While You Were Self-Isolating...

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandchildren (who exist), and my great-grandchildren (who don't) — the Stickies — to haunt them after they become grups or I'm deleted.

                  
                             -Image by Mylene2401 from Pixabay- 

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, and/or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering

                                                  Glossary  

                                                    About

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlerreader

"If isolation tempers the strong, it is the stumbling-block of the uncertain." -Paul Cezanne


Dear (eventual) Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies (& Gentlereaders),

Most of us, my fellow Citizens of the Republic (CORs) — with certain exceptions like the brave young scholars who participated in the nation's annual Beach Bacchanalia and some undeterrable members of the clergy and their flocks — have and are self-isolating as best we can to "flatten the curve."

Unfortunately, the Purple Press has pivoted from All the Donald All the Time to All the Donald and COVID-19 All the Time.

Much important news floats by like wispy clouds on a summer day, barely noticed. Infotainment rules.


Prior to the pandemic, the primary focus of the All the Donald All the Time coverage was about busting, and busting on, the Orange One.

The FBI was manipulated into a high powered and secret investigation authorized by the FISA court (that's supposed to be on our side) by a country run by a dick tater who enjoys posing topless and has a GDP roughly the size of the state of Texas (Russia).

-Image by Ирик Яров from Pixabay -

The FBI then manipulated the FISA court (created by the Foreign Intelligence Survalience Act) into authorizing the secret investigation of the Trump campaign.

Let the games begin!

Our nation's top law enforcement agency, an arm of the Justice Department of the United States of America, played the part of the kid that can be counted on to show up at the "my parents are out of town for the weekend" party with hard liquor and primo weed.

Result?

A global investigation by a special prosecutor that went nowhere. Price tag, $32,000,000.

Three years of congressional investigations that resulted in the Donald's impeachment — for something else. Verdict, acquitted.

Three years of Purple Press click-baiting and hysterical talking heads and hysterically hilarious press conferences and briefings.

[You have a keen eye for the obvious, your crankesty, tell us some more stuff we already know.]     

A solid foundation is crucial for a well-lived life and a well consturcted column, Dana.


While you were self-isolating the Justice Department's Inspector General...

I wonder if he has a cool uniform that he can wear on special occasions? Sorry.

The JDIG, Michael Horowitz, the gentleperson who released the big fat report in the old days (last December) detailing how the FBI had played fast and loose in FISA court to get permission to spy on the Trump campaign, has released the results of a more recent investigation.

This particular wispy cloud (see lyrical simile in paragraph three) lasted about a half a minute before it was overwritten by a virtual skywriter. Message: Isolate, Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway.

[There's something really, really wrong with you, you know that?]

The results of this new investigation? The FBI is a hot mess (forgive the technical jargon).


Very long story short...

[Thank you.]

The FBI is supposed to follow a process called the Woods Procedures. These rules, created by the FBI, were put in place back in 2001 when the FBI was called out for submitting a bunch of applications for FISA warrants that contained bogus information.

Another very long story short...

[Thanks again.]

Multiple people within both the FBI and the Justice Department are supposed to sign off on the information submitted to the FISA court to prevent illegal snooping. All aspects of this system of checks and balances are supposed to be kept track of in "Woods files" in case of problems.

[Sounds good.]

Indeed. However, after taking a careful look at a random sampling of 29 FISA warrant applications submitted between 2014 and 2019, the Inspector General discovered “errors or inadequately supported facts" in 25 of them. 

[Well, at least four of them were legit.]

Nope. The Feds can't find the four missing Woods files and can't verify that three of those four ever existed in the first place.

[Hoo-boy.]

It gets better. Yet another long story short...

[On behalf of your tens of readers I thank you yet again.]

Lawyers on The Fedrl Gummit's payroll are supposed to annually review a sampling of FISA warrant applications in every FBI field office.

[Lemme guess, this is bogus too.]

Yup. The field offices get advance notifications so they have time to clean up their applications. Lots of "errors" are discovered anyway and reported to headquarters. The FBI places the reviews in a virtual drawer and orders lunch.

[So the whole process is nothing but procedural masturbation?]

Yup. If ya didn't know better you'd think that the Feds and the news media belonged to the same exclusive Country club and the CORs are paying the membership fees and the bar tabs.

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day

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Your friendly neighborhood crank is not crazy about social media (I am a crank after all) but if you must, you can like me/follow me on Facebook. 

Cranky don't tweet.

Random Randomnesses

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandchildren (who exist), and my great-grandchildren (who don't) — the Stickies — to haunt them after they become grups or I'm deleted.

                  
                           -Image by sarajuggernaut from Pixabay-

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, and/or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering

                                                  Glossary  

                                                    About

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlerreader

"Expose yourself to as much randomness as possible." -Ben Casnocha


Dear (eventual) Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies (& Gentlereaders),

I recently checked out the reviews of a series currently running on and produced by, Amazon Prime Video, Hunters. Happily, It's not just me, it is yet another drama with a comic book sensibility. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

If you like the show, I can state with confidence that it’s me, not you. I'm old. In my defense, when I was a kid I loved comic books till just shy of my thirteenth birthday whereupon I lost interest for some reason. 

Having learned cynicism at me sainted muthers knee, it had already been a few years since I had turned my back on pretend wrestling but I've never given up on the possibility of waking up a rock star one fine morning, although I’m starting to have my doubts. 


I have this Hotmail account that I’ve had forever, my first foray in fact, into the wild, wacky, wonderful world of email. Nowadays, I use a couple of Gmail accounts for most of my email heavy lifting.

Hotmail, as you may know, seems to have a much tougher time blocking spam than Gmail does. Since I use my Hotmail account relatively lightly, this doesn’t bother me. 

In fact, it provides an ever-changing snapshot of what’s going on in the world at the moment, it also serves as a measurement tool. The hotter a given topic the more spam.

It’s not just that I’m receiving plenty of spam related to COVID-19, the overall volume of spam has increased noticeably. I wonder if spammers, aware that so many folks are self-isolating, have cranked up their spam generators.    

I’ll bet there are all sorts of Ph.D. thesi out there being written by wannabe doctors of economics/sociology/etceterology even as I write. If I were a more responsible columnist I’d go a-googlin’ to find out.

[It's theses, not thesi, there's no such word as thesi.]

Are you sure about that, Dana? Theses sounds like feces. Could it be thesises?

[Could we move on? Please?]

Certainly. As for me, I’m currently contentedly self-isolating as I'm a semi-self-isolator by nature. Given that I’m a prime candidate for the Boomer-B-Gone bug (did I mention I’m old?) this is all for the best. 

Also, I’m in possession of a little known sacred salve developed by a secret sect of Himalayan mystic masters that is protecting me from deletion.

It's starting to burn though...


Apropos of nothing above, I would like to recommend an article I recently read on the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) website to all of the many Millies and Zoomers out there. 

Note: If you have any interest in a website that will teach you the fundamentals of free-market economic systems (what we, more or less, have here in our prosperous little republic) in plain English (mostly) this site can do the job.

The article is a clear, well-written refutation to a statement made by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “An entire generation, which is now becoming one of the largest electorates in America, came of age and never saw American prosperity.”

The refutation, penned by one Alyssa Ahlgren, can be summed up via a quote from Ms. Ahlgren's article.

“We don’t have a lack of prosperity problem. We have an entitlement problem, an ungratefulness problem, and it’s spreading like a plague.”

To which I would add that we have congresspeople playing and promoting the currently popular reality show, Who's the Biggest Victim problem.  

Her article explains why this is true. More importantly, it has relieved me of the burden of writing about the same subject.

See, I’ve contemplated writing something similar for quite some time. I even had a title, America is Suffering From a Prosperity Epidemic. But considering the current popularity of the Me and Mine are Victims/Let’s Eat the Rich movement I suffer from a lack of motivation.

In my defense, I’m genetically predisposed (I've been tested) to both Procrastination and What’s the Point? syndromes. Also, as I may have mentioned elsewhere, I'm old. The older one gets the more careful one is about choosing one’s battles…or should be. 

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day

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Your friendly neighborhood crank is not crazy about social media (I am a crank after all) but if you must, you can like me/follow me on Facebook. 


Cranky don't tweet. 

May You Live In Interesting Times

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandchildren (who exist), and my great-grandchildren (who don't) — the Stickies — to haunt them after they become grups or I'm deleted.

                  
                                                       (Meme by Weibo)

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, and/or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering

                                                  Glossary  

                                                    About

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlerreader

"China is trying to become America without democracy while America is trying to become France without cheese calories." -P. J. O'Rourke


Dear (eventual) Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies (& Gentlereaders),

Obligatory disclaimer:

"May you live in interesting times" is apparently not an ancient Chinese curse. Many have investigated the origins of the phrase; a consensus remains elusive.

I begin with a digression by the garrulous geezer that authors this column, a question:

If labeling the new bug on the block that's currently causing such a cacophonous kerfuffle the Chinese virus (I much prefer Wuhan flu) is racist, why aren't the woker than thou whining about the ancient Chinese slur above?

Could it be because they're too busy trying to keep Asian kids from making everyone else's kids look dumb by hiding behind diversity quotas for college admissions?

But that's not what I'm on about at the moment.

[Pray tell us then, your crankesty, what are you on about at the moment? Your tens of readers are waiting to exhale.]

The World Health Organization.


In a column that I wrote in the distant golden age before the Wuhan flu took over our lives, the first week of last month (3/7/20), the WHO received a passing mention.

The column — Lies, Damn, Lies and statistics — was about how Cuba uses lies, damn lies, and statistics to present themselves to the world as a medical utopia that the supporters of socialized medicine love to point to and that their foes love to debunk.

The WHO...

[You just like typing that, don't you? Every time you type, the WHO, you grin like a schoolboy. It's all you can do to keep from adding a question mark every time you do it, isn't it?]

We must do our best to maintain morale in these difficult times, Dana.
Positivity is very important (even for those of us that think the word itself is very ugly).

I mentioned in that column that Cuba rents doctors out to other nations, pays 'em next to nothing, and turns a nice profit. I linked to a New York Times article that points out that the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), a division of the WHO, gets a cut for brokering the deal.


The WHO continues to cover itself in glory.

Our World in Data, a "...scientific online publication that focuses on large global problems such as poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, existential risks, and inequality." (phew!)... 

published by Oxford University, has decided that the WHO is not to be relied on according to an article on the FEE (Foundation For Economic Education) website.

[Speaking of phewness...]

Point taken. The bottom line is that almost a dozen reports by the WHO about the Wuhan flu betwixt 2/5 and 3/16/20 not only contained errors, the WHO corrected the reports without bothering to tell anyone, sowing confusion.

And then there's the senior official of the WHO (a Canadian) who accidentally stumbled into his 15 minutes of infamy by singing the praises of Emperor Xi's China and blowing off embarrassing questions by a reporter about Taiwan.

But I guess, now that I think about it, what I'm really on about...

[OMG!]

What I'm really on about, is China.

[Could you be a little more vague?]

I could indeed. I could point out that vaguer, like the equally ugly positivity, is an actual word.

Instead, I'd like to express my support for the Hong Kong dissidents and those folks calling for America to uncouple from China as much as is practically possible. To reassess all aspects of our relationship. Particularly with Emperor Xi and his minions.



As a self-identified wild-eyed free marketeer, my usual knee jerk position is that anyone in the world should be free to trade with anyone in the world as long as the rule of law in general, contract law specifically, is in place and enforceable.

Despite acknowledged problems and awareness of the law of unintended consequences many folks, including me, hoped that inviting China to participate in the economic system that reduced the number of folks living in extreme poverty by 80% from 1970 to 2006 would be a, good thing (HT: M. Stewart).

That it might help loosen the fingers of the fascists who call themselves communists — perhaps more accurately labeled as a 21st-century version of a bloodthirsty Chinese emperor and his minions — from around the throats of the Chinese people.

BIG BUT,

In consideration of the ongoing rape of Tibet, the rounding up of a 1,000,000 or so Uyghurs and placing them in concentration camps, the social credit system, putting Hong Kong booksellers on trial for selling books, being the world's number one source for the precursor chemicals the Mexican cartels use to create fentanyl, intellectual property theft, declaring the South China sea to be their private swimming hole, loaning money to other countries using the same methods and with the same intentions as the mob, pumping money into institutions of higher learning all over the planet bristling with attached strings, deliberately deceiving their own people and the rest of the world about Boomer-B-Gone... inhale (hope you're wearing your mask).

And,

Now that they're reopening the "wet markets"...

Fresh bats! Killed while you wait!

I must admit that I may have been wrong.

It's a Sputnik moment America, wake up and smell the disinfectant. 

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day    

Please scroll down to react, comment, or share. If my work pleases you I wouldn't be offended if you offered to buy me some cheap coffee.  

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Your friendly neighborhood crank is not crazy about social media (I am a crank after all) but if you must, you can like me/follow me on Facebook. 

Cranky don't tweet.