Monday Morning Smile

 

Tom on the Passing of Norman Lear

 Norman Lear, at the age 101 years old and transformed the way that Americans watched network TV.Before Lear, network TV was something of an alternate universe which depicted characters as somewhat otherworldly.  These children were deposited beneath cabbage leaves where they were placed by storks, and they were retrieved and raised by happy parents. On those occasions when the script demanded that a couple be shown in bed, those beds were always twin beds, with both mommy and daddy fully dressed in pajamas, lest something untoward occur.

Mr. Lear's characters were, above everything, normal people, albeit somewhat over the top.  His characters reflected some of the societal tumult that transformed America from the idealized fairy-tale world of the 1950s to the hyper realistic landscape of the post-Vietnam 1970s.  Lear created Archie Bunker, and George Jefferson, two shows which dealt with the many aspects of racial animus in a fresh way, and showed us aspects of ourselves that made us uncomfortable.  His female characters were affected by the awakening of the feminine mind, even though their struggles with self-awareness were largely played for laughs, but sometimes things got unexpectedly serious. Maude got an abortion in 1972...a year before 'Roe v Wade'.  Lear understood that people learn more about moral clarity from laughing at themselves, and their foibles, than in being lectured by some humorless scold.

So Kevin McCarthy, the former House speaker, has decided to leave congress at the end of the year, reducing the razor thin House majority to 2 .  Unlike Norman Lear, he won't be missed. 

Monday Morning Smile

 

Tom on the Racist Elon Musk

 Elon Musk, the impresario behind X, the platform formally known as Twitter, has stepped on his dick yet again. The other day he endorsed the "White Replacement" theory favored by White Supremacists and anti-semites everywhere, which holds that Jews favor the importation of dark skinned folks who would supplant honest White men whose jobs would be stolen by the "mud people".  And the Jews would profit.  This daffy theory was popularized by the tool who murdered 11 worshippers at the 'Tree of Life' synagogue in Pittsburgh a couple of years back.  Since Musk purchased Twitter, its value had declined from the 44 billion dollars that he paid for it to its current valuation of 19 billion dollars.  And that was before the current outrage.  He's losing most of his remaining 'Blue Chip' advertisers, such as Apple, IBM,Warner Media, and a host of others too numerous to mention here.  Soon, the only advertisers left on the platform will be vitamin merchants, purveyors of survival rations, and blow up rubber sex dolls for all of those 'incels' who increasingly flock to X. 

Chuckle

 

Monday Morning Smile

 I apologize for the Mondays without smiles.  I fell and broke (shattered) my hip, so I was in the hospital for 2 weeks  and finally got home on Saturday.  

Monday Morning Smile

Tom on Maine Massacre and Guns

 

The tale of the Maine shooting this week continues to grow longer, especially now that the shooter has been found dead and we can focus on cause and effect, rather than public safety and apprehension. The inevitable calls for increased regulation of the type of gun used in the Maine shootings...an AR-15 military style rifle...has become a topic of discussion in the Pine Tree State. Maine is a rural state and, along with her sister Northern New England states, has high rates of gun ownership., (Vermont-51%, Maine-47%, and New Hampshire-41%.   These figures represent the percentage of adults who live in gun-owning households according to a study conducted by the RAND Corporation). At the same time, these 3 states seem to have reasonably low per capita gun death rates, (Maine-12.6 per 100,000, Vermon-11.8 per 100,000, and New Hampshire, 8.3 per 100,000.  By contrast Mississippi and Louisiana, the national leaders in this category, have per capita death rates of 33.9 and 29.6, respectively). The takeaway from these numbers is that Northern New England, while having high gun ownership rates, have somewhat moderate gun death rates, indicating that gun owners in these states are reasonably responsible gun owners. 

Yesterday, Jared Golden, who represents Maine's 2nd CD, and whose hometown is Lewiston, announced that he had changed his long held opposition to banning assault weapons.  Mr. Golden is a conservative democrat who has sometimes broken with the Democratic Party on issues like gun regulation.  This puts the spotlight on Maine's two US Senators, Angus King, an Independent who is up for reelection in 2024, and Susan Collins, a Republican.  Neither seem inclined to do much of anything to address a problem that continues to convulse the nation.  Sen. Collins dithers but, in the end, toes the NRA's line; More guns for everyone.  Sen. King actually signed on to an amendment that would prevent the Dept. of Veterans Affairs from informing the folks that do background checks of any veteran who has been deemed unfit to manage their own benefits.  It sounds to me that Sen.King believes that the wholesale slaughter of civilians is the price that we must pay so that veterans such as Mr. Card, who hear voices and have heads full of snakes, should not be proscribed from owning military grade weaponry, even though the VA has determined that they're not capable of managing their own affairs.  What could go wrong?  We found out what could go wrong on Wednesday evening.  18 people won't be celebrating Halloween this year.

There's nothing anti-American about reasonable gun regulation.  Nobody needs an AR-15 for home protection unless they're drug dealers or members of a criminal organization.  Perhaps it's time for clergymen to denounce politicians who oppose any reasonable gun regulation from their pulpits in apocalyptic terms, especially when they're present in the congregation.  It's Saturday and I have to wonder who's life will be sacrificed before Sunday dawns because we're too weak to denounce the merchants of death...

Tom on Russia, Plane Rides and Florida Crimes

It seems that the Ukranians are raising merry hell with the Russians by employing more asymmetric warfare against their numerically superior  foes.   I've always felt that the Ukrainians should adopt a more robust guerilla focus as a way of forcing the Russianns to devote resources to areas that they once thought safe.  Commando attacks on Russian naval facilities. have kept the Russians off balance.  Targeted incursions into Mother Russia that result in civilian casualties are the way to go at this point.  The Laws of War should not be applicable to

only one side in a conflict. By flouting the norms of civilized behavior toward civilians, as the Russians have done through the entire course of the war, the Russians should forfeit any protections afforded their own civilian populations by the various Geneva Conventions.  

An Alaska Arline's pilot who was deadheading on a flight from Everett, Washington to San Francisco attempted to seize control of the aircraft from the pilot and co-pilot in order to cut the power to the engines and cause the craft to crash, presumably causing the deaths of all aboard.   He was subdued by the crew and was charged with 80 counts of attempted murder, among other things. This sort of thing happens from time to time. If a pilot is of a mind to commit suicide, what better way to do it than to take a planeload of folks with you?  There was that Malaysian Airlines plane that recently disappeared under mysterious circumstances that wes last seen heading straight down, which is not how crashing airplanes behave.  No trace of that plane has ever been found. And I dimly recall an EgyptAir pilot who took a plane load of passengers with him when he decided that that particular day was a good day to die. 

You've probably heard of Florida's "Don't Say Gay" law that's an important part of Gov. Ron DeSantis's "Kulturkampf', (culture war), against gay people..  The State Rep who authored the bill in question was recently convicted in federal court of fraud in a scheme to misappropriate $156,000 in Covid relief funds for his personal use.  He's a home health executive, a breed that's known for gaming the system for their own benefit.  The health care system is under constant attack by boodlers and grifters, large and small.  A few weeks ago, I wrote about scams involving purveyors of Durable Medical Equipment who took advantage of what medicare would pay for a particular piece of equipment and what it would cost to purchase that same equipmenton the open market.  The practice is called arbitrage, if you're interested.  Another favored form of fraud is manipulation of billing codes, which has been at the root of some of the largest healthcare frauds known to man.  It was that sort of scam that caused the Justice Dept to go after the healthcare chain, Columbia/HCA a while back.  The feds fined the rogue operation nearly a billion dollars, but the firm's CEO Rick Scott, now a US Senator from Florida, walked away with a billion dollars.  Aother huge fraud was connected to a company called 'HeathSouth', which was founded by a Respiratory Therapist named Rich Scrushy, who made a boatload of money before the feds caught up with him and tossed his sorry butt in prison..

Monday Morning Smile

 

Tom on the Middle East

 The truth about the explosion of the Gazan hospital this past Tuesday was certainly the result of a missile that was launched by a militant group called the Islaic Jihad toward Israel.  The problem here is twofold.  The first problem is that these rockets employed in assaults are primitive devices; many constructed in underground factories by unskilled workmen or supplied by Iran and are of similar quality.  They have a failure rate of nearly 40%, which basically means that 40% of them fall from the sky before reaching their target.  In this case, the projectile failed shortly after takeoff and was fully fueled and when it crashed, it covered the courtyard of the hospital courtyard where many had sought refuge.  The conclusion is supported by extensive evidence including from satellites and signals intelligence.

A good number of Palestinians want nothing to do with Hamas or the other militant groups operating within the enclave.  Hamas wants to hide behind the civilian population of Gaza.  But Hamas has the guns.

The entire struggle between Israel and the Palestinians goes back to the birth of the State of Israel in 1948, and really has its roots in the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of WWI.  It's a fiendishly complex story with a cast of characters that represents the best and the worst of humanity.  I've been following this story for almost 60 years now and there's always something new.  Bibi Netenyahu is a toxic creature

who cares more about staying out of prison than doing anything useful for the Israeli people.