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Reality Star Heather Dubrow threw a party that may have cost as much as $140,000. The average American makes in one year $66,622. So, Dubrow spent more than twice the average American salary for one party.

Some will say, it is her money to spend how she wishes.

I would argue with that. If she is receiving any tax credits to lessen her tax burden, some of this tax money is actually being spent on a party. How would you feel if a poor person spent their benefits on a party? Of course, we would be outraged. So, why are rich people, who gain income through not pay all their taxes, seen differently? Aren’t they manipulating the system to obtain money they don’t need to pay for a lavish party? Why is the Welfare Mom (which is largely mythic and not real) who buys a Cadillac demonized while the socialite (which is real) can use her tax reduced income on lavish parties and nary a word in protest is spoken?

It’s not so much the cost of the party, it is the misplaced sympathies we have for the rich. The temerity of these people who constantly complain about their tax burden while they can still afford lavish parties. They are doing fine and will continue to do fine if they pay their full tax bill.

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Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Coleman have a new movie out called the Roses. In the movie, there is a scene where Cumberbatch’s character gives Coleman’s character a food she is allergic to and then refuses to give her her epipen when she reacts until she signs their divorce papers. Apparently the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation is upset because depriving someone of their epipen while having an allergic reaction just isn’t funny. This seems like another mountain out of a mole hill situation. The movie is a satire on how divorce proceedings get out of hand and the terrible things that people might do to gain an advantage.

The movie wasn’t endorsing murder by epipen as much as pointing out the potentially horrible things a desperate person might do who finds themselves in a messy divorce. Withholding an epipen to someone who needs it to fits nicely into one of those potential horrible things. There are thousands of ways this might be done. Would it be any funnier if he was holding a gun to her head?

And I am pretty sure I have seen it before in movies and in television without comment. It is in fact an ingenious way to murder someone. Why then has the Natasha Allergy Foundation got their panties in a twist over this is a bit of mystery until I read that the movie had lukewarm reviews and weak box office.

Then the light bulb went off over my head, this is just a PR trick to get the movie into the headlines. Nobody is really mad at all. Now I have no proof whatsoever regarding my speculation but it is the only thing that makes sense. It is a movie after all, a movie where people do outrageous things, depriving a person having an allergic reaction of their epipen is outrageous and wrong but it also fits right into the movie being made.

I am betting there is no there there but kudos to the movie’s marketing department for keeping it in the headlines.

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I have to give it Donald Trump and his administration. They definitely know how to make a mountain out of mole hill and gain advantage from that little mole hill.

Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, resigned in a wave of resignations that struck the CDC last week. He also wrote a memo using the term “pregnant people” as opposed to the Trump preferred “pregnant women.” People and women are not the important words here, pregnant is. This is a message to advise someone who is pregnant about a health issue. It doesn’t really matter if you call them people or women.

But, of course, I am wrong. It matters greatly and people are hopping mad about it. One side believes pregnant people is more inclusive of trans people and the other side is claiming that only women can get pregnant and it’s ridiculous to use the more inclusive term.

Trans-obsessed lefties want everyone to use the more inclusive people and make no bones about telling people they should. This irritates trans-obsessed righties who think this is a biological question and that only women can get pregnant, so when talking about pregnant people, people should say pregnant women. This is so much cage rattling and of little significance to the majority of Americans.

First, the necessity to use pregnant people over pregnant woman is incredibly stupid. 99.99% of the people who are pregnant are women and like to be called women. Plus there is little chance that a pregnant trans man ( I am assuming about .01% of the population or less) would be confused by what the sentence means and how it might relate to him. But because somebody somewhere might be offended, people should be used instead of woman. This is the mountain they want to die on.

Language is social lubrication. It is there to make our lives easier. If you want me to use specific personal pronouns for you. I have no trouble using them. On the other hand, if I see a person with a beard, I am going to think this is a guy and I will trust my eyeballs and use male pronouns. 99% of the time I will be correct and offend nobody. This makes my life easier and less awkward because a lot more people would be either stumped by your personal pronoun question or unnecessarily angered by it. Why bother making trouble for yourself?

Which means I will continue to use visual cues, like a beard, to guess at someone’s gender identification until I start having trouble with people about it. Right now, I think I will die before having to ask someone their preferred pronouns.

What to do if people say “pregnant people.” I say deal with it. I admit it is a little clunky but perfectly understandable. Someone who says this is talking about pregnancy and want to be inclusive. Let them. Do what is comfortable for you. But no, “pregnant people” has become fighting words, so a fight must ensue.

The worst part is Trump has managed to turn the chaos at the CDC into a problem with politically correct bureaucrats. They have gone after Daskalaskis for being both gay and a satanist. So what should be about how to effectively get health information out to the public has become a witch hunt about being politically correct. And Trump has the advantage here.

I’m not sure this helps pregnant people or pregnant women but public health should be about using the right terms instead of delivering important information about people’s health.

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We bought a car a couple years back with an extended warranty which meant, or so we were told, that any problem with the car in the next 6 years, the dealership would handle free of charge. ANY problem. It was even called a Platinum Plan in order to let us know it was the best warranty possible. First, before I go too far, we love the car. It has treated us well and the free oil changes and tune up services we bought have been welcome.

But all good things must come to an end. Bob noted a problem with one of the door seals. It was a little tattered. I was taking the car in for an oil change so I made an appointment for a tune up and noted the problem with the door seals hoping that this can be dealt with at the same time.

We also kept getting a recall notice about a trailer hitch. We don’t have a trailer hitch but they had to do something or rather in order to actually confirm that we didn’t have a trailer hitch. Mind you this is the dealership where we bought the car and I would assume that they would have a record. They did not so they would have to check the trailer hitch in order for us to stop getting the recall notices. I decided to take care of this while I was there.

I arrived on time for my 11AM appointment to a 6 lines of cars with approximately 5 cars in each line. This looked ominous. I waited patiently in the car for Sam, my service counsellor, to consult with me. After a few minutes, he arrived. I explained why I was I was here and that I had an appointment to get his service. Things got hairy pretty fast. Sam explained that it would take at least two hours for the oil change, the door seals and the trailer hitch recall, it might take an additional couple of hours.

But I have an appointment. Sam informed me that this was only an appointment to talk with him and not when the car would actually be serviced. The woman who made the appointment never told this. Why would I think an appointment for a conversation about servicing my car instead of actually servicing the car. The whole reason for getting an appointment was for me to schedule my time and wait at the garage for the matter to be handled. Sam gave me the look of someone who has had to answer this same question a million times, a shoulder shrug, a pitiful look and then silence.

After a few seconds of awkward silence, Sam kindly offered to pay for Uber to take me home if I wanted to wait at home. I decided to take them up on this offer. The problem was I had to have Uber as an application and the dealership would give me a voucher as payment. I don’t use Uber because they treat their drivers horribly. I use Lyft who treat their drivers a little less horribly. In order to use the voucher, I had to put the Uber application on my phone.

So I began the arduous process of loading the Uber application, when Sam, as if this important piece information might have a bearing on my decision, informed me that he didn’t know if they had the door seals in stock or whether it was covered by the warranty.

I said of course it was covered by warranty. We bought the platinum warranty which was supposed to cover ANY repair for the next 5 years. Sam, again as polite and as beaten down person could be, explained that it would probably be covered but he would have to check with his boss.

I repeated the phrase Platinum Warranty as if this should ring a bell for him and make him understand the situation. It had absolutely no meaning for him whatsoever. Sam didn’t know what was covered on any warranty — be it Gold, Silver, Bronze or Platinum. It turned out I knew more about the Platinum Warranty than Sam. He still would have to ask his boss. He did say, as if to encourage me, that if I understood that they would repair anything that they would probably cover anything. I wasn’t encouraged.

After much pressing of keys and staring blankly at a computer screen, Sam determined that they did not have the door seals in stock and would have to special order them. Why did I drive all the way up here (OK it was all of 10 minutes but Sam didn’t know that) if the dealership didn’t have the part in the first place. More pitiful looks and shoulder shrugs. He didn’t make the rules. He didn’t understand the rules. He didn’t know anything about warranties. He was just here to see that my car was serviced and nothing else.

As I pondered my dilemma, Sam asked me if I still wanted to go ahead with the oil change. Of course, I don’t want to get the oil change if I have to wait here two to three hours and have to come back in a couple of days and wait another two to three hours to get door seal repair. Why would I want to waste two mornings getting my car serviced? Call me when the part is in and I will make a new appointment.

This is when Sam explained that I really didn’t need an appointment. I should just come first thing in the morning. The dealership takes everyone on a first come first serve basis. The earlier you got there, the faster you were served. Then why does the dealership advise making appointments? Sam had the pitiful looks and shoulder shrugs down.

Can I, at least, get the trailer hitch recall taken care of today? No I actually could not. But I don’t have a trailer hitch. Just put a little tick in the box saying the trailer hitch recall has been taken care. No, he couldn’t look at, he couldn’t take my word for it, the recall team would have to take a look at it and they would have to tick the box saying the trailer hitch recall was complete.

I drove home having failed to complete any of the tasks I set out to do and also none the wiser on what I should do next time. Why make an appointment if it has nothing to do with when I will get serviced? Why tell them what I need to do when they won’t have the part when I arrive for my appointment that I really don’t need in the first place? Will the trailer hitch recall team take a few seconds to see that I don’t need a trailer hitch repair because I don’t have a trailer hitch?

But, any way.

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Every time there is a mass shooting I have this momentary reflexive fear that the killer might be someone who I agree with politically because partisans will say that the problem is the politics of the person and not say something more directly responsible like guns. It matters why the person doing the shooting, did it. But, it doesn’t matter. All mass shootings are bad and the killer’s reasons are irrelevant. You can’t ban white men or trans people for the matter.

No one reason can explain every mass shooter’s motives. The shooter’s politics changes from instance to instance. The killings, however, continue. Of course, the recent shooting at the Minnesota Catholic school have charged partisans up and the problem is either white men or trans men depending on the political agenda of the writer.

Unfortunately, these identifications are unhelpful in helping prevent future mass shootings because the vast majority of white men and trans people aren’t going to shoot Catholic school children praying in church. In fact, 99.9999% of these people will never shoot children at any point whatsoever. So what makes this small number of people break, take up a gun and shoot strangers for no good reason?

The availability of guns is part of the problem. There is very little that can be done here as there is constitutional protection to carry arms, it is difficult to change the Constitution and there isn’t enough public support to even bother. So Gun Laws will not change. Any solution that calls for this is doomed to failure — at least right now. By all means, continue to bang your head against this wall but you are only going to get a bloody head.

These leaves us with addressing the mental health element which is another part of the problem. People who want to kill small children, for whatever reason, are mentally ill. There is no question in my mind and I think most people would agree with that. The question then becomes how do we stop crazy people from using their guns?

The most difficult hurdle to clear would be an acceptance that people need to submit to mental health assessments — particularly young people who are more susceptible to this type of behavior. This also involves a more restrictive take on mental health. Right now most people would say that going for a mental health check up is an option and not a requirement. You are free to be a crazy person — no matter that you are living on public sidewalks, no matter that you are a schizophrenic carry an AK47. Until you are actually hurt someone, you are free to be as crazy as you wish.

Personal rights and public safety are difficult issues to balance. I would argue because we have constitutional protection for gun rights than the government has a responsibility to assess a person’s psychological ability to responsibly carry them. It becomes a health issue instead of a gun rights issue. Every year of high school, every student needs to take a psychological evaluation. Not only could this help with mass shootings but also may help address homelessness, drug addiction and array of other social problem before they become serious problems.

If mental illness is the cause of school shootings then what is the mental health solution? So far the political class seems mired in pointless struggles about gun control and finger pointing at the the other side’s toxic politics neither of which is likely to change. What if we determine that good mental health is a personal responsibility and if we, as a country, can get early intervention with this very small number of people willing to shoot down small children we can address this without affecting anyone’s right to bear arms?

But you don’t have a right to be a crazy person — whether that manifests as shooting up a school or sleeping on public sidewalks.

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The raid on John Bolton’s house is more than a little worrisome. To start with, Bolton is a Republican who, at least on paper, agrees with Trump on most of the issues. He actually served in Trump’s first term as president. But Bolton disagrees with Trump and he personally seems to hate Trump. These type of disagreements, at least in the past, were a part of the big tent parties. You occasionally disagreed with each other. But Trump must have 100% allegiance to him.

So, if you won’t keep your mouth shut willingly, Trump is going to scare you into submission. Trump is using intimidation to stop his opponents from speaking. There is a big difference between calling a person stupid and opening a Department of Justice Investigation into a person’s activities.

If Bolton has nothing to hide what is he worried about? If only it was that easy. Investigations require lawyers to gather evidence to support your case. This, of course, means you have to have money in the bank to take on a Trump investigation. You have to take time out of your life to appear in court. So, even if you are found innocent, you lose time and money to Trump’s petty harassment. There might be people who would risk irritating Trump, but there also are people who will decide to keep their mouths shut instead.

It certainly seems to have shut down any criticism from anyone in the Republican party. Any Republican who disagrees with Trump is silenced — either by keeping their mouth shuts or through making their lives so miserable they quit or are pushed out in primaries. There is only Trump and what Trump says goes.

The deafening silence of party elders is baffling. I am talking about you Mitch McConnell (83 years of age) and you Chuck Grassley (91years of age). Here are two old men without a political future. Their political futures, and let’s face it their personal futures, have a very limited time line. They have nothing to lose. Why not raise a little Hell on your way out? What are they saving their gravitas for? Future power.

Trump’s behavior is so blatantly corrupt now that it is beyond shocking. He is selling presidential pardons. He owns stock in companies the government is doing business with. He openly shakes down business leaders for their spare change. He threatens anyone who crosses him with investigation. What line does Trump have to cross before these men speak up? There is very little power in nodding your head in agreement to everything Trump says. Yet they still continue to quietly nod.

Democracies occasionally put bad people in power. It is inevitable. They aren’t, however, the real problem, it is the people who keep their mouths’ shut hoping to hold onto what little power they have when any real power they had is long gone. They are powerless intimidated people who would rather give Trump what he wants than take him to task.

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The problem with the present party system is that both parties nominate people that some party members don’t like. Republicans are locked into only Trump supported candidates while ignoring any candidates who might hold differing opinions. The Democrats are a quibbling bowl of mush. The candidate is either a party stalwart who the partly elders foist on the members as the only electable candidate (See Joe Biden) or a left wing ideologue (See Bernie Sanders) who would have trouble winning a state that wasn’t located on either coast.

In almost 50 year of voting I have rarely ever voted for the person in the general election who I voted for in the primary. It’s almost always my second or third or even fourth choice. I am a party man so whoever gets the Democratic nomination almost always gets my sometimes less than enthusiastic vote. But I think they should know that it was less than enthusiastic.

I am not sure if it would change things but it might be helpful to know how genuinely popular the candidate is. Polls might point to this but actual voting would be confirmation of the weakness of the person and is the only accurate way to get this information.

So when you voted instead of seeing:

  1. Jenny Jones Republican
  2. John Smith Democrat

You would get an additional drop down box for each candidate:

  1. I am voting for candidate who I think will be a great President.
  2. I am voting for the lesser of two evils.

The candidate would get the vote for either option but if a candidate got a lot of I am voting for the lesser of two evils votes it might (might is the key word here) remind the candidate that yes they did win a lot of votes but that a lot of his voters are doing so as a last resort. I imagine a candidate who won and got 70% lesser of two evils might behave differently than a candidate who wins and gets a 10% lesser of two evils.

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I managed people who held low level jobs and limited opportunities for advancement. They are, by and large, an unmotivated bunch. They did their work adequately and left on time. They weren’t there for more than a paycheck. Good for them, I say.

One of the things my managers frequently tasked me with is how to motivate these people. And before I could say more money they then added the painful restriction without offering them more money. More money was always the hitch. The companies wanted to motivate the employees without paying them more. Needless to say, nothing we ever came up with worked.

The problem here is that the highly compensated people who run companies have convinced themselves that more money only works to motivate high level people. Low level people want something else. I attended seminars where I was told countless times that employees actually want other things than more money. They want respect. They want autonomy. They want acknowledgment. Notice that all of these things are free for the company. They are also vague and difficult to deliver for the direct managers. How much autonomy can you give to a person who has a highly structured job with expectations of coming in on budget and on time? If you didn’t deliver, you were encouraged to do better; if you did well, you got a pat on the back.

The budget for employee incentives were such that it was easiest to reward the group instead of the individual. So Donut Fridays and elegant Christmas parties were thought of enticements which never delivered the expected punch. I actually had one employee ask if instead of going to the Christmas party could she instead have the percentage we paid on a per person catering charge in cash. She would rather have the 29.99 than spend time at the party. I had to explain to her that this was a group incentive and her choice was the party or nothing. She, obviously, was being facetious but her point was made — the company was giving her something she didn’t want.

Even more ironical is that when I relayed this information to my boss, she completely understood. This to me, speaks volumes, about corporate culture — everybody knows this won’t work, but since we can’t give more money individually we are stuck we these group benefits that nobody cares about and won’t deliver. In other words, everyone knows these actions are doomed to failure from the start but continue doing them because nobody has a better idea.

I worked for a company that diligently surveyed their employees on how they felt about work. A neutral company took the survey, the results tallied and delivered to the employees. Every year the areas where my department scored lowest would be our focus to improve for the next survey. Except, of course, low pay. Everyone knew we couldn’t change that so low pay was a problem when the first survey was taken and low pay was a problem on the last survey I was there for. I am betting, with almost 100 % chance that I am right and after being away for six years, low pay is still one of the lowest scoring areas for my department.

The higher ups, convinced by seminars they attended where they were told that higher pay is not the major concern for employees, made us middle managers attend these same seminars so that we too can understand that higher pay was not the reason people worked. We learned how to encourage employees, how to discipline employees, how to reward them without giving them any money and, of course, nobody was convinced.

What is so baffling to me is this resistance to giving more money when the higher ups know the way to get people to work harder is to give them more money. This is, after all, the argument for giving rich people more money. We want them to work hard right? These people are the innovators, the entrepreneurs, and the risk takers. They have to be rewarded. If you take away their money, they won’t work very hard. But if you give them money — will the sky is the limit.

Exactly. So why should regular employees be treated differently? It is a blindness to the very economic tenets that Business so enthusiastically embraces. But by all means, continue with the Pizza Parties and Donut Fridays. I am sure one day that it will eventually work.

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Donald Trump was upset about the Smithsonian’s failure to talk about the good parts of slavery. There are good parts of slavery? Who knew. I am greatly interested in hearing more. I am sure he will be forthcoming with more details sometime in the future.

Trump may have had a point about the information in Smithsonian displays but it was lost when he started to talk about the good parts of slavery. Because Trump has a reputation of never apologizing and never backing down, there will be no apology which puts his supporters in the awkward position of defending Trump’s ridiculous statement when the only sane response is Trump is wrong and he never should have said something so stupid.

A good portion of the Conservative side has taken the best option available to them — they are ignoring the statement completely. Anyone who tries to defend him looks like an idiot and no one dares contradict the notoriously vengeful Trump so silence is about the best option a sane person would have.

Why Trump and Conservatives feel that American History has to always paint the country in a positive light is baffling. History is about human beings doing things. Human beings, some of the time, are going to do the wrong thing. It is inevitable. And it is a good lesson for children. Even people who do good things can sometimes believe and do terrible things. Children need to know this. How do you expect them to navigate life in this rough and tumble world if they believe Americans only do good?

Facts are facts. Slavery existed in the United States at one time. How do you explain American History without talking about it? The Civil War was all about slavery no matter how hard people try to make it about State’s Rights. This fails when looking at what people living at the time say. All the historical evidence points to slavery as the cause of the war. It wasn’t tariffs, agricultural policy, industrial policy, or any one of a million different issues that states might disagree about — it was about slavery.

Well, then, a lot of Southerners opposed slavery but they felt compelled to support their state, friends and family who did. So where exactly do you stop supporting your friends and family when they have bad ideas? I don’t really want slaves but all my friends and family have slaves so, in order that they don’t feel awkward, I am going to fight a bloody civil war so they know I really like them. These people are actually worse than the people who believed slavery was acceptable. It is the old mother’s adage if everyone was jumping off the Empire State Building, would you? Give me a break.

The Civil War is over with. It is no longer relevant to a modern discussion of civil rights. Now, I happen to disagree with this but say I give it to Trump’s defenders in this debate. The Smithsonian’s displays are about the Civil War. They are trying to explain what happened in 1860 and not how we live now. In order to understand America in the 1860’s, slavery has to be discussed and, if it is discussed honestly, the evils of slavery come up from time to time — it is unavoidable.

Some slave owners were nice to their slaves. Oh come on, really. They may have been nice people but they still believed it was OK to own people, to sell people, and to retrieve people if they ran away. That is your definition of nice? There is little evidence that this niceness was apparent to the slaves. If the slave owners were so nice why did they have to have laws returning runaway slaves? Why would anyone want to leave paradise on the plantation?

The slaves were fed and housed. Big Whoop. Prisoners are fed and housed. Hostages are fed and housed. This is basic human behavior. Nothing particularly special or nice about. If you are going to buy someone, force them to live somewhere and tell them they can’t leave — you better damn well feed and house them.

Why people try to make the South out to be the good guys in this scenario is beyond me. They were wrong about everything and I mean everything. There is nothing redeeming about the South’s position on slavery. It was wrong for them to have slaves and it was wrong for them to start a war about it. Trying to make lemonade out of this tainted basket of lemons is impossible. So, for God’s sakes, stop it.

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Given Trump’s record of fucking up almost everything he touches, I never gave it much thought but now with all of this back and forth with Putin and Zelenskyy in the past few days, it has occurred to me that a complete idiot like Trump might bring peace the Ukraine. What if Trump can come up with some manageable scenario where Putin can exit the Ukraine gracefully while Zelenskyy can limit his land losses to Russia. Right now, it is highly unlikely but still possible nonetheless.

Trump doesn’t know a lot about the Ukraine or Russia and isn’t looking to learn much. Oddly this puts him in a position of having few preconceived notions about how things will turn out. He is a blank slate. He just wants peace so he can snag a Nobel Peace Prize and if he has to force two warring parties to make peace then that is what he will try to do. Since he also has an inflated sense of his abilities, he might be so oblivious to the reality of these two enemies that he might also suggests something crazy enough to work.

I am more than a little dubious that this will happen but, unlike almost everyone else on Earth, expect the unexpected with Trump. I mean I never thought he would President and look how that turned out.