A round of random comments

 Is it me or has everyone I follow stopped posting?

Wouldn’t it be great to have a job where the people that hire you don’t care about your job performance, but that you only say what makes them happy? Seriously don’t do anything, complain about anyone trying to do anything, lie through your teeth to your boss about what was done and tell them wonderful things even though you didn’t have a hand in it. 

Welcome to being a Republican in the House of Representatives. I would run, but as a sensible person, well on occasion, I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror for what they are doing to this country. Worse though they think they are right and doing good. Oh to be that self absorbed and get away with it. 

You know how people will always propose the concept of if you could have dinner with anyone now or in history or have dinner with five people or something who would that be? What type of person would invite Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley or Mat Gaetz? I am not even sure Trump or any of his followers would put them on the top of their list. I would automatically puke if they just walked up dinner or no dinner. Yet their machinations always seem to keep themselves in the news. Oh wait, so it is not this ten pound cyst in my bowels that is keeping my stomach upset. 

Remember the Irony song or something from the 90′s? Don’t you hate being late to a free dinner. 

And the Mavericks went a made a checkers piece trade. Didn’t I say in a previous post not to do that?

And speaking of previous posts I will get back to the Minimum wage crap. I have just drifted off topic for so long in my head I am going to have to revisit the whole concept. And yes there is a whole concept to the government getting involved with a minimum wage or a living wage. There is no one answer.

Don’t you love it when you see an add that says this billionaire just bought this stock? And so I am suppose to buy it so that person can sell when I buy? 

And speaking of buying at the wrong time. Didn’t we have a housing crash a few years back? Yes I know it was because there were people over leveraging and speculators driving up the market, not really people buying houses for themselves to live. Oh wait! Yes, I saw the story where there were x number of cash offers on a house that just went on the market and people were saying that these offers were from people looking to fix up the house and sell it later at a profit. Do we ever learn anything? I wouldn’t buy a house right now unless I know for certain I am going to live there 20 years. And speculating always has that moment when you are the last person to buy. 

Spring is here, time to do the should I or shouldn’t I turn on the AC here in Texas. 40 + in the morning 80 in the afternoon. Exactly who runs our electric grid again? 

How much more?

 At what point do independent moderates and conservatives say they have had enough. I gave up the ghost in 1980. I cannot believe there isn’t a much larger ground swell by now for something better.

I do know a few conservatives have moved to the Solidarity Party and yet even a party already formed with a truer conservative platform isn’t getting much of a listen. 

There are the numbers to make a difference if they would ever coalesce around something or some identity. There are the independent conservatives, many minorities are conservative, and add in some independent, Republican, and Democrat moderates and you create the largest political party in the country. And yet.....?

Are we so disenchanted with the two party system we cannot trust another party? 

At every turn nowadays the Republicans or the Trump Republicans are sticking their foot in their mouth, are screaming hypocrites and have absolutely nothing to say productive and have this perverse feeling of being in charge.

I know a few hold on because you know the democrats are the enemy or something, but realistically how many Americans can continue to believe this charade without some slow crawl back to humanity or some type of epiphany that there is something wrong here. 

I hate to say this because it is negative, but how long can you believe a lie because why? It makes you feel good or are you too weak to stand up to the lies. What gives?

And more importantly when does this end? For the sake of our Constitution and Country, when does this end!?

And to all my fellow Christians, what does this upcoming week mean? 

Or have the false idols won? 

A few separate thoughts

The Mavericks better not trade away team chemistry just to get better on paper. Sometimes better on paper is not the answer. And no checker pieces trades either...moving players around to move players around. I do not know if we are “title contenders” right now, but we are a good team with high upside. Time to be the team in the NBA. Play this season out!

“Owning the libs” is not conservatism, not effective governance, not public policy, and is a bunch of entitled middle school thinking. If this keeps up, the Democrats are going to be able to take the high road and it will be harder and harder to have true conservative policy. Will somebody put adults back in charge going forward?

And finally racism, fascism and totalitarianism are not conservatism.  Racism, fascism and totalitarianism are just evil. The fact this has to be said is beyond scary. 

Some of the real American heroes

 First of all I said I would follow up to the previous post about the minimum wage crap and I will, but this thought came to me this morning.

In today’s world of hate your neighbor because they do not look, sound, or yell like you I thought I would discuss some of our neighbors who have done well, but do not always receive many accolades.

And the first thought that may come to mind are the first responders, police, fire, doctors, nurses, teachers etc, but not today.

There are thousands of successful business owners, CPAs, attorneys, doctors, Judges, and other successful professionals who do more than you know. And most of the time they plow through life doing what they do and maybe at the end of their life they receive some type of professional recognition or community recognition that acknowledges some of their work. 

And the unknown suspects are the type of professional who is successful in their chosen field, yet it is the CPA who also does the taxes for small non profits year after year for free, or the attorneys who participate in a city’s attorney volunteer program representing people who cannot afford an attorney on a regular basis, the doctor who works at various clinics for free, a County Judge for a rural county who manages the county for years trying to figure out how to afford road improvements, manage the employees, sit as the Judge in a whole host of different cases that fall under their jurisdiction, and untold other tasks only a County Judge would know and still find time to represent the County in statewide endeavors or do community work; or a businessman who quietly donates to all sorts of causes that somehow leads to a disabled child living in a state hospital having a bus ticket to visit their parents for the holidays because they parents cannot afford to come visit since it is out of town. 

I am sure many of you could create your own list of professionals in your community or your world in a large city who not only live the American dream and have a nice financial life, but also spend inordinate amounts of time going beyond and contributing both time and money to their community and no one really says anything except maybe like I said there is a professional organization or a club that one days says so and so has been doing this for the last thirty years and we would like to show our gratitude or something like that happens.

They are not the Rockefellers or the Gates and never have hospitals or museums or have other large public recognition. Many may die without any recognition, yet they have done much. They may belong to a local civic group, but they do more than embody that group’s mission statement. They may do much for their church, but many members know not what they contribute in time and money.

These are some of the people that make America great. They do this because they care for people like you and I. Some may call them self a liberal and some may call them self a conservative, but in reality they are neither, they are good citizens who do what is needed for the greater good.

Cheers

Let’s talk about this minimum wage crap

There is an enormous amount of chatter about what should be the minimum wage. Should it be “x” amount or should it not? And if not, then what.

Should it be market driven? Determined by the locale? Is the minimum wage really only for part time workers or young workers? 

And what is a living wage? Should the minimum wage reflect a living wage?

And if you had add in the problem of the wealth and pay gap between the different economic strata in our society, how do you determine a minimum wage or a living wage? And how do you even determine what constitutes a living wage?

Or so what? Is it every person for them self? And this last question is the easiest to answer. If you believe that we should group together as a society and accept laws, rules and mores to create cohesiveness, order and social interactions, then we cannot accept every person for them self. We are not animals in a jungle. And if you do not like this answer then separate yourself from humanity, do not intermingle with us at all, or complain about us and live in the jungle or a deserted island. And you do not have to bother to tell me how it is going.

As humans it appears to be in our nature to be social and interdependent animals. Oops, changed paths too much.

Going back to do we need a minimum wage or even a government defined minimum wage. As always if humans behaved at their best we would not need government at all, yet we rarely behave at our best so we need some entity to control our interactions. We shouldn’t, but we do.

So until we do, we need some type of defined attributes to how labor is paid in our country. And let me say this, the minimum wage arguments really need to be discussed throughout the globe. It maybe different for different countries, but if you want to benefit society as a whole then all humans need to see the same arguments resolved.

This is already running much longer than I wanted it to be so this may end up in stages or parts.

So lets back away from the immediate answer about what dollar figure we say is minimum wage and discuss what is needed for people who work.

And that is actually a hard question to answer. At what point is a person self sufficient in society? How much money is needed to pay bills? And that depends. We can all, if we try, get away with very basic necessities. We could live in an efficiency, keep our thermostats at low temps in the winter and high temps in the heat or even where more or less clothes depending on the weather. We could eat very inexpensive food. And oops this is where the push me pull me of making choices comes into play. And this is my first example of  the problems we face in making arbitrary financial determinations.

If you eat inexpensive foods over your life time, in most cases in our modern society they are unhealthy. So if you are not making much, and are eating these unhealthy foods eventually they can cause health problems and some of these health problems could end up very debilitating and expensive such as diabetes. And now you cannot work at all. 

So if you are not making much then you probably couldn’t afford health insurance. And if you cannot afford health insurance and then who pays for your medical care. Do we as a society let you die a slow painful inhumane death? Well of course not, but now we are at one example of how determining a wage for a person one day may have detrimental costs another day, both to the person and to society. 

I am going to leave it for you to think about it for now. And I could leave you with a litany of questions to reflect upon and how all this interconnects. For now though give it some thought and hopefully some questions come into your head so you can start to develop an idea that all this minimum wage talk is crap, there is so much more to the discussion. And hopefully you realize that for us to make good answers we need good understanding. I do not profess to have all the answers, yet I am going to delve into this further in future posts because we should make this discussion a real priority in our society otherwise creating an arbitrary number to pay people solves no problems. 

Cheers

I forgot to create a bracket and I am mad at myself, still love March Madness though. And in some ways glad I didn’t because Friday was crazy. I hope you enjoy one of the greatest events of sports entertainment around.

There is a lot being said

 And there is much talk about free speech, yet what is free speech? 

Well apparently free speech is just about anything which I guess you cannot argue, but at what point does free speech create a cost.

If you say something that triggers hate and someone then goes and uses that hate to harm someone are you an accessory to the crime?

If you insult others, but complain when others insult you, how do you view free speech?

If your words are so despicable or so degrading or self degrading, at what point does it stop becoming art and just becomes degrading. 

For a society to flourish with free speech there is usually an underlying understanding that the speech is respectful and healthy. People may push boundaries, but the boundaries remain. There is an unspoken word that you push the boundaries of thoughts and ideas not inhumane conversation.

A society that cherishes free speech also cherishes human dignity or the speech is not really free anymore because someone eventually pays a price for what is said. 

How a society views free speech reflects how a society views it self and right now in our country there is a lot being said. 

Some random observations

 Do not leave all your blinds open and all the lights on. Sooner or later someone is going to walk by and they are either going to look in or stumble or trip or hit their head on something trying not to look in. And no it wasn’t me thank goodness, but on that note I need to talk to some of my neighbors about the sports teams they support.

I have said this before so I will say it again in a different context. If you are upset about things remind yourself how old is Mitch McConnell and how old is AOC. And if you are a conservative, but not a Cruz or Hawley type conservative this is really irksome. For the one billionth time, we need new parties.

Think about this for a moment. There are values and there are values and finding and obtaining both can make for a pretty good life. You would think someone would have already tied this together. I couldn’t find a reference.

I am both amazed and scared at how large the audience for UFC and all the wrestling iterations has become.

Why is it when you went to bed at 2 in the morning (don’t judge, we had something we needed to do or better yet judge because life is bogged down in pandemic boredom) your work somehow manages to become very public the next day?

And speaking of pandemic boredom, well it took a whole year, but now the pounds are multiplying like a virus in a petri dish. I have always managed to stay within a range, but blew through the top end of that range over the last couple of weeks. And don’t say  oh God, don’t say it, wait.....hold on.....  oops.... I just knocked the laptop off the table laughing so hard because you thought I should exercise. ......whew........gotta catch my breath. and yeah, it took effort just bending over to pick it up. 

Was listening to the classic rock station on the subscription radio and I do not know who programs this stuff, but someone forgot to tell them use good classic rock. I swear and this is hard to believe, yet they somehow managed to find the one bad Stones song or maybe I just paid better attention to it this time around. And then a hour later they played another Stones song, still only a fair one though. Or maybe it is just me because when you say classic I am thinking anything from Some Girls or previous you know like...” I bet your mama was a tent show queen// and all her boyfriends were sweet 16// I’m no schoolboy but I know what I like//you shoulda heard me just around midnight....” or maybe they should have just played some Hollies especially in today’s world...”so on we go//his welfare is of my concern//no burden is he to bear//We’ll get there//He would not encumber me//He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother....” these weren’t found on the classic station....

Spring forward ya’ll

We need a new conservative party post haste

First of all, who thinks making someone read 600 plus pages is actually governing. Second can the person or people that have to read the bill sue the Republican Senator for cruel and unusual punishment.

And for the party that says they are for not spending money is sure wasting a bunch of time and money going through this more than futile exercise.

The Republican party has lost touch with reality and somehow has managed to take a good chunk of America with them.

We need a new conservative party that actually wants to espouse conservative policy now. This is utterly ridiculous that people think they are being represented by the madness coming out of the national Republican Party. And yet people do. 

I will not support the Democrats so we need to get this party up and going yesterday. 

In Texas some of the criteria for a mental health warrant on someone is that they are harming them self or harming another or are in imminent danger of harming them self or someone. Can we get a mental health warrant for the National Republican party if they visit here? Their madness is destroying this country. They are not accomplishing anything except making the Democrats look reasonable. Seriously!

In case my frustration is not making sense to you, a Republican Senator has found a way to make the entire Covid 19 proposed bill be read on the Senate floor before the debate of the bill begins. And they are reading it right now. 

There is no rationale for doing this except some Republicans don’t want anyone to play if they cannot get their way.

The better half is listening to the reading and there is someone sitting in the leader chair, the camera isn’t showing the floor to see if any Senator including the person that required the reading is there to listen. Every now and then you just have to laugh, but it is sad. Not the reading, just how inane the Republican Party has become, but they and their fans will tell you it is the Democrats who are destroying this country. The Republicans do not know how to write policy anymore or govern. And people are watching us. This is sad.

Long live the Constitution, the Constitution is dying.

And just in case you are losing count, you can add Governor Abbot to the list of people who need to resign. 

My previous post is more important by the minute, we need something new yesterday. 

And psychologists are good at labeling what humans do, so they need to come up with a new word for where the Republican party has landed, cause...damn.

Will our grandchildren ever forgive us?

What if there was another CPAC?

 What you say, my God man, that is the last thing we need. Yet I say, we do need another one that isn’t so modern Republican centric.

There is probably some independent conferences out there so we either need to push those or create a new conservative conference made up of independents, minor parties that are conservative, some of the current Republicans thinking of jumping ship, some moderate Democrats that lean middle conservative, small business groups and large company leaders that are open to the changes we need to build back up the working and middle class and reduce the wealth gap. Yes, believe it or not having a strong middle class will not destroy the one percenters, in fact it will probably benefit them too. 

The pre-Trump iteration was too pro large corporate America and well the current Trump iteration is just worthless and is incapable of producing any rational conservative policy. This includes the one or two populist ideas that Trump stumped on, but was never going to implement such as infrastructure improvements. 

We need to find a way to create a group that can compete with the madness now coming out of CPAC. There are many potential upper echelon people now tired of the Trump Republicans who might be looking for a strong alternative to rally behind to push out a more rational productive conservative agenda. How does a part time amateur bloggist reach out to the one or two influencers that have the contacts to, as they say, make this happen? 

Most Americans are still rational people. Do not let the vocal nuts that support Trump confuse you into believing all Trump Republicans are crazy. There are people who support Trump because they do not like Democrats and the vocal nuts pushed Trump on them and they do not see the options anymore. Given a chance they will come back to supporting real policy proposals that do benefit them, ie better tax policies for the middle class, family value issues such as affordable healthcare, infrastructure projects especially if they bring good jobs, better education for their children, and a better understanding that change will happen and renewable energy sources are not evil, they are the future. I never understand why people who call themselves Christians let people pollute the planet God gave us. It is counter intuitive to me. 

And we need the dreamers to expand our economy to create new jobs with better pay, better opportunity such as and I saw this today, a space resort. Seems frivolous, but we all love vacations anyway so having a new place to go and with the technology required to develop and build it just adds so much to the overall economy and job growth. These are the people a new conservative business policy needs to promote. There is nothing wrong with balancing a budget and allotting resources to expand the economy at the same time. And if you have read previous posts over the years you know I always want to see economic development plans that incorporate new technology to solve world problems. 

Anyway speaking of dreaming, how does one start a conference?

Or a PAC to start a conference and fund an alternative vision?

Sleep on it and get back to me.

And can someone explain to me why Governor Abbott wants to kill me?