We could leave it at that, you know? The messaging was interesting this morning. The re-hash on the Debate controversy continues, mostly on how the presentation was structured to enable a nice performance by one and a less so by the other. We are pleased to be retired, since we are locked up in obsolete modalities. Like what the issues are, instead of what they sound like.
Old Fashioned. The way it works now is much more fun. Living adjacent to the Potomac now, we miss the distance we enjoyed down at The Farm in the country. We read the Cowboy State Daily as an intro to the day, rather than the Washington Post that used to determine the metrics of our working days. The election makes more sense out there. One of the lead stories was about a dispute between Bryce Kirk, a leader of the Crow tribe and Time Sheehy, a Naval Academy graduate and former SEAL who is attempting to unseat the incumbent Democrat in a struggle to shift the narrow balance in the upper chamber of the Congress of the entire country.
The topic was about who was drunk at breakfast, a matter sometimes discussed at Socotra House after vigorous evenings, and directly relevant to the controversy over the Electoral College, a matter under other intense discussion in the electoral controversy.
Apparently the nature of the Constitution is a matter we need to address, or at least some folks are already addressing it. We are pleased to be retired and view the messages flying around with more amusement than concern. We had a note from Gerry, the guy who used to claim to represent us in the 11th District out in Fairfax and Prince William County when we were trying to raise families and that old fashioned stuff.
His note indicated concern that another Government Shut Down, the Next Big Issue, cost $11 Billion the last time it happened. Some of us did budget stuff for a while and it is an impressive sounding total, but you know it is now a part of comic emphasis..
Each day the government taxes a little more than $5 billion, but Gerry is talking about the $11 billion a day it spends. The Department of Health and Human Services goes through roughly $3 billion a day; Social Security is $2.5 billion and our old home at DoD runs a $1.8 billion daily tab. Daily though they spend a little more in daylight hours.
That is a six billion dollar daily shortfall, so we could save a bunch of money if we just shut the thing down for a while, but we understand there may be problems with that approach.
President Biden briefly donned a “Trump 2024” hat yesterday at an appearance at the Shanksville, PA, 9-11 Crash Site to summarize his position on the matter. The White House said that the president was in the spirit of returning to “bipartisan unity.”
We had been waiting for input from singer Taylor Swift to help us narrow our decisions as the election balloting is starting this week. She made her position clear on Instagram and we will look at it if we can remember the password.
The LA Times helped us out, since our location hereneeds from balance from the Left Coast. They said the ABC real-time fact checking during the debate “cut through the proceeding like a sharp blade.”
We take that as a new tool in the journalistic trade, which used to rely of something like objective fact. But blades are faster. Montana tribal leaders say they’re not going to ignore comments, and we are determined to join them. Further east, Ohio officials are being extra vigilant after an investigation uncovered illegal voter registration forms circulating in Springfield. They are voter registration form translated into the Haitian Creole language.
We are in favor of understandable registration, but were under the impression that being a citizen was the first part of that civic duty. Times change, don’t they? Like messaging about dietary issues that could involve neighborhood pets. That was fact-checked as a “baseless rumor spread online” claiming Haitian migrants were abducting people’s pets in Springfield order to eat them.
We think the messaging was actually aimed at women who keep felines, but it has been a message with legs. It was in the Debate and there were later reports of bomb threats at two elementary schools, City Hall, DMV license bureaus and Clark County court facilities were cleared “out of an abundance of caution.” We are relieved the FBI was called and is working with local police to help identify the threat which we assume are radical right wingers or something.
You may recall, Springfield was a target city for refugees in the “Temporary Protected Status Program (TPSP), an Executive Action program undebated in Congress admitted 300,000 Haitian migrants in June.
To give some perspective, the Cowboy State Daily is a useful reference point. The Wyoming population there is a little short of 600,000 citizens. Many are of voting age, probably about the same number as the Haitians admitted without screening in a single month.
WYO is a big state in land but not people,. They have only a single seat in the House, but two Senators. You can see some of the challenges in the consequences of pen-flourishes in the Oval Office. Eleven billion of one thing really doesn’t have the same sort of impact as 300,000 of something else, you know?
But that summed it up. VP candidate Walz was on the podium unsupervised yesterday and described candidate Harris and her time “As a young prostituter, going into that courtroom for the first time. For thepeople.”
Meanwhile, Boeing’s 33,000 production workers voted overwhelmingly to strike yesterday, with over 90% rejecting the company’s proposal of a 25% wage hike over four years, or about 6% per annum. The work stoppage is a blow to new CEO Kelly Ortberg who was brought on last month to restore faith in the company.
Trump says no more debates.
So, there we are on this Friday the Whatever. We are pleased to be retired and to be able to treat this as the comedy it has become. That can’t be, like, real, you know?
Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com