AM Grumble in Book Six: Trying to Hold On 2019

Grumble Grumble

This morning has not started out too well.
I went downstairs this morning to try to find my wedding ring (not sure where it is :x !) and while I was down there, Nala decided to run after me (not that bad) and do her entire morning pee in the middle of the basement. The whole thing. Epic amounts of pee. I tried to clean it up as best as I could and left Wife a note about it.

Started driving to work… ran into construction… was delayed there for 10 minutes. Started driving again… same road… not even 2 miles later… ran into construction. 15 minutes just sitting in a parked car waiting for the go ahead. The entire strip of highway all the way into town has been reduced to one lane! GRUMBLE.

Get into work… immediately handed a court notification. Emergency Hearing at 11:30 for Juvenile in Detention. The kid broke into someone’s home and raped a girl… allegedly. And in 3 hours, I have to argue to a judge why that means the child shouldn’t be allowed to simply go back home under his parents’ supervision.

Adding fun to the heaps… the way that mail is shipped somewhat confuses me. I am expecting a package. The delivery history of this package? Orlando, Florida to Jacksonville, Florida. Jacksonville, FL to Nashville, TN. Nashville, TN to Indianapolis, IN. Indianapolis, IN to Hodgkins, IL. Hodgkins, IL to Addison, IL. Addison, IL to Davenport, IA. Davenport, IA to Des Moines, IA. Des Moines, IA to Ames, IA. That is where it has stopped. Really? I mean… the only “international” part of the Des Moines Airport is that it is a direct hub for Post. But even more than that? It makes no travel sense. Addison, IL directly connects to my town by Highway 20. So… everything to Addison makes sense. From the South East of the United States to Addison does not involve going around me. Addison to Davenport? Is sending my package back south in relation to Addison and IF. Davenport to Des Moines involves passing my town! The only way this could get even more asinine is if Ames sent my package to Mason City who then sent it to Waterloo before it actually came to me!

My day has become so friggin’ busy and stupid! Hearing at 10 where I do nothing; hearing at 11:30 where I say “Really?” 6 potentially long phone calls trying to track information down.
A DNA Request that I don’t have any paperwork for. Another hearing where I do nothing then (hoping I have time(!!!) a buttload of filing before the end of the day. Law, as they have always said, is a Feast or Famine, Drought or Flood Business. Bah. Bugger. This is going to be a rather foul entry for the weekend starter but perhaps that will purge it and allow the weekend to be quite good. So let’s jump in with both feet, I guess.

(1) Rep. Eric Swalwell Says the Attorney General Should Resign
Honestly… gonna kind of have to agree with this one. Big reason being… not only did he entirely mischaracterize the Mueller Report in a way that should have gotten him fired… but he acted outside of the scope of his responsibility and abused the power of his office. I get it, under the Trump Administration, abusing the power of your office is now an expectation but it should not be allowed nor encouraged.

(2) For the second straight year, the Treasury Department will have to borrow $1 trillion to pay for the government’s growing budget deficit, a consequence of juiced government spending and smaller revenues as a result of the late 2017 tax cuts, Bloomberg reports.
Remember when the Republicans took control of the Legislative Branch under Obama and vowed to obstruct him on every single priority of his? They continually claimed it was because they wanted to “control the deficit” and “protect the country from going into default”. Convenient. A president wants to spend government money on the people by focusing on healthcare, education, welfare programs, and other For The People expenditures… Republicans trip over themselves shouting “inappropriate deficit spending!” And yet… Trump wants to spend government money on the military and large corporations by focusing on increasing budgets while decreasing taxes and regulations… and Republicans trip over themselves shouting “wise deficit spending!” Excuse me for a moment as I, a former fiscal conservative take a pause to say: GO ABSOLUTELY FUCK YOURSELVES. When you’re being consistently fiscally conservative, fine, then you can bitch about deficit spending. When you’ve borrowed 2 trillion dollars during the presidency immediately following a huge “deficit concern push”… you’re worse than hypocrites.

(3) As a follow up to that… how’s this headline grab you: The US posted a $234 billion budget deficit last month, the biggest one-month deficit in history

(4) Oh, and anticipating the argument “The tax cuts have helped people, that is good deficit spending!” Allow me the following. Ultimately, what we saw were Corporations rewarding themselves with tax cut money… not rewarding their workers. A new analysis of all Fortune 500 companies found only 4.3 percent of workers will receive any bonus, limited to a one-time bonus or wage increase tied to the business tax cuts, while businesses received nine times more in cuts than what they passed on to their workers. That was according to Americans for Tax Fairness, a political advocacy group devoted to tax reform. This new analysis also found that companies spent 37 times as much on stock buybacks than they did on bonuses and increased wages for workers. Stock buybacks exist exclusively to benefit the Company’s underlying value and reward shareholders. In short… corporations aren’t producing more value nor are they rewarding the hard workers whose labor goes to providing that value… all the are doing is “shifting paper” to inflate their Stock Market Value. Y’know… something that Enron did. Inflate the stock value, sell the shares to get/be/keep super rich but fuck over your employees? I’m not saying that IS happening or IS GOING to happen but.... when money stays concentrated at the top, does not go to anyone “underneath” but does go to make what the top owns more valuable? That is certainly something that should concern us!

(5)
In countries where everyone is covered (healthy and ill) the fact that you’re likely to have a heart attack is a reason to see a doctor.
In countries where Insurance Companies wish to only accept healthy people and not ill people, the fact that you’re likely to have a heart attack is a reason to prevent you from seeing a doctor.

(6)
This is still true. They did finally receive a grant to start working on Water Infrastructure, but that is 5 years later. Also, Flint isn’t the only place in jeopardy. There are currently more than 5 towns/cities in Iowa that either are on a Don’t Drink The Water requirement presently or who have been in the last 12 months. Why? GOP Cost Saving Measures. That is the long and painful short of it. It is this bizarre concept of Government shouldn’t spend money if they don’t have to! deciding that clean drinking water is not a “have to” category!

(7) J. Hogan Gidley is a horse’s ass. This should be obvious as it is someone within the Trump Administration and recently interviewed by Fox News. But it still stands to be said. Gidley is a horse’s ass. He went on Fox News to pontificate that Nadler and the Democrats were “wildly misconstruing” the Mueller Report and attempting to foster “far left conspiracy theories” twisting the Mueller Report to inappropriately make it appear as though the President had done something wrong. Sir? You may have a degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Mississippi; but you are a horse’s ass. If you actually read the report instead of fluffing AG Barr while he summarized… you would be familiar with specifics contained in the Mueller Report. Like the part where Mueller directly states “If we were confident that the evidence did not find obstruction of justice, we would have made that conclusion. We have not.” In other words: Obstruction of Justice was found and there is evidence enough to suggest guilt. “But the president isn’t in trouble, so the Democrats are just misconstruing those words.” Actually, Mueller spoke to this as well. He stated that he would not come to a conclusion of Obstruction of Justice as the Department of Justice has declared that a sitting president cannot be indicted, only impeached. As Mueller was a DOJ employee as he conducted his investigation, he felt that he could not go against that but he did specifically state Congress would make the final decision. Despite Barr’s attempts to do so, unlawfully. Mr. Gidley… to conclude that reading the Mueller Report in a way to make the President look like a bad guy is a mistake… leads me to believe that you haven’t the first idea of law, ethics, or morality.

(8) A Fox News Contributor that does have an idea of the law? Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano. He received his J.D. from Notre Dame, taught law at Delaware Law School, became a Superior Court Judge in New Jersey, was an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University School of Law, served as visiting professor at Brooklyn Law School, and has been involved in the practice of law (in one form or another) for 44 years. This guy versus Broadcast Journalism Degree Gidley.

“Mueller laid out at least a half-dozen crimes of obstruction committed by Trump,” Napolitano wrote Then Napolitano listed them! Napolitano said, “Barr used an extremely narrow definition of obstruction that’s at odds with “the nearly universal view of law enforcement.” Barr, he said, is wrong ― and added that obstruction as a crime is almost never completed and doesn’t have to be successful to lead to criminal charges. A redacted copy of Mueller’s report showed that reported attempts to hamper the Russia investigation were thwarted by aides who did not fulfill Trump’s requests. Now, Napolitano said, it’s up to House Democrats to decide if they should impeach Trump ― but noted that they might be looking at how Republicans suffered politically during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. “I’m disappointed in the behavior of the president,” Napolitano said in his video. “His job is to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States to uphold and enforce federal law. Not to violate it.” He said if Trump violated the law to save a life, he could have a moral defense. “But ordering obstruction to save himself from the consequences of his own behavior is unlawful, defenseless and condemnable,”

So there you have it. Even a Fox News Analyst who Trump once considered for the Supreme Court has come out to say Trump’s behavior was unlawful, defenseless, and condemnable. But no, no, no… this is all a Far Left Conspiracy!

(9) Now… lets all just take a breath from the unlawful, unethical, unacceptable of current politics and review the idiotic and bizarre! The President of the United States, who has long been given almost all the media coverage in the world, has also long stated that all media is biased against him and unfair. This has included such “media” as GOOGLE and TWITTER. Yes, that’s right. The political figure that tweets 40 times a day is saying that Twitter is censoring him by removing his supporters from Twitter. But… for those of us under 70 that understand how technology works.... and hell, even those 70 or older who understand how Twitter works… this is an old man yelling at clouds argument. BUT that old man is powerful enough to demand the presence of Twitter’s CEO to explain it. Thirteen Second Break Down for those who may not know… Twitter can and does ban and remove certain accounts for things such as “hateful, criminal behavior” or (more often) BEING BOTS. And, despite Trump still maintaining that the Russian Influence campaign is only “a couple of facebook ads”; the American People and anyone that has been paying attention to anything besides Fox News knows better. And lo and behold: Twitter has suspended over 5,000 accounts tied to a network amplifying a message denouncing the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller as a “RussiaGate hoax.” According to a researcher, the accounts—most of which had only posted three or four times in the past—were connected to other accounts previously used to post pro-Saudi messages.

AAnd here’s just a few photoplasy Cracked items while I wait for my Phone Calls to pick up. BTW- that’s how this entry was mostly written. Me, on the phone, waiting for a secretary or an attorney or a judge or someone… funny how much can get written, read, processed, and discussed in the in-between times of phone call work.

OH, and as a funny follow up to yesterday’s Pintrest Recommendations? I showed just the specific people. There was also a specific outfit Pintrest said, “Trust me, dude. You love this.” Not wrong.
Ao Dai: The áo dài is a Vietnamese national garment, worn by both sexes but now most commonly worn by women. In its current form, it is a tight-fitting silk tunic worn over trousers. Áo translates as shirt.[1] Dài means “long”.[2]

The word “ao dai” was originally applied to the outfit worn at the court of the Nguyễn Lords at Huế in the 18th century. This outfit evolved into the áo ngũ thân, a five-paneled aristocratic gown worn in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Inspired by Paris fashions, Nguyễn Cát Tường and other artists associated with Hanoi University redesigned the ngũ thân as a modern dress in the 1920s and 1930s.[3] The updated look was promoted by the artists and magazines of Tự Lực văn đoàn (Self-Reliant Literary Group) as a national costume for the modern era. In the 1950s, Saigon designers tightened the fit to produce the version worn by Vietnamese women today.[3] The dress was extremely popular in South Vietnam in the 1960s and early 1970s. On Tết and other occasions, Vietnamese men may wear an áo gấm (brocade robe), a version of the ao dai made of thicker fabric.

Academic commentary on the ao dai emphasizes the way the dress ties feminine beauty to Vietnamese nationalism, especially in the form of “Miss Ao Dai” pageants, popular both among overseas Vietnamese and in Vietnam itself.[4] “Ao dai” is one of the few Vietnamese words that appear in English-language dictionaries.[a]










This Red Ao Dai number is actually a traditional Vietnamese Wedding Dress

Though… never underestimate my interest in a Cheongsam Qipao.... which some of the above may be as those who tag Ao Dai photos may not understand a difference between the Vietnamese Ao Dai and the Chinese Cheongsam Qipao.
Cheongsam Qipao: The cheongsam (from Cantonese Chinese: 長衫; Jyutping: coeng4saam1;/ˈtʃiːɒŋˈsæm/,[1] /ˈtʃɒŋˈsæm/ or /ˈtʃɒŋˈsɑːm/) is a typical, traditional, and feminine body-hugging dress with distinctive Chinese features of Manchu origin. It was also known as qípáo (from Mandarin Chinese: 旗袍; pinyin: qípáo; Wade–Giles: ch’i-p’ao; and was the Republic of China’s mandarin gown. It was popularised by Chinese socialites and upper-class women in the 1920s and 1930s in Shanghai.