Ten Piece Nuggets

Spring is in the air.  It reminds us of spring chickens.  Spring chickens remind us of nuggets.  Ten are waiting for you below.

  1.  Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls for regulating conservative news.   She opined on Sunday’s MSNBC, “When you look at what Tucker Carlson and some of these other folks on Fox do, it is very, very clearly incitement of violence. Very clearly.”  Free speech and the First Amendment say otherwise.
  2. Say what you want about Ted Cruz, but every January when the new Senate convenes he puts forth a bill calling for strict term limits.  And every January it finds the round file in the corner of the room.  AOC on one end and Mitch McConnell on the other are two prime examples of why term limits would help us all.
  3. It won’t happen until the American public demands it though.  You can’t get 60% of Congress to agree on anything much less eliminate their job(cash cow).
  4. A poll revealed on NBC”s Meet the Depressed that voters are depressed having Uncle Joe in the White House four days a week and in Delaware three.  53% of Biden’s 2020 voters say he shouldn’t run again in 2024, and a whopping 75% of Biden voters under 35 think likewise. Will Joe Biden be the weakest incumbent president running for re-election in any of our lives?
  5. “Stunning he didn’t get a major primary challenger,” says Clay Travis.  Or, is it?  “Stunning that he got 81 million votes” is more like it.  Not stunning is that he and his handlers will do anything to minimize his exposure to questions, debates, news conferences, etc.  The basement awaits.  Time to order up another pandemic if you are a conspiracy theorist.
  6. Travis was on a roll on the weekend.  Another tweet,  “DC public schools are requiring all students and staff to provide a negative covid test in order to return to school after spring break. These people are batshit insane. Covid broke whatever functional brains they had.”
  7. That tweet reminded us of watching Morning Joe about three years ago.  They interviewed visionary Bill DeBlasio in the middle of the covid paranoia.  He suggested that we all wear two masks. He really did.  Maybe he was educated at the aforementioned DC public schools?
  8. “Today proves yet again that you can’t buy class but you can buy a blue check mark,” said Dan Rather.  We wonder if Dan knows that his salary was paid by those watching him by watching ads every five minutes.  Multiple sites believe that Rather’s net worth is north of 70 million.  You’d think he could afford the $8 bucks a month.  Or maybe he could just stop complaining while you’re still tweeting without it.
  9. Alyssa Milano wonders with the blue check removal, “Does that mean Twitter and @elonmusk are liable for defamation or identity theft or fraud?”  The DC public schools must have been very crowded.
  10. Exxon Mobil isn’t going all in on green just yet.  Near the Gulf Coast just east of Texas’ oil-rich Permian Basin, nearly 2,000 ExxonMobil contractors are making sure the company’s latest project – which includes 26 miles of piping, 35 miles of electrical wiring, and 875 tons of steel is pumping oil at full capacity.  Fill er up.

And we hope that you are filled up after the nuggets.

And, We’re Off!

If you’re like most you probably needed this past weekend to decompress from the stress of reliving the pain and suffering brought about by the anniversary of Insurrection Day last Friday.

Hopefully, on Monday you weren’t cheering for TCU.  If you were, by Tuesday morning you must have felt like anyone who fought Iron Mike Tyson in the mid to late 80s.  Wait, we are being told as we write that Georgia just scored again.

And then it all hit the fan Wednesday.

First, news broke that Joe Biden, unbeknownst to him he says, stashed away a few classified top secret documents discovered in a locked closet at an office at a Washington think tank, the Penn Biden Center.  Thank goodness the closet was locked.  Typing “Biden” and “think tank” in the same sentence seems odd.

Meanwhile, the entire nation’s air travel was shut down.   The Federal Aviation Administration’s preliminary investigation points to a “damaged database file” in a key system. The agency is still working to determine the root cause of the outage in NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) which alerts pilots and airports of real-time hazards.  One can hope that they get to the root cause quicker than VP Harris has been able to determine the root cause of the illegal migration problem.

Of course, that problem may be overstated.  Footage shown of Prez Biden walking the border in El Paso Sunday showed not a single illegal in sight.  Weird?  Probably not says WH Press Secretary Karine Jean Claude Van Damme Pierre Toulouse.  She called the lack of traffic “a coincidence.”

The lack of air traffic yesterday probably did not sit well with the Biden Administration’s former Department of Energy official, gender fluid thief Sam Brinton.  No flights mean no moving carrousels.  No moving carrousels mean no incoming luggage to roll out with.

Midday brought the announcement that The University of Southern California’s School of Social Work will no longer use the word “field.” They will replace it with “practicum.”  “Language can be powerful, and phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ maybe have connotations for descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign,” the statement read.

At least our government is looking out, as always, for our health.  The US Consumer Product Safety Commission says a ban on gas stoves is on the table as they emit harmful pollutants.

Who knew?  AOC knew.  She tweeted, “Did you know that ongoing exposure to NO2 from gas stoves is linked to reduced cognitive performance?”  Actually, we added the question mark for her.  She may have forgotten it due to reduced cognitive performance.

Speaking of thieves and reduced cognitive performance, Oh Joy Behar defended Biden on The View yesterday.  She said, “We know Donald Trump is a liar and a thief.  We give Joe Biden the benefit of the doubt.”  Fair and balanced.

She may have spoken too soon as she often does.  Biden’s legal team found yet another batch of classified government records in a different location last evening. No worries, they were very likely under lock and key as well.  That the first batch was discovered just weeks before the November midterms and yet kept quiet was probably another one of those coincidences, but we digress.

Will the Feds obtain a search warrant for the White House?

Will Biden ask that we remove the word “White” from “White House?” He might be in his think tank pondering the thought.  USC would be all in.

By nightfall, the FCC put all of the planes on ground halt again.  Surely Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg will get to the bottom of this.  He always does.

Hey, we did get Congress seated.

And misinformation was so 2022.

Twelve days into 2023 we are off and running, just not flying.

 

 

 

Sleep With the Fishes

Yesterday here at the global headquarters for BBR.com the temperature at 8 AM was 77.   As we gather for a staff meeting we just asked Siri what it is this morning.  Her answer was, “Brrrrr, it’s 37.”

Maybe, just maybe, this is enough to convince those “climate deniers” that change is indeed in the air.  For further proof, we used the Google search engine courtesy of Al Gore’s internet for any recent updates to this existential threat.

Gore himself is quite the expert on climate change (formerly known only as global warming) as well.  As a former VP, though, his expertise on the climate falls short of current VP Harris’ handle on the US and now the Ukrainian border, but we digress.

The very first article that popped up was courtesy of NOLA.com the virtual newspaper formerly known as The Times-Picayune back when we cut trees down to write.  The article, in a nutshell, said that the latest Federal Government research project on rising water levels now projects a two-foot rise at the Louisiana coastline from current levels by 2050 and a four-foot rise by 2100 of the Gulf of Mexico.

This was a modest but not insignificant increase in levels from a previous study by the same team just five years ago.  The word dour comes to mind.

As we ready the lifeboats, we climate change ignoramuses have a couple of questions, please and thank you.

One, if the water is going up two feet on the Louisiana coastline by 2050, isn’t it going up by two feet everywhere in the Gulf of Mexico, or for that matter any and everywhere that land touches an ocean worldwide?  The old adage, “water seeks its own level” comes to mind.  We’re not claiming to be intelligent, just inquisitive.

Are all coast dwellers soon to “sleep with the fishes?”  Venice, Italy, are you listening?

Two, Nancy Pelosi is building a swanky mansion on the Florida Gulf Coast for her retirement home as we speak.  What does she know that the researchers have overlooked?

Cramped Barracks at Barrack’s. Is a Small Carbon Footprint Needed to Run this Joint?

Oh, and Barrack Obama and the fam decided that they would like an occasional getaway from the cramped conditions in Martha’s Vineyard.  They’re building a second home on the Hawaiian Islands.  Will they fly to and fro emitting fossil fuel all along the 3000-mile journey?  Heck, maybe the glacier melts and Artic Shelf degradation fallout won’t matter much that far away from the mainland.

Then we wonder why the tops of every single mountain reaching thousands of feet in the Sedona, Arizona air are flat, parallel to the ground there? A little research of our own, not federally funded, tells us that once upon a time the ocean actually was there.  The tops of the mountains were the floor of the sea.  Let that sink in a bit.

This brings us to the ultimate question.  Hasn’t the climate always been changing?  Of course, it has.  If you don’t believe us ask the dinosaurs.

But, now we need to do something about what nature does on its own.  Why?  Because mankind (and womankind) is bad.  We’re destroying our planet.

It’s why we have more hurricanes and more severe ones at that.  No, it isn’t.  And, do we even have more and more severe ones?  Nah.  We have more damage because more folks like Nancy and Barrack live closer to the water than ever, so the damage to lives and property is far worse.

If ending(which you can’t) or greatly reducing fossil fuel consumption is some/most/all of our solution we’ll eventually get close.  But, you need communist China and India, and others to jump on board.

And, relative to what Mother Nature does on her own it’s like shooting a BB at a tank anyway.  But, shoot away.

All it takes is 30 or 60 or 90 trillion depending on who you ask.  AOC thinks 90 and she’s an emerging expert here as well.

And, finally, did you know that the sun is cooling by the year as well?  What to do, what to do?  Get a match.

Father Time is undefeated, and you shouldn’t mess with Mother Nature.

But, give it a try we will.  Oh, and you better get it done by 2050 or you can kiss Louisiana goodbye.

Six(?) Piece Nuggets-Random

Let’s make a deal.  We’ll feed you as many nuggets as we can cook up by 8:30 CDT.  We’re late against the deadline. So, hopefully, you’re not too ravaged this fine summer Friday morning.

  1.  LA County has reinstituted face masks as mandatory due to a barely discernable blip on their new cases tracking graph.  Too soon?  Time will tell.  Cali was the first to declare a state-wide emergency when the pandemic spread across the US last March.  One wonders why they are waiting five days prior to instituting it if it’s that dire, however.
  2. After ripping his driver and then getting ripped right back by a representative from Cobra Golf, Bryson DeChambeau issued an apology Thursday, saying he was “unprofessional” and that his emotions got the best of him after a bad first round at The Open.  Mr. Physics needs a Mr. Psych.  His brain operates on a plane that is either way ahead or way behind most of ours.  You pick.
  3. The Biden Administration openly admitted that they were working closely with Facebook to eliminate negative or contrary views to the vaccine.  Big government and Big Tech can do wonderful things together.  This isn’t one of them.  Big Tech is a bunch of companies that can control messaging to the degree that their posters tolerate.  When government helps, it’s not helping.  Boil it down to one word-censorship.
  4. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for more transparency from the Chinese Communist dictatorship, admitting getting access to raw data had been a challenge for the W.H.O. team that traveled to China earlier this year to investigate the source of the virus.    It’s weird that a year ago he ripped Donald Trump’s speech asking for an investigation. That’s an Olympic-sized flip.  Comforting.  Rip, then flip.  Bonus points for any reader that pronounces his name correctly the first time.  We’ll wait.
  5. A judge ordered free-agent cornerback Richard Sherman be released from jail without bail Thursday following his arrest on suspicion of trying to break into his in-laws’ home northeast of Seattle.  King County District Court Judge Fa’amomoi Masaniai found probable cause that Sherman committed four offenses: misdemeanor and gross misdemeanor charges of criminal trespass in the second degree, malicious mischief in the third degree — both carrying domestic violence designations — and misdemeanor charges of resisting arrest and driving under the influence.   Where’s the #metoo outrage?  The race to the bottom is hotly contested between Portland, Seattle, and the Big Apple.
  6. “We stand in solidarity with the Cuban people and condemn the suppression of the media, speech, and protest. We also call for an end to the U.S. embargo and additional Trump-era restrictions that are profoundly contributing to the suffering of Cubans.”  That was AOC’s tweet yesterday.  Is there a lick of doubt that the DNC has polling data that shows that blaming anything on Donald J. Trump plays well with the Democrat’s base?

We asked if someone could call the weatherman in the South last week to get the rain to stop.  Consider this a second request.

 

The System Is (Not) Working

Derek Chauvin got what he deserved.

He got a fair trial by a jury of his peers overseen by what seemed to be a very even-keeled judge all the while represented by a competent defense attorney.

George Floyd’s family and all of America got what it deserved- a guilty verdict on all three counts brought against a police officer who committed a very serious crime.

In other words, to use an old tried but true phrase, justice was served.  And, after forthcoming sentencing, Chauvin will serve plenty of time for this injustice.

So, as we look back, was all of the looting, burning, rioting, violence, and teargas necessary to get us to this verdict yesterday?  No, of course, it wasn’t.

But, the marching and chanting gone bad wasn’t about getting justice in court, was it?  No, rather it was about the outrage that such a crime, and particularly a crime against a black man by someone who is supposed to protect and serve happened in the first place.  As understandable as the outrage is, lighting the town on fire isn’t the answer.

What is the answer?  Well, for the young and naive, know that society has searched for that answer for centuries.  It matters not what the crime is, and who has done it against whom, we haven’t prevented anyone from doing just about whatever they, unfortunately, choose to do against their fellow man.

Call the previous statement defeatist if you wish.  It’s reality.   It’s much like the war on drugs. How is that coming along?

But, when you mix in a white cop killing a black man, you multiply America’s outrage by a factor of X.  It’s deemed social injustice.

Chauvin isn’t the first bad cop.  And, news flash, he won’t be the last.

So defund the police.  The fine line between civility and incivility would run amok in a matter of minutes.  It’s also reality.

If you look up the aforementioned “young” and/or “naive” in the dictionary you’ll likely see a picture of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC) next to it.  Predictably she had a strong point of view.

“It’s not justice. I’ll explain to you why it’s not justice. It’s not justice because justice is George Floyd going home tonight to be with his family.  Justice is when you’re pulled over, there not being a gun that’s part of that interaction because you have a headlight out. Justice is your school system not having or being part of a school-to-prison pipeline.

So, no, this verdict is not justice. Frankly, I don’t even think we call it full accountability, because there are multiple officers that were there. It wasn’t just Derek Chauvin. And I also don’t want this moment to be framed as this system working, because it’s not working.”

When does any murder victim come home to be with his family?  Ever?

George Floyd had his share of run-ins with the legal system.  It in NO WAY justifies his killing, however.  But, remember, amongst nine crimes Floyd committed one was an armed robbery of a couple in their home after he impersonated a police officer to gain entry.  He held a gun to the women’s abdomen while his cohorts in crime took what they wanted.

He was tried, found guilty, and served his time.  What makes that different than the process that Chauvin went through?  Two things make it different.

One, we hold our officers up to a higher standard.  We should.  And, we’ll be disappointed again and again for doing so when one in a hundred goes bad.   Two, it’s different because Chauvin’s crime was white on black while Floyd’s crime was black on white.  If you are an equality purist that shouldn’t matter either.

AOC says that the system is not working.  Did your school have a school-to-prison pipeline by the way?

Depending on your view, it never has.

Or, it always will.

And that goes for the system and the pipeline.

Robin Hood Rides Again

Politicians make strange bedfellows.  What’s old is new.

Do you know what you get when you cross-breed two old-school famous sayings?  You get Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez(AOC).

Old Bernie turns 80 this coming September.  He’s been doing all of the Vermont people’s business since 1991 in one or the other Halls of Congress.  That’s a smooth 30 years.

NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 19: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) endorses Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) at a campaign rally.

Young AOC turns 32 this coming October.    She’s been doing some of the New York people’s business since 2019 in the House of Representatives.  That’s two years and counting.

President Joe Biden revealed his $2 trillion-plus infrastructure plan late last week shortly after the $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill two weeks prior.  Never mind that the relief bill only had 9% of the money earmarked for direct money to the citizens nor that that infrastructure plan (dubbed the American Jobs Plan) has only about 25% for traditional (roads, bridges, airports) infrastructure repair or improvements.

A BBR staffer bumped into a U.S. Rep Saturday who will remain nameless.  That Congressperson summed the giveaways up perfectly,  “you can sell anything you want when you use the words ‘Covid relief.’  And who can possibly be against ‘jobs’?”  Indeed.  Sounds like a chicken in every pot and pork for all.

But wait, there’s more!  Or at least AOC and Bernie wish it to be so.

AOC applauded Biden’s “vision” on the infrastructure plan but exclaimed that it is not sufficient and “needs to be way bigger.”  She went on, “we’re the richest country in the world, it should be $10 trillion.”

Senator Sanders said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he was working to include “human infrastructure” into President Joe Biden’s infrastructure package.  “One of the areas that I am working on right now is the need to expand Medicare in order to provide dental care and hearing aids and eyeglasses for the elderly. Is that infrastructure? I think it is. Look, Jake, the truth is, in so many ways, we are behind many other countries throughout the world in providing for working families and the elderly and the children. And I think now is the time to begin addressing our physical infrastructure and our human infrastructure.”

Who knew infrastructure had so many definitions?  And, if you can’t hear people blowing horns at you nor see the red light in front of you how can you take advantage of all that new infrastructure?  We digress.

Is it any wonder that AOC backed Sanders’s latest failed bid to reach the Democratic nomination for President?

AOC called us rich and therefore we snap our fingers and can afford it. Oh, to be young and naive all over again.

Sanders makes it overtly simple.  He is a Socialist.

Biden said no one making under $400k will have to pay for any of it.  Well, the corporate tax of currently 21% recommended returning to the previous 28% might cost the consumer a titch we suppose.

“No president has ever raised business taxes to recover from an economic crisis,” Rep. Kevin Brady, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said. “This couldn’t come at a worse time.”  Details, details.

In 13th Century England, Robin Hood robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.  Supposedly.

Robinhood.com, the investor website, got in trouble playing games with GameStop stock a few weeks back.

And now this young (AOC) and old(Sanders) Robin Hood duo are playing a different game that needs to stop.

Margaret Thatcher knew as much many, many moons ago.  She said, “the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

 

 

When the Game Stops

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.

 

 

Come On In, The Water Is Fine

A whole flock of small rubber ducks just hit the river.  And, with it, the great race for 2020 has begun.  If you are watching it on TV it’s abundantly clear that the race downriver is from right to left.

The flapping, quacking, and invisible web-footed paddling is robust.  It’s about 20 such newbies or not so newbies all looking for the right current to power their way to the front.  What’s first prize?  It’s power in the race that wins the power out of the race.

There is but one problem.  By far the biggest and loudest quacker is, for now out front.

The biggest duck is none other than, ahem, Donald Duck.  As we breathlessly wait for the now neutered Mueller Report (less than 24 hours away) The Donald is swimming in fresher, clearer, and not so deep nor hot water.  Every opponent will have a staff member read the report and be able to find the worst moment and whale away.  This will last about 24 hours.  Then, reality will set in.  While they have had their scope sighted on the biggest duck for two years, they’ve shot blanks thus far.

So, then, what now a mere 17 months from the election?  Well, the swim to the hard left seems to be the rip tide of choice.  Remember a short three months ago when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez jumped in with the Green New Deal.  It seemed like a swimmingly good far left idea at the time.  Quickly, it’s been overtaken by paddling of cute orange feet even further to the left.

Good old Bernie Sanders, he of a few feathers missing on his crown, has one upped his desire for free college tuition with a proposed 52% tax take on the income rich.  When asked in a Monday night town hall if he and his $562k income of a year ago were ready to ante up, he went dead left and talked about Google and Apple, and other capitalistic successes not paying any taxes.  And, he called it criminal.  Silly us, we thought “criminal” was doing something against the law.  He said nada, or not a thing, about his willingness to go along with his own proposal.

The newest duckling, Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg, told MSNBC’s Rachael Maddow last evening that this Electoral College thing, written into the Constitution by our founding fathers, was so yesterday.  And with that he shook his tail feathers and motored past the previous left.  He said, we paraphrase, that it no longer represents the true will of the United States.  We wonder how his friends and family from the great state of Indiana feel about his desire to minimize their voice?

And from the left coast, Northern California Congressman and now announced candidate as well, Eric Stalwell quacked loudest of all.  He declared that when elected he would push legislation to make all assault type rifles illegal.  He then swam into the deep, deep left side of the river by stating that if anyone refused to surrender their guns, they would be convicted of a crime and sent to prison.  To recap, he wants to make a legal part of the Second Amendment illegal and take away legally owned guns.  And, then he wants to convict those certain gun owners who won’t surrender them of illegal possession.  He suggested that other rifles and such only be stored in gun clubs, shooting ranges, and hunting clubs.   There is a duck hunting joke in here somewhere.

Our guess is that Joe Biden, who someone labeled as Creepy Uncle Joe, is waiting at a turn in the riverbank.  He is busy making sure his feathers can repel any water that his past might have taken on.   If he (when he) waddled in, the river’s course splinters.  With somewhat limited tact, he might find a different tack to the finish line.

With so many baby ducklings in the river, fresh air (time) and space (on the stage) to maneuver is tight.  The 17 month race is on. Soon enough Mother Nature will take its course and the flock will lose members.

And the mother of all ducks for now, Donald, will vigorously attempt to pluck what’s left (did you see what we just did?).

Meanwhile the race is on and the quacking is incessant.