Author: boom booms room staff

Knuckle Scraping

Posted on by boom booms room staff

President Joe Biden accused Texas Governor Greg Abbott of “Neanderthal thinking” yesterday after Abbott announced that the great state of Texas was now “100 percent open and a mask mandate was no longer in place.”

Mississippi’s governor did essentially the exact same thing on the exact day but nobody really cares about people in the great state of Mississippi, or so it seems.  Or, the electoral votes pale by comparison.

You see the real prize for the group that lives to divide (they call it unifying) is Texas.  They thought they had a shot with Beto v Cruz four years ago.  Somewhat close.  They thought they had a shot with Biden v Trump four months ago.  Somewhat closer.

Biden, we are mostly sure, didn’t think this way when the teleprompter and/or notes told him to utter “Neanderthal.”  He was looking out for the citizens of course.

After all, he flew in just last week to survey the land and the snowmen that had frozen the week prior.  Why he even assembled almost all of the “leaders” for a quick photo op and some words of unifying encouragement to help out with the thaw.

He recognized Congresswoman Shirley Jackson Lee for her help.  He meant Sheila Jackson Lee surely.  And, don’t call me surely.

He stumbled terribly over another name or two as well.  Then, he stopped himself and asked himself, “wait, what am I doing?”  Abbott was six feet from Biden and surely (again) wondered the same.

Biden didn’t mention the governor in his “pat on the back, mispronunciation, obligatory before I board Air Force One gathering.”  Hmm.

Maybe the third time is a charm.  Let’s gang up on Abbott.

Was Biden’s assessment of Abbott’s Neanderthal thinking right on?  Yes and yes seems to be the two answers depending upon who you ask.

Back when man scrapped his knuckles along the ground he could choose to come out of his cave when he wanted.  If danger lurked he could choose to stay put.  That sounds about like what Abbott has opened back up.

But, no mask?  Wow!  Maybe Texas could have opened back up and at least kept the mask mandate in place.  Some people think a mask helps while others don’t.

At least a mask makes it appear that you care.  And,  appearances count for everything.  Ask Biden.  He appeared in Texas and thinks he somehow helped warm it up while others don’t.

Heck, even Dr. Fauci who surely(and again) is old enough to remember his first cave thinks masks are important.  Now.

Although, the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical advisor to the President said almost a year ago today(3/8/20) as we first got into his mess “that there is no reason to be walking around with a mask.”  Then.

So now and then we change our minds.

But, for those that eye Texas as the ultimate prize, they can only think Abbott has lost his.

Biden can relate.

Has the governor created another of those dreaded super spreader moments?

Time will tell.

But for the left, now’s the time to use every bit of it as political capital.  They do it well and they do it often.

 

 

 

 

Hot Air

Posted on by boom booms room staff

Opportunity.

When one sees it, one must capture it.

So it goes on the national political scene where an opportunity is rarely missed.  As Henny Youngman might say, “take last week, please!”

With so much cold air blowing down into Texas, the hot air emanating from all comers was coming from all corners.  Hot takes were aplenty on the existential threats that plague us so.  Climate change and coronavirus were topics 1 and 1a.

Al Gore invented the internet and became an authority on climate change.

Bill Gates one-upped him and gave us the programming language software to run the microchips that run the internet and now is following in Gore’s nonfossil footprints.

Gates weighed in Sunday on his latest endeavor.  “The changes in the wind patterns are allowing those cold fronts to come down from Canada more often,” Gates explained. “There’s a pattern of wind that, … as it gets warmer, that breaks down. There’s no doubt that we’re putting CO2 into the atmosphere. There’s no doubt that that increases temperatures and that affects the weather. ”

So warmer winds made the colder winds blow in Texas.  Who knew?  Ted Cruz did.  Apparently, the wind change stopped at the border though as Cruz took a fossil-fueled jet down to Mexico to avoid the resultant freeze and snow if only for a day or so.

Gates continued, “You know, there’s no magic date that it’s all great until then, and it’s terrible once you cross that threshold. It’s pretty linear as far as we know. 2050 happens to be the soonest realistic date for the world to change all of these source emissions.

Luckily we have more time than some of those also-ran politicians that fell by the wayside told us we have left.  Remember when Liz Warren, Andrew Yang, Cory Booker, and Julian Castro one-upped each other with the time left to save our planet?  Eleven years said one, eight years said the other. Five years anyone?

Castro said it was already too late.  Dammit.

Thankfully Sheila Jackson Lee and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez rushed down from Washington to help in the present while we debate the time left for this planet.  They handed out thousands of free lunches and warm blankets to those without in the deep south during the deep freeze. Fix the grid already and you don’t have to have to fill brown boxes.

How did they get from Washington DC to Texas so quickly?  Our guess is on a fossil fuel burning 737.

Say it slowly, pho-to op-por-tun-i-ty.  Where were you, Ted?

Meanwhile, an estimated 99,763 people in the U.S. have died due to complications from the coronavirus during Biden’s first month in the White House, according to statistics provided by Johns Hopkins University.

When he was campaigning he told us Trump had no plan to combat the virus, but that he (Biden) did.  Maybe that was a bit of hot air unto itself from now Prez 46?

“There’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months,” said Biden last month, after being sworn into office.

New Yorkers beg to differ. The U.S. Department of Justice has reportedly launched an investigation into New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s (mis)handling of the state’s nursing homes and other long-term care facilities during the pandemic.  This can’t be true, can it?   Cuomo wrote a book patting himself on the back about how he handled it so well.

NY City Mayor Bill de Blasio blew in to weigh in.  He thinks that Cuomo is bullying all of his lieutenants into toeing the company line about how well he handled the crisis.  “A lot of people in New York State have received those phone calls,” continued de Blasio. “The bullying is nothing new.   No public servant, no person who’s telling the truth should be treated that way.”

We actually need to eliminate bulls to halt climate change, but we digress.

However, de Blasio might have a solution that the rest of us, including Dr. Fauci, overlooked.

“Of all the things that we’ve learned in this crisis, maybe the most profound is the power of a mask,” said de Blasio during a Thursday press briefing. “What we’re saying today is, time to double up.”

“Two masks are better than one,” the mayor added. “Make it a double.”

Who knew that the solution all along was right under (or over) our nose?

Meanwhile, it will be 70 degrees in Texas today.

Like in politics the hot winds are blowing again.

 

 

 

 

Talent on Loan From God

Posted on by boom booms room staff

Yesterday God called back the talent he had loaned out to Rush Limbaugh.

“With talent on loan from God, it’s Rush Limbaugh,” part of how the intro to the daily conservative three-hour show went.  And, went.  For three hours a day, for 52 weeks, and for 32+ years the solo voice behind the golden mike, comfortably ensconced in the EIB(Excellence in Broadcasting) studio, offered lectures in advanced conservative studies as he put it.  Over six hundred stations globally offered his “course.”

His reach and his resilience are unmatched.

Limbaugh is regarded far and wide as the savior of talk show radio regardless of your political preference or party affiliation.

But, he was so much more than that to so many.  The charitable donations of his money, time, or airtime were far too numerous to count and far too generous for even a man of his wealth.

But he was so much more than that.  His passion for his country, his vision for how it was, and how it could and should be, was unwavering.  Guiding principles never go out of style.  You might disagree with the “how” but you’d be a fool to disagree with the “what” and the “why.”

Rush shaped lives.  Rush changed lives.  Rush was bigger than life.

And, yet, he had his missteps and faults.  Prescription drugs and a few wrong turns down the racial rabbit hole were all too well documented.  But, we’d guess God just gave him a fast pass ticket through the pearly gates.  Life is after all a roller coaster, isn’t it?

Fox News commenters, a video of him receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor at President Trump’s State of the Union(SOTU) in February of 2020, and President Trump himself all intersected on the Fair and Balanced network yesterday shortly after his passing.

And, that confluence is an example of where America got it all right and yet all wrong.  Rush would tell us so in comical and wise detail if he had but one more day to use his fine audio pipes.

Bill Hemmer asked Trump to watch along with the audience the SOTU moment when he awarded Rush the medal.

As Trump spoke directly to Rush and his wife seated in the balcony, behind the Prez was the one and only Nancy Pelosi.  She thought so little of the moment that she turned her body and therefore her view well away from Trump and even further away from the about to be anointed Rush.  She rifled through the paper that her SOTU copy was printed on like Amazon’s Alexa’s best shuffle.  So childish, like Trump.

Should anyone turn their back on Muhammed Ali, Bill Clinton, George Clooney, or countless others if they were getting a lifetime achievement award regardless of your beliefs about their beliefs?  No. No.  No.  Respect is earned and should always be recognized.

The Republican congressmen and women roared.  The Democratic ones sat in silence.  Maybe you didn’t like what he stood for, but at the very least you could have stood up for the presentation out of the respect you had (or should have had) for his place in American history.  Shameful.

And then Hemmer made the mistake of asking Trump what Rush told him after the November 3rd election.  Trump immediately launched into saying that Rush thought he won, and Americans thought he won, and Trump himself thought he won.  So childish, like Pelosi.

You take the low road and I’ll take the high road.

Even on his last day Rush would have dissected his own moment, found a way to make sense of it all, pointed us in a better direction, and stayed mostly above the fray.

America lost a great one yesterday, all of America that is.

So, who possibly can take Rush’s place?

The answer is no one even if you have considerable talent on loan from God.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

White Pow(d)er

Posted on by boom booms room staff

It seems, luckily, that Joe Biden took office just in time.  This climate change thing might be real after all.  And the education system is even worse.

From sea to shining sea this week America has been covered in white powder.  Staying warm has never been more important.  Where is the global warming that we all need right about now?

While Joe is fixing that it looks like the education system is bound and determined to fix not the white powder problem, but the white power problem.

On the far left coast, the Oregon Department of Education is seeking to root out white supremacy in mathematics, manifested by an emphasis on “getting the right answer” and making students “show their work.”  Oregon’s progressive Department of Education has furnished educators with an 82-page training manual titled “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction: Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction.”

The education department mailed the manual to teachers as part of Black History Month.

The manual enumerates signs of “white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom.”   “In order to embody antiracist math education, teachers must engage in critical praxis that interrogates the ways in which they perpetuate white supremacy culture in their own classrooms, and develop a plan toward antiracist math education to address issues of equity for Black, Latinx, and multilingual students,” the manual declares.

“Praxis” is a noun that means “accepted practice or custom” in case you needed to look it up like we did.  That old-school education apparently does leave some things to be desired after all.

What the manual never addresses is how dumbing down mathematics will magically eliminate “mathematical inequity,” a counterintuitive proposal if we ever heard of one.  Nor does it address the racial overtones of why it would need to be so.

We wonder what type of math is taught in other countries.  Isn’t math, math?  Maybe one plus one does equal three after all.

But wait, there’s more!

Three time zones over, a NY school principal is taking higher education to an even higher level.  East Side Community High School Principal Mark Federman reportedly sent a survey to white parents asking them to identify their level of whiteness.

Federman is asking parents to “reflect” on their “whiteness” — passing out literature that extols “white traitors’’ who “dismantle institutions,” education officials confirmed to The New York Post on Tuesday.

The offensive at the East Side Community School in Manhattan features a ranking list titled “The 8 White Identities,” which ranges from “White Supremacist’’ to “White Abolitionist.”  You can click on the link if you wish to see who you are and how much woke your wokeness has or does not have.

So we have a white principal, who knows white privilege when he sees it, sending homework home for his student’s parents, who don’t see it, to do.  Who said you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

The racial makeup of the student body at East Side Community is 55 percent Hispanic, 18 percent white, 15 percent black, 10 percent Asian and 2 percent other during the last school year.   Isn’t the categorization of “other” offensive?  We digress.

The assignment was sent home to all parents.  So we wonder how 82% (the nonwhite) of the parents felt about the characterization, the assignment, and how they graded out.  Who knew nonwhites fell into one of these eight whiteness categories as well?

How did we get here?  Once upon a time, there was a little red schoolhouse on top of a hill.  If we built the same today there would there be a debate about the paint color?

The white powder across this land will soon turn to slush. Joe is up to the task of making it so.

We hope the minds of our young ones across this land won’t soon turn into mush.  What a task that is.

From this point of view, the change in education is far more extreme than the change in the climate.  And, as a reminder, it’s record-breaking cold outside.

Party With the Lombardi

Posted on by boom booms room staff

If everybody every day got offended by everything would that actually enable cancel culture to cancel cancel culture?  Just asking as 1) we cannot be that far from it, and 2) it would be a merciful end to the maniacal madness.

Can we just make it stop?  We are asking for a friend.

Actually, we are asking for Tom Brady.  He’s in hot water(not really) after tossing the Lombardi Trophy over Tampa Bay water from one boat to another as all of Tampa celebrated the Bucs Super Bowl victory with a boozy Super Bowl boat parade.

He completed the pass just like he has so many before with a real football that isn’t attached to the stem of the trophy. So, no big deal right?  Wrong.

“It just upset me that this trophy was disgraced and disrespected by being thrown as if it was a real football,” the daughter of the man who designed the Vince Lombardi Trophy, Lorraine Grohs told Tampa’s Fox 4.

“I personally would like an apology, not just to me and my family and the other silversmiths but to the fans, all the football fans, the other team players,” she insisted.

Did she miss anybody?

“Hi, Tom Brady here.  I’d like to personally apologize to all silversmiths near and far for my outrageous behavior late last week.  Hic.  Apparently, having fun and silver trophies don’t mix well.”

Would that tongue-tied in cheek BS apology be sufficient?  We can hope.

The woman went on to claim that she has experienced “sleepless nights” over what she feels is the “disrespect” her father’s handiwork received.  Sleepless nights?  Sure.

The only thing worse than that claim is that this nonsensical “news” story even got air time.  And, maybe that, unto itself, is the problem.

Everyone wants to be famous for 15 minutes even when it’s achieved by taking a shot at a guy who took a few shots on the field then a few more off of the field.

“I only watch the game to watch the trophy come out. I like to see all the owners and the football players just hold it up with such pride and hold it up and show everybody and I get goosebumps…. like right now I’m getting goosebumps,” she admitted.

Goosebumps!  It’s not winning the trophy that’s the thing, it’s seeing the trophy.  Who knew?

Tom tweeted, “nothing to see here, just a little avocado tequila.”

Nothing to see here, indeed.

No Doubt, Game On

Posted on by boom booms room staff

Ten days into month two of year 21 of century 21 you have two serious doubts.

One is, you doubt that you’ll ever watch a movie on one of the super big screens inside of an American Multi-Cinema (AMC) Theatre again.  Two is, you doubt that you’ll ever watch another hour of the American political theatre again.

AMC theatres are closed.  It’s a virus thing you know.  Political theatres never close.  It feels like a virus thing as well.

AMC has no choice right now.  Politics chose basically to rerun the Trump Impeachment.

It’s a slightly different plot but all of your favorite characters are there.  It’s got a catchy name too- The Second Impeachment of Donald Trump.

They had a choice.  They could choose to let the darkest days of his Presidency stay that way.  Or they could choose to “buy” airtime on all of your favorite channels like MSNBC, CNN, FOX, ABC, CBS, or NBC to shine more light on the darkness.

So while America watched one Super Bowl commercial after another that spoke to unity and coming together, the newly sworn-in Congress decided to further unify us by making their first order of biz in the new year with a new prez a docudrama about the old prez.

How many times can you watch Jason hack someone up in Friday the 13th?

Super Bowl parties can leave you hungover.  American politics can as well.

But you wonder if the sequel has and the prequel had ulterior motives.  Did the prequel have everything to do with getting 45 out of office and 46 in?  Does the sequel have everything to do with the 2022 midterms?

You see to “unify” you can always divide to conquer.  And, forcing a Republican to vote for or against Trump being impeached and/or convicted gets him/her on the record.

Vote to acquit him and the Dems will run against you on that very point.  Vote to convict and you risk alienating the very people that may have put you in office last time or for the first time.  It’s a win/win or a lose/lose depending on the color of your uniform.

We highly doubt that America is watching this anymore closely than they were watching the last five minutes of the Super Bowl.  The outcome at the game’s end was no longer in doubt, only the final score was.  And, breaking news, Trump isn’t going to get convicted either.

Meanwhile, for AMC, it’s at least the two-minute warning.

But in American politics running up the score never ends.

And make no mistake about it, the game never ends either.

 

 

Pass the Alka Seltzer

Posted on by boom booms room staff

The Super Bowl and the Super Bowl party (not in that order) took its toll on the BBR staff.  Here’s ten observations from afar.

  1.   You have to be sick of watching Brady and his pearly whites accept the MVP Trophy by now don’t you?
  2.   Tampa Bay won with Brady, but they won because of their defense.  That side of the ball has been ferocious for two months now.
  3.   The commercials used to help during a boring game.  Used to…..
  4.   Twenty five thousand fans and thirty thousand cut outs watched the game live.  What do the cutouts do really?  Weird times.
  5.   Did you bet the prop that KC would score no touchdowns in the game?  If you did, a one buck wager paid you back 500 of them.
  6.   There was a lot of maskless celebration going on post game.  The New Orleans Saints will get fined for it.  They always do.  It’s like Jerry Tarkanian once     said, “every time North Carolina recruits illegally Cleveland St gets put on probation.”
  7.   Maybe a great defense can still beat a great offense.  If so, look out for the LA Rams next year.  Stafford just needs throw some game management passes    and an occasional zinger or two.
  8.   The Waste Management Phoenix Open never disappoints the day of the SB.  The blue sky and green grass contrasted againsted the desert tan sand        makes most of the rest of the U.S. yearn for warmer days.
  9.  The Tampa Bay Buccaneers Lori Locust and Maral Javadifar become the first female assistant coaches to win a Super Bowl.  While referee Sarah Thomas became the first female official to work a Super Bowl.   One of our overserved guests remarked upon learning this, and we quote, “whoop tee do.”  Our government is likely using facial recognition to out him(or her) as we speak.
  10.  Who’s going to win the SB next year?  The Chiefs, listed at +550 at Caesars Sportsbook, are the favorite to win Super Bowl LVI. The Green Bay Packers are next at +900, followed by the champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers at +1100.  But, before you drop too much coin on one of them realize that Tampa Bay was +5000 this time last year.

Plop, plop.  Fizz, fizz.

When the Game Stops

Posted on by boom booms room staff

The get rich quick crowd gathered on Reddit and was having quite the party.  There was no stopping the game that they were playing with stock in GameStop.

But, like at the stroke of midnight, if you don’t pay the band the music stops.  And, yesterday it got quiet.  Quiet like the inside of GameStop stores during this pandemic.

Just last Thursday shares in GameStop were bought for as high as they were sold-it always takes two to dance.  And the price to get on the floor was $483.  The stock was a much cheaper date in mid-summer at $4.  That’s no typo.  And, yesterday the stock retreated to $84 just four trading days after the $483.  That’s again no typo.

If you’re a retail investor and you wanted to show old school Wall St. that there was a new kid in town, you did.  Briefly.  The short-selling hedge funds got squeezed a bit.

If you wanted to get rich quick, hopefully you bought low and sold high.  Because as it was quickly learned again, value never goes out of style. Stock is always only worth what someone will pay for it.

However, if you bought high and sold low maybe it’s time to get off of Reddit.  If you did so with margin money you might need to see a bankruptcy attorney.  If you did so with your stay at home stimulus money, as many on Reddit bragged, maybe you should go get a job.

But, if you live in Long Beach, CA, and want to get into the grocery business you’re looking in the wrong place.  Yesterday, Kroger announced that it was closing its two stores at the end of this month in response to the mayor’s mandated “hero” pay of minimally $15 an hour for those “workers on the front lines.”

And, we are reminded again, value never goes out of style.  People are always only worth what someone will pay for them.  And jobs are valued for what people will accept them for unless you are the government and want to cause some market disruption.

Government has its eye on this stock market disruption.  They’ll start hearings next week on what we can learn from it.   That should be good for a few laughs.  Do you notice how the government always reacts, it never acts?

Political opposites Rep Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Senator Ted Cruz were in full agreement that the bad guys in this were the old Wall Streeters who were trying to blame the up and comers for making the market rattle.

In other words, “let the free market decide what a stock is worth.”  Hmm.  That seems like the polar opposite of what the government is trying to do with wages.

Reddit user benaffleks (really) says “This is a big moment.  Hedge fund managers live in the past.  They believe that average retail investors don’t know anything about the market(which may be true) and we’re just gambling our money away.  This was the past.”

One never really knows when the game stops.

But, when it does fair market value is always the winner.

Always.

 

 

When It Was a Game

Posted on by boom booms room staff

It’s been a while since we served up some Ten Piece Nuggets for your consumption.  As sports and the “real world” continue to collide we decided to take you back to a simpler time when the games were about the games.  Take a trip down Super Bowl memory lane.

  1.  With Super Bowl LV upon us, we thought we’d visit an old adage.  In order to be effective in this league you have to be able to run the ball and stop the run.  Can you name the last Super Bowl winner to lead the league in regular-season rushing yards?  It’s been a while actually.  It’s the 1985 Chicago Bears.  On their Super Bowl Shuffle way, they amassed a league-leading 2761 yards.
  2. And, they could stop the run as well. In their three post-season games that year they gave up a total of 125 yards rushing.  In the 85′ Super Bowl beatdown of NE, the Patriots gained exactly 7 net rushing yards.
  3. Guess who completed the longest pass play in Super Bowl history.  Montana? Nope.  Marino?  Nope.  Elway? Nope.  Give up?  You should.  It’s Jake “The Cajun Snake” Delhomme.  The Carolina Panther’s QB completed an 85-yard pass to Muhsin Muhammad against the Patriots in Super Bowl XXXVIII.
  4. Guess who is the only running back to gain over 200 yards in any Super Bowl.  Payton? Nope.  Riggins?  Nope.  Faulk? Nope.  It’s Redskin Timmy Smith who went off for an all-time Super Bowl record with 204 rushing yards in Super Bowl XXII as his Washington Redskins ran roughshod over the Denver Broncos.  Who?
  5. Hello Friends!  Jim Nantz might catch him one day, but for now, Pat Summerall has provided the play by play on TV for more Super Bowls (11) than any of his contemporaries.
  6. Eleven seems to be the lucky number for Summerall and for Miami.  The Magic City as it’s known has hosted the most Super Bowls with 11.
  7. The 2011 (there’s that number again) New York Football Giants own the distinction of having the worst regular-season record at 9-7 of any SB winner.  It’s important to get hot at the right time they(whoever they are) say.  Super Bowl XLII(42) was the one that had the greatest and most important catch as well.  It’s considered the greatest catch in SB history.  It’s important to get lucky at the right time as well.
  8. Pennsylvania is known as the hotbed of QBs.  It’s produced Namath, Marino, Montana, Kelly, and many more.  But, California has produced the most Super Bowl winners with five: Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Trent Dilfer, Troy Aikman and Jim Plunkett.
  9. It is one thing to get to the biggest of them all.  It’s yet another to win it.  It’s yet another to get there multiple times and never lose.  But, that accomplishment is rare.  Only the Baltimore Ravens have won more than one and not lost any.  And, they are only 2-0.
  10. And finally, Dallas and Pittsburgh have met the most times(3) for the Lombardi Trophy in NFL history.  But, it has been a while since they have.  The contests ended the 1975, 1978, and 1995 seasons.

Tampa Bay becomes the first team to host a Super Bowl this coming Sunday.

Friday the winners of the prop bets and the game will be available for you right here on BBR on Al Gore’s Internet.