Author: boom booms room staff

2022

Posted on by boom booms room staff

Thankfully 2021 was one and done.  On to 2022 and hopefully out with the old and in with the new.

In our last column of the year we take a peek at what’s in store for us next year in the business, political, and sports worlds month by month.

January- Michigan wins its first FBS National Championship in OT over Alabama 35-31.  Joe Biden undergoes minor surgery and mistakenly names his new dog Commander as commander in chief over Kamala Harris prior to sedation.  Omicron new cases peak, then start a slow decline as the CDC announces a better test for the variant will be available March 1.  Ghislaine Maxwell finds out the hard way that orange is indeed the new black.

February- Green Bay and Kansas City meet in Super Bowl LVI just as they did in SB I over 55 years ago.  Fittingly GB hoists the Lombardi Trophy winning 30-24.  Inflation reaches 10.0% annualized.  Joe Kernan is suspended after striking Andrew Ross Sorkin on-air for mentioning gas prices slid another 2 cents last week.

March- Commander bites the hand that feeds him.  Joe is sutured by Dr. Jill Biden who says the wound is transitory.  March Madness delivers on its name in a big way.  In round one number one seeded Gonzaga is upset by Sam Houston St. 73-71!  Apple introduces its self-driving car, customers go bananas, but early feedback labels it a lemon.

April- The massive Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica falls apart raising sea levels by 10 feet.  Key West is now Key Deep South.  Miami rebrands itself as Venice. Tiger Woods has a leg up in the final round of The Masters but loses by one penalty stroke to Patrick Cantlay after failing to sign his scorecard.  The Dow crosses 38,000.  Joe successfully fights off a six-week infection from the butchered sew job.  Barrack Obama chimes in to mockingly announce, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”

May- Venice is now swimming with tourists.  A refreshed Kamala Harris returns from her March vacation.  LeBron James announces his retirement from the NBA and accepts Biden’s offer to become US Ambassador to China.  CNN hires Andrew Cuomo and rehires Chris Cuomo to cohost a new primetime show tentatively called When No One Is Watching.

June- Hunter Biden slips in his art studio on some dropped oil paint and breaks his hip.  Russia invades Ukraine.  Biden threatens to reduce vodka imports. The Utah Jazz defeats the Chicago Bulls in a four-game NBA Finals sweep.  Kamala Harris calls the locker room, laughs nervously, and asks to congratulate Karl Malone.

July – Nancy Pelosi announces that she is retiring to her waterfront beach home in Atlanta (Thwaites Glacier effect) at year’s end after 259 years in Congress.  A new Covid-19 variant named Kalamata is discovered in Greece.  Biden threatens to ban olive imports unless they are fully pitted.  The MLB All-Star game is moved from Los Angeles after the City Council refuses to force the homeless encampment in left field to relocate.

August- Hurricane Condoleezza slams rural Louisiana destroying rice fields near and far.  Aaron Rodgers suits up for a preseason game with his new team, the Washington Football Team.  The Football Team announces a nickname change to the Washington Senators after a fan vote won in a tiebreaker 51-50.  BTS sales plummet as Kalamata spreads like tapenade.   The Dow retreats to 35,000.

September – Twitter bans Dr. Doolittle for speaking out against sixth booster shots.  The Football team starts 0-3.  Rodgers asks the fans to relax.  Yellowstone ends a great run when Beth Dutton goes Die Hard Detective John McClane to the new airport built next door.  OJ Simpson guest stars as season nine rolls on Dexter.

October- New York announces that their mask mandate will remain in effect through October 2027.  Jussie Smollett signs on with Subway as their late-night delivery spokesperson.  The most-desired but least given Halloween treat is Ivermectin.  Mitch McConnell gets new glasses and says he sees a clear path to a Republican House majority in next month’s elections.

November-  The Democrats miraculously hold onto the House.  Biden says his first call will be to Tip O’Neil to congratulate the Speaker.  Texas completes its own border wall as Governor Greg Abbott simultaneously announces that he’ll run for President in 2024.  Alabama losses in back-to-back weeks against LSU and Auburn as Nick Saban goes through a six-pack box of headsets.

December- Dr. Anthony Fauci turns 82 but refuses to blow out the candles on his career.  Biden offers support calling Fauci a young 82.  Seventeen bowl games are canceled as entire teams opt out.  Ryan Day leaves THE OSU to coach the Venice Hurricanes as Mario Cristobal’s tenure was taking on water.  Social distancing guidelines are reduced to half afoot.  Austin Texas changes its name to Los Austin.  And, finally, BBR’s readership crosses 1000 daily thanks to a certain Hilton Head avid reader constantly singing its praises.

See you in 2022.

Enjoy the bubbly!

 

Taking the Bad With the Good

Posted on by boom booms room staff

So there’s bad news, more bad news, and even more bad news, and good news. Then there’s bad news and good news.  Which do you want first?

Ah, yes.  Understood.  Let’s get most of the bad out of the way first to get on to sunnier days.

The first bit of the bad is that those long lines that you’re standing in to get tested for Covid -19’s latest variant Omicron aren’t going to get shorter anytime soon.  New cases have exploded to surpass the previous highs of the late Spring of 2020.

And when you finally get to the front of the line and assuming they haven’t run out of test kits, the results might not be accurate so says the FDA.  “Covid-19 antigen tests may be less capable of detecting the fast-spreading Omicron variant,” the Food and Drug Administration cautioned on Tuesday.

If you test negative but exhibit the symptoms, stay home they ask.  Sure.

The new warning is based on preliminary studies by the National Institutes of Health’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics initiative using patient samples with the live virus — analysis that “represents the best way to evaluate true test performance in the short-term,” according to FDA.

The good news is that help is on the way.  The Biden administration has signed a $137 million contract with a pharmaceutical company for the purpose of building a factory for COVID-19 test strip materials, a White House official confirmed yesterday.

But it’s going to take a while.  The new facility will not start churning out the materials for three years, according to the company.  Never mind that the administration is under fire for reportedly rejecting a deal in October that would have strongly ramped up the supply of COVID tests available now.  Remember, Biden always says, get vaccinated, NOW!  Maybe his new command will be, “Get tested, LATER!”

Of course, the bad news is that the three-year timeline also signals that the administration expects the need for tens of millions of such tests per month into 2024 or 2025 and beyond.

So, Covid-19 has plans to have a sixth and seventh sequel called Covid-24 and Covid-25?  How many Friday the Thirteenth’s can you watch?

At least $137 million is cheap money for such non-entertainment in these inflationary times.

Further, the multi-department cooperation by our government is heartening.  The Department of Defense issued a press release stating that it had awarded the contract in coordination with the Department of Health and Human Services.  It was funded through the American Rescue Plan Act.

Got that?  Government red tape never has supply chain issues.

The White House inked the agreement with MilliporeSigma, a subsidiary of German firm Merck KGaA, not to be confused with U.S. company Merck & Co.

“The money will allow the company over three years to build a new facility to produce nitrocellulose membranes, the paper that displays test results, in Sheboygan, Wisconsin,” the outlet reported. “That, in turn, will allow for 85 million more tests to be produced per month.”

Well, at least that’s some good economic news for Wisconsin.  After the Kenosha riots that never should have happened, the subsequent trial that never should have happened, and the SUV in Waukesha that ran down its citizens at a parade, they could use a dose of good news.

And, based on the above we could use another dose or two from Pfizer to boost our spirits as well.

 

 

 

We Come Bearing Gifts!

Posted on by boom booms room staff

Tis the season for gifts.  And, yesterday, while you were returning those one size too small pj’s, your government and its agencies were bestowing a few other gifts for you to try on for size.

The biggest gift of all was Joe Biden giving the states the responsibility to solve this pesky virus problem.  On a teleconference with governors, he said, “There is no federal solution. This gets solved at the state level.”

This seems odd.  A year or so ago, Kamala tweeted out that the first thing she and Joe Biden were going to do when they got to the White House was to solve this virus problem.

And, just a week ago he coughed through a White House speech telling us all that the federal government was ordering more testing, mailing in-home test kits, putting Army doctors into needed states, and telling us to get vaccinated, NOW! This Omicron variant must have really snuck up on them.

And with that, he clicked his heels and walked to his helicopter to depart to his Delaware beach house that you and some lobbyists gifted him for all of his roughly 94 plus years of loyal government service to the people and counting.

But wait!  There’s more!

The CDC gave you new social distance guidelines reducing the stay-away zone from six feet to merely three.  Retailers love selling gifts, so across America they are busy this AM scraping the old 6 ft. floor signs off and sticking new 3 ft. ones down.  Our best guess is that two years into this we can’t sneeze quite as far as we used to.  It happens to the best of us.

And then the good doctor, Dr. Fauci, weighed in.   He was and wasn’t in the gift-giving mood Monday.

First, he wanted to mandate that we give you the jab or three in order to get on airplanes.  “When you make vaccination a requirement, that’s another incentive to get more people vaccinated,” Fauci said on MSNBC. “If you want to do that with domestic flights, I think that’s something that seriously should be considered.”  Could he help with all of the cancellations, too?

But, then he wanted to take away your fun this New Year’s Eve. “When you’re talking about a New Year’s Eve party, we have 30, 40, 50 people celebrating. You do not know the status of their vaccination, I would recommend strongly staying away from that this year.”  Isn’t he the dud bottle rocket that never leaves the bottle?

He wasn’t asked directly about the 50-80 thousand fans in the stands at the roughly 25 bowl games between now and the New Year thankfully.  For now, it’s game on, if you can field a team that is.

The NFL is giving its players reduced return to work requirements after consulting with the NFLPA starting this weekend.  The new protocols are more lengthy and complicated than War and Peace.  There’s not enough virtual ink on Al Gore’s internet to relay them.  The New Orleans Saints needed a dose of this last night.

And, last but not least, the CDC gave us this statement yesterday.  “Given what we currently know about COVID-19, CDC is shortening the recommended time for isolation from 10 days to 5 days, if asymptomatic, followed by 5 days of wearing a mask when around others.”  Mask and ye shall receive a 5-day reprieve!

What’s better than the gifts that keep on giving?

It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

 

 

 

An Empty Suit?

Posted on by boom booms room staff

Pre Zoom and pre casual Friday there were offices, typewriters, secretaries, liquid paper, ties, and suits.  The suits may have been two-piece or three-piece, wide lapel or not, with a matching pocket square or not, but everyone wore them in the workplace.

Surely you’ve heard that you never get a second chance to make a first impression.  But, ultimately it was what’s inside of that suit that counted.

One of our senior staff members had a dyed in the wool suit wearer of a father, complete with a fedora most days.  When he thought less of a person’s abilities than necessary to competently carry out the duties of their job, he called them an “empty suit.”

An empty suit might have looked the part or tried to talk the talk, but they couldn’t walk the walk as we twist Jimmy Johnson’s battle cry.

Today, we have a Vice President of the United States who regardless of her choice of clothing might have reached “empty suit” status.  Her name is Kamala Harris, and her accomplishments after one year are, well, we aren’t so sure.

But, she seems so sure of her abilities.  “Anything that I handle is because it’s a tough issue, and it couldn’t be handled at some other level.  And it has actually been part of my lifelong career to deal with tough issues and this is no different.”

Sounds like she’s talking down to the minions at levels below the VP to us.  We also note that there is no “I” in “team” as you may have heard.

And, actually, there may be no team in DC named team Kamala soon as well.  Her key staff departures are growing by the week.  Rumors of lack of strategy, lack of preparedness, and outright finger-pointing by the VP abound.

So what does a VP really do?  And what should/or does this VP really do?  POTUS named VPOTUS as the lead on the border crisis for one.  She’s resisted going there and says that she’s working on the “root causes” of unprecedented illegal crossings.

Don’t we all know what the root cause is?  It’s an open border policy driven by this administration of course.  Close the border, fix the problem.  Boom!  “What’s next?” she could ask.

She did fly to France and back.  The reasons for which are still unknown.  She does laugh a lot.  The reasons for which are called nerves.

Could she tackle this tricky virus thing?

She’s not the first VP and won’t be the last to be a punching bag.  The list and the list of failures/shortcomings are long.  VP nominee Spiro T Agnew, for example, never made it to the office for all of the right reasons.  Dan Quayle ran headlong into a tough word in a spelling bee.

But, Kamala might have made it to the office for all of the wrong reasons.  Joe Biden moved left and further left in each passing week on the road to the nomination. During Democratic debate #2 he announced that if nominated he would have a woman as his running mate.  During debate #3 he announced that she would be black as well.

There’s nothing wrong with being black or being a woman.  But, those aren’t qualifications.  They’re vote-getters.

There is plenty wrong with being over-jobbed.

What to do?  What to do?  Ah, yes.  Play the race card.

The Daily Mail reports that Ms. Harris has told her confidants that she would get better press coverage if she was a white man.  Joe Biden isn’t feeling too good about his press coverage right about now.   Donald Trump took a daily beating in years prior.  And, George Bush doesn’t send Dan Rather any Christmas cards.

So, is it down to whether Joe chose wrong, or a serious operation is forthcoming?

As a reminder, Harris was polling at less than 1% before dropping out prior to the first primary in Iowa when gunning for the highest job in the land back in 2019.  Basically, her own party doesn’t like her.

Now, with her all-time low VP poll numbers in 2021, she’s turning to none other than Hillary Clinton for advice to reverse the dire poll numbers.

Maybe the “vast right-wing conspiracy” theory will get dusted off?  There’s a great Bleachbit joke possible there too.

This will get interesting.  You now have an “empty suit” asking an “empty pantsuit” for advice.

What could go wrong?

 

 

 

The $99,000 Question

Posted on by boom booms room staff

Many, many moons (Bang!  Zoom!) ago Ralph Kramden had a chance to win big, big bucks as a contestant on the $99,000 Answer Game Show.  He chose music as his category of expertise.

He convinced his buddy Ed Norton to quit his job working in the NY sewer system to help him prepare in the week prior.  Norton, as Ralph called him, was an accomplished pianist.  In the Bensonhurst apartment, he played song after song, and Ralph would know the name, the singer, and the year of everyone.

But, prior to each song, Norton would play a little bar or two of a jingle, then get to the actual song.  Norton described the need like a pitcher warming up in the bullpen.  This angered Ralph so. But, it was a small price to pay for very cheap labor.

A week passed and it was time for the big show.  The bus driver strode onto the stage with a wide girth and a wide grin, confident that he was going all of the way to the top ($99,000 in a geometric progressing fashion).

The MC asked for the first song from his show band.  And, wouldn’t you know it, it was the Norton warm-up jingle.  “Humanah, humanah,” Ralph muttered.  He also broke out into an immediate sweat.  He had no clue.  He had heard it two hundred times in the last seven days, but.

The buzzer sounded and ended Ralph’s run to fame and fortune before it started.  “Swanee River,” said the MC.  “That’s Swanee River,” Ralph stammered.

So too went the President Joe Biden national address yesterday.

He told us that the international travel testing window he instituted gave us a look at what the virus would do in the foreign lands before it got here.  He then told us that Omicron came upon us so fast that no one would have predicted that.  Odd.  “That’s Omicron,” he muttered.

Humanah, humanah!

Unlike Ralph, he said we are prepared though.  While you’ve been shopping his team has been stockpiling hospital gowns, masks, ventilators, and the like. No reporter asked if that would stop or slow the spread.

“And get vaccinated, NOW!  And get your booster, NOW!,” he urged in between coughs of his own.  No reporter asked if either would help in short order given 73% of all new cases are Omicron in the US, and the totals are doubling every three days, NOW.

Also, note, that the Director of NIL Immunization publicly stated yesterday, as Biden was lecturing, that he thought vaccines should be administered every three months from here on out.

The day before, the good Doctor Anthony Fauci said publicly that we will very likely NEVER be able to ride in an airplane again without a mask.  This was a day or two after American Airlines and Delta questioned if masks on planes were any deterrent.

He’s sending relief to hard-hit areas where testing lines are long with more tests, in-home tests, and more testers.  He sounded testy telling us that.  No reporter asked if by the time our government got to those currently higher infected areas if the virus would already be ramping up elsewhere.  “Skate to where the puck is going,” Dr. Wayne Gretzky once brilliantly stated.

“You can still work, but even if vaxxed, wear a mask inside,” he implored us.  Norton wore a mask in the sewer for his job.  It was definitely needed.  No one asked why we have never defined what a good mask is from, say, a thong.  No one asked if any studies showed the effectiveness of masking.

You can still enjoy the holidays if vaxxed and boosted said Jolly St. Joe.  You’re in for a dark winter of death if you’re unvaccinated said Joe Grinch.  No one asked why the vaxxed are getting and spreading the virus.

What about deploying the floating hospital ships, the USNS Mercy, and the USNS Comfort?  He didn’t offer and no one asked.  Hopefully, he didn’t go executive order rogue and is trying to send them unannounced to Colorado and Nevada.  Drydocks both.

What about therapeutics? He offered nothing and no one asked.

Schools can and should stay open.  We can test every day if we need to starting in mid-January.  Surely the virus won’t replicate much in three weeks.  Surely the band won’t play Swanee River.

Luckily, vaxxed or not, Norton got his job back in the sewer.  Ralph went back to driving his bus.  Normalcy at last.

But here is the $99,000 question.

What is lunacy?

The answer?  Doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results.

That’s Swanee River?

To the moon Alice, to the moon.  Has the virus reached there?

 

 

 

Sunny Days

Posted on by boom booms room staff

Lessons today, we have three.   Geography, English, and Math.

First, can you tell me how to get, how to get to the White House from Capitol Hill in DC?  Pennsylvania Ave. is a good guess.  But the correct answer is a quick shortcut-Sesame St.

Today’s lesson is brought to you by the letter B and later the letters R and D.  Let’s use the letter B in a sentence or two.  Do you know what BBR and BBB(short for Build Back Better) have in common? If you said two B’s that is correct.  Do you know what else?  Nothing!  Correct.  You’re off to a good start.

West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin(D) doesn’t have constituents that have much in common with BBB either.  Yesterday, he told Fox News that studied the bill and was going with Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” when deciding his potential vote on the big, bigger, biggest government social and welfare handout attempted since Obamacare was railroaded through.

Some of Manchin’s fellow students disagreed with his learnings.  Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) said, “While Manchin is exercising unusual power because of the numbers and is willing to be one man, one person that will hold up assistance to the American people, is absolutely disgusting and amazing to me.”

This brings us to the dreaded math session brought to you by the numbers 1, 2, 3, 50, 51, 1.7 trillion, 30 trillion, and 50 trillion.

One sometimes is the loneliest number that you’ll ever know.  But Manchin is doing something very similar to what John McCain did just a few years back when the GOP attempted to end Obamacare.  That is, he has the right and courage to stand up for what he believes in.  Refreshing.

She continued, “In that bill, we have the child tax credit, where we’re having to eliminate poverty for children in this country. I have in that bill money for housing. The cost of housing is exploding. We need to build affordable housing. We need to do something about homelessness.”   What about free lunches, too?  People get hungry, don’t they?

Did she forget that 50 Republicans are also against this government handout?  Probably not, but there’s that pesky letter D after Manchin’s name that so upsets her.  Cause 50 R’s plus one D equals 51.  And that’s the kill shot to the $1.7 trillion bill that Biden says will pay for itself.

Sure it would have, just like it only took to two weeks to slow the curve two years ago.  Now it’s three vaccines, not Maxine’s, and counting, but we digress.

Waters added, “I don’t know how he thinks he’s going to get away with this.”  Get away with what?  His right to vote for that which he thinks is right?

Put the bill up and let him stand before the American people and tell them that he does not support child care and climate change, and housing assistance for people who are desperately in need of rental assistance and the ability to have safe and secure housing.”

Sounds like this bill could have been the panacea for nearly all that ails Americans.  And more.

It even solves the largest existential threat to our country-climate change.   And, it is way, way cheaper than the $30-50 trillion bandied about during the Democratic Nomination process.

Back to geography we go. Doesn’t Manchin know that Miami is about to slip into the ocean?  Does he even care?

West Virginia is a long way from any rising waters. Manchin is in hot water with the Dems.  And Maxine Waters is, well Maxine Waters.

Can you tell me how to get…

Class dismissed.

 

 

 

 

Nine Piece Nuggets-Random

Posted on by boom booms room staff

Inflation has hit BBR as well.  We contemplated a price increase but decided instead to cut the product back and maintain the price.

The quality is still here, but the quantity is one less.  Your beltline wins too!

  1.  Things aren’t all bad on the inflation front though.  The average price for a gallon of gas fell almost three cents in the last week.  That leaves it only 49% higher than a year ago, down from 50%.  The Biden team took a victory lap around the White House over the news.  Transitory we were once told.
  2.  A week before Jolly Old Saint Nick fires up the sleigh curmudgeon old Joe Biden had a sobering message for the unvaccinated: “We are looking at a winter of severe illness and death if you’re unvaccinated,” Biden said.  For themselves, their family, and the hospital they’ll soon overwhelm.”
  3. President James “Jimmy” Carter asked us to turn up our thermostats in the winter of the gas shortage of 1977.  Depressing.  That was a few years before his botched Iranian hostage rescue attempt went down in flames. Depressing.  The sky wasn’t falling then and it isn’t now in spite of Joe’s dire message.
  4. Speaking of speaking, botched, and Biden, yesterday’s presentation to Medal of Honor recipient Alwyn Cashe went wrong during a White House ceremony on Thursday.  For starters, Biden was 37 minutes late to the ceremony.  He then mispronounced Cashe’s name twice despite having a teleprompter in front of him.   Other than that Mrs. Cashe (who accepted the honor for her late husband) how was the rest of the play/ceremony?
  5. Biden’s verbal flub was not the only mistake in the ceremony.  As the narrator read Biden’s citation, he announced the Medal of Honor was being awarded to Master Sgt. Earl Plumlee as well, but “posthumously,” even though he was standing right next to the president.  Mark Twain chimed in and said, “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
  6. The Twitter war between Elon Musk and Senator Elizabeth Warren was a doozie.  Elon landed several written jabs, but the haymaker was calling her Senator Karen.  You know it was great when MSNBC’s (no) Joy Reid had to throw in the towel.  She said that the “Karen” jab at Warren was “misappropriating black vernacular,” whatever the hell that means.  Reid is on the way out at MSNBC.  You can feel it.  We wonder how Karen would translate into Cherokee.
  7. Cops investigating the shooting death on the set of Rust got a search warrant for Alec Baldwin’s cell phone.  Baldwin appeared on ABC News George Stephanopoulos a couple of weeks back to explain that he didn’t shoot the gun that he was holding killing Halyna Hutchins.  Does that sound like the media coverage of the driver of the SUV  that didn’t run down and kill the Waukesha parade-goers, the SUV did.  One was very likely an accident, the other on purpose.  But still, let’s not kid ourselves.  Someone pulled a trigger.
  8. Dr. Peter McCullough, whose video we highly recommended last week, appeared on a Joe Rogan podcast this week.  It’s gone internet viral faster than the Omicron variant spread after Biden tightened the tests before international flights could come into America.  The good doctor said to Rogan,” There is no bigger public health crisis than the censorship in Covid -19.”
  9. Dr. Fauci says that we should require our holiday guests to show proof of vaccination before entering our homes.  Meanwhile, college and pro football stadiums are packed to capacity weekly since September.  Fauci reminds us of the Chevy Chase character in Vegas Vacation.  Ole Clark Griswold couldn’t win a bet in the casino guessing which hand, odd or even, nor heads or tails.
  10. Ok, ok, ok, we couldn’t help ourselves.   You’ll get ten after all.  Fired former Chris Cuomo producer John Griffin had all of his electronic devices seized by law enforcement 17 months ago.  This is CNN.  The FBI didn’t arrest him in the child trafficking heinous mess until 6 days ago.  They stormed Jeffery Epstein’s island quicker than that.  Barely.  This is the FBI.

 

 

 

Crime Solved

Posted on by boom booms room staff

Yesterday BBR posted content questioning what some cities and their leadership were doing about the ramp-up in flash mob theft.  We specifically cited Lori Lightfoot’s ignorant response(s) which put the responsibility back on the retailers.  Lightfoot is no gumshoe, but we digress.

We also observed that about twenty national retailers penned a letter asking the federal government for help.  Well, what do you know?  Yesterday, Jen Psaki, WH Press Secretary was asked what the reasons for this spike were and what help the Biden Administration would provide back to the local level.

“I would say, we have seen, I’m not going to attribute the reasoning from here,” Psaki said. “What I will tell you is we have seen an increase in crime over the course of the pandemic. There is a range of reasons for that.”

Psaki didn’t go into any of the range of reasons.  But she did cite the pandemic.  We are aware of several side effects of Covid-19 and its variants like the loss of taste and smell, but not the loss of merchandise in stores.   Who knew that planned robberies were a viral symptom?

What is even stranger is that this side effect seems to be acutely affecting San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, New York, and Minneapolis.   All of these cities lead the way in mask mandates and social distancing.  We wonder if asking their police to stand down prior to the pandemic during the “mostly peaceful” protests could be a root cause as well.

Maybe.  “The president has proposed additional funding in the budget to make sure local police departments and cops have the funding they need,” Psaki said. “We also have worked directly with police departments in areas where they are seeing the highest impact of the crime, the retail theft—which we have great concern about.”

So, it seems that defunding the police and causing mayhem was the ticket to getting elected while refunding the police might be needed to get reelected.

Also.  “One of the root reasons of crime in communities is guns and gun violence, and we’ve seen that statistically around the country,” Psaki said last week.  Chicago might even agree.

No one asked her if any guns have been brandished during the smash and grab crimes.  They haven’t been.  But, it’s always a good day to take a shot at gun control that way when a store owner shoots a “victim or two” we can take to the streets again protesting these senseless shootings.

And finally.  She added: “Our focus is currently on doing what we can to make sure the funding is out there to the communities that need it the most.”

Which communities need it the most?  The ones cited above that elected them in the first place.  It’s always a good day to throw federal money at your local political bases.

So there you have it.  Just one day after asking, ye shall receive.

This is governance at its finest.

Problem day one, fixed day two.

Now, these cities can go back to enforcing the reinstated mask mandates to save even more lives.

 

 

Crime Time

Posted on by boom booms room staff

Long before Kamala Harris was named Border in Chief she ran quite poorly for Commander in Chief.   Prior to that she was a Senator, and prior to that she was the Attorney General for the State of California.

As AG her number one job was to prosecute individuals that the state felt were guilty of a crime.  You would think she knows a criminal when she sees a criminal.  You would also think that she would know well enough to refrain from jumping to conclusions until facts around such cases are researched.

Back in 2019 when the Jussie Smollett circus came to a town known as Chicago, Kamala tweeted, “@JussieSmollett is one of the kindest, most gentle human beings I know. I’m praying for his quick recovery. This was an attempted modern-day lynching. No one should have to fear for their life because of their sexuality or color of their skin. We must confront this hate.”

Well, that didn’t age well.  Madame VP has yet to tweet or publicly speak to the Smollett guilty verdicts nor her rush to judgment.  Remember BBR lecture no. 23- never let facts get in the way of a good narrative.

There are/were so many lessons to be learned right there in the Windy City.

But, the Mayor of the Windy City, Lori Lightfoot disagrees.  You would think she would know better as well.

Her thoughts?   She essentially told the retail community to fix the crime issue themselves.

She specifically mentioned security guards at the door, entrance cameras, merchandise “either chained and roped or put behind glass” and customers being “buzzed into” stores.

On Thursday, Illinois Retail Merchants Association President Rob Karr flatly rejected all of the mayor’s ideas.

He branded the suggestions “extraordinarily disheartening,” “misinformed” and “false”—yet another example of how Lightfoot “continues to point fingers and play the blame game.”

And he continued, “We’d be getting screamed at for [racial profiling].  And furthermore, it would push more people to simply go online. Why would you go to a store if you can’t touch, feel and try on the merchandise?”

And online is where the stolen merchandise is going for resale. Looks like these mobs “fence” the goods on Al Gore’s internet.

As if brick-and-mortar didn’t have enough problems dealing with online, now they are paying for the products, displaying them, losing the cost dollars when stolen, and watching online third-party “retailers” gain 100% profit from them.

If the local government won’t help, how about the federal government?

Twenty CEOs at major retailers sent a letter addressed to congressional leadership on Thursday asking lawmakers to pass legislation to help curb illegal business activity by anonymous vendors online.

What to do?  What to do?

With her border now under control, maybe Biden can assign the former AG, now VP, to tackle this difficult situation.

Her judicial eyesight is so good she can spot a crook on a snowy night at 4 AM from hundreds of miles away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lefty, Shorty, Alec, and Colonel Jussie

Posted on by boom booms room staff

Last evening Lefty and Shorty were all but ready to close the Gulf Station.   Rain was falling from the heavens at an accelerating pace, the fog was rolling in and cars were not.  Shorty- Why do we stay open until midnight?  Lefty- So that you and I can discuss the life and times of Jussie Smollett.

Lefty sat to the left of Shorty.  Imagine that.  Shorty sat on the shorter of the two “halves” of the 55-gallon drum. Imagine that.  Each was cut down to size and retrofitted with a soft cushion top.

Lefty-  Can you believe what a bad actor he turned out to be? Shorty-  I canceled Netflix months ago, what did I miss?   Lefty- Umm.  Are you not aware of his arrest?  Shorty- I must have missed the scroll at the bottom of ESPN.    Lefty- Are you from Colorado, cause it seems like you live under a big rock?  Shorty- The Boulder State?  No.  Too cold.

Lefty- Speaking of cold, let me bring you up to speed.  Jussie wrote, produced, directed, and acted in his own attack in Chicago at 4 AM on a freezing, snowy night.   Shorty- Sounds like a believable plot.  Lefty- He paid two black guys $3500 to put on white face and hoods, put a noose around his neck, scream MAGA and the n-word, and attempt to kill him. Shorty- Did they?  Lefty– No.  Shorty- If you want the job done right maybe you hire Alec Baldwin?  Lefty– Too soon.  Way.

Shorty– Why was he out there to begin with?  Lefty- He said he was going to Subway.  Shorty-  That’s dumb. The L train is elevated.   Lefty-  Jeez, not that kind of subway.  Subway Deli, like Eat Fresh!  Shorty- It can’t be too fresh at four AM, can it?  Lefty- Not only not fresh, he and his five-dollar foot long were probably frozen too.  Shorty– Frozen 2!  No way Disney puts him in that movie now.  Lefty- Dear Lord!

Fifteen seconds of utter silence feels like 15 minutes.

Lefty- Well did you at least hear about the trial? Shorty- The Rittenhouse one? Innocent.  Lefty- NO!  The Smollett one. Guilty on five of six charges.  Shorty-  For his final act did he at least take the stand in his own defense? Lefty- Yes.  And, he tried to weave quite the coverup tail.   Shorty- Call him Colonel Nathan R. Jussie? Lefty- I guess we could.  Shorty- What did the prosecution say?  Lefty- You can’t handle the truth.  Shorty-  CNN is not a good movie critic.  They said he was only guilty of “some” charges.  Five of six sounds like “almost all.”

Lefty- His acting career is over.   Shorty- Nah.  Hollywood will need someone to play an SUV in a soon-to-be-made movie.  Lefty- A what?  Shorty- CNN keeps reporting that an SUV ran over parade-goers in Waukesha.  Lefty- How can you “act” like an SUV?    Shorty- I’d start by studying the “mostly peaceful” protesters in a city near you.  Then, I’d consult with Don Lemon daily during the project.

Lefty- I’m OUT!  Lock up.  Shorty-  That’s what they’re going to do to Colonel Jussie.