Sunday Morning Post (V2, #7) - A Cultural Defection

Is it my imagination, or is the Democratic Party hell bent on putting forth a candidate against the President who is even more out there than said President? Bernie Sanders is the clear front runner at this point for the Democratic nomination going into the Super Tuesday primaries.   Political pundits are already treating him as if he has won because, based on history, no one has been elected who did not win the first two primaries/caucuses/whatever.

History!   Who needs it?  The other side is clearly ignoring it!  Why can’t we just wing our destinies on our own with no thought of past experiences good/bad/disastrous?

It’s as if we are saying, “Okay fine!  Your guy is bent on being dictator.  Don’t make us vote for Bernie Sanders.”  Don’t get me wrong: Sanders has some attractive ideas for America, but unfortunately there’s just enough voters in this country who are scared crapless at the thought of radical change.  Sanders and his ideas don’t stand a chance in today’s political environment. 

Anyone miss Hillary yet?

Oh, right, we’re relying on logic and common sense to win over the other side, who believes gun ownership is more precious than life outside the womb itself.  It's a wonder they haven’t thought of a way to arm fetuses, but it’s early yet.  

Despite all this, the progressives are winning over converts. The latest is Clint Eastwood who had publicly announced that he is no longer a supporter of the President. He is now endorsing billionaire Michael Bloomberg for the Democratic nomination.

Yes sir!  The progressives are winning over converts one Hollywood icon at a time. At this rate we’ll be rid of the current regime sometime around 2070.

It’s nice to hear that ole Clint has seen the light/had a change of heart/woke up and smelled the Starbucks House Blend, but I’m not getting too excited about his defection.  Like the President, he tapped into the angry American citizen sentiment years ago with his Dirty Harry persona.  He only played this character in five films, but the persona persisted beyond his screen work.  This character capped off his earlier portrayals of the lone gunfighter in Leone’s spaghetti westerns, and it stuck to Eastwood like a chauvinistic American ethos. 

Also, I can’t help but to think back to Eastwood’s more recent memorable performance when he spoke at the Republican National Convention and debated President Obama’s accomplishments with an empty chair.

The chair won.

Now we know why the news of Eastwood’s cultural defection is not prompting me to break out the champagne.   

(Thank you for reading.  Oh damn!  The champagne has gone flat!)

Sunday Morning Post (V.2, #6): The Odd Week

Apologies for not posting last week, but I was otherwise detained with getting an oil change for my car. Besides, truth be told, I couldn’t come up with a worthy topic to save my life before Sunday noon (my self-imposed deadline) approached.

The week since then was both very sad and very good at this end.  The sad part: last Monday morning around 1:30a, Warrior Queen heard three “booms” in quick succession from the street in front of our house.  Three police cars, two ambulances and three fire trucks parked in front of our house as they cleaned up and investigated a one car crash across the street from our house.  WQ also heard the sound of a woman yelling loudly.  I was awakened and could see the accident from our second-floor window.  I could see a telephone pole snapped in half and the crushed remains of a vehicle just beyond the pole.  It did not look good.

I spoke to my next-door neighbor a few days later and he filled me in on the details. A car went out of control, ran over a neighbor’s mail box (first boom), snapped the telephone pole (second boom) and finally hit a large tree in another neighbor’s yard (third boom). The driver was killed and the driver’s girlfriend survived with injuries. It was her voice WQ heard trying to get to her boyfriend, although we think the police were able to talk her out of doing that.  All of the first responders did their job quickly, took the girlfriend away in an ambulance, towed the car off the neighbor’s lawn and were all gone within an hour.

In the days since then we have witnessed several groups of people stop by, park in our and our neighbor’s driveways and, at the peril of their own lives on our busy street, and pay their respects at the scene of the accident.   The groups built a highway memorial with flowers, cards and mylar balloons at the base of the tree.  We had a few rainy days this week which I would have thought would mar the memorial, but a full week later the makeshift shrine still seems to be in one piece. No one would even know what happened here (the telephone pole and mailbox were both replaced within a few days) if it were not for the memorial at the tree.

On a much brighter note was our lunch with Mistress Maddie yesterday in King of Prussia.   We all had a good filling lunch at one of the better Italian restaurants in the area, accompanied by at least one alcoholic beverage. Truth be told, two of us had more than one alcoholic beverage, but that was not enough to impair anyone’s senses.

Unfortunately, we committed a social media faux pas.  We forgot to take a photo suitable for blog posting while we ate.  Sorry everyone, but you’ll just have to take my word for it.  We had a fabulous time!

(Thank you for reading.  Thank you, Mistress, for the homemade challah bread.  It did make a good French toast.)

Sunday Morning Post (V.2, #5) - 02/02/2020

It is Groundhog Day, the annual celebration when the loopiest members of our society puts all of their weather forecasting faith in a small rodent in western Pennsylvania.  In past years Punxsutawney Phil would have the spotlight all to himself.  This year he was upstaged by Moscow Mitch.

As we all know by now Moscow Mitch emerged from this shell on Friday and did not see his shadow.  Astute observers believe this means 9 more months of government corruption, unlimited Presidential power for the immediate future, increased expansion of the swamp, and an overall malaise on such concepts as truth and justice indefinitely.  Of course, none of this is disconcerting to Mitch, because he believes his side is still winning.  The joke’s on him: the traditional Republican Party has ceased to exist.

I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would be rooting for conservatives to take back the GOP.  Yet here I am hoping that the PAC founded by George Conway (spouse of White House spokesperson Kellyanne), the recent declarations of New Republic editor William Kristol and Senator Mitt Romney (you remember him) will get the GOP back on their traditional track of fiscal conservatism and overall nastiness to those less fortunate than themselves.

Good luck, gentleman! 

So, onto another topic we have no control over: the weather and our dear rodent weather predictor.  I watched the proceedings from Punxsutawney this morning and I won’t even give out a spoiler alert.  Phil did not see his shadow and “predicted” an early spring.  This year’s prediction was fixed; fixed like a Senate impeachment trial.

Phil was pulled, willingly or not, from his mid-winter slumber, held aloft to the thousands of cheering humans who ventured to Gobbler’s Notch,  placed on top of his hutch where the dozen or so top-hatted members of the Groundhog Council encouraged/cajoled/begged the critter to move towards one of two scrolled proclamations.   Phil didn’t move a muscle, save for his jaw continually chewing on something.  Finally, a human hand from one of the council members pushed one of the scrolls towards Phil and that was deemed good enough for everyone at the scene.

And that’s how Phil predicted an early spring on this palindrome date of 02/02/2020.   

This prediction was really a no-brainer.  The daily temperatures here in Pennsylvania have been overall above average since the winter solstice.   We’ve had maybe—maybe—an inch of snow in that entire time.  There have been very below freezing days the last few months.  It’s not so much signs of an early spring as a sign that winter never bothered to show up at all!

Oh, I forgot to mention that snowflakes were falling on Phil when he made his prediction this morning.   Fix, fix, fix!

Uh? What? There’s a football game today?

(Thank you for reading.   Happy Early Spring everyone!)