Truckin'

That's a fine looking truck, Mr. Beagles; you did good.  And you weren't kidding when you said that red trucks with a regular cab were hard to find.  Chevrolet has a website where you can search their inventory for the truck you want, so I did,  I looked for trucks within 100 miles of me that were "Red Hot," regular cab, 4-wheel drive, and I found five, only one of which had an all-black front end.  It was more than 45 miles away from me, so if I was shopping for a truck and didn't know about the internet tools I never would have found it.

It looks like all the truck manufacturers want to downplay the regular cab models; the emphasis is on the four-door versions.  I guess that's where all the money is once the customer starts adding all the options, some of which I find ridiculous.  Having USB ports available is nice but Chevy offers four different USB options and I wonder why one wouldn't suffice.  Mr. Beagles showed remarkable restraint in not succumbing to the allure of the "High Country Premium Package," whatever that is, and I'm afraid to ask.  Just out of curiosity, the last four digits of your new truck's VIN wouldn't happen to be 3060, would they?

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I miss the old Watergate days when life was so much simpler.  A "third rate" burglary, some shady intelligence guys, a mysterious character spilling the beans in a parking garage, and a couple of dogged reporters digging into a hot mess of political shenanigans.  Tricky Dick was a pro, though, and knew when to bow out.  But today?  Christ on a crutch but these people are screwy beyond belief.  You can't tell a player without a program but they have to print a new one every morning.  I never thought that Giuliani could be such a destabilizing influence, but here we are, with money of dubious origins flying all over the place.

And what's the deal with that General Flynn character?  I think he's still walking around a free man but he was convicted of something a long time ago, wasn't he?  It's too hard to keep up with those guys.  Speaking of generals, I wish those two Jarhead generals, Mattis and Kelly, would get together and make the rounds of all the talk shows and news programs.  That would be something if they started speaking freely and openly about what they know.  Too bad that they are probably prevented from doing so, by law if not their own sense of integrity.  Quite a word, integrity, not something usually associated with the current administration.

happy belated Sophia Loren Day

If Old Dog is The Scourge, I suppose I am The Big Nag.  And as usual my complaint is with the link.  I had to interrupt my train of thought to look at it, and then it turned out that MSN was trying to sell me something, not that that mattered, since it was pretty old news anyway.  I have a Google Machine, I read all kind of articles on the web, I already have this information.  The strength of The Institute is the fellows.  I want to hear what they have to say, not some article where there are a hundred like it on every news site.

And nobody is replacing Trump anytime soon.  Republican outrage over Trump's actions lasts only until somebody whispers into the candidates ear, "How would you like to be primaried?" and then they are as meek as lambs and singing the praises of the very stable genius.

Sanctions, don't make me laugh.  We had the fucking U S army right there.  The army that gets about twenty percent of our budget (while people go hungry and schools are way underfunded), way more than any other country in the world spends.  That U S army.  And then I saw Esper, the head of defense, explain on tv why they are pulling the rest of the troops out of Syria.  See there is this big Syrian army coming up from the south, and this awful Turkish army coming down from the north so how can the 97 pound weakling of the United Fucking State's Army face that?  We'd best skedaddle boys.


Yar I seem to remember back in the day, and that day would be like the summer of 72, you had one key and it opened the door and started the car,  Didn't make that irritating wee wee wee sound either.


Columbus day yesterday.  One thing I remember about it is one Friday shortly after I started working for the state and I was pretty buoyant about it being Friday afternoon, but I became more buoyant when I overheard the boss telling the secretary that she was leaving for the day and she'd see her on Monday.  But when the secretary reminded her that next Monday was Columbus Day so of course we would be getting the day off my buoyancy knew no bounds,

The other thing I remember is that that was the day in 1992 that I moved into Marina City.  So I've been living here now for over a third of my life.

While Chicago is deep blue we are not all that progressive, and haven't gotten around to calling it Indigenous People Day.  I agree with the progressives that Columbus was overall a pretty bad man, but Columbus day is not really about him.  It's about Italians, who like every ethnicity, love a parade.  Why don't we call it Sophia Loren Day?

Down With Trump!

Well, he's really done it this time.  Trump's going down for sure.  The only question left is who's going to replace him.

https://a.msn.com/r/2/AAILykc?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare

Those old trucks were good in their day, but the new ones are better.  One thing I miss is the running boards, but they are offering something similar now since those 4WDs are hard to climb into because they're so high off the ground.  I have a set of steps on order and will post a photo after they are installed.  My new truck has power windows, but they aren't so bad, and yes, they roll down all the way so you can rest your arm on the sill when the window is open.  There will be a learning curve with all the new electronic features but, if I can learn Windows 10, I can learn anything.

One positive thing that I've noticed already is you can't lock the doors with your key in the ignition.  You can lock both doors with the push of a button but, when you open the driver's side door to get out, it unlocks itself, and the only way you can lock it from the outside is with your key or that keyless entry clicker.  I suppose you could lock the door with the clicker while the key is in the ignition,  but then you could unlock it with the same clicker, so you still wouldn't have locked yourself out.  

Last I heard, the Canadians were calling their health care system "Medicare", but it's not like our Medicare.  It's not just for old people and there are no deductibles or co-pays.                                  

they don't make em like they used to.

You call that a truck, now here is a truck.  No CD player but surely a radio, surely an ashtray conveniently located, no air conditioning but windows that roll down with cool handles.  How do the windows roll down in the new truck? 

This is 1949, Beagles would likely have been just beginning Kindergarten at Sawyer School, see how much better trucks looked in those days?  Note the handsome well-shaped nose, the headlights prominently mounted on the fenders which denote the powerful wheels.  The grill could use a little more flair in my humble opinion, but all in all a handsome citizen of the road. 

That new guy, note how the headlights are squashed to the ends of the grill and bisected to lose whatever prominence they might have had.  It was a sad day in 1958 when the automakers all together put in double headlights so that they were no longer the eyes of the car.  Look at that brash grinning grill on the 2019.  If it were wearing a baseball cap, it would have been put on backwards. Bah!


I get confused by things like single payer and medicaid for all and the various terms the candidates give for their ever changing plans and just call the whole thing socialized medicine for short.  Would Beagles refuse his monthly check if it was call Socialist security?

The reason we have those gargantuan insurance companies in the USA is because during WW II, wages were frozen.  Workers were scant and since companies could not raise their wages to attract them they offered medical insurance and that's how medical insurance came to be provided by employers.   I guess it didn't work out too badly at first, most people had jobs and medical care wasn't so godawful expensive, but these days it is a mess.  If we hadn't made that move in WW II we might have come to a sensible healthcare system like most of the world has, but anymore the insurance companies are titans squashing any chance at reform.


I was never comfortable with our shenanigans in the mideast, backing opposing factions because they were on our side against ISIS, but suddenly pulling out in a fit of pique, knowing that Istanbul has a fine Trump Tower, doesn't seem like good diplomacy.  The GOP senators seem to be in high dudgeon, but by the time Moscow Mitch does anything the Kurds will be gone, gone, gone, solid gone.

Did anybody besides me find it shocking that hardly a rep sen can be found who thinks that dealing with a foreign nation for a personal gain is a bad practice?   

My New Truck is Here! My New Truck is Here!

The bad news is that it has no CD player and no ash tray.  It seems that they came out with a 2019.5 midway through the year and the 2019s are all gone.  The good news is that there is a USB port into which I can plug a portable CD player, and I should be able to cobble up some kind of ash tray.  Actually, the ash tray on my old truck was a little far to reach from the driver's seat, so I kept an old coffee mug in the cup holder for that purpose, but the new truck doesn't have a cup holder either.   The good news is that I don't miss my stick shift as much as I thought I would.  They must have improved automatic transmissions since the 1960s.  Who'd a thunk it?

They Are With Me

"I know Beagles doesn't like to think of himself as a republican, but he is generally with them on the issues, anti taxes, abortion, gay marriage, immigrants, big gummint, generally hawkish, and pro gun."

I am not with them, they are with me on most of those issues, which is why I usually vote Republican.  I was a card carrying member of the Libertarian Party for over a decade, starting in 1992, and I never missed an election, so I voted for them more than a few times because I thought that they were with me on more issues than the Republicans were at the time.  One problem with the Libertarians is that they never win, so voting for them is mostly a protest vote against the other two parties.  I'm fine with that as long as I consider both major party candidates to be equally bad, which is why I voted Libertarian in 2016.  I am not so sure about that this time, I think it's going to be a closer call than last time.  I would like to see Trump removed from office before the election because then I won't have to decide if he is as bad as whoever wins the Democratic nomination. 

The term "socialized medicine" kind of  sticks in my throat, so I prefer to call it a single payer plan.  Last I heard, the Canadians had one that has been working fine for decades, so I don't know why we can't just copy theirs instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.  I suppose it's because of the insurance companies, but the Canadians must have had insurance companies because they still do now, to cover the things their government plan doesn't cover.  I don't know how they overcame the resistance of their insurance companies, but one way to do it would be to give government jobs to the insurance people that are put out of work.  They did something like that when they decided to regulate the banking business, and that has mostly worked out well.  

The guy called me about my new truck today, and I am picking it up tomorrow morning.  Pictures to follow.

in the wake of the fall of the Hose of Trump

Too bad he's a Democrat.

Why yes, yes I am.  My dad was a republican and to emulate hik so was I.  I confess to being for Nixon in 1960.  In 1964 I wasn't a big fan of that bumpkin LBJ, but Goldwater seemed like a madman.  But then I got into hippiedom, politics was for squares Man.  In 1968 I wanted to vote for the Peace and Freedom party, but never registered because I was afraid that once in the polling place I would pull the lever for the despised Hump.  It was in 1970 in sleepy southern Illinois where the anti hippie campaign of the republican moved me to vote for Adlai Stevenson for senator.  In 1972 I was working for the campaign of George McGovern.  Such a cool guy.  How could he possibly be beaten by that awful Tricky Dick?  Since then I have twice voted for republicans for governor when the dems nominated some total asshole (in the second case it was Blago.), but every other vote has been for dems.

I think outside of his flirtation with George Wallace who proclaimed "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever," but not in front of the college gates, and certainly not the gates of Ol' Miss, as the scourge has kindly pointed out, Beagles has been a pretty dependable puller of the republican lever.  I think he has voted third party a few times, but generally it i for the republicans.  I don't think he has ever voted for a democrat.

I know Beagles doesn't like to think of himself as a republican, but he is generally with them on the issues, anti taxes, abortion, gay marriage, immigrants, big gummint, generally hawkish, and pro gun.  Strangely I think he is in favor of socialized medicine.  I wonder if Americans living just south of the border, close to the wonder, are more liberal on medicine than their brothers further south.

And Beagles is a Never Trumper, though he rather likes the guy for his supreme court justices and certainly for his tough stance on immigration, which is the way a lot of his fellow republicans feel.  But they felt that way before Trump came along, and what if say Marco Rubio had won the election, wouldn't they have had all these things and without Trump's self-serving ways and constant lies?  In fact might they be better off without Trump at all?

I speak here, or course, of republicans who do not hold office, many of them, say John Kasich have been quite vocal against Trump without sacrificing their conservative values, and though I abhor their conservative values I have to applaud them for speaking out.

Republicans who do hold office are an elephant of a completely different hue.  Though many of them were former Never Trumpers, they all now slavishly lick his boots.  I speak harshly of them, but I understand that it is a matter of self-preservation, to do otherwise is to be primaried and lose their seat.  But deep in their hearts, though they will never say so, they would love to see that big heart attack.

Impeachment has the big mo right now, every new poll shows that more people support it even among republicans, in response Trump is becoming more unhinged, doing dumber and more vile things led on by his dancing gnome which makes people more disgusted with him.  Who knows if the big mo will continue, but say it does.

I think it's a real stretch to think that it will ever go so far as to sway twenty republican senators, but in the aftermath the republican senators will be covered in shit, what becomes of them then, and what of their conservative values? 

If they truly believed in their conservative values, could they make a valiant stand on their sinking ship, develop a spine, stand up to the tyrant and look like men of honor?

Probably not.  But we live in strange times.