Month: July 2024

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I am of two minds about the Olympic opening ceremonies Last Supper controversy. In a previous blog, I explained how I think that the people behind the opening ceremonies were being disingenuous in their denial that they were showing a Bacchanalian Feast and not satirizing da Vinci’s the Last Supper with a transvestites, transexuals and gay people. I personally thought they were satirizing the Last Supper while I was watching it. Only to be told, after the shit hit the fan, that it was something else altogether.

It simply defies logic that millions of people around the world would think the Last Supper and be so wrong. Denying it is insulting to the intelligence of the people watching the show and, more importantly, an out right lie. The controversy is still going on and now nobody rightly believes the Paris Olympic Committee. It would just be easier to own up to it and thank them for bringing it to their attention. You know the typical Customer Service response you hear when the company has no intention of doing anything about the complaint.

I also have a big problem with the people who got bent out of shape about it. People have been using the Last Supper for years without any backlash from the Christian Community. Buzzfeed has put together a list of 50 plus examples if you are looking for some evidence. How is putting Marilyn Monroe or Albert Einstein or Homer Simpson at the head of the table any more blasphemous than a transvestite? It is a joke.

It’s the painting that is being satirized not Jesus. I think it is highly unlikely that the good Christians complaining about the Paris Olympic version of the Last Supper have never seen a satiric version of the painting. A simple google search provides numerous examples as I have shown. I remember seeing one in the basement of one of my Dad’s friends. The Last Supper was with dogs instead of Jesus and apostles My Dad’s friend was practicing Catholic as well as my Dad who thought it was pretty funny. So now you are getting mad. So now anyone who uses the Last Supper in a satiric way is anti-Christian. Spare me the faux outrage because I don’t believe it for one minute.

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When I first saw the tableau of the Bacchanalian Feast at the Paris Olympics, my first thought was they are making fun of the Last Supper. It popped into my mind almost at first sight. Millions of other people had exactly the same thought which leads me to question the official explanation that it had nothing to do with da Vinci’s the Last Supper and was merely showing a Bacchanalian Feast with Greek Gods.

This explanation might fly a bit better if a good portion of the world wasn’t so familiar with the Da Vinci painting. It is also a little insulting to your critics to say you idiots can’t you see this has nothing to do with the Last Supper. These are Greek Gods sitting there at the table. This is all Bacchanalian Feast and no Last Supper. It isn’t our fault that you ingrates can’t tell the difference.

Isn’t art a personal experience? So even though your intention was to show a Bacchanalian Feast, I saw the Last Supper. And, if you were to show it to me again. I am pretty sure I would still see the Last Supper because my familiarity with Greek Gods is minimal while I know a great deal about Jesus and Christianity. It isn’t likely that I will ever see what you are intending me to see, so your vehicle might not be the best one to convey a Bacchanalian Feast if, indeed, it was your intention not to make fun of the Last Supper. To be clear, I was amused when I first saw it. But I was amused because I thought they were making fun of the Last Supper with drag queens. Since I am not a Christian, I can enjoy the joke.

On the other hand, if I were a Christian, I might have other feelings which, I would think, people who were putting together such a show for a large and diverse audience might take into consideration. I seriously doubt that the smart and cultured people putting the Olympic show together are unfamiliar with the Last Supper. It is, after all, one of da Vinci’s most famous paintings, one that a large portion of the Olympic audience might be familiar with. So, the Bacchanalian Feast response to the uproar this performance caused is more than a little disingenuous. They knew what they were doing and they maybe were even a little suspicious of the reaction they would receive and they went ahead any way.

So, yeah, obviously a Bacchanalian Feast, can’t understand why people are making such a big deal about it.

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Every gay person’s coming out worry is the reaction of their parent’s. Will they be supportive or will they go bat shit crazy? I was terrified even though I was fairly confident that my parents would be fine and they were. It still scared me and I was in my 30″s. What if they reject me? What would I do? What would I say?

Elon Musk telling the world his child is dead to him because she underwent puberty blockers and transitioned into being a woman is disturbing. He could have kept his mouth shut or say he doesn’t talk about his family publicly. Sadly, he is done with her — she is dead to him.

It sounds very much like the daughter gives as good as she gets which might explain some of Musk’s animosity towards her. The difference is he is in the public eye. When Elon Musk speaks, people listen. Because of this, he has a certain responsibility to speak decently and thoughtfully where she does not. What kind of message is he sending to the world when a parent publicly behaves in such a horrible way towards his own child? How many children had their worst fears confirmed about how their own parents might act because of how Musk acted in disowning his daughter?

Nothing is forcing a person to say unkind things in public. Saying nothing at all delivers a message. It shows people his family is off limits for public consumption and he isn’t going to play that game just to get headlines. He is going to protect his family from the limelight especially when he has trouble with his child’s decision. People in the public eye don’t have to feed the media monster.Giving them what they want only encourages them to get even more. Musk would have done the world a great favor by modeling decent behavior.

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Throughout my work life, I have been told numerous times that my wages were in line with industry standards. For some reason, this bullshit answer actually shuts down any follow up questions regarding increases in workers wages. How can you argue with wages that are in line with industry standards? Every one else is getting the same.

But we should. Start with why is keeping wages in line with the industry standard even the goal. Wouldn’t you want to have the best wages to attract the best workers? Keeping wages in line with a standard wage is unfair to the regular worker particularly if the company is a financial success.

I understand if a company is struggling and needed wage concessions to survive, the employees might agree to those cuts in order to keep the company going. People wouldn’t be saying you have to keep your wages in line with industry standards. The company needs saving, sacrifices have to be made.

Then why would you say that when the company is successful? Shouldn’t the workers share in the success of the company?

The concern is that if one company gives their low wage workers a pay rise, that other companies, within that industry, will have to pay higher wages in order to compete. Yes, exactly, after all isn’t that what market capitalism is all about. The best workers should get best wages. But, no, this isn’t the case. Wage increases at the low end of the scale causes inflation.

This same philosophy, however, does not apply to wages at the high end of the scale. Large increases at the high end of the scale doesn’t cause inflation to the broader economy because fewer people receive them. It does, however, cause wage inflation for those few people who get them. This is why there has been such a dramatic rise in wages for upper management.

This isn’t, however, capitalism because the low wages are artificially low to control inflation which everyone agrees is important except when it comes to prices and executive wages. There is an industry standard for low wage workers and companies want to adhere to this standard to keep wages low across the industry. Inflation, you know.

So whenever I hear people moan about how bad employees are today, I ask — are you paying above market wages in order to get the very best people. If you want good workers, you have to pay for it. Right? Isn’t that the whole spirit of market capitalism. If not, then why exactly do you think your industry standard wages will get you the employees you want? It makes no sense in a capitalist economy. You should expect mediocre employees with little interest in putting in their full effort into the job because they could lose their jobs today and find a comparable job tomorrow.

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Here is the thing If rich people put money back into their business and their employees, I can see giving them some kind of tax break. But a lot of their money is spent on bull shit. If they can afford the bull shit, they can also afford the additional taxes. It isn’t taking money away from investing in their business either. It is taking money from them spending it on bullshit. There is this notion out there that we can’t afford to help the poor with government programs that bring more equity to the society. The money is there it is just misallocated.

Here is another glaring example of this misallocation.

Andrew Garfield’s new girlfriend is apparently a witch. She charges $1,000 for a Tarot reading. I would rather it went to a street person buying cheap wine than it went for this bullshit. At least the homeless person would get drunk for a number of days which is certainly a much more tangible result than telling the fortunes of rich people and bilking them out of a few dollars.

Every time someone claims we just don’t have enough money, I hope you keep these waste’s of money in mind.

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I know some people who think that Biden bowing out of the election is a bad thing. I think it is genius.

First, and most importantly, what party is now stuck with an aging candidate who often borders on the incoherent. Biden was bad in the debate, but if incoherence is a problem, and I do, then Trump managed to look against Biden because he was marginally more coherent.

Now that Biden is out of the race, all eyes will turn to Trump, and he is a handful. He says whatever the hell he wants to which is what his supporters like about it. It also carries a risk. Often Trump is notoriously undisciplined. He says whatever is on his mind, unfortunately for Trump, this is often ill thought out and incoherent.

So what do you do if you have a troublesome candidate. Well, the Democrats just showed you. Party leaders have to come in, deliver the bad news to the candidate and change course. Contrary to some of the commentary out there, particularly the Republicans — this is a good thing. It is to Biden’s credit that he understood what these leaders were saying and acted on it. No doubt it was an unpleasant experience for everyone involved. But it was done and, for the most part, done well. Biden understood the message and acted on it. There was something more important than Biden running and that was Democrats winning.

Trump, on the other hand, won’t listen to anyone. He routinely ignores advice from his lawyers and his fellow Republicans. Trump has travelled unbelievably far on his brash personality but this very brashness has also created a lot of the problems for him. Sometime it is best just best to keep your mouth shut. Trump can’t do this even if it is costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

This reveals Trump’s greatest weakness. He thinks he is smarter than everyone else in the room and if someone’s advice doesn’t match up to what he wants to do, he does what he wants to do. So therefore there is no influence on him other than yes men. Quite a bit of Trump’s time is spent cleaning up his own messes.

This was fine when Trump was matched with Biden. Now Trump has a new opposition candidate who will be a younger and more energetic candidate. Presumably, Kamala Harris, but most anyone will do. She will not be having senior moments. She will also be better at listening to advice from senior Democratic advisors which already gives her a leg up on Trump who doesn’t. A 78 year old man isn’t likely to change anytime soon

I don’t think this means Harris is going to handily defeat Trump. It is still a close election. The good news is that the Republicans are more locked into their candidate than the Democrats. The dynamic of the election has changed significantly with Harris and Trump is still pretty tied up in his present behavior.

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Elon Musk announced his intentions to give $45 million a month to a pro-Trump Super Pac. If he is true to his word, he will, at least, contribute $180 million to the Trump campaign before the election.

Think about it. He has an extra $180 million free dollars to contribute to an election campaign. This is a fairly large sum of money in anyone’s books. Unlike most people, his donation will not be missed in the least bit. He has billions so it doesn’t matter to him if he loses $180 million dollars.

If Trump wins, there is no way that Trump could pay off Musk other than through favors. Even the best person would have difficultly saying no to a man who gave you $180 million and Trump is far from being the best person. To be fair to Trump, in his crooked understanding of wealth, he probably thinks there is nothing wrong with billionaires draining the public trough any way but this makes it ridiculously easy for him to say yes.

More importantly, if Musk has this amount of money, why not divide it among his own employees instead of investing in a political campaign. $180 million divided among the employees of Tesla and Instagram would bring real benefits to his own employees, encourage other rich people to do the same and it spreads the wealth around a bit to people who can then make campaign contributions of their own.

Musk is free to use this money in any way he wanted yet he choose to use this money to support a political action committee. With all his billions, he would rather gamble with a political candidate that may lose than giving more money to his own employees. Spreading the wealth this way would also give some political power to his employees. Now, because he is such a generous leader, these employees might follow his lead and contribute to the pro-Trump Pac or they may choose to give to the Democrats but it wouldn’t be one man using this money to gain more political leverage.

But Musk would much rather spin the wheel with Trump. To get what exactly? More billions? This disproves this oft repeated notion that billionaires will do the right thing with their money if only left alone. Musk would much rather keep the money which also keeps the political power this money can provide strictly within his hands.

If the government took only half of the $180 million, Musk would still have $90 million to contribute to Trump. Wouldn’t it be good for Musk to help pay off the national debt the Republicans are so worried about and it wouldn’t be a bit of a problem for Musk because he wasn’t planning to put the money back into his business and creating in the first place. Win Win, I say.

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Given the absence of any credible information about why Thomas Crooks took a shot at Donald Trump, I would like to offer my opinion. Could it be not political but Trump was close at hand. Crooks wanted to shoot someone famous and Trump was near by. He may not have had a political agenda but a personal one.

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The Media’s coverage of Trump’s assassination attempt gives a prime example of what is wrong with the media. They immediately reported the assassination attempt with the announcement when it happened. While this is a good start, it is also, sadly, the high point of the day for reporting on what is actually going on. Then there is a lot of nothing because the news is so fresh that there is no new information. The cops are busy with the problem at hand, but for be it for Media to let something as minor as a lack of information to stop them from talking.

Thus begins the endless repetition of the video of the assassination attempt — showing it as it actually happened, showing it in slow motion, trying to determine if they can figure out anything new with this frequent viewing of the video. They rarely can. So then they interview people who were there and they know little that is new and their stories are remarkably similar. This leads to bringing in experts who then review the videos of the assassination attempt in order to find something new to talk about. they rarely do. Then one interview is interrupted by another interview of someone who is slightly more important than the present interviewee in the hopes that this new person, because they are more important, knows something new. They don’t.

Stuck with a captive audience and nothing to say, the Media then begins to report on what famous people are saying about the assassination attempt. It starts out reasonable enough. We have to tone down the political attacks. Know that in a democracy, our political opponents are good citizens with different opinions and not our enemies. Talking heads shake their heads in agreement about the sad state of political affairs. This isn’t the way the USA should operate. We all agree.

But that doesn’t stop one of the famous people from saying something controversial because the best way to get another call from the Media the next time is to be able to supply interesting sound bites that bring in viewers. The best sound bites are controversial, so eventually some famous person, who doesn’t know anything about the assassination attempt, is going to speculate about some conspiracy or another.

So now other famous people and experts are talking about conspiracies based on no credible evidence other than famous people talking about conspiracy theories. So the Media, purely in the interest of getting the truth out, must report on the conspiracy even though, as far as verifiable information is concerned, the Media has learned nothing new and certainly nothing that would suggest a conspiracy. But why should that stop people from speculating.

The urgency to fill empty air time is more important than the accuracy of information. Keep the audience watching at all costs. Ironically, after dozens of political leaders urging to tone down the rhetoric and the public knowing little more than they did on Saturday, the air is rife with speculation and anger. Fingers are carelessly pointing this way and that. Fortunately, the ever present Media is there analyzing and reporting on this sad sad situation and wondering how did it come to this awful state.

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The thing that frightens me most since Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance is the number of Democrats who think Joe Biden is the only Democrat who can beat Donald Trump.

I like Joe Biden, I do. But he isn’t a particularly strong candidate. He has ran for President numerous times and never got past the early primaries. Barrack Obama rescued him from obscurity when he made Biden his Vice-Presidential candidate which left him the highest ranking Democrat eligible for the presidency after Hillary Clinton, another sure thing, by the way, lost. He is old and a visibly frailer man than he was in 2020 which shouldn’t be a particularly surprising circumstance for 81 year old man.

So Biden, this not particularly strong candidate, is the best that the Democrats got to run against the demented Donald Trump. Trump who has serious problems putting together a coherent sentence, who has no real agenda other than his own personal grievances and lining his pocket, who has a history of questionable business practices, a man who can say something one moment and deny that he ever said in the next breath, a man who is publicly on the grift to oil company executives, a man who has little grasp on the complex problems facing this country, a man that many members of his own party can’t bring themselves to vote for, this is the man so powerful that only Joe Biden can beat?

If Joe Biden is the only solution to the Donald Trump problem then the Democrats have a much bigger problem than a fragile Joe Biden. They had four years to line up suitable opponents for Trump and yet they decided to prop up an old man and hope for the best. This reveals a party with a lack of confidence in itself and unprepared for the future. Seriously, if the Democrats can’t beat an idiot like Donald Trump with any number of alternate candidates than politics might not be the best profession for them to be in.