Christmas Eve

It's a quiet Sunday night at the grand old hotel. Most of the guests have already arrived and gone to bed. One arrival remains. I finished my paperwork in the first hour I was here, so I'm at the front door waiting on the last arrival and reading a book about John Steinbeck. As often happens, reading about writers makes me want to write.
Much of the quiet is due to the absence of some of the usual people. Keven, the overnight houseman, has Sundays off. Karen, from Loss Prevention (our pretentious designation for our security department) has decided that she doesn't want to work on Sundays either. I haven't asked her yet how she's managing to maintain her 30 hour per week work requirement to keep her health insurance. Her husband, and my best friend, Ted, called in sick earlier tonight, and his absence makes things particularly quiet. So it's just me, and Jay, and Mike: valet, front desk, and LP.
The kids from Paycom are here this week. They are a group of uncommonly attractive twenty-somethings here for some kind of training. We get a different set of kids each time they stay with us, which is about every three weeks or so. One of our bar waiters commented recently that Paycom must have some pretty shallow hiring standards to have every person in every group to be so attractive. The valet staff doesn't care for them. They don't tip, and often they exhibit a rather privileged attitude, which probably is encouraged by the fact that I bring all their cars around early in the morning. I'm sure they think that I do that because there are so many of them and they all come down at once. Some of them might think it's because they're special. The actual reason is because we don't have universal health care in this country.
To elucidate, all of our morning guys have their kids on their health insurance, which means that they don't get a substantial paycheck. All of their spendable income is from their tips. If the guest doesn't tip, they're basically working for free. I don't have that problem, so I bring around the Paycom cars before the morning guys get here. All the morning guys have to do is hand them their keys.

Mike just walked by and asked if there were any homeless people. I haven't seen any. In fact, I haven't seen homeless Joel in a week. Normally he's camped in the third floor of the heated entrance to the parking garage next door. He frequently stops by to buy candy bars and get coffee . Nobody has seen him since last Monday morning. I'm kind of worried about him.

I'm missing Ted tonight too. I have a book to give him, and I wanted to tell him about how I totally trolled one of my FOXhead friends on Facebook. I was able to do it solely because this guy never ever looks anything up, never does any kind of research or fact-checking. He's perfectly happy in an ignorance that suits his prejudices. He posted a meme that said "Kill one terrorist and the world is outraged. Iran shoots down a commercial airliner and kills 179 civilians, crickets!!!!!" I replied, "Haven't heard much about flight 655 either. 290 people killed on that one." He liked that. Now, is he going to do any research and find out that flight 655 was the Iranian airliner that the Americans accidentally shot down in 1988? Not a chance.

Okay, I'm done gloating.

My Dad and I went to the airport to pick up my brother. Tomorrow is Christmas, because that's the way the Savage family does things. We haven't seen each other in years, and I expected the ride back to be full of conversation, but that wasn't the case. It might have been the group dynamics. Our Dad would have been a captive audience had Scott and I engaged in the usual stuff we talk about when we're on the phone. I've often had the fantasy of talking politics with Scott at the dining room table in front of my parents,but somehow in the car it just seemed wrong, and we, all of us, have never been good at small talk. But we have Monday night and all day Tuesday before I have to go back to a normal schedule.

Now it's lunchtime: 2:30am. Still two and a half hours before I have to start bringing Paycom around. I might get a lot of of this book read before then, unless i get sucked into Netflix. We'll see how I feel.

The Opossum and the Tumor

It's been interesting watching the Solemaini case playing out on Facebook. My friends on the right are all talking about the tumor. My friends on the left are talking about the opossum -- which my friends on the right interpret as being pro-tumor.

The Heavy Lift

Optimism is not exactly something that’s just lying around on the floor, waiting to be picked up. It’s something we have to work for again. It’s a heavy lift, but a necessary one. All we have as we enter 2020 is, well, us. - Charles P Pierce in Esquire

Tuesday evening, New Year's Eve, as I was standing in the shower, getting ready for work, I had the thought that 2020 was going to be a year of loss. I don't what that means. I'm not generally a pessimistic person. I'm not prone to premonitions, like Gaby, nor am I the unrepentant cynic like my bff Ted, but I just haven't been able to shake this idea from my mind. I wouldn't know how to discuss it with anyone. It's just there. And I don't know what to think or do about it.

Fascist Things My Friends Post on Facebook: Christmas edition

Ironically, he's the same guy that posted this just days earlier: 

The Right to Cruz

"For too long, members of Congress have abused their power and ignored the will of the American people. Term limits on members of Congress offer a solution to the brokenness we see in Washington, D.C. It is long past time for Congress to hold itself accountable. I urge my colleagues to submit this constitutional amendment to the states for speedy ratification."

That was Senator Ted Cruz talking to ABC News last January, talking about the Constitutional amendment that he introduced in the first week of the year. It was the second time that he had introduced an amendment with the goal of establishing term limits for Congress, the first being two years earlier in January of 2017. A FOXwing friend of mine posted the article on his Facebook page yesterday. Knowing him, it's easy to presume that he thought it was something new. I have friends on both sides of the aisle who think that this would be a good thing (in fact, Beto O'Rourke proposed the same idea back when he was running against Cruz in 2018,) and I commented with my usual response:

It's tempting to go off on a tangent here. J____, in recent posts,  has made it obvious that he strongly disapproves of Socialism, so it would be easy to rib him a little for suggesting that anyone should start drawing on Social Security. But he's also made it pretty obvious that he doesn't know what Socialism is, much less Democratic Socialism, so I think the point would be lost on him. But anyway... 

There are lots of articles out there about why term limits would be a bad idea, and why they are not in the Constitution, but they're mostly just variations on the reason that James Madison gave in Federalist Paper #53: 

"[A] few of the members of Congress will possess superior talents; will by frequent re-elections, become members of long standing; will be thoroughly masters of the public business, and perhaps not unwilling to avail themselves of those advantages. The greater the proportion of new members of Congress, and the less the information of the bulk of the members, the more apt they be to fall into the snares that may be laid before them"

In other words, instead of offering "a solution to the brokenness," it's more likely to create brokenness, because a newer, less experienced Congress will susceptable to bribery and other forms of influence,effectively handing the control of government to lobbyists and special interests. There is also the tendency for new Congressmen to try to codify the personal prejudices of both themselves and their constituants without regard to the civil and human rights of the people they are supposed to be representing, or for their health, safety and welfare. Samantha Bee made that abundantly clear on a segment of her show Full Frontal back in 2016. 

But for me, the biggest problem is that it is simply anti-democratic.

Ted Cruz was the one who proposed this amendment. Now, I don't like Ted Cruz. He's an economically ignorant dominionist who tends toward Fascism. He says stupid things. He does stupid things, and even the people on his side don't like him.  But he represents a different part of the country from where I live. I can't vote for him or against him. A term limit would be a sure fire way to get rid of him.

But the majority of voters of his district chose him, whether I like it or not. And that is their right. And in my opinion, the right to vote -- and the right to vote for the candidate of your choice -- should be sacrosanct, and not be taken away or diminished. As Hillary Clinton said recently, "One of our most precious rights as Americans is the right to determine who our leaders are." We already have voter purges, precinct closures, gerrymandering, voter ID laws, and court decisions like Citizens United and Buckley v. Valeo that give wealthy people more undue influence on government-- policies that already take away the right to vote or diminish the effectiveness of the individual's vote. We don't need another policy that takes away the voice of the people. 

They Wouldn't Leave

givemewanderlust asked:

"Hi! Question! I was talking to my boyfriend about taxing billionaires and Warren’s tax plan, etc. and his question was “why would they stay here if they’re going to lose that much money?” I’m wondering what you’d say to that argument? Because I was kinda stuck. Thank you in advance!"

odinsblog answered

"They wouldn’t leave. It’s a bluff that no one has called, iMho. Think about it: America is where a shit ton of money is because we have so many markets that are integral to the world market. The US dollar is still the defacto currency of the world. If congress did it right, with no loopholes—I know, that’s a big if—but if they did it right, and threatened to take away access to the US markets, and denied said billionaires the ability to conduct business in the US, they couldn’t leave. 

What kind of greedy snot avoids paying their fair share of taxes just because they’re going to lose such an infinitesimally small portion of their wealth that even their grandchildren’s great-grandchildren would still be millionaires?

America built the interstate highway and other crucial infrastructure when the tax rate was a whopping 91 percent. I’m not saying we need to go that high again, but we aren’t going to be able to repair our infrastructure by making poor people and middle class people pay higher taxes. And someone has got to pay, so it might as well be the privileged 1%. 

Remember: if the tax laws were written to say, “we are going to tax millionaires and billionaires,” the tax is on every dollar AFTER a certain amount. For example, a 51 percent tax on $500,000 means that the 51 percent rate doesn’t kick in until that person makes $500,001. Every dollar AFTER $500,000 would be taxed at the 51 percent tax rate. If someone made “only” $499,000 a year, then they wouldn’t get hit with a 51 percent tax rate. If they made $500,000 they still wouldn’t get hit with the 51 percent tax rate. It’s not until they exceeded $500,000 that the tax rate kicks in – and then it only kicks in on the dollars that go OVER $500,000.

I think that’s the part everyone misses, right? So if I made $500,002 (that’s five hundred thousand + two dollars), then only that extra two dollars is taxed at the rate of 51 percent.

Anyway, it’s a bluff. And we need to call it. But we gotta do it the right way and make it painful for them." 

Dear Republicans: You Didn't Object...

Dear Republicans:

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You didn’t object when you heard Donald Trump say he likes to grab women “by the pussy.”
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You didn’t object when he kicked the American media out of the Oval Office and handed two Russian spies classified data entrusted to him by one of our allies.
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You didn’t object when he likened our intelligence community to “Nazis.”
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You didn’t object when he stood before the Memorial Wall of Stars at Langley and told lie after lie about himself and the election.
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You didn’t object while at the Helsinki Summit, he met behind closed doors with the Russian President.
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You didn’t object to him banning the American Press from covering that meeting.
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You didn’t object when he emerged from that meeting and sided with the Russian President over the findings of our own intelligence community.
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You didn’t object when the Trump campaign admitted to accepting Russian offers to help him defeat SecState Clinton.
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You didn’t object when he stood before the cameras and said; “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find 30k e-mails that are missing.”
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You didn’t object when the Russians responded that VERY DAY with stolen emails.
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You didn’t object when it was confirmed that the basis for the Trump Tower meeting was a total fabrication. That it had nothing to do with adopting Russian children, and everything to do with swinging the election.
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You didn’t object when it was revealed that Trump himself floated the cover story of adoptions from Russia.
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You didn’t object when it was confirmed that his campaign staff had met with Russian agents over 150 times, after claiming they had never met with them at all.
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You didn’t object when the Trump campaign declined to inform the FBI about the Russian advances.
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You didn’t object when Trump’s campaign manager gave internal data on four key battleground states to agents working for Putin.
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You sure as hell didn’t object when those very same four battleground states miraculously shifted towards trump on Election Day.
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You didn’t object when Trump kicked his Attorney General out of the room and asked the FBI Director to let his National Security Advisor off the hook for lying about his contacts with Russian agents.
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You didn’t object when Trump fired that FBI Director for declining to let Flynn off the hook.
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You didn’t object when Special Counsel Robert Mueller said he couldn’t establish a conspiracy, largely because so many of Trump’s staffers lied during their interviews, and because Trump himself refused to submit to a live interview.
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You didn’t object when Special Counsel Mueller cited no fewer than ten instances of the president himself obstructing justice in his report: an impeachable offense.
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You didn’t object when it was revealed he cheated on his wife with a porn star.
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You didn’t object when it was revealed that he paid off that porn star to the tune of $130,000.00 to buy her silence just prior to the election, an illegal attempt to hide relevant facts from the electorate.
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You didn’t object when he withdrew the U.S. from the JCPOA, which was the first and ONLY treaty that’s successfully kept Iranian nuclear ambitions in check.
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You didn’t object when he pulled us out of the Paris Climate Accords.
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You didn’t object when he scuttled the Obama administration’s clean air and water standards.
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You didn’t object when he opened up vast tracts of protected wilderness to his friends in the oil and mining industries.
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You didn’t object to the myriad of cases of violations of the emoluments clause.
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You didn’t object to the recently-discovered military stopovers at Trump properties in Scotland.
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You didn’t object when after mass shooting after mass shooting, he wouldn’t lift a finger to protect even little school children from gun violence.
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You didn’t object when he started putting tariffs on everyone from China to Turkey, which have undeniably hurt millions of people around the world and shaken the stock markets.
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You didn’t object when he gave the corporate farming industry $26B in compensation for their losses due to his tariffs.
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You didn’t object when he channeled $3.6B in Pentagon appropriations to his wall on the Mexican border.
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You didn’t object when Trump called out against “Islamic terrorism” on multiple occasions, but never once for terrorism by white nationalists.
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You didn’t object when he forcibly separated little children from their parents.
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You didn’t object when he confined those children to chain-link paddocks.
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You didn’t object when a whistleblower revealed the president had on multiple occasions said things that potentially undermined our nation’s safety and security.
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You didn’t object when his personal lawyer, his personal consultant, and his army of sycophants at Fox News have repeatedly and consistently lied about ALL of the above for three excruciatingly long years.
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So here’s my question for you: What about any of the above do you believe entitles you to the right to call yourselves “patriots?”

-Bruce Lindner