Saturday, January 7, 2023

Davids Daily Dose - Saturday January 7th



1/. Kevin McCarthy finally made it.....
McCarthy is still stuck in the middle. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Kevin McCarthy is no longer trapped in congressional purgatory. Thanks to an underwhelming midterm for his party, the longtime GOP leader had to unite a cantankerous bunch of House members to get enough votes to become Speaker
But in the first round of voting on Monday, he lost the votes of 19 Republicans, when
 he could afford to lose just four defectors. Through Thursday, he has lost the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh rounds of voting
 as well. Then there was finally some substantive movement towards McCarthy in the 12th and 13th rounds on Friday afternoon, but it still wasn’t enough to end the humiliation. Nor was the 14th late Friday. Finally in the 15th round, which ended 
early Saturday morning, he secured enough votes (and “present” votes from 
holdouts) to become Speaker, at last.



2/. Ron DeSantis - worse than Trump? Bess Levin in Vanity Fair says yes.....

Ron DeSantis has not (yet) said if he will run for president in 2024, but with approximately 
two years to go until the election, and with the caveat that about a zillion things can change between now and then, his candidacy appears to be a forgoneconclusion. That prospect is 
exciting to a number of people—namely, his record-setting pack of billionaire donors—but, as it turns out, having the support of, say, Elon Musk does not mean someone should be president. In fact, it’s probably a good indication someone definitely should not bepresident, and when it 
comes to DeSantis, that is most certainly the case.



3/. Wow! WOW! What an ad from Lucas Kunce, running against Josh Hawley in 2 years.....



4/. If Trump gets in in 2024, forget Canada - they just passed a law that says non-Canadians 
can't buy property....
Two construction cranes stand above a work site in Toronto, Ontario, with skyscrapers in the background.
New towers join the Toronto skyline, seen here in October. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation reported that 3.5 million 
more homes would need to be built by 2030 to achieve affordability for all Canadians.



5/. Some of you have commented when are you going to give us some good news about the climate? Or is it all doom and gloom?
The answer is yes -  it's Doom and Gloom, there is minimal good news and 
humanity is toast.....and if you don't believe it watch this 13 minute 
segment from "60 Minutes" about how biodiversity is being pummeled, and it's because of overpopulation. 
We are going to face the consequences of a mass extinction in just a few decades, 
and there is zero impetus to do anything about it. 
The old are in charge, and they don't care. 
It's up to the young to save themselves.....



6/. If you're planning a visit to the UK better go soon, because it's getting worse 
over there....
Keir Starmer arriving at Global Studios in central London, ahead of a phone-in at LBC Radio.Keir Starmer arriving at Global Studios in central London, ahead of a phone-in at LBC Radio.Photograph: Tayfun Salcı/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock
Sun 1 Jan 2023 08.00 EST
speak illuminating truths about the impossibility of the human condition, and how people from these islands tend to cope with it. Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon was released in March 1973, as the last traces of postwar optimism gave way to mounting economic strife and international tension. The response it offered was twofold: a call to empathy and mutual understanding, and the pointing-out of a national trait that this 
writer – among many others – has probably quoted far too much. It comes nearly six minutes into a song simply called Time: “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the 
English way.





8/. Yes it's bad in the UK, but not for the wealthy.....check out this new restaurant 
in Berkeley Square in London - "Bacchanalia"....

The show starts in the foyer.

Guests are greeted there by women in dark red togas wearing gilded arm cuffs, looking like they just walked off the set of “Ben-Hur,” the 1959 Hollywood epic about the Roman empire and chariot races. The women are here to take your coat, then hand you off to a colleague who appears to be dressed as an extra from the same movie, who will whisk you through the door and into the theater.

Strike that. It’s a dining room, albeit one so eager to project theatrical opulence, and so crammed with color and lush fabrics, that it seems to belong on a stage.

This is Bacchanalia, a new restaurant in the ritziest corner of one of 
London’s richest neighborhoods, and a place as gleefully out of step with
 the grim temper of this country as a clown car at a wake. You can either 
recoil at the cartoonish debauchery of it all, or surrender to this immersive production and snap some selfies, along with everyone else.



9/. On a day when we learned an elderly couple was murdered in Waterman 
Village in sleepy Mount Dora, there's this story. 
A Publix in Atlanta was evacuated because of a guy with 6 weapons and body 
armour, but they can't find a 
crime in Georgia to charge him with.
Is this a great country, or what?

ATLANTA — Two days after a gunman killed 10 people at a Colorado grocery store, leaving many Americans on high alert, Rico Marley was arrested as he emerged from the bathroom at a Publix supermarket in Atlanta. He was wearing body armor and carrying six loaded weapons — four handguns in his jacket pockets, and in a guitar bag, a semiautomatic rifle and a 12-gauge shotgun.

Moments earlier, an Instacart delivery driver had alerted a store employee 
after seeing Mr. Marley 
in the bathroom, along with the AR-15-style rifle, which was propped 
against a wall. A grand jury indictment later 
described what had come next: “panic, terror and the evacuation of the 
Publix.”


10/. Tom Tomorrow....or is it just AI?



11/. We love Greta Thunberg.....one of the best tweets in history!
‘He was hoping to promote himself with his sneer at Thunberg; he managed to raise his visibility just in time to make news of his arrest.’‘He was hoping to promote himself with his sneer at Thunberg; he managed to raise his visibility just in time to make news of his arrest.’ Photograph: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images
Sat 31 Dec 2022 03.21 EST

O

n 27 December, former kickboxer, professional misogynist and online entrepreneur Andrew Tate, 36, sent a boastfully hostile tweet to climate 
activist Greta Thunberg, 19, about his sports car collection. “Please provide
 your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and 
their respective enormous emissions,” he wrote. He was probably hoping to enhance his status by mocking her climate commitment. Instead, she burned the macho 
guy to a crisp in nine words.



12/. Interesting story on the polling for the midterms, and how the media bought into the narrative of a "red wave", when 
the reality was the opposite.....the BS polling was skewed by some right wing online surveys which were complete nonsense....

Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat, had consistently won re-election by healthy margins in her three decades representing Washington State. This year seemed no different: By midsummer, polls showed her cruising to victory over a Republican newcomer, Tiffany Smiley, by as much as 20 percentage points.

So when a survey in late September by the Republican-leaning Trafalgar Group showed Ms. Murray clinging to a lead of just two points, it seemed like an aberration. But in October, two moreRepublican-leaning polls put Ms. Murray barely ahead, and a third said the race was a dead heat.

As the red and blue trend lines of the closely watched RealClearPolitics 
average for the contest drew closer together, news organizations reported 
that Ms. Murray was suddenly in a fight for her political survival. Warning lights flashed in Democratic war rooms. If Ms. Murray was in trouble, no Democrat was safe.




13/. Excellent story from the Times on how much food Americans waste, and 
how it adds to our climate crisis.....but you'll like the solutions....

Jennifer Savage was scrambling to pull something together for dinner. Deep in the back of her fridge, she found a container of stuffed peppers. Very old stuffed peppers. She groaned, then did what millions of Americans do every day, without a second thought: She scraped the rotten food into the garbage.

Sitting nearby, her daughter, Riley, burst into tears.

Riley, then a fourth grader, had learned at school about people who don’t have enough food to eat. She’d also learned about the impact of food waste on the planet: When food rots in landfills, it generates methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide. Seeing her mother toss one of her favorite meals in the trash brought these messages home




14/. Bob Lefsetz musing on life, and shopping.....

I’m never going to a brick and mortar store again!

Well, unless there is service. Like at the ski shop in Vail. But you pay for that service, more 

than MAP (Minimum Advertised Price). But the employees have been at it for years, unlike 

at Vail Sports, where the seasonal employees mounted all the demo skis incorrectly.

But no one wants to pay for service. That’s the conundrum. People want a rock bottom price 

for their flight. They want every last penny squeezed out of the deal. As a result, the few 

people who are working retail are untrained and inexperienced and therefore unhelpful.

So I had to go to Santa Monica for a medical appointment. Are you aware we’re in the midst 
of an “atmospheric river”? This is what people don’t understand about Southern California, 
yes, it barely rains but when it does…it’s either very wimpy or it pours. I mean think of your heaviest day of rain out of state, it’s like that, but even more so. I left the house and a 
tsunami of water was pouring down the street. As for the freeway… No matter what time of 
day, there are people on the freeway in L.A.



15/. Masochist Airlines.....modelled on Spirit! Or maybe Southwest.....



16/. Heather Cox Richardson reviews the year, and it's kind of heartening to read 
what really happened last year, instead of what could have happened......
A feel good [or at least feel a little better] story....

Just a year ago, we were focusing on Russian troops massing on the border with Ukraine, which the U.S. government and allies recognized as an attempt both to keep Ukraine from joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a longstanding military alliance resisting Russian expansion, and to test the unity of the democratic nations that made up NATO itself. Former president Donald Trump had weakened NATO and vowed to pull the U.S. out of it if he won a second term, demoralizing our allies, but Democratic president Joe Biden and his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, had worked hard to pull the alliance back together.

Biden worked the phones and Blinken flew around the world, talking to allies not only to warn them but also to get pledges to pressure Russia, help Ukraine defend itself, and accept refugees if necessary. On one day alone, Biden spoke with leaders from the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Poland, and Romania; the secretary general of NATO; and the presidents of the European Union. 

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-30-2022?r=2cwgv&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post






17/  Holy Moley - check out this movie coming this week! M3gan!!!!

And a review -  Rolling Stone likes M3gan.....




19/. Rolling Stone with some really interesting TV shows coming in 2023....




Today's video - an absolute classic, very funny indeed....."Monthly Man"......



Today's edgy joke....
A mother stopped by, unannounced, at her son's house.  She knocked on the door and then immediately walked in. She was shocked to see her daughter-in-law lying on the couch, 
totally naked. Soft music was playing, and the aroma of perfume filled the room. 
 
"What are you doing?!" she asked.  "I'm waiting for Brian to come home from work," the daughter-in-law answered.  
"But you're naked," the mother-in-law exclaimed.  
"This is my love dress," the daughter-in- law explained.  
"Love dress? But you're naked!”  
"Brian loves me and wants me to wear this dress," she explained. "It excites him to no end. Every time he sees me in this dress, he instantly becomes romantic and makes love to me for hours on end. He can't get enough of me.”
 
The mother-in-law left.
 
When she got home, she undressed, showered, put on her best perfume, dimmed the lights, put on a romantic CD, and laid on the couch, waiting for her husband to arrive.  Finally, her husband came home from the golf club. 
He walked in and saw her laying there so provocatively. 
 
"What are you doing?" he asked.  
"This is my love dress." she whispered sensually.  
"Needs ironing," he said "What's for dinner?
 
He never heard the gunshot….


Today's management jokes
Lesson 1 | A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her shower, when the doorbell rings. The wife quickly wraps herself in a towel and runs downstairs. When she opens the door, there stands Bob, the next door neighbor.
Before she says a word, Bob says, “I’ll give you $800 to drop that towel.”
After thinking for a moment, the woman drops her towel and stands naked in front of Bob, after a few seconds, Bob hands her $800 and leaves. The woman wraps back up in the towel and goes back upstairs. 
When she gets to the bathroom, her husband asks, “Who was that?”
“It was Bob, the next door neighbor,” she replies.
“Great,” husband says, “Did he say anything about the $800 he owes me?”
Morality: If you share critical information pertaining to credit and risk with your shareholders on time, you may be in a position to prevent avoidable exposure.
Lesson 2 | A priest offered a nun a lift. She got in and crossed her legs, forcing her gown to reveal a leg. 
The nun said, “Father, remember Psalm 129?”. The priest removed his hand. But, changing gears, he let his hand slide up her leg again. 
The nun once again said, “Father, remember Psalm 129?”
The priest apologized “Sorry sister but the flesh is weak.”. Arriving at the convent, the nun sighed heavily and went on her way. 
On his arrival at the church, the priest rushed to look up Psalm 129. It said, “Go forth and seek, further up, you will find glory.”
Morality: If you are not well informed in your job, you might miss a great opportunity.
Lesson 3 | A sales representative, an administration clerk, and the manager are walking to lunch when they find an antique oil lamp. They rub it and a Genie comes out.
The Genie says, “I’ll give each of you just one wish.” 
“Me first! Me first!”, says the admin clerk. “I want to be in the Bahamas, driving a speedboat, without a care in the world.”
Puff! She’s gone.
“Me next! Me next!”, says the rep. “I want to be in Hawaii, relaxing on the beach with my personal masseuse, an endless supply of Pina Coladas and the love of my life.”
Puff! He’s gone.
“Okay, you are up,” the Genie says to the manager. The manager says, “I want those two back in the office after lunch.”
Morality: Always let your boss have the first say.
Lesson 4 | An eagle was sitting on a tree resting, doing nothing. A small rabbit saw the eagle and asked him, “Can I also sit like you and do nothing?”
The eagle answered, “Sure, why not?”
So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the eagle and rested. All of sudden, a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it.
Morality: To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high.
Lesson 5 | A turkey was chatting with a bull. 
“I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree.”, sighed the turkey, “But I haven’t got the energy.”
“Well, why don’t you nibble on some of my droppings?”, replied the bull. They are packed with nutrients.”
The turkey pecked at a lump of dung, and found it actually gave him enough strength to reach the lowest branch of the tree. The next day, after eating some more dung, he reached the second branch. Finally after a fourth night, the turkey was proudly perched at the top of the tree. 
He was promptly spotted by the farmer, who shot him out of the tree.
Morality: Bullsh*t might get you to the top, but it won’t keep you there.
Lesson 6 | A little bird was flying south for the winter. It was so cold the bird froze and fell to the ground into a large field. While he was lying there, a cow came by and dropped some dung on him. As the frozen bird lay there in the pile of cow dung, he began to realize how warm he was. The dung was actually thawing him out! He lay there all warm and happy, and soon began to sing for joy. 
A passing cat heard the singing and came to investigate. Following the sound, the cat discovered the bird under the pile of cow dung, and promptly dug him out and ate him.
Morality: 
1- Not everyone who sh*ts on you is your enemy.
2- Not everyone who gets you out of sh*t is your friend.
3- And when you are in deep sh*t, it’s best to keep your mouth shut.

Today's Villages jokeA few years ago, my wife and I moved into a retirement development in 
The Villages in Central Florida.
There are 3,000 lakes in Florida; only three are real.

Our biggest retirement concern was time management. What were we going
to do all day? No longer. Let me assure you, passing the time is not a
problem.

Our days are eaten up by simple, daily activities. Just getting out of
our car takes 15 minutes. Trying to find where we parked takes 20
minutes. It takes a half-hour in the check-out line in Wal-Mart, and 1
hour to return the item the next day.

Let me take you through a typical day: We get up at5:00 am, have a
quick breakfast and join the early morning Walk-and-Fart Club. There
are about 30 of us, and rain or shine, we walk around the streets, all
talking at once. Every development has some late risers who stay in
bed until 6:00 am. After a nimble walk, avoiding irate drivers out to
make us road kill, we go back home, shower and change for the next
activity.

My wife goes directly to the pool for her underwater Pilates class,
followed by gasping for breath and CPR. I put on my 'Ask me about my
Grandchildren' T-shirt, my plaid mid-calf shorts, my black socks and
sandals and go to the clubhouse lobby for a nice nap. Before we know
it, it's time for lunch.

We go to Costco to partake of the many tasty samples dispensed by
ladies in white hair nets. All free! After a filling lunch, if we
don't have any doctor appointments, we might go to the flea market to
see if any new white belts have come in or to buy a Rolex watch for
$2.00.

We're usually back home by 2:00 pm to get ready for dinner. People
start lining up for the early bird about 3:00 pm, but we get there by
3:45 because we're late eaters.

The dinners are very popular because of the large portions they serve.
We can take home enough food for the next day's lunch and dinner,
including extra bread, crackers, packets of mustard, relish, ketchup
and Splenda, along with mints.

At 5:30 pm we're home, ready to watch the 6 o'clocknews. By 6:30 pm
we're fast asleep. Then we get up and make five or six trips to the
bathroom during the night, and it's time to get up and start a new day
all over again.

Doctor-related activities eat up most of our retirement time. I enjoy
reading old magazines in sub-zero temperatures in the waiting room, so
I don't mind.

Calling for test results also helps the days fly by. It takes at least
a half-hour just getting through the doctor's phone menu. Then there's
the hold time until we're connected to the right party. Sometimes they
forget we're holding, and the whole office goes off to lunch.

Should we find we still have time on our hands, volunteering provides
a rewarding opportunity to help the less fortunate.

Florida has the largest concentration of seniors under five feet and
they need our help. I myself am a volunteer for 'The Vertically
Challenged Over 80.' I coach their basketball team, The Arthritic
Avengers. The hoop is only 4-1/2 feet from the floor. You should see
the look of confidence on their faces when they make a slam dunk.

Food shopping is a problem for short seniors, or 'bottom feeders' as
we call them, because they can't reach the items on the upper shelves.
There are many foods they've never tasted. After shopping, most
seniors can't remember where they parked their carts and wander the
parking lot for hours while their food defrosts.

Lastly, it's important to choose a development with an impressive
name. Italian names are very popular in Florida. They convey world
travelers, uppity sophistication and wealth. Where would you rather
live: Gary's Condos or the Lakes of Venice? There's no difference --
they're both owned by Gary, who happens to be a cheap bastard.

I hope this material has been of help to you future retirees. If I can
be of any further assistance, please look me up when
you're in Florida. I live in the Leaning Condos of Pisa in Lady Lake.



Today's Grandma joke
My grandmother died in the 80's but her birthday is coming up, and that always causes me to reminisce: the long walks we used to take to the shops in town, the 5 cents she gave me for meaningless jobs like pulling weeds or cleaning off the driveway. Her soothing hands helped when I would get hurt. But the thing I remember most was her sage advice. 

Once when I was about 13, we were sitting in the park enjoying a cookie and a Coke. She told me that one day I would find a wonderful woman and start my own family. 

"Always remember this,” she said. "Be sure you marry a woman with small fingers & hands." 

"How come, Grandma?" 

She smiled and said gently, "Makes your dick look bigger.

Kinda brings a tear to your eye.
 


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