Desperately Speaking…

Democrats! For the sake of everything dear, GET OUT IN FRONT OF THIS! Start saying that Republicans will be the reason Kyiv falls! Start saying that they are traitors! It’s not as if these are lies! It’s not like you control both houses of Congress or something! Start playing like you have some skin in the game. Otherwise we’re going to start wondering who ELSE Putin has bought off. Seriously, earn your pay, twerps. Paint the Republicans with the image of Kyiv’s fall the way the Republicans painted the Democrats with Saigon’s fall…or you’ll get blamed for it.

22 February, 2022 Update: I can’t find the article anymore, but I read an article yesterday that reported that Biden had actually been selectively revealing information about Putin’s plans in order to take away the element of surprise and derail them. This is great. I had been complaining more about the federal government’s’ seeming milksop reaction to the invasion.

20 March, 2022 Update: I knew it, McConnell reads my blog. No kidding around, MOST Republicans are backing Ukraine in the war, which is good — but don’t forget that they backed Trump backing Putin right up to and for the beginning of the war. They just want to keep their phony baloney jobs. Read this: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-policy-republicans-trump/

In the Beginning…

An incomplete list of ubiquitous items from my life that either are now extinct, or close to it. Items in italics were local to where I grew up.

  1.  The Toranado (Pontiac), a car as big as a cruise ship.
  2. The Duster car (Chevrolet).
  3. Phelan’s Pharmacy
  4. Charles Variety store
  5. Sorkins Dept. store (Livingston Manor, NY)
  6. Mattel Hand held simple LED video games:  Racing, Football, Sub Chase, Merlin
  7. Radio Shack TRS-80 Microcomputer.
  8. Carson Pirie Scott dept. Store
  9. Platters and Pipes store (first job).
  10. Bressler’s Ice Cream store (2nd job).
  11. Writing your SS# on your check when cashing it.
  12. Using checks-for paying bills and getting cash
  13. Credit Card stamper
  14. The Smoking Section –EVERYWHERE:  planes, busses, trains, restaurants, 
  15. The little toys that Phillips 66 stations gave out.  They were cute plastic creatures that would hook to the outsides of cars.  One was a butterfly.
  16. Black and white TVs.
  17. Clock-radios.
  18. Schwinn Typhoon.  
  19. MACOS (5th grade)  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man:_A_Course_of_Study
  20. Banana seats on bikes (like the Schwinn Fastback)
  21. The VW Rabbit& the Chevy Citation (first cars I drove)
  22. Hand held stop watches.
  23. THE telephone, instead of MY telephone.
  24. The Reference Librarian at the library.
  25. Encyclopedias (that is, the old fashioned “Google.”) 
  26.   Hi fidelity stereo systems:  Amp, pre amp, tuner, turntable cassette player, reel to reel tape player.
  27. Albums sold on 8-track.
  28. Albums sold on cassette tape.
  29. Long Playing Albums (33RPM).
  30. Single albums with a b side (45 RPM).
  31. VHS and Beta cassettes for video tapes. and machines.
  32. Video tapes and video taped movies.
  33. Saturday morning cartoons.
  34. The big fall preview for Saturday morning TV shows.
  35. The Double Decker Kids, Hong Kong Phooey, the Bugs Bunny Road Runner 1 ½ hour long show, The Pink Panther and the Ant and the Aardvark.Magilla Gorilla, the Banana Splits.
  36. Aluminum lunchboxes with  matching thermoses, with cool cartoon live action  characters on them;  Fat Albert, Kung Fu, The Double Decker kids, Starsky and Hutch  These were NEVER refrigerated.
  37. Record needles (aka the “stylus”).
  38. Record cleaning tools:  anti-static gun, cleaner, fluid.  Cassette head cleaning fluid and swabs.
  39. It was a normal thing for my 6th grade teacher  to let me and some friends  walk a block away to the Junior high school each school afternoon so we could play in the 7/8th grade band.  We were completely by ourselves until we got to the junior high school.
  40.   Carburetors (replaced by fuel injection systems).
  41.   Big Blue Marble, Zoom, Mulligan Stew, Sesame Street, The Electric Company,  and other feel-good PBS shows.
  42. Tube socks.
  43. Big, “blaster” radios.
  44. Sony Walkman (cassette version).
  45. Citizens-Band (2-way) radios in cars.
  46. Absurdly lax rules regarding airport security.
  47.  Silly urban myths that spread without the aid of the internet:  Spider eggs are inside Bubble Yum, Mikey from the Life cereal ad died of eating Pop Rocks & Coke, etc.
  48. Full Service gas stations:  they pumped your gas, checked your oil, filled your tires, etc and was all part of the price of your gas purchase.  
  49. Paper bags were the norm.
  50.  Old pull-tabs for canned drinks. . Some people would use them to create gowns and chain mail. Once pulled, they were often just put inside the drink. Every once in a while we’d read about someone who choked on the tab as they were drinking the cola.
  51. Kodak film.
  52. The Fotomat drive up place where one could get film developed.
  53. Actual cameras that project an image onto film to create an image, along with the equipment used to develop the film and create hard pictures from photographic negatives. This is a nearly lost art.
  54. Slides.
  55. Slide projectors (like Power Point, without all the fancy presentation features)..
  56. Home movie cameras, and projectors.

Letters to the Editor

Dear Sir/Madame: People are always criticizing Spirit Airlines. I don’t get it-We removed our fantastic revival of the airplane smoking section. Nearly 30% of checked bags get to their final locations now. It broke my heart, but we got rid of the luxurious open air seating for our 4th Class passengers (goggles were included!). And now we’re merging with Frontier to make America’s 5th largest airline. https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/07/investing/spirit-frontier-airlines-merger/index.html

I forgot the best part! We’re initiating the use of the best planes in the business!

The Pride of Spirit!

With these babies, we’re going after Pan Am! Wish us luck!

Edward M. Christie III

CEO, Spirit Airlines

Ted Christie

Moral Leadership in RNC: Right Wing Cockroach Shares a Walter White Moment

It took close to thirteen months, but former Vice President Pence declared without reservation that he had no right to overturn the election last January 6th. https://www.wsj.com/articles/cheney-kinzinger-face-rnc-censure-vote-as-trump-rift-widens-11643993140 .

One can never underestimate the political fall out of refuting cherished American myths. Every Fox-Drone who has lamented losing Santa Clause, the Tooth Fairy, and supply-side economics evolved to believe that a lifelong grifter whose moral compass has always been stuck on “John Gotti,” is somehow worthy of absolute allegiance. Drink the bleach-flavored Kool-Aid, people.

Well, they have him, Liz Cheney, and Mike Hogan. Only about 100 million more Republicans need to pass the GOP’s Kindergarten Moral Fitness Test.

{{{SCREAMING FROM THE ASYLUM}}}

I hate being so easily astounded by all of this. I think it betrays my age. An East Tennessee school board has banned the Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel Maus. I’m sorry, I’m still figuring blocks out on WordPress but here is the link: https://www.kold.com/2022/01/27/tennessee-school-board-bans-pulitzer-winning-holocaust-book-maus/

Their philosophy seems to be to be, “Pretend we’re just a bunch of Southern hayseeds and we can ban anything we don’t like.” About Maus, School board member Tony Allman said,

It shows people hanging, it shows them killing kids, why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff? It is not wise or healthy.”

There is no way that this yutz is so bloody stupid that he believes author Art Speigeleman and the school administration were promoting genocide. He complained about the cursing in it (less than a dozen words), and about a provocative picture of a woman. The woman was a mouse.

Others said that they believed it was not age appropriate. The fact is, there is no way to teach genocide in a way that does not offend decent people. It was a gigantic, horrible, disturbing indecency. As was the African Diaspora and Enslavement. As was the American Native Genocide. As was the Armenian Genocide. As was the Khymer Rouge genocide in Cambodia. As was the Tutsi Genocide in Rwanda.

There isn’t an inoffensive way to express human cruelty without it appearing cruel. If people are not indignant and offended, it wasn’t taught correctly. One doesn’t have to feel the direct shame of what their culture has done in the past; but denying it happened and denying its effects on the descendants of its victims as well as its perpetrators IS something of which someone should be ashamed. By denying and covering up the crimes of the past, YOU ARE PARTICIPATING IN THEM.

I can only believe that they don’t give a duck’s wet behind about what actually happened, and about who perpetrated it, and for what reasons. I believe what Mr. Allman, et al really want is an opportunity to elevate the so-called Holocaust denial movement to the level of actual scholarship, instead of the naked Jew hating that it clearly is. If you need information on the Holocaust denial Movement, read Debra Lipstadt’s Denying the Holocaust, which is extremely detailed and well-documented. https://www.amazon.com/Denying-Holocaust-Deborah-Lipstadt/dp/0141985518

Oye, gavalt, Out here.