, and has reduced the territory to piles of rubble.  

Gaza, by reputable accounts from international relief agencies, is on the verge of mass starvation and a humanitarian catastrophe.  Yet the savage assaults by Israeli armed forces continue, blocking the deliveries of aid - including food, water, and medicine - and pounding the Palestinians well beyond defeat and toward annihilation.

The United States has always provided military aid to Israel, and the level of aid has increased since the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7th.  That support is arriving without any pre-conditions, things such as a stated expectation that the country receiving the aid will work to ensure the safeguarding of basic human rights.

This week Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent of Vermont, introduced a resolution in the US Senate that would have conditioned US aid to Israel on that country's adherence to basic human rights and international accords in its war in Gaza.  Sanders, who is himself a Jew, wanted to force his colleagues in the Senate to go on record as to their concerns regarding the human rights of Palestinians.  

Eleven US Senators voted to condition US aid to Israel on the safeguarding of human rights in Gaza.  That vote failed with 72 opposed - and several Senators unable to make it to the Capitol because of inclement weather.

The eleven senators who voted for the resolution to try and force Israel to adopt a human rights focus in Gaza were:  Bernie Sanders (I, VT), Peter Welch (D, VT), Rand Paul (R, KY), Martin Heinrich (D, NM), Ben Ray Lujan (D, NM), Jeff Merely (D, OR), Chris Van Hollen (D, MD), Ed Markey (D, MA), Elizabeth Warren (D, MA), Laphonsa Butler (D, CA), and Mazie Hirono (D, HI).

It's a small group, but but their cause is just.  There was a time when the Vietnam war protesters were few in number, also, but they eventually forced a sitting President into early retirement.

Old Dog Scandal Rocks Guinness Organization

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

The Guinness Book of World Records, a chronicle of unique achievements to which many aspire to be included, is currently dealing with a challenge to a couple of records that it had purportedly carefully verified.  The records involve the age of an old dog.  

Bobi, a purebred Rafeiro (a Portugese livestock guard dog) had been declared by the Guinness organization to be both the world's oldest dog and the world's oldest dog ever when he died this past October at the reported age of 31 years and 165 days.   Members of that breed normally live to between twelve and fourteen years of age.  

Bobi was allegedly born in central Portugal on May 11, 1992.  He was part of a litter of four.    His owners, who were burdened with too many animals at the time, decided to get rid of the puppies, but they somehow missed Bobi and he survived.  One of the owner's children, who was eight at the time, verified Bobi's date of birth and long life span.

But there were some people who did not buy off on the age story as easily as Guinness did.  Several veterinarians questioned the believability of the tale, and some pointed out that Bobi just did not look that old, nor did he suffer all of the infirmities that such an advanced age should have produced.   One researcher noted from studying photographs that the color of Bobi's feet seemed to have changed over the years.

The Guinness organization has temporarily suspended Bobi's two records while it conducts a more thorough investigation of his reported age.

While it may not be easy to teach an old dog a new trick, surely with all of this modern technology it should be possible to make a fairly accurate determination of his age.

Rest well and be at peace, Bobi.   Guarding livestock is an honorable profession, and I'm sure that you did it well, regardless of how long you served.  Certainly the work you performed was of more actual importance than that of humans who scurry about trying to calculate a dog's age.

This old dog salutes you!

The Cremation of Sam McGee

 

by Pa Rock

Poetry Appreciator

Today is the 150th birthday of one of my favorite poets, Robert W. Service, a.k.a. "The Bard of the Yukon," though Mr. Service would have not referred to himself as a poet.  Many of his contemporaries, particularly those of the intellectual sort, labeled the poems of Robert W. Service as "doggerel," and the poet succumbed to their criticism and called what he wrote "verse."  Whatever they were, the character descriptions that Mr. Service penned illuminating the lives of the hard and colorful characters who went to Alaska at the end of the 19th century to get rich quick by finding gold, smacked with realism, and they were funny as hell!

I choose to call them poems, and Robert W. Service wrote over a thousand of them.  A couple of his early poems were made into movies, and he even had a part in one of the films where he shared a scene with Marlene Dietrich.

Robert William Service was born one hundred and fifty years ago today in England to a Scottish family.   He wrote a few poems as a child and even published at a very young age, but as a young man he went into the safer occupation of banking where he worked as a clerk.  He wasn't very good at being a bank clerk, and decided early on to move to Canada from where he spent several years roaming around the American and Canadian West, living a rough lifestyle and, at one time, even taking up residence in a bordello.  Service eventually found steady employment - again at a bank - in Dawson City, Alaska, about ten years after the gold rush had subsided.  While he lived in his small cabin in Dawson City, he became acquainted with a host of individuals who had been part of the great gold rush, and he listened carefully to their stories.

Robert W. Service's first poem (verse) was "The Shooting of Dan McGrew," a long piece which he wrote almost automatically about two rough characters who engage in a shootout over a saloon woman named Lou, and when the bullets stopped flying, Lou was the only winner.  His second poem, the one I am highlighting here today, "The Cremation of Sam McGee," Robert Service composed in his head while walking in the woods one night.  The next morning he woke and put the entire thing to paper from memory.  It is his retelling of a piece of folklore that had earlier circulated through the mining camps of the Yukon.

If you enjoy the work of Robert W. Service, there is an abundance of it scattered about the internet, as well as in several previous postings of this blog.  Here then, on the occasion of the poet's 150th birthday, is one of his masterworks, "The Cremation of Sam McGee."  Enjoy!

The Cremation of Sam McGee

by Robert W. Service

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
      By the men who moil for gold;
  The Arctic trails have their secret tales
      That would make your blood run cold;
  The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
      But the queerest they ever did see
  Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
      I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way that 'he'd sooner live in hell'.

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see;
It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and 'Cap,' says he, 'I'll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request.'

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
'It's the cursed cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet 'taint being dead - it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains.'

A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: 'You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains.'

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows -O God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the 'Alice May.'
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then 'Here,' said I, with a sudden cry, 'is my cre-ma-tor-eum.'

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared - such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: 'I'll just take a peep inside.
I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: 'Please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm -
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm.'

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Those Who Survive

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Those who survive the unrelenting bombing and terror in Gaza, and there will be some survivors, will carry with them, throughout their lives, a primal need for revenge for all of the horrors they were forced to endure, and that will be especially true for the children and for those who struggled to protect them from the ravages of war.  This barbaric, genocidal "conflict" is spreading the seeds for the next campaign of terror, and the one after that.  

I heard the term "child-wasting" in a news broadcast about the shameful situation in Gaza this morning.  I didn't need to look it up because here in the Ozakrs many of us are already familiar with "wasting."  Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is a malady that affects the local deer populations rendering the deer sick, then dead, and ultimately unfit to eat.  Wasting in children could not be a good thing.

Yet there are already signs that it is happening in Gaza, an isolated stretch of land where residents can currently neither produce nor import food, and are dependent on aid deliveries of food, safe drinking water, and and medicines.  Deliveries are restricted through two ports-of-entry and are woefully slow and far between.

Those who survive will carry the memories of hunger, thirst, and pain with them throughout their lives, and there will come a time when those horrors of childhood manifest themselves in future hostilities.

The report that I heard this morning said that children in Gaza are on the brink of massive amounts of "wasting" and rampant malnutrition.  Parents are skipping meals in order to give the limited amounts of food to their children.  The entire population is hungry and thirsty, and many are also injured or ill - or both - or all of the above.  People are sleeping outside, in the cold, in the rubble, and watching helplessly as the planes and drones fly overhead dropping their bombs indiscriminately with the singular intention of killing as many Palestinians as possible and creating an unlivable landscape.  

And it's not just food and water that are in dangerously short supply.  Doctors and hunmanitarian aid workers are having difficulty gaining entry to the war zone, and when they do get in they encounter clinics and hospitals that have been ruined beyond use, as well as a lack of medicines, medical supplies, and equipment.   A news report from Gaza a week ago said that an average of ten children are losing one or both legs each day as a result of war injuries, and that often their legs are amputated without the use of anesthesia.  

What is happening in Gaza today will not end terrorism - it is just creating the next generation of terrorists.  Some will survive, and those who survive will remember.

The world owns this disaster, and the world needs to fix it - now - for peace today and tomorrow.  Those who survive will never forget what they have been forced to endure while the world looked away.

Dogs, Birds, Gnomes, Frida Kahlo, and Hot Chocolate

 

by Pa Rock

Cold Timer

It's 9:15 a.m. on a very frigid morning in West Plains, Missouri.  Alexa has just informed me that it is zero degrees Fahrenheit outside, which is up six degrees from when I woke up a couple of hours ago.  Alexa predicts that we could reach a high of eight degrees later on today.     

I've showered (and completed several other morning routines that begin with the same letter), taken the dogs outside to do their business - and put 1,500 steps on my wrist odometer in the process, had a breakfast (of sorts), and am now sitting in front of the living room window trying to  form a few scattered thoughts into a blog entry while watching the birds, mostly cardinals, and one pushy old squirrel, all fight for a place at the bird feeders.  

The temperature is supposed to stay in single digits today and tomorrow, with a possibility of snow on both days.  That gloomy forecast inspired me to get the bird feeders topped-off yesterday afternoon, so at least I won't have to go outside for that particular chore for a couple of days.  (I threw some whole kernel corn on the ground in an effort to  keep the squirrels out of the feeders, and old Mr. Pushy has just discovered that corn - which is much easier pickings than trying to pry sunflower seeds out of the wire feeders.)

My bird feeder area is encircled and guarded by seven cast iron gnomes who have been with me since my days in Arizona.  There are also a couple of plastic gnomes out there as well who have shown up to visit and elected to stay.  The cast iron Gomes have been standing outside for more than a decade, and they have darkened and discolored with age.  I won't have much to leave my heirs because I converted my life savings into silver and buried it in the woods, but I would like to paint the gnomes this summer and leave one to each of my six grandchildren.  The seventh I will probably have mounted on a slab of concrete and used as my tombstone.

I would also like to have a Frida Kahlo rosebush planted at my grave.

It is now 10:00 a.m. on a very frigid morning in West Plains, Missouri.  The dogs are asleep and snoring peacefully, the bird feeders are still bustling with business, the gnomes are stoic but look like they could kick it into party mode with very little provocation, and the blog is ready to post.

This would be a great time for a big mug of hot chocolate!

Stay warm!

A Flag Planted in Malaise

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Remember the presidential administration of Jimmy Carter?  It's understandable if you don't because it was short-lived, only one term, and it happened nearly fifty years ago - so many people who should remember it are perhaps too old now to remember much of anything.  

But my long-term memory is great and I do remember the remarkably nice couple from Georgia as they mucked about in the White House trying to remain relevant and vibrant during the onslaught of the Reagan campaign.  Carter struggled to lay the foundation for peace in the Middle East while dealing with a situation in which several dozen American hostages were held captive in Iran for well over a year (444 days).   He wore sweaters in the White House and put solar panels on top his official residence in order to draw attention to the burgeoning energy crisis, and was ridiculed by Republicans for his concerns with our energy independence and his focus on a sustainable future.

Americans just grew tired of their lot in the Carter years and wanted a return to happier times, something they felt that the smiling and enthusiastic Reagan could provide.  Jimmy Carter described the national mood at the time as one of "malaise," and thus many of us learned a new word:

Malaise:  A general feeling of discomfort, illness, or uneasiness whose exact cause is difficult to identify.

I felt it, I can remember feeling it.  Things weren't overwhelmingly bad, but they weren't good either, and when Jimmy Carter highlighted what we were feeling, we looked it up and decided he was right.  Change was needed, and in rode Reagan on his big, white, Hollywood high-horse.

There were some who felt that compared to the camera-savvy Reagan, Jimmy Carter was just too docile.   Americans were not looking for a quiet sermonette when they turned on their televisions, they wanted to find a raucous used car dealer urging them to "Come on down!"  We were on the cusp of reality television, but just didn't know it.

A half-century later reality television, social media over the internet, cell phones, and all manner of modern life have transformed and even corrupted the presidency, and the individuals who run and serve bear few similarities to Jimmy Carter and earlier presidents.  Now many voters don't even pretend to be influenced by policy positions.  They are focused on candidates' stunts and outlandish behaviors far more than they are on issues, and its not unusual to see voters blindly following candidates whose known positions on issues are actually at odds with those same voters' self-interests.

This year we have two candidates for the presidency who both appear to already have a lock on their party's nominations.  Both are elderly men who are too old to be serving in such a demanding job - they just are - and one of the two comes across as being unhealthy and perhaps even suffering some cognitive impairments.

But the other comes across as Eisenhower - okay, perhaps that is a stretch too far back in time - let's say Jimmy Carter, instead.  He is calm, relaxed (almost to a fault), and steady-Eddie dependable, while his likely opponent is a firecracker with a lit fuse who tends to explode everywhere he goes.  The press gravitates toward the firecracker because he's unpredictable and exciting and they just can't help themselves.   And the voters, who are already slathered in a thick coating of malaise, are ready for any change that will rock their world - even if that change is a well known conman who held the job before and claims to have been cheated out of it.  

We are in a new time and it's a new world.  I wish that weren't true, but it is.  Politicians are transporting migrant human beings and refugees across borders as if they are cattle going to market, people with Bible School educations are telling other people what their children can and cannot read, real estate agents are telling doctors how to practice medicine, and members of Congress are waving dick picks around in committee hearings and groping their boyfriends in public venues.  Americans aren't concerned with where candidates stand on the issues, they want to know whether they are trending or not.

Slow and steady won't win this race, Joe.  It just won't.  If you are absolutely committed to running for re-election, you are going to have to do it in a way that will draw the cameras away from Humpty-Trumpty.   If you can't amp it up, wrap it up - and let somebody grab the nomination who can actually run with it.

A flag planted in malaise is going to topple.

It just is.

Wading Through a Cesspool for Insurance Coverage

 

by Pa Rock

Former Tweeter

I unofficially retired from Twitter in October of 2022 when billionaire Elon Musk took over the social media company - and it was a good decision because Musk immediately began to micromanage the once vibrant company and impose his slanted world views on the work environment of Twitter's employees and the type of content that was addressed in the company's operation.  Twitter quickly became a bastion of  right-wing ideology and a breeding ground for hate.

I left Twitter and never looked back - until yesterday.

For the past week or so I have been working with a friend who was trying to enroll in the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and kept running into obstacles.  At first he couldn't get the enrollment site, healthcare.gov, to cooperate and function properly, and because I have better internet access than he does, my friend asked for an assist.  But the site proved to be as horrible as he said it was.   Roughly ninety percent of the time it would not pull up at all, and on those rare instances when it did, the site would not work properly.

I suggested that my friend go to a particular clinic in town where I knew they had, in the past, provided some assistance with getting enrolled in the Affordable Care Act, and he did.  One person at the clinic worked that program and she, too, was complaining about the awful state of the healthcare.gov internet site.  That lady didn't have time to see my friend that day, and asked him to return the following day.  When he did, he discovered that she was out sick - and she remained out sick for the remainder oft he week.  (I hope she has good insurance!)

The deadline for enrolling in the Affordable Care Act is next Tuesday, so my friend was beginning to get concerned - and I was beginning to develop a full head of steam!

I determined yesterday morning to get the matter resolved.  The weather was nice and I would even go to town and knock on doors if necessary.  I tried healthcare.gov again and couldn't even get the site to pull up.  Then I called the clinic where I do much of my medical business - thinking that a clinic that survived off of the medical needs of low-and-middle-income individuals would undoubtedly have someone in charge of helping them to get insured.

But I was wrong.  The local clinic suggested a local public assistance agency and a commercial insurance operation.  I tried the local agency and discovered that they had no one answering the phones, and their answering machine was turned off, and I ignored the commercial agency for fear that it would be looking out for its own interests.

I telephoned my local hospital as well as my own insurance agent.  The hospital kept me on its in-coming call merry-go-round for fifteen minutes and was then unable to provide any information other than I should go to healthcare.gov or contact the local agency that wouldn't answer their phones, and my insurance agent's secretary was very pleasant but also unable to help.

More research was in order.

I came across a news article on the internet in which President Biden was bragging that over 20 million people had signed up for the Affordable Care Act - and cautioned that enrollment would close next Tuesday - and I also came across news stories where Joe and Kamala's tweets regarding the ACA were posted.  So I sat down and wrote a letter to the President and told him that the internet site was not working and politely suggested that he get it fixed - and extend the deadline for enrollment to make jump for lost time.  

Because I currently have no printer, and time was of the essence, I determined to forward that letter electronically - and because the President was using Twitter for bragging rights on the topic, I decided to hold my nose and go back on Twitter to share the letter with him and anyone else who happened to see it - and I copied it to the Vice President, an outspoken Missouri congresswoman, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services.  Surely someone would see it and either fix the situation or at least respond with some sympathetic blather.  So far no one has.

In the end, before I had to resort to going to town and banging on doors, my friend managed to make contact with the person he had originally been dealing with - and she got him enrolled.  He now has health insurance, and I now have high blood pressure!

But, back to X (Twitter):  When I got on the site that I have last visited nearly fifteen months ago, the first thing I noticed was all of the right-wing manure that was waiting in piles around my homepage.  About the only good news that I saw right away were postings from Joe and Kamala talking about the great success of the Affordable Care Act and encouraging people to hurry on over to healthcare.gov and get signed up before the open enrollment period ended.

Perhaps there really are over 20,000,000 enrollees.  I hope that's right.  Those must be people who were truly desperate for insurance if they managed to surmount all of the bureaucratic obstacles imposed by our government in order to acquire it.  And I hope that the ACA delivers on it promise of providing basic healthcare coverage, because, from this outsider's view at least, it has the appearance and feel of being an Elon Musk business operation.

Every American should have access to affordable healthcare, and they should be able to get it without having to battle the bureaucracy and wading through the cesspool of X (Twitter).  Many countries in the world already have universal healthcare coverage, and it is well past time that we joined them!

Medicare for all would go a long way toward righting that social imbalance and humanitarian failure.

Healthcare.Gov Remains Down

 

by Pa Rock

Voter

I'm concerned about public access to a critical public program, hence, the following letter:

Hon. Joseph R. Biden

President of the United States

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC  20500

Dear Mr. President,

As you are undoubtedly aware, the open enrollment period for Obamacare ends next Tuesday, January 16, 2024.  As you may not be aware, healthcare.gov, the internet site where people are supposed to go to enroll, has been down at least for the past several days.  This is creating a serious hardship for those who are in need of this vital insurance program.

Please get it fixed as soon as possible, and please extend the enrollment period to make up for the time that the enrollment site has been down. Americans in need of assistance with their healthcare costs are counting on you to act promptly in their behalf.

Most Sincerely,

Rocky Macy

West Plains, MO 65775

Circus Train Derailment at Nation's Capitol

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

A female member of the US House of Representatives is traditionally referred to by her male colleagues as the "gentle lady from such and such," just as her male counterpart is referred to as a "gentleman," but it is getting to the point where there is not a lot of "gentleness" being demonstrated by either gender in our nation's halls of power.

Yesterday two separate committees of Congress, Oversight  and Accountability - and Judiciary, both met separately in public sessions to consider issuing a contempt citation to Hunter Biden, the President's son, for his failure to honor a subpoena and appear before those committees to be deposed in private regarding his business affairs.  Hunter Biden has repeatedly offered to testify before the committees in public settings, but the GOP controlled committees are insistent that his testimony occurred in closed sessions which are beyond the public view.

(Biden and his lawyers contend that the GOP members are not honest brokers and prefer closed hearings so that they can misquote and selectively leak testimony to the right-wing media.)

The Oversight and Accountability Committee had not been in session long yesterday, and GOP Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina was speaking, when Hunter Biden and two of his attorneys entered the room and seated themselves among the spectators on the front row.  Rep. Mace appeared to be incensed.  She pounced with:  "Who bribed Hunter Biden to be here today?" and then meandered off into some oddball claim that he was exerting "white privilege" by showing up at the hearing.  Representative Mace, who is white herself, decried the presence of the visitor saying:

"You are the epitome of white privilege coming to the Oversight Committee, spitting in our face, ignoring a congressional subpoena to be deposed.  What are you afraid of?   You have no balls to come up here."

The the angry congresswoman added:  

"I think Hunter Biden should be arrested right here, right now, and go straight to jail."

But Democratic Representative Jared Moskowitz, a member of the committee, didn't sit by and calmly and permit Mace's theatrical performance to go unchallenged.   He suggested that since Hunter Biden was in the room it would be a good time to let him testify, while the cameras were rolling, a strategy that the secretive Republicans would not permit. Then, referencing Mace's  comment regarding Hunter Biden's balls, Moskowitz said:

"So I'm listening to the gentle lady from South Carolina about the witness being afraid to come in front of the committee.  That's interesting.  He's here.  He doesn't seem to be afraid.  The only folks that are afraid to hear from the witness with the American people watching are my friends (the Republicans) on the other side of the aisle."

Later, as the circus rolled on and showboating GOP Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia  began using her allotted time to speak to the committee, Biden and his attorneys got up and walked out of the room - and much of the press followed, leading Greene to call him a "coward."    That prompted Democratic Representative Robert Garcia of California to remind Greene that she had once shown "dick pics" of Hunter Biden to that same committee.  Chaos reportedly was quick to engulf the room with members yelling over one another to gain attention.

MSNBC referred to the overall debacle as a "circus train derailment."

Both committees, Oversight and Accountability - and Judiciary, eventually passed measures calling on the full House to charge Hunter Biden with "Contempt of Congress" over his refusal to honor a congressional subpoena.

How dare he try to testify publicly, in front of every American voter and taxpayer, and not just the privileged few who sit in Congress.  

Has he no balls?

Or have they no shame?

Stefanik and James: Show Horse versus Work Horse

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Elise Stefanik is a Republican congresswoman from New York who is currently enjoying her fifteen minutes of fame, and like others of her political persuasion, she has primarily achieved her notoriety through outlandish behavior rather than through legislative industry or prowess.   Stefanik, the chair of the House Republican Conference, grabbed a few headlines when she tried to pin some seemingly liberal university presidents down on how students who expressed what Stefanik regarded as "anti-Semitic" views on campus should be treated.

Stefanik took the lead in a House hearing a few weeks ago in which three prominent university presidents were grilled on their responses to protest behaviors and free speech at their schools, interrogatories in which the questioner angrily tried to present the administrators as condoning anti-Semitic behavior by students.  The three GOP targets were the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania (Liz Magill), Harvard (Claudine Gay), and MIT (Sally Kornbluth).

Congresswoman Stefanik, who is herself a product of a privileged education having graduated both from a private girls' academy as well as Harvard, was relentless in her dogged pursuit of the three female university presidents.  When Magill resigned from her position at the University of Pennsylvania a couple of days after the hearing, Stefanik went on "X" to proclaim "One down.  Two to go."   And when Claudine Gay resigned from her position at Harvard days later, Stefanik bumped her tweet eloquence up to "Two down."  Now Stefanik is impatiently waiting on Kornbluth to join her two former colleagues and fall on her sword before the Grand Inquisitor so that she can claim a third down.

Interestingly, Stefanik has not spoken out against Donald Trump and his verbal forays into the hate speech of the world's most well known anti-Semite, Adolf Hitler.  There is nothing bi-partisan about Elise Stefanik, no-siree-bob! 

But there is another inquisitor from New York State who is not afraid to pursue justice along bi-partisan lines.  Letitia James, the state's aggressive and whip-smart attorney general, and a democrat, has already forced the state' previous governor, democrat Andrew Cuomo, to resign, without patting herself of the back with a "One Down" tweet.  

Just a couple of days ago, James had another very significant victory when her efforts to clean up the National Rifle Association, an organization whose charter is in New York, resulted in the sudden retirement "for health reasons" of the group's CEO and Executive Vice President, Wayne LaPierre, a man who has been a national right-wing political instigator for more than three decades.  LaPierre announced his resignation for the end of the month, just as the NRA corruption trial will be getting underway.  If she were an insatiable braggart, Letitia James would undoubtedly go on "X" and boast "Two Down!"  But apparently she is too mired in decency to waste the taxpayer's time and money in self-congratulatory tweeting.

Now Ms. James is down to just one more major target, her New York inquiry into the financial dealings of Donald Trump, senior members of his family, and the "Trump Organization."  Bringing down Trump's financial house of cards would definitely merit bragging rights for the ages, but based on her past performance after courtroom successes, Letitia James will probably just go on doing her job without constantly looking over her shoulder to see if she is "trending" or not.

Letitia James is a work horse who is focused on getting the job done, regardless of where it leads.  Elise Stefanik, on the other hand, is a show horse whose primary concern is keeping the house lights focused on herself.

A prancing pony may be great fun to watch, but she won't get the field plowed or the corn planted.  That takes work.