Not Losing, Again

 In an exercise of full disclosure, I look exactly like Tom Selleck, albeit an overweight Tom Selleck.  I have also been on a diet for roughly 60-years, and have lost about eight pounds; unfortunately, I gained 11 pounds.

 

Me.  Or Tom Selleck.  Not sure

Again today, I discovered that a new weight loss program had blessed the television to hawk “plans” and “systems” toward better health.

 

You know the ads; photos of people who allegedly partook in these weight loss efforts flash prominently across the screen with images of both before and after.  An excited narrator explains how this “new” simple plan will “help” you lose weight – “guaranteed.”

 

Actors, actresses, geologists, former athletes, housewives, factory workers, and anyone else who can operate a fork, are well represented in this seemingly endless parade of fixes to better health and, subsequently, longer lives.

 

Those representative pictures include a blurry “Before,” and a crystal clear “After,” snapshot to present verification that this “new” discovery in weight loss actually works.

 

The blurry picture shows a dowdy, beer-bellied client wearing 1980’s period clothing and a dour expression; the adjacent “after” evidence clearly depicts a smiling, slimmed-down, person who is visibly delighted at their fresh, new size. 

 

Client-after-client appears on the television with customer voice-overs bragging about the amount of weight they lost.

 

“I’m Jerry and I lost 87-pounds in three months!” declares one guy in a fireman’s uniform.

 

“My name is deLaShermonda.  I’m a housewife and office assistant who lost 112-pounds in only 9-months,” blathers another.

 

“I’ve been a writer for two-decades and gained 45-pounds, before I tried this fantabulous weight management program.  Now I’m the same size I was in high school!!!” claims Norm.

 

And so the testimonials go.  A half-dozen cheerful well-built individuals explaining how they lost dramatic weight, in short order, and kept it off for at least the duration of the commercial.

 

If you own a magnifying glass to perhaps remove splinters of wood from unlucky fingers, or to thread sewing needles, or even burning ants with light from the Sun, this would be a terrific time to dig it out to read the fine print on your 55” HDTV.

 

That fine print goes something like this: Results are NOT typical.  Do not use these claims as gospel or something that could actually occur – like genuine weight loss.

 

In other words, you have a better chance of The Vatican calling to name you the next Pope, than losing weight they claim. 

 

Still, with product names such as “Fat-be-Gone,” “Super Slimmer,” and “Chubby Meltaway,” it’s hard to ignore the testimonials and photos.

 

But here’s the kicker: if all these products are so effective at weight loss, why do they state their elixirs and pills need to be augmented with “diet and exercise”? 

 

It seems to me that if these products are so effective, weight should automatically melt once the bottle cap is removed; and that “diet and exercise” stuff should be discouraged to prevent too much weight loss.  Alas, it doesn’t.

 

One last thing.  How, if these products are so new and revolutionary, can they market their once-in-a-lifetime weight cures for only two- or three-months, before the Food and Drug Administration shuts the manufacturers down for false claims?

 

I’m now facing facts with the realization I’m never going to be able to hide behind a piece of rope.  But I also realize I’m not wasting my time with that diet and exercise nonsense.  Just saying.

Dragnet

 In the 1950’s, and again in the 1960’s, after a brief hiatus, a fellow named Jack Webb created and starred in a television show “Dragnet.”

 

It was a campy police show that spotlighted Los Angeles, California, detectives solving crimes in a half-hour.  Jack Webb appeared in both runs as Sergeant Joe Friday, a detective; Harry Morgan, his partner, played Bill Gannon joined the program for the 1960’s.

 

This popular show usually involved these two cops involved with the machinations of police work, including interviews cutting to the chase with the catchphrase “Just the facts.”  Those words were injected into the regular witness interviews to better abbreviate lengthy, circuitous answers to Joe and Harry.

 

It is now pre-midterm election time, 2022, and we are in the midst of a disastrous presidential term of Joseph Robinette Biden, one of many life-long smarmy politicians who don’t know when it is time to find the exit door.

 

After more than 50-years of scaring people by carping about climate change – and their brilliant plan to replace the currently used “fossil fuels” to power the world – environmentalists have finally settled on “the science” of renewable energy.

 

Renewable energy is one of those misnomers that beg for more details, and I’m here to help.

 

According to the shallow thinkers in the renewable energy realm, we, as a society, need to embrace the idea of non-polluting means by which to power our transportation, home, and industrial requirements.

 

It’s pretty simple, they explain.  Simply use solar panels to generate electricity, or windmills to produce larger quantities, with no side effects.  Problem solved.

 

Not quite.  Components used to make both solar and wind-driven energy producers must be mined using large machinery that uses diesel fuel.  Those ores and minerals are then manufactured into malleable steel and aluminum which requires smelting using coal.

 

Not to be deterred, the Big Three American auto manufacturers are neck-deep in the production and sale of electric vehicles (EVs).  Unfortunately, EVs also use steel, along with plastics, to reduce weight, which are derived from oil, also known as: fossil fuels.

 

And short of using really long extension cords, the Big Three are exploiting rechargeable batteries as a way to store the electricity you transferred from your home or on-the-road recharging station.  The best-known batteries currently in-use are made from lithium.

 

Where do the necessary supplies of lithium lie, awaiting mining for transportation to America, you ask?  The answer is Afghanistan.  Remember Afghanistan and the 20-year war President Biden just ‘ended’?

 

In any case, we now have an almost plethora of EVs ready for delivery.  Almost.  Almost because the electronic chips required for controlling the digital gauges, speed, charging, and maximizing battery life in the EVs are in short supply.

 

Be that as it may, once completely built, the fresh, new EV will be transported to dealers far and wide via rail.  It’s too bad our train engines rely on diesel fuel, not unlike tractor-trailers, that are also often used to move cars and household consumables.

 

To recap, America desperately needs to stop using oil, gas, and diesel in the name of saving the planet by controlling the fragile climate.

 

Mining environmentally friendly plastics

Buying an EV at roughly $70,000, would help us reach that lofty goal, if only they were available, and the general population could afford them.

 

“What?” you’re asking yourself.  “Why not simply continue using our seemingly endless supply of refined oil?” you’re now thinking.

 

Answer: Because President Biden, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, and the rest of the brainwashed environmental movement, thought it wise to force EVs upon every – EVERY – American by intentionally driving the price of oil through the roof.

 

In their best compassionate moments, the above-mentioned Three Stooges’ solution to high oil prices is: Drum roll, please: Just buy an electric car.  Their logic is that if you can’t afford gas at $4.99 9/10 per gallon, you should pony up $70,000 for a new car.

 

Still, there is bad news looming.  Once these EVs are bought and on the road, those lithium batteries have a limited life requiring more frequent charging, and eventually replacing them to the tune of between $4,000 and $20,000.  Nice song, eh?

 

Of course, President Biden’s brain – best described as a loose squirrel running around inside his otherwise empty head – believes it is better to not use inexpensive domestic oil; rather it is prudent to beg from and buy costly foreign oil from our enemies.  Wink, wink.

 

Now that makes sense.

 

Sure this was a long way to get to the much-awaited punch line to the joke.  But this is not a joke; it’s what Sergeant Joe Friday would say: “Just the facts.”

I Can See Russia

 Fourteen years ago, in time for the 2008 Presidential election, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, ran with U.S. Senator John McCain in hopes to defeat Barack Obama.

 

Throughout the year-long campaign, countless unfunny comedians, television sitcoms, daytime talk shows, and late night hosts, relentlessly badgered The Governor citing her “clearly obvious lack of intelligence.”

 

Filled with giggles and gaffaws, Ms. Palin’s numerous appearances were quickly and everlastingly becoming fodder for cheap laughs at the eventual expense of our country. 

 

One comedienne even donned look-alike eyeglasses in an effort to mock her for the whole world to witness.  This tart took a geographical fact and turned it into a comedy skit berating Ms. Palin along with anyone who had attended high school.

 

That half-baked comedienne/actress used an interview answer Ms. Palin gave to a talk show host about Alaska’s proximity to Russia.  Palin said, in effect, that you can see Russia from Alaska.  The subsequent joke offered the poor comedienne/actress an opportunity to malign The Governor as a dolt who believed Alaska was within eye shot of Russia.

 

As it happened, the joke was on that lame comedienne; Alaska is within eye shot of Russia – particularly at the Bering Strait.  In fact, an Alaskan swimmer named Lynne Cox swam from Alaska to Russia across that same body of water in August 1987.

 

For the record, Russia is a mere few miles away from Alaska, and so the United States.

 

Unfortunately, comedy writers are apparently not geographers or map-owners who could have simply looked this information up.  Still, this fact was largely ignored as the joke expanded until after the election, and beyond.

 

Sarah Palin still seeing Russia from Alaska

But the irony is just beginning to come into focus.  Our nation was co-opted by nefarious forces under the duly elected Obama largely because of this wildly inane premise of the vice-presidential nominee being “stupid,” and clearly incapable of taking command in the event of an untimely catastrophe befalling a President McCain.

 

“She’d be one heartbeat away from the nuclear football,” was the running mantra in an attempt to further fabricate untruths about Palin and her running mate John McCain.

 

History should be used as a barometer to gauge the future based upon the past.

 

Obama’s reign of terror was chock full o’ lies, racist policies, division, and poverty, all of which was ignored when voters offered him another four-year term at further destroying our great nation.

 

Along came an oddity, in that this new candidate was not a lawyer or a politician.  He was a successful businessman named Donald John Trump.

 

Trump eked out a win over Democratic hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton in an election decided by the Electoral College, bringing rage for a perceived theft of office.  Of course it wasn’t; it was an exercise as to why the Founding Fathers created this system out of whole cloth over 250-years ago.

 

Following another contested presidential election in 2020, President Trump “lost” his office to a career politician, Joseph Robinette Biden, and his Vice President, Kamala Harris.

 

This match-made-in-Heaven appeared to be too good to be true.  Alas, it was.

 

Biden was elected by what appears to be questionable means, all-the-while remaining hidden in his Delaware basement throughout the campaign.

 

Harris, on the other hand, bounced around from one talk show to another letting the proverbial cat-out-of-the-bag along the way.  Harris was, and continues to be, a media magnet.  That’s a person who avidly seeks the attention of anything involving a microphone and/or a television camera.

 

Touting herself as a “woman-of-color,” Harris filled the bill for what her boss promised his VP needed in the way of qualifications: A woman, and black.  Apparently affirmative action at work.

 

Not unlike her boss, Harris is a lawyer, too.  The good news is she once was a prosecutor jailing nefarious drug users for various marijuana offenses.  The bad news is that she admitted to using this illegal vegetative substance herself while incarcerating others for the same offense.

 

Not to worry, the media, and television hosts, emcees, and skit programs conveniently ignored these faux pas’.

 

It wasn’t long before she needed to show her mettle to the public, though.  Immediately upon removing the curtain hiding this mental giant the true Kamala Harris appeared.  Among her first words were chuckles and hearty laughs.

 

That blank stare in her eyes led one to believe she was lost for words, and this media appearance would be harder than previous ones – perhaps even requiring a serious response to a question or comment.

 

And so it went for several months.  It is said a public speaking coach was hired to assist her with thinking ahead, not laughing at inappropriate times, and being less combative during interviews.

 

It has been a year-and-a-half since this dynamic duo of Biden – Harris assumed their respective offices, and time for a re-evaluation.

 

It seems that in an effort to confirm her status as a buffoon-of-color, and a woman (maybe – depending on how biologist Ketanji Brown Jackson defines a woman,) Harris is cementing her ardent efforts as just plain stupid.

 

In a recent CBS interview, Harris was asked if former Democratic presidents and members of Congress should have codified Roe v. Wade “over the past five decades.”

 

“I think that, to be very honest with you, I do believe that we should have rightly believed what we certainly believe that certain issues are just settled.  Certain issues are just settled,” Harris said.

 

Yep.  Clearly affirmative action at work.

 

While I’m pretty certain no one associated with The White House or this current administration reads this blog site, I’m offering free advice to any and all: select candidates for jobs based on knowledge, skills, and abilities; and when you find yourself in a hole, quit digging.

 

Suddenly Sarah Palin can see Russia from Alaska.  Oh, my.

 

Welcome to the Jungle

 

Last look at a 50-star flag, maybe

We are upon exciting times in our lives.  On June 19^th, 2022, America celebrated its newest federal holiday, and the date should be the dead giveaway.

 

“Juneteenth Day” is the latest of holidays enacted into law to commemorate the emancipation of enslaved people in Texas.  Although not celebrated in all states, or even an official day off from work, Juneteenth is a special day to memorialize and enjoy.

 

African Americans have been fighting for this race-specific holiday for decades, to finally have President Joseph Robinette Biden sign this Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law.

 

This is a noble act, indeed, coming from a life-long politician who, himself, has been an overt racist while serving as a Senator from Delaware, cheering the end of slavery seems odd for a staunch bigot.  In 1977, Biden actually said “Integrating black students would turn schools into ‘a jungle…a racial jungle.’”

 

He’s made highly offensive remarks about accents of people-of-color, blacks attending largely-white schools, and even giving a glowing eulogy for the late Senator Robert Byrd – a well-known member of the Ku Klux Klan.

 

Without apologizing for his past vile public remarks, Biden gladly rode the wave of popularity of this landmark bill through what is known as “pandering.”

 

Still, Juneteenth Day was inaugurally celebrated by a largely black community – the same black community that has lately been screaming at random whites for decades of systemic racism.

 

Falsely alleging that the celebrated freed African Americans have been targeted for incarceration or murder by police and white supremacists, this fresh holiday was designed to also celebrate nonviolence and multiculturalism. 

 

With a bitter taste still in the mouths of most Americans, from the riots of the death of George Floyd, a Marxist organization designed to intimidate and terrorize whites – Black Lives Matter (BLM) –  was contrived to further drive a wedge between the races.

 

But Juneteenth Day was created to stop some “perceived” superiority of white people over blacks.  This effort in and of itself is racist as the pendulum swings from one side to the other.

 

Gathering in select groups based by race seemed like a stellar idea – something called “segregation” – the thing that prompted the American Civil War to end this behavior.

 

With such a removed group celebrating the unity and culture and contributions of blacks, it would not be out of the question to expect a more unifying gathering comprised almost exclusively of African Americans.

 

But you would be wrong.

 

One of the largest Juneteenth celebrations occurred in Washington, D.C., a long, largely black populated “city” that also serves as home to the Seat of Government. 

 

Commonly abbreviated “DC,” this city has been in an embroiled kerfuffle with Congress to change its status from a city to a state.  Such a move would create two new Senatorial seats and at least one Congressional seat.  And those would likely be Democrat controlled.

 

Black DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, who is up for re-election soon, has been an outspoken pro-state advocate for her tiny area.  In fact, on Flag Day, which is celebrated on June 14^th, Mayor Bowser flew a flag adorned with 51-stars, which represent our number of states.

 

Her anticipation was greeted with smiles and clenched fists of solidarity, all in apparent approval of her lame effort to circumvent the legal design of DC.

 

Most visitors to DC come to see the monuments, statues, and museums.  However, the drug addicts, and prostitutes, and homeless, are cleverly hidden on side streets and alleys – far enough away from out-of-town visitors’ eyes, and the vision of politicians.

 

Eager to celebrate a black holiday for black people in a black town, an unauthorized Juneteenth Day party sprouted up like a weed on a golf course.  Unfortunately its illegality was ignored by authorities who looked the other way so as not to stifle the festivities.

 

After all, since guns are illegal in DC – and have been for about 50-years – what kind of trouble could occur?

 

But it was on this inaugural celebration day that at least one person felt compelled to shoot an illegal gun inside this crowded event.  One armed 15-year old African American boy was struck and killed, while countless others were injured by additional partiers running to escape the mayhem.

 

Here is the bottom line: BLM marched to intimidate guiltless members of our society using mentally twisted theories about racism, desperately trying to continue the sordid practice of segregation, only find that black lives don’t really matter because it’s only a cheap slogan.