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In the past, I said that I would support a serial killer Democrat over a Mother Teresa Republican. The point, for me, is that the party matters more for me than the person nominated by the party. I am assuming that the serial killer would support the same issues that I, a fellow Democrat, support. I may not like the serial killer. I may much prefer sitting down with the Mother Teresa Republican than a blood thirsty killer but, in the end, I will vote for someone agrees with me on issues I care about. Particularly if he is going to be president. This means, I will have to, on occasion, align myself with people I don’t particularly like. I stand by that statement.

Which brings me to the election of Donald Trump. I think Donald Trump is a terrible person and I can’t imagine myself ever voting for him. Well, wait a minute, that is unless he changes his position on an array of issues and is somehow nominated by the Democratic Party and he was running against Ted Cruz and then, yes, I would happily vote for Donald Trump. Not because he was a good person, a truthful person but because, given the choices I have, he is the best possible option for implementing the policies I want. I vote for the person I agree with on policy and not the person I like best.

So I find it a little irritating when people say they could never vote for a man like Donald Trump and, because of your principles, you then are cutting out any Trump voters from your life. I have seen people asking any Trump voters in their friends list to unfriend them, people are cancelling their holidays with Trump voting relatives and some women are trying to organize a sex strike against Trump voting men. These people think they are punishing their Trump voting acquaintances. Why this is necessary is beyond me because they seemed perfectly willing to maintain their relationships as long as Harris won. Losing is what broke the camel’s back here. There is no principle involved. If Trump voters are so despicable, they were despicable before the election results came rolling in. Instead of looking like a moral stance based on good principles, they look more like a child throwing a tantrum.

Then there is calling the Trump voters racists, misogynists and stupid. This is half the country. Now if you are doing this in the privacy of your own home to let of some steam, go for it. But it isn’t particularly helpful public position when you are trying to persuade people to change their votes in the next election. Indeed it confirms all of their worst impressions of the snowflake liberal. Liberals just aren’t tough enough to handle disagreement and losing. Well, then toughen up buttercup because, if the battle is with facism as so many people believe, liberals need to be able to deal with people who disagree with them, address their concerns and hopefully persuade them to change. Taking to your bed is of no help at all.

That doesn’t mean beat yourself up listening to racists and misogynists spew their poison but it also means that there is a range of people who voted for Trump. Some were enthusiastic and thus unreachable, some were voting for the lesser of two evils and are potentially persuadable. They need thoughtful argument. Joe Rogan, for instance, who was a Bernie Sanders supporter in 2020 seems like a good example. Harris refusing to go on his show certainly didn’t help her cause with him or his millions of followers. Worse still, she opted out of appearing on Rogan’s show because she was afraid how it would affect her left wing supporters. Well, who else were left wingers going to vote for? Jill Stein? Better to show up for Rogan and disappoint the left wing purists. Even if Rogan was unpersuadable, it would have shown Harris was willing to reach out to the broader electorate instead she looked like a whiny snowflake.

The question shouldn’t be why are the American people so horrible. The better question is why did so many Americans, given the choice they had, choose a two bit carnival barker over a rather conventional Democratic politician. There is a problem here that needs to be addressed. Seeing how Democrats are stuck with the voters they have and not the voters they want, it might be a good idea to figure it out before 2026.

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As I get older, I try to keep tabs on my mental state. So far, I think I am all right but every so once in awhile I think I might be a little crazy and I am just too crazy to realize it which leads me to present confession. I think my plants are watching me.

Now I rationally realize this is impossible but I still have this nagging feeling every time I give one plant water and not the others that I am pissing off the waterless plants. Watering the plants is not one of my normal chores. Bob does it. I water for ecological reasons or so I tell myself. If, while washing dishes, I notice water still in the glass, instead of tossing it in the sink, I give it to one of the house plants. There usually isn’t a lot of water. Just enough to give one of the guys a little dash.

Only one of the five plants is going to get water so I try to be fair. I put the plants in a rotation, so all is well as long as I remember my rotation. But I don’t. If we go out to eat several nights in a row, or I have too much to drink, or I just plain forget or some combination of the three, I worry that if I went out of rotation.

Now a normal person wouldn’t worry about this, right? But it really bothers me. I don’t want piss of the plants. It has gotten to the point that if I can’t remember the rotation that I give all of them a little water. The problem I have is that I am doing because the plants are behaving like assholes and not because I love them. It kind of pisses me off that I am letting a bunch of plants push me around.

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I know that the Social Justice Kitten calendar is a joke on Left-Wing political correctness but it has a frighteningly close resemblance to actual statements coming from the theorists. For example, one of the calendar pages reads: You are not allowed to exclude me from your dating pool.

Just a quick google search and you will find people discussing this very topic on Reddit and Psychology Today. Yes, there are people who think heterosexual men should date Trans women even if they haven’t had the trans surgery replacing the male genitalia with female genitalia. So, a man, who is sexually turned on by women, should include trans women, who still have their male genitalia, in their dating pool simply because the trans women identifies as a woman or else the man risks being called transphobic. I suppose he could exclude the trans woman if she had voted for Trump.

View the pages of this calendar and you will see why the intellectual left wing is having trouble connecting with working class Americans. The travails of the trans community have limited interest in the vast majority of people. It is something they don’t understand and, more importantly, don’t care about. It might be argued that they should. OK, maybe they should but the reality is they don’t. Saying shit like this doesn’t mean that actual people believe it. Elections should be fought in the reality of the present moment and not in the idealized hope of what people should act like sometime in the future.

The modern Left’s assumption is that they have won the argument. There is nothing more to talk about and everyone should bow down to their understanding of how people should behave. But, they haven’t won the argument and people aren’t listening to what they have to say. So good luck with changing the minds of working people.

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I wait to pay medical bills because the first billing is almost always wrong. The medical office is waiting for an insurance payment, or a deduction based on some deal that the medical office has made with the insurance company which reduces my bill hasn’t been received, or, and this happens to me a regular basis, the bill is just wrong and the medical office will sort it out on about the third time it bills me. After all this to and fro with payments, I then jump in fairly confident that I am now dealing with the amount I owe.

Back in May, I started the process with one such bill and found that I owed $35. I could account for $15 but I couldn’t account for the other $20. I examined my bill and found the missing $20 but it was showing as a payment and not a debit. I called the office and explained my situation to a Customer Service representative. She went through the bill and saw the problem and instantly was confused. “It is in the wrong column.” My concern was what if it is in the right column but wasn’t deducted as it should have been and could she ascertain whether itr was a credit or a debit. She puts me on hold in order to talk to a supervisor. After about ten minutes she returns, she and her supervisor were unable to determine whether the $20 was a payment or a charge and she would need to investigate. She assured me that she would call me back. She did not.

So in June, I received another bill for $35. I again call Customer Service. This time I was unable to reach a representative. There were too many calls in the queue and my wait time would be something like a half of an hour. I was instructed to leave my phone number and a brief explanation of my problem and that I would get a return call within 48 hours. I never received a response.

In July, I received another bill for $35. I again called Customer Service. I again was unable to reach a representative and was told there would be a long wait before I could talk to one. I again left a message but added the number of futile attempts I had made to resolve this matter and how I would really appreciate a return phone call. No one called me.

I didn’t receive any bill in July, August or September. Thinking that the matter had been resolved, I waited to receive the bill for the correct amount – $15, instead, in October, I received a check for $35 with no explanation of how they determined they owed me this amount.

I am certain that I owed them $15 but now, at least I think this is true, I owe them nothing and they gave me $35 to boot. I can’t wait to see my next bill.

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Furious Spain Flood Survivors Hurl Mud At King, Queen And Top Government Officials.

I had read the above Huffington Post headline three or four times before I realized it was just bad grammar. It should read Furious Spanish Flood Survivors. The first couple of reads, I thought why is Spain flooding survivors and hurling mud at the King and Queen. Now you may claim I am being nit picky here but this seems really basic here. Spain is a noun which is doing something while Spanish is an adjective describing the survivors.

It is confusing and makes for difficult reading.

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Just to show you the power of almost 60 years of misspelling.

I was writing something with the word tragedy in it. I wrote tradgedy instead and a red line, signaling that I have the incorrect spelling, appeared. I refused to believe it. I convinced myself that it must be some sort of British/American spelling disagreement even though I was using an American English spelling tool. Then, I was intrigued by this error because there must be some interesting history behind it so I investigated further.

And I was shocked to learn that I was wrong in USA or in the UK. Tragedy is only spelt one way and that is tragedy. This is pretty embarrassing because I am pretty sure that anytime I have used tragedy in the past, I spelled in tradgedy.

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I know I am little late in commenting on this but I feel this is a great example of how wrong headed the media has become.

First, I want to apologize to Aaron Rodgers before going any further. I have to mention something that he was reported to have done which is in essence passing on the information that I feel is unworthy of news coverage. I have made my peace with it in that so many major news outlets have reported it and my very low subscriber list is certainly no match for these networks, I am fairly certain that this is not news to anyone who would read an article about Aaron Rodgers. It also shows the bigger problem, I stopped to read this article over say what is going on in the Ukraine or the Middle East.

Any way, here is the gist of the report — Aaron Rodgers eats boogers. That’s right, a man who has a camera focused on him for much of his life, was, maybe, caught doing something human. That it is so important to point this out to the world beggars belief. So what? Nobody needs to know this. NOBODY.

Rodgers denies it and I can’t blame him it because it is embarrassing, but I think a better response would be to mind your own fucking business. What person on this earth, if they were under the same scrutiny, wouldn’t sometime lapse into some gross behavior which is entirely human? Blowing my nose without a handkerchief? Spitting? Picking their nose? Smelling their arm pits to check on their oder?

What value did this story bring to the reading public? All it really does is embarrass Rodgers which, I admit, is pretty fun because Rodgers is a bit of an asshole and deserves a little embarrassment. This, however, was the wrong tool to bring him down. Some in the media will say that they were forced to report on it when social media began to go wild with reports of Rodgers booger eating. It, then, became necessary for people to know about it and for Rodgers to address it.

How disingenuous. This means some crazy person can gaze hour after hour at a famous person sitting on a bench and report about any of the things he does there just because he is famous. Once the asshole finds the booger eating and then spreads his discovery onto social meeting, the media has to investigate because the public is talking about it. Let them talk about it. The media is under no such compunction. It isn’t news. Celebrities are human beings whose bodies function much like other mere mortals. If it annoyed Rodgers enough to rebut, he can talk about it but I see no reason for any responsible media operation to say anything about the topic.

More importantly, it is a distraction from a million more important things that could be reported on. Why waste the short attention of the public with something so insignificant, and, hey, I am admitting I one of the public here because I zipped right on to the booger eating controversy. The sports media might focus on something like the Jet’s abysmal record this season and how Rodgers might change this continuing disaster? Now that is something worth talking about. .

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Bill Maher walked out of a hotel with Noor Alfallah and the media goes wild reporting it.

This headline appeared in the Daily Beast, a serious news site, I read every day, when I stumbled upon a headline talking about Maher’s exit from the Chateau Marmont. Who, other than Bill Maher, Noor Alfallah (the woman Maher walked out with), and Al Pacino (Alfallah’s boyfriend), cares. Why did the Daily Beast give it an all important Top Cheats headline that directs people to read it? Wait, why did they put it into their site at all?

Here is the bit that caught my attention, “Paparazzi mobbed the duo early as they left together in the same car, Page Six reported. It is unclear what the duo were doing at the establishment together, and representatives for both have not commented on the appearance. Just hours earlier, Alfallah was snapped alongside Pacino at another Los Angeles restaurant, Chez Mia, in West Hollywood.”

OK it is gossip. People love to read gossip. But way too much time and energy was spent on this particular bit of gossip. The Paparazzi mobbed the duo. Mobbed. Dear God, how many photographers spent hours of their day waiting for Maher and Alfallah to leave the hotel? One would be one too many. This also means that some news outlet is willing to pay for photographs of the couple leaving a hotel. Keep in mind that is all they were caught doing is leaving the hotel. No one knows what went on in the hotel nor are the two explaining.

To be fair to the couple, there isn’t anything about their actions that suggests that their meeting was even good gossip. A man goes into a hotel and later leaves with a woman. Yes, it could mean that they were sleeping together but it also could mean that nothing went on at all other than he picked her up at a hotel. I have picked up many a woman from their hotel rooms without sleeping with them. So if someone were to ask me later what I was doing with that woman in her hotel room, I would gleefully reply none of your fucking business.

Think about it.There is a presidential election campaign going on, a war in the Middle East, a war in the Ukraine, a hurricane disaster with over 200 people dead and still counting, and another hurricane on its way to Florida. For a supposedly serious news site to spend any time on speculating who Bill Maher is shagging is a total waste of space. I repeat and in caps to emphasize my outrage — BILL fucking MAHER.

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Maybe it is because almost everything that comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth is bat shit crazy and to actually single one statement out becomes difficult given the sheer volume of his output that so few Republicans have commented on it. But recommending vigilante justice has disturbed me more than any of the other recent comments. An hour of violence or a day of violence to stop drug store thievery seems like a fairly big breech of democratic norms. It takes the government out of the whole process and puts it squarely into the hands of his own supporters.

I was certain that some Republicans would, at the very least, caution him to use less violent language. Yet there is nothing and I mean nothing so far that resembles even a mild rebuke. Given that Republicans like to point out the Constitution and the original intent of our founders, it seems like a good time to remind Trump that the Constitution enshrines the right to a trial as opposed to grabbing suspected thieves off the street and teaching them a lesson (in other words – beat them up).

Trump has always had a penchant for vigilante justice but this is the first time he has so nakedly expressed his desire to see it enacted. It also makes his denial of violent intent on January 6 less believable. If Trump thinks violence is a suitable response for shoplifting, why wouldn’t he also think it was appropriate for something more important like losing a stolen election? What are the limits of Trump’s extralegal violence? He needs to explain how this tool might be used if he were to win.

It is incredibly disappointing that Republicans have chosen to remain silent about this blatant call for violence. Trump talking shit like this is hardly surprising. It is the game he has been playing since he entered the political scene. What is surprising is the silence of other Republicans. The American legal system is flawed but, then, all systems are flawed. We should work to create a better system instead of ignoring the system we have. If we decide to go outside this system, particularly with violence, who knows where that violence will take us. I suspect to a much worse place than where we are now.

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The media was aghast at British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s gaffe in a speech. His big mistake was saying sausages instead of hostages. So what? Any person who gives speeches in front of the public is going to occasionally make a mistake. Starmer caught it immediately and corrected it.

As far as being newsworthy, not so much going on there. It could have been mentioned in a report about the speech but the headlines are screaming gaffe which made his mistake sound like much more than a mistaken word choice. So, readers thinking that Starmer must have really screwed the pooch here, read the damn thing thinking this must be good.

It wasn’t. It was a mostly an article about a mundane political speech at a Labour Party conference. The only thing newsworthy I got out of it was Starmer’s gaffe which should hardly even counts as a gaffe. What troubling circumstances occurred because of this error? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Starmer was momentarily embarrassed over a small mistake. Yet headlines everywhere were talking about it like something earth shattering occurred.