HOSPITAL DAY

Yeah I went there today. It was pretty much what I expected except for losing my car in the endless garage. I've been putting my keys and wallet in the same place when I come home for years just so I can find them. Not being able to find the car was kind of new to me. The 3 doctors all had the same ideas about my black toes. I suppose I can live with their decision. None of them had a clue about to help out the vision in my right eye. With that I will proceed to see if I can find my wallet. We are traveling in the morning and it might come in handy.

It's around here somewhere, I think.

PERHAPS A NEW LICENSE

My better half pointed out this morning that my drivers license expired a month ago. 2 California Highway Patrol officers said my Rhode Island license was no good in California at 3 am outside Monterey. The San Diego PD stopped me and gave me a ticket for a california rolling stop and were not amused when I joked about it.

In Ohio you're made to get a new license. They clip the old one just so, what? exactly? You have to wait for a month to get the new one and meanwhile you drive with the clipped one. Why? I did have to pass a vision test to get the new one this morning and that was really difficult and I may not pass it again.

That's OK I can drive to Pennsylvania and get one that's good for 16 years to life. Guess who lived in PA a lot.

THE GALAXIES COLLIDE

"I think NDAs are a way for people to hide bad things they've done," Warren said. "And I think that women should be able to speak. They need to be released from NDAs."

All NDAs hide bad things. Free them all not just the ones you think will advance your campaign.

I'm willing to bet .40 cents that Warren has some NDAs in her background.

MESS RULES

They were copied from the Royal Navy and I lived with them. No religion, no politics, no talk about wives. Bernie is going to be the democrat candidate!!!!? OK, now I'm going around knocking on doors and suggesting people here vote for Donald Trump. Yah, all them are foul candidates but srsly, people voted for Bernie? He's an avowed communist.

FREE

I like the man and incidentals like this make me like him more. A politician sent to jail for doing nothing Hillary and Bill didn't do. Justice shouldn't be so two faced..

YEP WE WENT THERE

THE MISSING VOICE

Back when I was nought but an OC we would get about 15 minutes after lunch to get haircuts and hit the little mini-exchange under Nimitz Hall at Newport. We were always there just in time to hear Paul Harvey with his Rest of the Story. I hadn't heard his voice in 30 years when I went over to this place new to me and right there was this,

WHY NOT BE HONEST?

When we read things like this in what passes for the news we are sometimes struck by the abysmal failure of the press to actually write what is real. They always seem to hit their default setting which bares very little resemblance to reality.

Many gun control advocates have denounced these chants (and the Second Amendment Sanctuary movement itself) as undemocratic and anti-American. While this reaction was predictable, voicing a collective refusal to comply with laws perceived as unconstitutional or unjust is a fundamental part of American democratic discourse.

They're not really gun control advocates. They are totalitarian anti-Constitution fascists who don't like that you own a gun and they do not care for that and insist that you play by their new rules for society. They'd like to see guns pass out of history along with women wearing long gloves and hats and for roughly the same reason. They didn't like them.

Gloves and hats are not inalienable rights and you can kiss them goodbye if you want. It seems the snowflakes are willing to piss away all of the inalienable rights Americans enjoy if they hates them. They hate free speech with a passion and view freedom of religion as nothing but a bar to all religion everywhere and God help you if you own a gun and like to shoot. I have to admit, I'm waiting for the day when antifa goes up against one of the lost with nothing left to lose who decides he's sick of them.

WHEN JOURNALISTS WERE

There are a couple of journalists I happened to read and enjoy without limit back in the days they were alive and writing. Yes yes I know, I'm dating myself but I date well enough thank you. The two I most admired were Herb Caen at the San Francisco Chronicle and Mike Royko at the Chicago Sun Times. Both of them could tell a complete story in their column every week. There is nobody in journalism today that comes close to achieving what they did week after week. The current crop are a sad bunch.

Time and a half, Herb Caen, 1992

By Herb Caen Aug. 23, 2018

CommRight, as in overtime pay. That’s what I’m supposed to collect for being here today, which is Labor Day, a full-fledged God-fearing Constitutionally sanctioned holiday dedicated to those noble men and women who, by the sweat of their hairy armpits (the men, anyways) made this country what it is today. The fact that the country today is a mess is not their/our fault. Blame has yet to be assigned but That Man In the White House is always a possibility and has been for many a long-underpaid year.

Of course, I am not writing this on Labor Day. If I were, it wouldn’t appear till tomorrow, at the earliest. With any luck it wouldn’t appear at all, but editors aren’t as tough as they used to be and they like the occasional day off, too. So, he said with a sickly supplicating smile, here we are, stuck with each other. Hi!

It’s all quite confusing. The up-to-date thing among columnists — and my, aren’t there a lot of them — is to skip writing a column when the spirit moves them, or, more precisely, doesn’t move them. Thus, on some mornings, you pick up the old rag, turn to your favorite fount of wisdom and read that so-and-so “is taking the day off.” If newspapers were accurate, which would certainly make them less entertaining, this sentence would read that so-and-so “has taken a day off” — which one, exactly, we may never know — that that’s why his or her piece is not in place.

---

The line “Herb Caen Is Taking the Day Off” has never appeared in this sterling journal. I don’t say that proudly. In these enlightened times, this could mean I’m monomaniacal, driven, insecure, deadline-ridden and a good dancer. All these things are true, but the real reason is that I am from the old school. OK, make that the Very Old School. I was broken into “the game” to believe that the deadline was the holiest of holies, holier even than the Grateful Dead or the Republican Party. “Miss a Deadline, Go to Jail” was inscribed on the bumper sticker of my mind, a well-turned line if I do say so myself. Do I hear a second?

One of my all-time favorite bumper stickers was “The Marquis de Sade Was a young Whippersnapper.” The young whippersnappers who are granted columns today think nothing of missing deadlines sadistically or otherwise. It isn’t part of their work ethics, or perhaps they weren’t reared properly, a reflection on their “family values.” The irreducible minimum, I suppose, is one column a week and I know a young whippersnapper who decided to take that day off. He thought it was a funny idea. Got away with it, too.

I’m not saying I haven’t taken a lot of days off, but I write a column anyway because it’s in my contract. Veteran readers say chidingly that “I can always tell when you didn’t write the column,” as though I have this large staff of bad writers who can turn out the old column when this even worse writer isn’t in the mood. Seriously, friends, hack writers like us are not allowed to have moods. It’s not in the job description. At deadline time, “don’t get it right, get it written,” as the boozy old reporters used to say.

---

As I near the twilight of a lackluster career, I can say without dissembling more than usual that I’m proud to be a columnist, no matter what my batting average. As a baseball manager might out it, “He’s a feisty little guy who can play hurt and put out 100 percent every day.” Yeah, but 100 percent of what? Well, 100 percent of stuff to fit the space, all the way down to the bottom of the page. Sure, I make errors because I’m a feisty little guy who goes after every ball. Like fertilizer, I cover a lot of ground. Sure, I may be one step slower but (that’s enough baseball metaphors — Ed.).

It used to be that becoming a daily columnist meant you’d reached the pinnacle of success in starting as a copy boy (now known as copy person or “associate”), graduating to cub reporter, doing a stint on the copy desk (to this day I admire a well-turned headline almost more than anything in the paper), covering the police beat, the state house, executions and so on. Finally, when they didn’t know what else to do with you, they gave you a column or fired you. “Kid’s got a certain style.” “Yeah, but he makes a lot of mistakes.” “That’s what I mean.”

---

Well, I don’t know why Labor Day turned into True Caenfessions Day, but a lot of today’s kids who start out at the top with a column owe their jobs to me. Yeah, me, old Herb, his finger flying over the keyboard of his beloved Loyal Royal and calling for copy paper from copy boys who never heard of copy paper and never saw a carbon copy. I said “finger” because I still type with my right index finger and two on the left hand and turn out sloppy copy.

Once upon a time there were only a few columns in this town, so when I defected to the rival morning paper, a goodly group of readers defected also. Upon my return eight years later, the publisher assured me, “That’ll never happen again. One columnist won’t ever make that much difference in circulation. I’m loading this paper with columnists and if one leaves, who’ll care?” That’s why the old Chron was eventually described as having “more columns than a Greek temple.” Some of them are quite terrific, too.

---

If you’re still with me, Happy Labor Day. I used to put the knock on this holiday as sounding not very festive, but it’s better than no holiday at all. The good thing is that you don’t really have to do anything special about Labor Day. It doesn’t call for a certain kind of food or costume, gifts or rituals. It’s just a plain old day off for people who work every day. Well, most of ’em, anyway.

HOMELESS CRUSADE IS DO-GOODERS` FLOP

Mike RoykoCHICAGO TRIBUNE

During a recent holiday party, a sensitive and refined young woman was going on about the plight of the homeless and how upset she was that society was unable to deal with this terrible problem.

My instincts told me to drift to a different part of the house, where someone might be talking about whether it was inevitable that Mike Ditka would try to strangle Mike Tomczak. But that would have been rude of me. Besides, she was standing directly in front of the liquor table.

''Why can`t something be done for these unfortunate people?'' the young woman asked. There was a silence, then I realized she was looking at me and expected an answer.

I resisted the urge to say: ''And why can`t something be done to make you stand over by the platter of chicken livers wrapped in bacon so you don`t block convenient access to the booze?''

Instead, I just shrugged, and she went on about the heartlessness of those who have more than they need and refuse to share with those who have little.

''I read a story,'' she said, ''about some men who live on the lower level of Michigan Avenue and sleep under pieces of old carpet. In this weather, can you imagine?''

I couldn`t take it anymore. So I said: ''You know whose fault that is, don`t you? It`s your fault.''

''Are you trying to be funny?'' she said. ''If you are, this isn`t a funny subject.''

I said: ''You are a do-gooder, and the do-gooders must share the blame for the plight of the homeless. In fact, do-gooders might be the single worst culprits. It was their idea to tear down the flops and empty the loony bins.'' ''The what?'' she said. Her question confirmed what I had suspected. For all her bleeding-heartism, she knew little about modern urban social history. So I explained.

There used to be long stretches of dumpy hotels called ''flop houses.''

These were seedy joints where a person with a drinking disorder (formerly known as a wino or alky) could rent a bed for the night for a minimal price. In other words, a place to come in out of the cold and flop. That`s why they called them flop houses.

There were clusters of flop houses in different parts of town. Clusters of flops were known as a ''Skid Row.''

These neighborhoods didn`t look nice but they had many conveniences: low- cost diners, liquor stores that sold moderately priced pints of skull-popper, and a choice of cheap flops. So a wino could panhandle a few hours a day and then return to Skid Row and find the basic necessities: food, drink and housing. And if you got sick, a police wagon would come and haul you to the County Hospital for free medical care.

But Skid Row offended do-gooders. In the old days it was the various abstinence groups. Then came the social engineers who accused flop house owners of being misery-profiteers. And they constantly demanded that the flop houses and Skid Rows be torn down. They said such blight was intolerable.

They didn`t know it, but they had quiet allies-real estate speculators who could look into the future and figure that land would be worth bigger bucks some day.

And thanks to the do-gooders, it happened. The city`s biggest, most centrally located Skid Row was demolished. The winos and alkies no longer had to plunk down a buck or so for a smelly cot. Madison Street had been purged and the goodness of the do-gooders triumphed.

The only problem was that all those winos no longer had a cheap place to flop on a cold winter night.

This happened in cities all over the country. And it`s one of the reasons why there are so many chronic drunks sleeping outdoors instead of indoors. The do-gooders got rid of the indoors.

At the same time they were eliminating the cheap flops, the do-gooders had another outburst of reformer-zeal: state mental hospitals. They thought it was terrible that people who were mentally ill, but harmless to others, should be cooped up in bleak institutions.

These institutions (nut houses or loony bins, as the insensitive used to call them), were poorly staffed, oppressive, crowded, miserable places. They did little to cure the crazies. All they did was keep them penned up.

That wasn`t entirely untrue. There weren`t enough shrinks, nurses and attendants. There wasn`t enough tax money to hire them. Therefore, many institutions provided little more than food and shelter.

The do-gooders found a solution. Throw open the doors and let them out. At least those who weren`t dangerous, which was the vast majority. Those who needed it would be provided with out-patient treatment.

On paper, it sounded good. Except there weren`t enough clinics to provide all that out-patient treatment. And families often slammed the doors on their deranged relatives. The mentally ill couldn`t work and support themselves. Details, details. So they wandered the streets. And they`re still wandering.

The sensitive, refined young woman finally interrupted and said: ''But all the homeless aren`t alcoholics or mentally ill.''

That`s right. Only about 75 percent of them, if you include the crack heads and other druggies.

''Well, something should be done,'' she said, finally moving toward the chicken liver tray.

That`s right, something should be done. But next time, leave bad enough alone.

Copyright © 2020, Chicago Tribune

This was on my refrigerator in San Diego for 10 years.  From these you might get some idea of  how I used to read the papers. They used to have a lot of what was good and interesting in them with a soupçon of bitters. I get the bitters. The Wall Street Journal doesn't come close and the NYT is just a joke

AND ABOUT TIME

This idiotic game we've been playing along with is just about over. Letting men compete against girls and declaring them all girls is one of the stupider things I've encountered over the last 58 years. It's right up there with letting perverts who identify as women into the girls locker room and restrooms. Finally, they are fighting back.

That a concept so idiotic on its face must be referred to the Courts is a sad commentary on the state of the American political class. They caved into the zealot 2% and let them run roughshod over the rights of girls and women because...... Because what dammit! We used to have perfectly good terms for boys that wanted to be girls. We called them cross dressers and fags. Either was descriptive and accurate and neither intruded on the rights of actual girls or women.

I used to fly with my little girl and it was with little trepidation that I sent her off into the ladies room at the airports because I had no fear any harm could come to her there. I'm not sure how that works for single dads anymore. I can't even imagine how it works in high school locker rooms.

If there is any justice the courts will sort it out properly and it will open the door for thousands of women everywhere to sue the schools and other polities for damages.

EXUBERANCE

Some people have it, most don't. It's always a delight to see it.

SUNDAY READING

You could do worse than read this article about science and doomsday. The author describes a period of recent past history that we once held within our grasp and let slip away because the ones who knew it failed to pass it on via the schools and education establishment. I don't blame the practitioners so much as I blame the educrats who destroyed American education following World War II.

The United States was once known for extraordinary competence. Consider the D-Day invasion, the Manhattan Project, the Berlin Airlift, the moon landing: In example after example, the United States government—not the private sector, note—mobilized vast talent to overcome historically unprecedented military, economic, technological, and governance challenges. So widely-known was our government for competence that to this day, we’re the object of conspiracy theories worldwide. Whatever we do, however dumb and cack-handed, is presumed to be deliberate, because so mighty a superpower as the United States could not possibly be capable of screwing up in such stupid ways. Just yesterday I was assured that the CIA had unleashed the Wuhan coronavirus—cui bono, after all? How could I be so naive as to think it a mere coincidence that the virus just spontaneously emerged near a virus research facility?

It's a long read so start with a fresh cup of coffee and maybe a nice large slice of crumb cake.

SAD BUT TRUE

Our buddies in the 5 eyes have been getting staked by the enemy. Yes the enemy is a befuddled mass of incompetent slackers and boobs but they have the power and they appear eager to use it to silence dissent at any price.

The nation’s newspapers are owned by a small group of people and companies. Many of the major television and radio stations are under charter with the U.K. government. Book publishing companies are too afraid to publish a single word that goes against the progressive orthodoxy. The ability to congregate and hold rallies is tightly controlled by government bodies. And now, the last realm of freedom, the last place in which like-minded souls can exchange ideas, learn, and express themselves to their fullest is about to fall under the Orwellian control of an agency that will not even be accountable to the government itself.

The Ministry of Truth is here.

What Orwell predicted so long ago in his novel 1984 has come to pass. Britain has long been without any sort of real legal justice system and how they justify giving Scots free medicine, free college educations, free dentistry and gouging the English for all that is something I've never understood. But now they've decided that an Englishman will do best by holding his tongue and not waving any fingers over any keyboards lest he/she set off the Ministry of Truth and get sentenced to the gulag.

The English aren't alone in this. New Zealand quietly slipped into socialism decades ago and never re-emerged. Their latest gambit grabbing guns is just one tentacle of the liberal beast that rules the kiwis and Oz is perhaps even worse off. Canada started going down the drain when they got their Star Chambers to indict Steyn on speech issues. I can't say America is any better since his case against Mann has been locked up in the DC courts for something like 7 years now with no resolution in sight.

I'm waiting for the tech denizens of the deep to surface briefly and invite all the socialists to bite them before heading once more into the deep. Srsly, you're Bezos or the Google and some European polity or all of them via the EU tells you to play by their rules or else....... I'm pretty sure I'd invite them to the World. If you don't like what netizens are doing online with my stuff feel free to snuff it within your borders but don't bother to ask me to snuff it for you. "You don't pay me enough to care what you want or legislate in your little banana republic."

Who in the opening days of the 21st century thought we'd be referring to European countries as banana republics?

CHIEF JUSTICE

In his closing remarks of the impeachment trial Chief Justice Roberts thanked the Senate for their support as he attempted "to carry out ill-defined responsibilities." He then invited them to cross the street where: "we keep the front row of the gallery in our courtroom open for members of Congress who might want to drop by to see an argument - or to escape one."

From Clinton's impeachment, Chief Justice Rehnquist adapted a line from an opera: "I did nothing in particular and I did it very well."

Roberts clerked for Rehnquist. It's good to see a bit of humor dribble out of the top court in the land.

ON SPYING IN 5G AND OTHER STUFF

I get a real kick out of all the panic about China's new 5G networks rolling out across the civilized world. It's a hoot to hear and read about all the alarmists predicting that any Chinese made technology like that will of course be filled with back doors and trojans and tigers and bears and dragons and thus far too dangerous since it risks compromising stuff, even encrypted stuff.

Well as we know from Mr. Snowden, the enormous leaker now cowering in Russia and wishing he could come home and explain how he leaked 17,000 Top Secret NSA files to wikileaks who promptly published them, the NSA spent decades working with all the America manufacturers of servers and computers and all shipments being sent to certain countries were first routed to NSA facilities where they could be outfitted with back doors, trojans and spy software of the first order. Somehow grasping at our pearls at the thought that the Chinese might do the same is a little over the top for me.

On that topic, the idiocy of all the pundits now punditing about the insult of Russians interfering in US elections is a hoot. That's what USAID does, thats what the CIA does, that's what idiots in things like Radio Free Europe did. It's what 17 Americans organizing the Egyptian populace to resist (at least I hope that was their intent) the election of the Muslim Brotherhood were doing only to be arrested and sentenced to jail forever for interfering in Egypt's elections. One of them was an American Sr politician's kid so we moved heaven and earth to get him out. I wonder if the other 16 are still languishing in Egyption prisons. At least the damned Taliban sent back the morons they caught preaching the gospel hoping to get muslims to accept Christ where apostacy is certain death by stoning. Sure they made a big deal out of it but then they sent them back unharmed shortly before we invaded Afghanistan.

THE DANGER OF HIRING INCOMPETENT CRONIES

We know why democrats always hire incompetent computer programmers and start-ups run by their friends and political allies as they try to implement various imperial directives but I would have thought at some point, since it inevitably results in a miserable failure, why do they keep on doing it?

I liked this from the link.

“I’m going to try and download every movie ever made, and you’re going to try to sign up for Obamacare, and we’ll see which happens first” – Jon Stewart challenging Kathleen Sebelius (former Secretary of Health and Human Services) to a race.

SOME PHOTO REVIEW

DEMOCRATIC RESPONSE TO STATE OF THE UNION

Captured live as Pelosi stands behind President Trump and rips up her copy of the State of the Union speech.



Classless and basically a statement that she doesn't believe in the things discussed in the speech. I think it was a very stupid thing to do at that moment.

All the democrats had to do to win was not act crazy. The shenanigans in Iowa are showing that they can't even pull it together enough to actually run a vote on their home turf without screwing it up. OTOH I think the few sane ones remaining know they have no hope of winning in the Fall with Sanders as their candidate and are willing to do any kind of low underhanded thing to make sure he doesn't get the Party nomination.

I REALLY MISS MTV

HAD TO COMMENT

NASA has always had some truly remarkable people. We lost a few on this day.

ON IDIOCY

You get old enough and you get to watch history repeat itself again and again and again.

The cunning authors of this piece are probably 14.

Chinese Communist Party agents are using our suicidal pathologies — blind worship of “diversity,” naive exaltation of “cultural exchange” programs, and reckless surrender of our education system — against us for economic espionage, intellectual property theft and world dominance. While Beltway blowhards rail against foreign interference in our elections, Beijing’s hijacking of our classrooms ensues with hardly a peep of political resistance.

What she doesn't see is that the theft doesn't cost this nation anything and leads to a better world for the peasants out there who can't, for instance, pay $40,000 a month for a life saving drug. To be honest few can but the way we've screwed up pharma means we all pay.

I was talking with my way better half this morning who works for a man who routinely does/did business in China and she told me how he made it to the countryside once a little while ago and learned something I could have told him 10 years ago. 3rd world cities are no picnic but you step out of them and you step back 300 years in time. Bucolic is a word best reserved for places in western Europe, Japan and South Korea. The rest of the world has barely caught up with electricity and most people in America don't know that.  They seem to think it's all like California. When I was young I took a bus from Rota to Cadiz and it went through southern Spain and it was like going back to the 16th century.

At one point I thought Castro's policy of sending hundreds of Cuba's doctors to the 3rd world to gain power and influence through communism was a joke. They're not at all what we think of as doctors but they were worlds better than the witchdoctors they replaced.

Knowledge is fungible. We can make it and trade it all day for centuries and profit by it. The people that think we're in some sort of war with China would profit if they read some history. China has a history going back thousands of years, much like Egypt. Egypt was overrun by islam and history stopped for them in the 8th century but China isn't going to let that happen.