It Was 1982

 

  After a jam-packed schedule with six of my doctors – most of whom insist I lose weight – I decided to desperately try my diet anew. If you were wondering, the only one not concerned with my weight was my dermatologist – although she did mention I was quickly running out of skin with which to contain my bodystuffing.

Using sentences such as “Perhaps you could pare down your food intake by slicing your main course of one raisin in-half,” and “A quarter teaspoon of cottage cheese may be too much for you to digest,” weren’t particularly helpful with my quest.

Last night I enjoyed a nice green salad that could probably sate a hummingbird, but the problems arose when I tried to open a bottle of oil and vinegar dressing with which to adorn my torturous meal.

Upon cutting off the cellophane wrap, then unscrewing the plastic cap, I came across a foil disk welded onto the mouth of this plastic vessel. Alas it was time to break out power tools.

My first thought was that I had reached the Seven Seals of the Apocalypse, but there were only three on my countertop. It was at this point I realized this was merely a memorial to the Great Tylenol Scare.

It was 1982, when people around the Chicago area were mysteriously dying by poisoning. Seven people of varying backgrounds were dead because they took doses of tampered Tylenol Extra-Strength capsules, unknowing those capsules were laced with potassium cyanide.

Widespread panic along with a massive recall of Tylenol were the results of this heinous act of product tampering.

Suddenly, life had changed from being simple and innocent to complex and untrusting. There was no turning back now.

Boxes containing salves, eye drops, and aspirin were immediately sealed to prevent manipulating the products contained therein. To add more pain to the process, pharmacies also wanted to get in on the act by introducing child-proof caps to all drugs they dispensed. Those pharmacy caps added a new level of excitement to prying them open much like a safecracker.

Assortment of tools to open a jar of grape jelly

Not to sound uncaring, this mayhem occurred 43-years ago, and as of this writing, no suspects have been arrested or charged with any of these crimes.

Of course, there were also what police like to call “copycat crimes” that closely simulated the seven deceased. Just for the record, copycats are wackos that feel they can mimic activities – in this case homicide – to either exact revenge or merely test the waters of possibility. In any case, they earn their ‘wacko’ moniker through such actions.

Still, this was largely the advent of everything from non-tamper lids to child-proof packaging that, after nearly a half-century have become the bane and cause of inventing new swear words by consumers everywhere.

Pliers, utility knives, hack saws, and sledgehammers – albeit small – are regular tools used open stubborn packaging that prevent not only tampering, but use of the products themselves.

And how regularly, upon discovering a problem, politicians are quick to offer a solution – no matter how good or bad their solution is. They enjoy pointing out that at least they “did something.”

In this case, the “something” was to transfer the onus onto the general public in the form of the consumers. It didn’t matter that the elderly who are stricken with arthritis, or those with poor eyesight and weak hands need to break into well-sealed bottles for food or medications. Measures by the all-knowing political elite were on the case and micromanaging our lives for brownie points, thank goodness.

Here is where I must simply, directly suggest to these do-gooders that they leave me alone. Your ideas and actions to help only hurt others, largely because you’re politicians, not geniuses. Stop It! Now get to work on finding the Tylenol culprit.

Your Fault, Your Problem

 

  Congratulations! You survived the 2024 elections.

Now is the time to look into the mirror to determine what you just did. Yes, for the last four years you heard the beating drum leading you to a particular candidate and issue. Throughout those four years you also were expected to gather, analyze, decipher, and ultimately vote for a candidate of your liking.

Let’s assume you did all of the above work and did it all diligently. Half of you reading this are pleased, the other half are disappointed. But why?

It’s time to examine the situation in which we are all now living to help us adjust for our collective futures.

Way, way back years ago, I used to travel to beaches for relaxation and surf fishing. My vacation time was precious, so I spent it wisely. Maximizing fishing with the tides, while visiting local sights of interest on other, non-productive intervals, was an exercise in time management, to say the least.

During the productive fishing tides, I would enjoy simply standing in ankle-deep water that would lap over my sandy tootsies. It was Heaven.

Until that annoying fellow with a clipboard would meander up behind me – not unlike a ninja preparing for an attack.

“Good morning!” was the beginning of his monologue. And so it went for the next treasured 15, or so, painful minutes. Eventually, this slug would get the message that I was disinterested in his sales spiel, but not before his perfect heist of my valuable time. His product? Time shares.

This was a regular occurrence for the duration of my mini vacation. “Annoying” is not a strong enough word to describe these regular inconveniences.

In the event you are unfamiliar with time shares, they are get-rich-quick schemes that ensnare unsuspecting travelers and vacationers into “buying” a unit in a resort area.

For only pennies a day, you, too, can have a place you can call your own at a ski resort, mountain retreat, desert oasis, or a beach; lest we forget the annual assessment and occupancy fees. The good part is that the owners maintain the property leaving you with ample time not making repairs or mowing the lawn. The bad part is that you are trapped for life.

But what the heck...it’s only pennies a day. Of course you can sell your unit share, but that is nearly impossible. If you simply stop paying pennies a day, your credit score winds-up in the toilet.

Don’t misunderstand me, they are usually very nice, located in prime areas. Prime enough whereas local government real estate assessments and taxes are regularly raised to help with the maintenance, thereby shifting the costs onto your pennies a day.

And here we are. Once giddy about that cost-effective annual vacation, forty-years hence we are ruing our lives, desperately searching for a way out.

Those time share sleaze balls didn’t lie to you when selling their goods to you. No, they merely left out the details in the fine print.

Which brings us back to our election results.

We have been on a treadmill of baloney with our politicians being less-than-candid during their time in office. After cherry picking “facts” regarding their hard sell to us, then massaging those facts into unrecognizable razzle-dazzle, we opted for what we thought was best candidate. But best for whom?

The EV mandate part that the planners forgot

If you’re a promiscuous woman, you’re delighted you voted for a pro-baby-killing candidate. That’s the same person who ignored federal and local laws under the “rule of law” guise. Their administration cleverly hid the electric vehicle mandates, out-of-control inflation, gas stove banning, open borders policy, increased gas prices, and pro-criminal agendas, likely because it slipped their minds.

Without exposing this grift on all Americans regardless of their incomes, a wink and a nod plus a broad smile conned the non-thinking into casting their ballot for just what they wanted.

It’s unfortunate that just like those pesky time shares we’re all stuck with our decisions – for better or worse.

But I’m willing to wager that the next election – if they are not outlawed for the sake of “democracy” – will be quite different from this election.

Politicians will have several years to reflect on whether to force me to buy a certain vehicle, live in a specific house, attend a particular school, work at a specified job, listen to federally subsidized “news,” or be entertained by guvment-approved artists, all in the name of freedom.

The mainstream media (MSM) has been filling our lives with tripe all for our own good; perhaps it’s because they think we are too stupid to know better.

Oh, and congratulations, again!

Really, Really Good Secret

 

  As you have probably surmised from the above title, today’s flash of brilliance concerns something, well, really, really secret.

If you ever turned over a medium to large size rock, you may have noticed critters scurrying and slithering hither and yon. That is because those critters felt safe and secure beneath that rock which served those creatures well as a means of protection.

I dare say some of those creepy crawlies included centipedes, earthworms, earwigs, roly-polys, and probably a slug or two, maybe even a salamander. Those are largely harmless to humans but are scary looking to novices who rarely turn over rocks. And why would you turn over a rock in the first place?

After all, those rocks provide a safe haven for the creepy crawlies; they largely live under those rocks to feast heartily on microbes and such in the soil, efficiently converting their microscopic prey into fertilizer to promote vegetation growth in order to continue the cycle of life. And so, life goes on in nature.

Until something disrupts this near flawless cycle. That something happens to be picking up the rock.

You see, before that rock was moved – maybe years since its last disruption – hidden was this secret world that seemed to not even exist, but it did and still does under other undisturbed rocks.

Which is where we enter today’s world of amazement. This amazement is not much different from the way our greasy, sleazy politicians have been using free-flowing taxpayer dollars for many, many years. Let’s examine this Capital Hill subterranean diner.

For decades, USAID – the United States Agency for International Development – has been funded to get politicians re-elected and re-re-elected, re-re-re-elected, and re-re-re-re-elected by appearing to be beneficial.

Unfortunately, that give-away money is taxpayer dollars – the taxpayer dollars that hardworking Americans (probably just like you) are forced to pay under penalty of imprisonment. Yeah, those same taxpayer dollars that former president Joe Biden harped about you stingy louts of “not paying your fair share.”

Goading Americans into gleefully stuffing billions of dollars into the guvment t-shirt cannon, USAID proved equally generous spending the $40,000,000,000, they received in 2020. Just where did these precious tax dollar go? Let’s inspect this legal shell game.

It seems everyone needs money for something, and this is where USAID excels. They disburse their funding toward agriculture, food safety, democracy, education, environment and climate change, global health, humanitarian assistance, water and sanitation, plus working in crisis and conflict; those are only a few wonderful ways their billions of dollars listed on the USAID website are spent.

If you’re thinking, “Wow! How great is that?” you’re right. It’s unfortunate, though, that those monies are freely spent in Africa, Asia, Europe and Eurasia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East.

Notably missing from this list is North America – namely the United States. Perhaps that’s because USAID doesn’t believe or know that needy people and situations exist in America. Perhaps it’s because these generous handouts to foreign nations and ungrateful people translate into palm grease.

For you novices, palm grease denotes a “tip” or “bribe” for a position, product, or service, that makes such ‘transactions’ possible.

If you are in doubt, witness the goings-on in Washington, D.C. This is the seat of government where politicians feel they are exempt from the law, rules, regulations, and something called “the truth.”

Where else can a gaggle of misfits, aka: politicians – grifters unable to hold a job where hard, honest work is required – gather to reach into constituent's pockets for mo’ money? Many of these pols have roots so lengthy they actually believe they have a right to your cash.

In the event you don’t believe me, you might want to check the USAID list of goodies the civil servants at USAID are doling out.

Gay and homosexual-oriented plays; lesbian coloring books; condoms for Africans; an anti-religious campaign in Europe; land distribution in Ethiopia; helping Indonesia fight forest fires (anyone hear about California’s and Hawaii’s forest fires?); and achieving sustained, measurable improvements in learning outcomes and skills development, all while American school kids are unable to read and write.

These are a few of the outlandish projects our politicians have snookered Americans into funding, often in perpetuity. And why not? These saviors of the world have generally exempted themselves from the very rules and regulations they foisted upon us.

Take, for example, the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), whistle blower protection, anti-discrimination training, the Freedom of Information Act, and record-keeping requirements for workplace injuries and illnesses. Those are just some of the exemptions from which Congress has thoughtfully excluded themselves. Very thoughtful, indeed.

But the really, really secret part of the USAID is that Congress’ connection remains secret. Democratic politicians, namely: Maxine Waters, Chris Van Hollen, Chris Murphy, Chuck Schumer, Ron Wyden, Elizabeth Warren, Adam Kinzinger, Cory Booker, Ayanna Pressley, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are just a handful of the 41 irate politicians who are adamant that USAID’s foreign agenda is far more important than our domestic plan.

Not Al Roker

Why else would these seasoned elected officials publicly rail – even scream – when addressing the immediate defunding of the USAID? It’s not as though poor American children are going to starve, or those same underprivileged kids are going to continue to be unable to read if USAID funding goes cold.

Is a $20,000,000 award “to a non-profit called Sesame Workshop” to produce a show called “Ahlan Simsim Iraq” necessary to “Promote inclusion, mutual respect, and understanding across ethnic, religious and sectarian groups,” per Fox News, somehow critical to the future of the United States?

Evidently the very public rabid Democrats mentioned above think so. Why else send precious tax revenue across international boundaries to satisfy politician’s wants over constituent’s needs?

Take the above-mentioned Maxine Waters. She’s a Democrat Congressclown representing the 43^rd congressional district of California, whose territory includes Los Angeles; she has been in that position since 1991. Quick ciphering makes her length of tenure 34-years, not a paltry amount of time.

If you recall, California just weeks ago experienced historic, catastrophic forest and wildfires. Those fires destroyed billions upon billions of dollars of property, taking precious memories and irreplaceable mementos, not to mention dozens of human lives.

Yet Waters and her misplaced generosity found her constituents’ tax dollars funding USAID projects instead of programs aimed at making her Los Angeles district safer and more conducive to helping fellow Americans over misfit foreign nations. I’ve got my fingers crossed that she gets reinstated during the next election cycle.

In any case, let’s harken back to the aforementioned rock.

Elon Musk, is a hand-selected member of President Donald Trump’s speed dial list, has proven himself to be a brilliant inventor, and entrepreneur, plus the richest person in the world. Those qualifications have pointed Musk toward sniffing out United States guvment waste with aplomb.

President Trump and Musk’s creation of a fictitious agency, DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), has been waving a cost-saving hatchet around sacred federal government agencies and programs, alike, since Inauguration Day. Among those useless entities run by hapless government employees is USAID.

Screaming before news cameras, frantic pro-USAID Dems may finally be realizing their rock has been overturned to reveal them scurrying, crawling, slithering, and now sweating, since their sleazy grifts have been suddenly exposed to the world.

It would be sensible for a rational representative to cater to the proverbial hand-that-feeds-them theory, along with an apology. Rather, those newly exposed creepy-crawlies are suddenly doubling down, producing what they only know how to produce: disdain for even thinking about cutting their pet projects, and subsequent fertilizer.

Which begs the question: Who would be against opening this USAID can of worms so that reckless and wanton spending of money the guvment doesn’t have – such as $14,000,000 for condoms for members of the Taliban?

Perhaps the very same type of people who would buy a $500,000 Hunter Biden masterpiece painting that may, along with a crude, childlike painting, also buy presidential access and influence.

And now the really, really good secret is out.

Forty-seven

 

  Many of us have heard a term that probably needs to be defined before we continue. Today’s word is “banshee.”

A banshee, according to Irish folklore, is a woman who grieves the death of a family member through loud wails, screams, and shrieking. These eerie noises, according to lore, emanate from forests of Ireland from whence banshees inhabit.

In the likely event you have seen death reporting, or mayhem on television, you probably have seen an American version of banshees during interviews of the mothers of carjackers, dope dealers, or other hoodie-wearing miscreants who succumbed to a timely meeting with St. Peter during their failed respective crime.

Howling to denote a loss of life that now affects the family of the criminal as much as that of the victim, society is fully expected to feel the pain of the bad guy every bit as much as the quickly-forgotten victim. But is the directional pain and suffering from a manufactured situation really well placed?

In November 2024, former president Donald J. Trump was handily elected to serve as President once again. With a respite of four-years filled by Joseph Robinette Biden, Trump spent much of his time fielding lawsuits begun under his stewardship from 2016 through 2024.

Most of those lawsuits were antagonistic in nature, and none were likely based on merit to do little more than hamstring and financially break President Trump, number 45 on the President’s List.

Beginning a new era in 2025, being sworn-in on January 20^th, Trump will probably end up with a wrist brace to soothe his carpal tunnel syndrome from signing one Executive Order (EO) after another to unravel the Gordian Knot of laws established by Biden, his predecessor.

It seems as though Biden, on his first day in office in 2021, he gleefully signed one EO after another until he ran out of ink. Using these EOs as payback to environmentalists and other pink slip holders, Biden essentially began a trip that surprised only a few people who did not really know him.

Growing deep, deep roots in the Senate Office Building while spending nearly a half-century there reaching into the pockets of Beltway Bandits and constituents, alike, Uncle Joe stayed busy lining his own pockets with “lobbying monies” and “tips” until his wallet was filled. And life was good.

But this time, Biden was firmly buckled into the driver’s seat that quickly veered to the Left and never stopped. Spending taxpayer cash ever faster day-by-day, the U.S. Bus to Perdition was, as the name implies, heading nowhere good.

Joe Biden thinking about his upcoming perp walk

Outlawing oil drilling, natural gas ranges, gasoline-fed yard equipment, as well as protesting, Biden happily pointed The Bus toward paperwork. That paperwork was in the form The Constitution – the law of the land that has been the bible of tenets for an entire nation, the United States of America, since 1776.

Biden, on the other hand, felt it was necessary to contort any and all mention of criticism targeted toward Biden and his minions. Suddenly, that pesky First Amendment – the one related to many freedoms – was under attack from Biden’s sty of sleazy attorneys and aides.

To set the record straight, here is what the First Amendment says:

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution prevents Congress from making laws respecting an establishment of religion; prohibiting the free exercise of religion; or abridging the freedom of speech, of the press, the freedom of assembly, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.

It’s not as complex as the guvment’s lawyers would have you believe. In other words, you can be as vocal and annoying to whomever you want. Except under The Biden Administration, that is.

Prohibiting anyone from talking about the COVID-19 virus or its vaccines, Biden lackeys almost instantaneously quieted opposing views, thoughts, ideas, treatments, prophylaxis, or comments, under the threat of arrest or dismissal from a job. Amen.

To help with Democrat voting, Biden opened the Southern Border to any and all who made it across the areas where the Biden Administration stopped the construction of the barrier to keep lawbreakers away. With literally millions – an estimated 15,000,000 unknown aliens illegally crossed – were now in a position to receive gifts o’ plenty from Biden and his organized crime network.

Included in the gift bags were cell phones, maps, vouchers for sustenance and housing, debit cards, food coupons, and instructions on how to avoid and ignore interference from Customs and Immigration officials. What a great country! But I digress.

Being summarily removed – electronically – from social media platforms, Trump was unable to state his thoughts to help stem the tide of a world-wide virus. Aided by a complicit media, Trump and all his supporters were hushed by virtually erasing The First Amendment throughout Biden’s smarmy term.

Lying about anything and everything, Biden, along with his press secretary – whose personality could be likened to an aluminum folding chair – kept Americans in the dark to better conduct their shady dealings out of plain view.

Regularly banging the dais with his fist, Biden insisted the “rich need to pay their fair share” in taxes in order to keep his wild spending spree going. Unfortunately, it would take a payment of $100,000+ from each man, woman, and child in America to cover the debt incurred under Biden’s term.

It’s rather unfortunate that Biden’s son, Hunter, was discovered to have failed to pay his fair share in back taxes. Oops. Too bad the media missed that story and subsequent trial which found Hunter GUILTY. Double oops.

With The Bus gaining speed, Biden was lured into a proxy war with Russia through a deal with a Ukrainian comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president. Since Russia’s incursion into Ukraine in 2022, Biden has sent over $200,000,000,000 in cash and arms and munitions to Zelenskyy.

Of course no one was allowed to mention this attempt to drag us – with our fingernails tearing the dirt from beneath peace-loving Americans – lest they be chastised and removed from social media, too – into another endless foreign war. But it was too late. It seems as though nothing with which Biden disagrees is off-limits. Hope you didn’t forget the Afghanistan war which Biden fumbled badly. Badly.

Following rubbing the noses of hard-working, blue-collar individuals in the dregs of Biden’s elitist cultural and foreign wars, he discovered he could garner more votes from college students by paying their tuition costs. Of course, Biden wasn’t paying anything. Taxpayers were.

(As an aside, my father informed me I was destined for factory work because we didn’t have enough money for me to attend college. As such, I worked for cash to pay my own way through college, and now absolutely refuse to pay for the higher education of someone else. Period.)

For readers baffled by the word “father,” that is a male figure that provides half the formula for creating a child. Combined with a “mother,” who is the female other half, they were traditionally married before the conception of offspring. But then, things change.

And so, it went for four Biden years, shredding The Constitution, buying resources from foreign adversaries, incarcerating Americans who merely protested, all the while ‘gimmes’ signaling their displeasure that Biden wasn’t doling out enough to steer this runaway bus over the cliff to end the misery.

Driving the economy into parallax territory, Biden, along with a compliant Congress, Senate, and media all conspired to hide this subversion of a just and free country. Ardently attempting to financially break the back of our nation’s economy, all the while lying about its impact on our citizens, this cabal seemed intent on trading our sovereign nation to a foreign entity out of spite.

We’re now entering a new era – again – under Donald Trump, and can only hope for rectification of the tragic, failed policies hidden under a smokescreen of lies, lies, and more lies.

A feeling of fresh air appears to be silencing the banshees’ screams and hollering, largely due to the deaths of their loved ones having only been contrived. Those perceived losses were merely a grift to extract more and more freebies off the backs and out of the wallets of today’s and tomorrow’s generations.

President Donald J. Trump, Numbers 45 and 47, promises to rectify the wild ride of the Biden Bus. It’s time to off-load the passengers, the navigators, along with the driver, and hand the wheel to someone who wants to take us all back to sanity, safety, and prosperity.

God bless President Donald Trump.