Month: March 2025

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The American West has so many National Parks that Bob and I decided to buy the National Park Senior Pass that gives you access to all them from coast to coast. Joshua Tree, located a short 2 hours drive away from San Diego, is one we have missed but that had come to us highly recommended, so, given we had a cat sitter, we decided to see what all the fuss was about.

It really is a just a bunch of Joshua Trees in the middle of some rock formations. Wait, I must correct myself there is also a lot of desert sand. A very monochromatic landscape. Endlessly. Or at least endlessly within the confines of the Joshua Tree National Park.

The Park was remarkably similar from entrance to exit. It was difficult to determine what we were supposed to be looking at. In most National Parks, you see a swarm of people looking in a direction, you turn to where they are looking and pretty quickly figure out what the attraction is. In Joshua Tree I would try to determine what people were looking at and I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out what it was. It finally dawned on me that it was these fairly pedestrian rock formations and Joshua’s Trees. Oh, and I can’t forget the desert sand. Endlessly.

Let me tell you I am not an anti-rock formation kind of guy here either. I have been to Arches National Park in Utah and those rock formations were something to gaze at. The ones in Joshua Tree, on the other hand, are something you could easily see driving in eastern San Diego County.

I did have one important takeaway. I was reminded that I wouldn’t have lasted 10 minutes on the wagon train west.

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A Kentucky state representative wants to put a 10 Commandments statue at the Kentucky state capitol. The idea being, I guess, that people reading the 10 commandments will have some magical effect and bring Kentucky to Jesus.

Do it. I could care less. Seriously, if the heathens of Kentucky wanted to come to Jesus there are thousands of churches in the state that will do the trick. If the churches can’t do it, I doubt seriously that a marble block at the state capital is going to have greater success.

In the meantime, let’s not waste our time on this trivial matter. This is a red flag meant to incite an utterly meaningless battle. Sadly, it will work. People on both sides will yell at each other until they are red in the face. There will be some to and froing until some decision is made that will make one side think they have won and the other side think they lost. The media will breathlessly follow because it has emotion and action which makes for great television but, alas, little else. All and all, it will be a big waste of time.

I am weary of these phony cultural battles. Ultimately, they distract from real problems. A block of marble with some words on it will have a limited effect on the people of Kentucky. Very few will bother to look at the statue and even fewer will bother to read it. On the other hand, insufficient health care will have a much greater impact on regular people. As will bad schools, bad fire departments, low wages and a long list of problems facing the people of Kentucky.

I would trade a 10 Commandments statue for universal health care any day of the week. Let’s fight battles that matter and not get sucked into losing battles about things that will cause minimal, if any, harm.

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Well, it looks like somebody in the Trump Administration is reading my blog about how insulting it was to send the vice-president’s wife to woo the people of Greenland. That blog was up for less than 24 hours when Trump changed his plans. Vice-President Vance is now going to Greenland with his wife.

It is nice to think my words have such power but people in the know are saying Trump is looking for some positive publicity after the Signal Group Chat Fiasco and it has absolutely nothing to do with my blog.

Just for the record, and based on no real evidence, I still think it was my blog.

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Is anyone else a little surprised that Trump is sending the wife of the vice-president to woo the Greenlanders to join the USA? She has no actual power and can do nothing significant to push the process along. Her only importance is she is married to a man who has no actual power and can do nothing significant to push along the process. Talk about insulting. Even I know that you send the Secretary of State for shit jobs like this in order to give the impression that you are serious. But the wife of the vice-president that is just cold. It is beyond insulting.

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Joe Rogan wants to add Mexico to the Trump land grab which made me laugh because well isn’t this the same Mexico that Trump is building a wall for the specific purpose of keeping Mexicans out of the USA. Talk about your crossed wires here. Doesn’t this defeat the purpose of building the wall in the first place? It would be easier to let the Mexicans that want in to the USA in and leave the rest of them in peace.

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For those still wondering why Trump got elected, look no further than the news that a lab leak was the likely cause of COVID19. Liberals and Democrats greeted this seemingly bombshell revelation with a sang froid that borders on indifference.

Now things would be different for me if the government scientists, at the time, were open to the possibility of lab leak being a possible explanation but they weren’t. They vehemently denied the possibility of a lab leak and accused any one who suggested it of being a racist. There is a big difference between an I don’t know and a they are wrong and shouldn’t be spreading such nonsense.

It is a big problem and the Left is ignoring it as if it never happened. Like if we don’t talk about it, it will somehow go away. Why would Trump and his buddies drop such a good example of government malfeasance? These people are not idiots. They also seem to have their pulse on a large segment of the American people. So I guess underestimating Trump and the wreckers will go on for the foreseeable future.

This is the only conclusion you can have when you consider:

  1. Trump was right about something very important. He claims that Dr. Fauci and the government scientists were lying about COVID and, it turns out, he was correct, at least about the lab leak theory. Yes there is still a low confidence that a lab leak is the culprit but it is now considered the most likely explanation of all the known possibilities. This isn’t what the government was saying in 2020. They were saying a Lab leak couldn’t be responsible and people who claim that a lab leak was responsible are racists. Trump has every right to gloat.
  2. It gives credence to every new crackpot theory that comes down the pike. All the crackpot has to say is well they lied about the lab leak theory. How do your respond to that? They are correct which is really bad news because too many people already listen to these crackpots. Now the voters have evidence that the crackpots are right. This is why the truth is important when dealing with people in a democracy. How does it help your cause to lie today when people will eventually discover you are in fact a liar?
  3. Belief in Government is already painfully low. This admission confirms every bad thing that the anti-government types claim our government does. If the Government wanted to momentarily placate the Chinese government while they got more information, I get it. This is a completely reasonable position. Withholding information, however, is different from a lie. The government could have said, and rightfully so, that they just don’t have enough information to determine the source of COVID and they are keeping an open mind. I can live with that. But no they aggressively denied any possibility of a lab leak. This turned into an overkill involving character assassination and dissembling. This was wrong especially since many of these scientists knew that a lab leak was the likely cause.
  4. Finally, it is an incredibly stupid lie to tell. If many scientists believed that a lab leak was responsible for COVID then this information was destined for revelation. Someone eventually was going to spill the beans. This should have been obvious as soon as scientists began sharing their suspicions with other scientists. So why lie in the first place? To keep the Chinese happy? Why? The Chinese stopped co-operating with UN officials fairly early in the crisis. Once this occurred what possible benefit could come from keeping the Chinese happy? But everybody in the know just kept their mouths shut. They may know a lot about biology but they are crap at public relations. They have damaged their reputation for being trustworthy. Why would the world believe these people when they announce the next pandemic?

This bothers me personally. I put my trust in these people because I saw no reason for them to lie and they knew more about viruses. Boy was I wrong. It is an unforced error that has done great harm to Liberalism, Science and Government — pillars of our democracy that are already under siege.

And, yes, I hold people on the Left to a higher standard which makes this so much more disappointing. I think democracy and liberalism are the best route to take for a better world. It hurts when my own side fucks up so royally. The good news is that you can’t say you don’t understand why some people voted for Trump. They believed they were being lied to and it turns out, in this case, they were right.

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“Architect” from Frighten Rabbit and Manchester Orchestra is my favorite depressing song right now. You know the song. The one you play when you are feeling blue and listening to this song connects somehow with your sadness and maybe if you play it, your sadness will quickly be purged and you get back to normal. And it usually does the trick better than a therapy session with a psychiatrist. You know the song. Well, this is my quick fix depressing song right now.

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Bobby Darin’s Mack the Knife was my parent’s favorite song. I have heard this from both of them at one time or another. Although my mother was more emphatic about it, it didn’t take much thinking on my father’s part to agree.

This makes me laugh every time I hear Mack the Knife. The song is about a paid killer dispatching his victim’s body into the river. No two hearts beating as one or you light up my life or any such romantic nonsense for my Mom and Dad. No, my parents hearts went all squishing when hearing about a murder victim bleeding to death in an alley.

So, if you are ever wondering why I turned out this way, this might be your first clue. This should tell you a lot about my upbringing.

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I tried to write about music and I have published a few (Sunset pigs, Peggy Lee and Marie) but I sometimes think I sound like a really bad Rolling Stone album review. “Great guitar playing.” Like I know anything about guitar playing. Seriously. I haven’t a clue about the difference between good and mediocre guitar playing.

All I really wanted to do was pass on music that I liked and a very brief explanation on what I liked. It might just be a line or two but then this is a blog and it is meant to be brief and to the point. And you can also see why it takes me so long to publish anything. I have a tendency to overthink.

This means I am giving up on deep thoughtful reviews and just going to muse hence the title Musical Musings. Snazsy name, right. about music. So get ready, I am about to unload about music.

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Elon Musk clarified something that has been bothering me for some time. I was always wonder how Hitler could kill so many people. I mean he was just one man. It seemed highly unlikely, at least to me, that Hitler could dispatch six million Jews all by himself. But, then, Elon Musk comes along to explain that actually Hitler didn’t kill anyone, it was civil servants that did the actual killing.

WTF. Really, like this somehow absolves him. I do have to give him some credit for looping in the true evil here — civil servants. Not Hitler, but civil servants. Hitler is a misunderstood genius much like Elon Musk while civil servants, if left to their own devices, are likely to commit genocide.

This is why when people try to explain that Musk is a genius, I flinch. A smart man would see the problem here. People keep calling me a Nazi. Every time I start talking about Nazis I get unflattering headlines. Maybe I should stop making any comments about Nazis and, in this way, I will stop getting so much bad press.

That he fails to understand this problem and continues to step in it belies his genius status.