Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

A.K.A. AOC

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

This is: A weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids and my great-grandkids — the Stickies — to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — A Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. Viewing with a tablet or a monitor is highly recommended for maximum enjoyment.  

About

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader  

"I wake up every day, and I'm a Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx. Every single day." -Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

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

On Memorial Day this year, I found myself culling outdated news stories (olds stories?) I'd placed in the e-folder where I set aside articles that might inspire a column. 

A couple-three articles were about the apparent case of PTSD inflicted on the inspirational young congressperson from New York City, Alexandra Ocasio- Cortez (AOC), when a band of Viking-led insurrectionists attempted to overthrow the currently disunited United States of America.

{Ain't she the one that successfully led the effort to stop Amazon from building a facility near her congressional district that would've created 40,000 jobs?}

Yeah, Dana, why?

{No reason.}   

Anyways, it reminded me that there are all sorts of heroes we should remember on Memorial day, not just the 1,100,000+ soldiers who died fighting in systemically racist America's wars.

{Oh yeah?}

Oh yeah. Take AOC for example. Traumatized by last January's insurrection she's now in therapy, and yet continues representing her constituents as their Swamp Delegate in the House of Representatives

According to the article linked to above, which is from the cleverly disguised Business Insider — a Wokie website that covers all sorts of topics including an occasional article about business — on 1/6/21 when all hell broke loose in D.C., she hid in a bathroom when the mob broke into the Capitol building, many chanting her name.

 

According to the article, which reports that according to a different article on the Independent website, AOC, speaking on a radio show (Latino USA), said that...

Why are you laughing, Dana?

{No reason, guess I'm just in a good mood, go 'head.}

She said that "the insurrection was deeply traumatizing for many members of Congress, who effectively 'served in war'." 

Dana, stop it, what's wrong with you? 

{I'm sorry, what else did she say?}  

Well, let's see... Oh, okay, "After the 6th, I took some time and it was really [Delegate] Ayanna Pressley when I explained to her what happened to me, like the day of, because I ran to her office and she was like, 'you need to recognize trauma'...". My emphasises. 

{May I ask a question?}

Sure. 

{Why did you render the likes above in bold?}

As part of a good faith effort on my part to point out that inserting too many likes into a conversation can make any given he/she/they sound like their vocabulary stopped expanding when they were like, 16, while trying not to, like, inadvertently trigger anyone.

{Right. I have another question. Is it true that Ms. AOC wasn't in the Capitol Building at the time of the Viking-led insurrection?} 

Well, while technically correct that's highly misleading! This article from the Associated Press tells the whole story. In fact, in the Instagram Live video she posted outlining the horrific story for her follower's edification she said... well, here's a quote from the article.

“For you all to know, there’s the Capitol Hill complex,” she told her Instagram followers. “But members of Congress, except for, you know, the speaker and other very, very high ranking ones, don’t actually work in a building with the dome. There’s buildings like right next to the dome, and that’s where our actual offices are.” My emphasis again.

A building with the dome?

{The Capitol Building, don't be a jagoff!}

To be factual, Ms. AOCs office is actually across the street from the Capitol Building, but it was evacuated by a downright rude and disrespectful Capitol Police officer who frightened Ms. AOC. 

{Gave her a case of the vapors?}

Look, she was in her office and minding her own when he banged on the door and she hid in the toilet bathroom. She heard him yell, "Where is she?" She came out after her legislative director told her it was a cop. He didn't announce himself, appeared to be angry, and told them they needed to go to another building. 

Also, he didn't say exactly where they should go or escort them there, which made Ms. AOC feel unsafe. 

{You think he might've been preoccupied with evacuating the building? I wonder why they didn't like, just ask him?}

Addendum: On a related note...

The Viking mentioned above, Jacob Chansley — aka, Jake Angley, the QAnon Shamon — didn't actually lead a merry band of wackadoos into the Capitol Building, or the office building across the street, on 1/6/21. No leader has been discovered and no guns were rounded up and displayed for the cameras like the way they are after a drug bust. No bombs needed to be safely detonated. No zip ties were found and all but one casualty died from natural causes.

Mr. Chansley has been denied bail and is locked up while awaiting trial lest he flees to Norway. So are a bunch of others.  

Richard Barnet, the guy that secured his 15 minutes of fame posing for a picture while sitting at Nancy Pelosi's desk, got out on bail in April. He's charged with trespassing, disorderly conduct, and possessing a dangerous or deadly weapon — a walking stick that also can be used as a stun gun, that had no batteries. 

Finally, the officer that killed Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran shot while climbing through a broken window during the melee has been cleared, and never identified.

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down to share this column or access previous ones. If you find my work pleasing you should buy me some cheap coffee with PayPal or plastic.    

Feel free to comment/like/follow/cancel/troll me on Cranky's Facebook page. I post my newest column there on Saturdays and interesting other stuff on other days.

Cranky don't tweet.

I Was Cancelled (For 24 hrs.)

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

This is: A weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids and my great-grandkids — the Stickies — to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — A Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. Viewing with a tablet or a monitor is highly recommended for maximum enjoyment.  

About

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader  

"If you can live on rice and beans you're uncancellable because you're always rich relative to your needs.” -Eric Weinstein

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

Recently, Google, which I affectionately refer to as the Goog, canceled one of my columns for 24 hours. In fact, for some of those hours, my website warned a given he/she/they that if they accessed my site they might be in cyber danger.  

{Is that like stranger danger? They probably think you're just another one of the squillion H. sapiens that use their blogging software and don't realize you're a world-famous columnist.} 

Having said unkind things once or a hundred times about the Goog, the other tech oligarchs, and their Wokie minions, I assumed it was something I said.

{Well, privately-owned companies do have the right to restrict speech based on the clearly stated rules of the obscure, slippery, and ever-shifting rules laid out in the fine print.}

Indeed... and I'll come back to that.

As it turns out my temporary canceling, I was told, was because: "Your content has violated our Malware and Viruses policy." This was because of the content of a specific post titled Show Me the (Covid Relief) Money! 

Criminy! What if I've run afoul of the Goog and The Fedrl Gummit? I ran around Casa de Chaos turning off lights and closing curtains. I was about to push the panic button and make a run for the armory when I realized we never got around to installing the panic button and we don't have an armory.

The post in question was temporarily disappeared. I found out later it was covertly spirited to a black site and not-tortured using the same methods the CIA (used to use?) to not-torture transnational Jihadies. 

The next day I received an email from the Goog stating that "Upon review, the post has been reinstated." Apparently, a drunk algorithm made a mistake. While the column now has PTSD, it has willingly returned to my site.

BIG BUT. 

I have to re-publish it (click on a button) to make it re-accessible to the public thereby confusing my millions of regular readers who have already read it. I think I shall hold on to it for now thus turning it into a priceless collector's item.  

In the meantime, I've managed to get it waitlisted for a program at Johns Hopkins that has had much success (no, seriously) at treating PTSD and other disorders with "magic mushrooms." Rumors that I'm also trying, as the author of the piece, to have myself admitted to the program are absolutely true.

Please send emails of support to help me pitch Johns Hopkins. In the meantime, I've copied all of my columns onto flash drives that are stored in safe deposit boxes here, there, and of course, in Switzerland. 

Now, as to the notion that the Goog, the other members of the tech oligopoly (and even the squillion wanna be/wish we were tech oligarchs) don't have to respect free speech because they're privately owned, I call bonkercockie.

Legally speaking, from what I was able to ascertain from a solid ten minutes of deep googlin', the legal consensus is that social media platforms are private companies and can censor what people post on their websites as they see fit.

However, there are myriad legal reasons and myriad laws at myriad levels of jurisdiction that prevent a given Woolworth's lunch counter from refusing to serve me just because I self-identify as an Afro-American lesbian named Coco, who in my mind's eye, could pass for Hale Berry's sister.

And Woolworth's is a privately owned company.

{I'm guessing myriad is the word of the week? It's a shame you can't find a way to get paid for that the way others get paid for inserting product links into what looks like innocent prose.  

And by the by, legally speaking, you're comparing Esopus Spitzenberg apples to Cara Cara oranges, but I don't know where to even start... and Woolworth's has gone out of business.}

Are you sure? Perhaps that's why I can't find 99¢ 45s anymore. 

I realize I've compared apples to oranges. 

I was merely cleverly setting the stage for a big finish in which I marshall all sorts of dazzling, highly technical legal arguments as to why big tech shouldn't be allowed to censor speech but my research left me so dazed and confused I had to go lie down.

So permit me to insert a suffice it to say and say that given the monopolistic power of the Goog, Facebook, Twitter, etceterer, if they don't/won't find a way to resolve the problem (unlikely), they should be regulated like a public utility.

Given that they are or are becoming the primary information conduit for most Citizens of the Republic (and make lotza dough by selling data about some of us to others of us) they should have to follow first amendment case law just like (in theory anyway) The Fedrl Gummit does, and serve everyone at the information lunch counter.

{But that would require Congress to pass appropriate legislation.}

Indeed... Never mind. 

I think I feel a migraine coming on. Sorry to waste your time, gentlereaders. God help us, every-one.

On the other hand...

She He/she/they wore a glove, as my late father-in-law would've said. 

As I've pointed out elsewhere this cacophonous kerfuffle could be easily reduced to a tempest in a teapot any time the oligarchs wanted. For example, require users prove who they are and register under their real names.

{What's next, having to have an ID to vote?} 

But they would lose money once advertisers only had to pay for access to actual eyeballs and not virtual ones, and lawyers could sue malevolent and irresponsible eejits.

Howsabout a tightly monitored and controlled Google, FaceBook, YouTube, Twitter, etceterer paired up wide open, watch where you step, versions for grups only? 

{There you go again, people would have to prove they're 18...}

In exchange, I'd let 'em use as many pseudonyms as they pleased and post whatever insanity they like. Trolls in paradise. But I'm thinking they should have to prove that they're 28. 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down to share this column or access previous ones. If you find my work pleasing you should buy me some cheap coffee with PayPal or plastic.    

Feel free to comment/like/follow/cancel/troll me on Cranky's Facebook page. I post my newest column there on Saturdays and interesting other stuff on other days.

Cranky don't tweet. 

    

  

Pittsburgh, Pa.

 A Mr. Cranky's Neighborhood episode

Image by Hands off my tags! Michael Gaida from Pixabay

This is: A weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids and my great-grandkids — the Stickies — to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — A Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. Viewing with a tablet or a monitor is highly recommended for maximum enjoyment.  

About

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader  

"I am a friend of the working man, and I would rather be his friend, than be one." -Clarence Darrow

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

This column/letter is about Mr. Cranky's original neighborhood, my hometown actually, Pittsburgh (with an h), Pa. Pittsburgh, by the by, is the hometown of Mr. Rogers. Cosmic coinkydink or cosmic consilience?

Anyways... The Burgh just turned its back on 1,000 full-time, union construction jobs and kissed off 3,000 steelworkers.

I was skimming a local business publication that serves the Hootervillle, Ohio region and came across a story about U.S. Steel canceling a $1,500,000,000 project to update its Mon Valley Works.

If you're not a Yinzer you're probably unaware that the Mon Valley Works isn't, technically speaking, actually in Pittsburgh, it's spread out across an adjacent "borough" or three. 

Locals know, more or less, where the borders are. But to most out-of-towners (and many Yinzers), lost and/or dazed and confused even with the help of GPS as they try and navigate the City of Bridges — and one-way streets, dead-ends, and death-defying hills — it's all Pittsburgh. 

To me, the Mon Valley Works is a perfect (and rare) example of the enormous steel-making complexes that were all over my hometown when I was a clip-on tie-wearing, daydreaming, Catholic grade school kid gazing out of schoolroom windows when sister Mary McGillicuddy was expounding on the esotericities of English grammar.

Mon Valley, by the way, is short for Monongahela Valley, named after one of the Burgh's famous three rivers, the semi-mighty Monogahela. 

{You just like writing the word Monongahela.}

Monongahela? Why yes, Dana, I do.  

Now, although the Mon Valley Works is about 100 miles southeast of Hooterville, the Hooterville region is the former home of all sorts of former enormous steel-making complexes, pieces/parts of which are still hanging on. The majority are now rusting hulks or hopeful empty fields. 

So the American steel industry is of interest to we flatlanders. There's no shortage of my fellow geezers/geezerettes that used to make steel, some of them while employed by U.S. steel.

Second paragraph of the article by Marc Levey of the Associated Press (AP):

"Project permits initially stalled by the pandemic never came through, U.S. Steel has added capacity elsewhere, and now it must shift its focus to its goal of eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from its facilities by 2050..."

Well, I thought, that sucks sweaty socks, and moved on. 

Recently, however, I came across a different article about the same subject; I confess I can't remember where. That article placed the blame squarely on regulators at the Allegheny County Health Department, the country wherein Pittsburgh is located.   

I returned to the original article and read it slowly, carefully, and in its entirety. 

Hoo-Boy...

From paragraph 17, "...the Allegheny County Health Department halted the permitting process because of the challenges the coronavirus posed to the public comment process."

Looong story short (based on the article in question and a bit of googlin'). 

Two years ago, in May 2019, U.S. Steel announced plans to turn the Mon Valley works into a primary source "...for high-strength, lightweight and flexible steel that feeds the automotive sector" via a process that was the first of its kind in the U.S.

The plan also included partially shutting down some of a highly polluting, locally controversial coke-producing operation, and adding a new emission control system. 

A thousand construction workers and three years later 3,000 current steelworkers would be breathing a little easier, literally and figuratively.

Fast forward to 4/30/21. U.S. steel announces that while the project updating the coke plant will go forward, the rest is canceled. 

In the last two years, U.S. Steel spent $170,000,000 on the project before deciding to give up. From paragraph 17: "...the Allegheny County Health Department halted the permitting process [a year ago] because of the challenges the coronavirus posed to the public comment process. My emphasis.  

Apparently, there was no possible way to gather public comments in the midst of the Wuflu Plague. 

County officials are accepting no blame; the usual suspects are pointing fingers at each other. Allegheny County and Pittsburgh are Democratic strongholds. My old man's Democratic party (he died in '69) would've never allowed this to happen.

My father's Democratic party, the working man's person's party, is now the Depublican party — often hard to distinguish from the Republicrats, and now the party of tech oligarchs, teacher's unions, and Wokies.   

 

What Have You Learned, Dorothy's?

My Dear Stickies, firms and entrepreneurs are about results. Without a facility and/or profits, there is no business. Regulators (bureaucrats) — competent, incompetent, well-meaning, or otherwise — are all about process.

No one who works for the Allegheny County Health Department will experience having their lives or paychecks disrupted because of this cluster suck. FYI: A cluster suck (sucks sweaty socks on steroids) is worse than a... well, you're likely familiar with the other version.   

Although the county and the city are both Depublican strongholds local Depublican officials will not pay a price. One-party rule, particularly by the party that has abandoned the working person, doesn't work very well in the Rustbelt. 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down to share this column or access previous ones. If you find my work pleasing you should buy me some cheap coffee with PayPal or plastic.    

Feel free to comment/like/follow/cancel/troll me on Cranky's Facebook page. I post my newest column there on Saturdays and interesting other stuff on other days.

Cranky don't tweet.