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Morning AB, All. As always, thank you AB for doing this thread so reliably and keeping the peace with gentle thread policing. Thank you Bray for weekly written wisdom, Thank you Rodguy for fishing tales and political perspectives from all angles, Thank all yon contributors for excellent commentary to flesh it all out.

Below are the words from my daily political diary. It is quite long so scroll on by if not interested. But do stay around and add your commentary and point of view to the thread.

Finally, Happy Father’s Day to all the wonderful Dads out there. I had a wonderful father. Wish he was still here.

Tuesday-6/11/19

THANK GOD PLASTIC BAGS BANNED IN DELAWARE

I haven’t been sleeping nights with worries about single-use plastic bags. God forbid the Delaware legislature should deal with the state’s dishonest judicial system. Or perhaps make efforts to save the states few electoral votes currently under attack by the Democrats. Or hey, maybe work on legalizing all the illegals in the state.

But no, WE MUST OUTLAW PLASTIC BAGS THAT CAUSE FAR MORE DAMAGE AROUND CHINA AND INDIA THAN HERE IIN AMERICA.

The gubmint makes our lives miserable.

The single-use plastic bags are outlawed based on square footage of the retail site.

The gubmint. Must have the gubmint. Cannot survive without the gubmint. God save the almighty gubmint.

HELICOPTER CRASHES INTO BUILDING IN NEW YORK

As I type a bulletin has come upon the television informing of a helicopter that crashed into a building. Governor Cuomo has already been on tv stating that no one was injured. There has been a 2 alarm fire in the same building that the helicopter crashed. As of this writing it’s been reported that there has been one death.

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HERE

A helicopter crashed in midtown Manhattan on Monday afternoon. The crash occurred near West 51st Street and Seventh Avenue, on the north end of Times Square. A spokeswoman for the New York Police Department told CNBC the number of possible injuries is unknown.

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BEGINNINGS OF IMPEACHMENT HEARINGS BEGIN

Well yes as I sat down and tuned in to watch the damn dumbest action taken by a political party, the helicopter hit a building in New York. Because of this I saw nothing of the wonderful John Dean sit in front of congress and berate my president.

Not that he isn’t a convicted fellow charged with lying before congress.

The Dems. have no pride.

Wednesday-6/12/19

JOE BIDEN COMES OUT OF HIDING

I chanced to catch a little bit of former VP Joe Biden’s speech yesterday in Iowa. The most notable sound bite is that bit about President Trump being an “existential threat”.

What is it with these people? Why can’t they campaign on something else besides hating Trump? It gets old and I strongly suspect that it will come back to haunt them in 2020.

But the most absurd and nonsensical statement by Biden was: “Forget ‘Let’s make America great again. Let’s make America America again.”

Does Biden think this is some kind of clever wording? Does he not want America to be great? Is he saying that instead of making America great, let’s leave it like it is? Meaning what? America’s not so great?

He came out of the woodwork and to add to the serendipity, Trump was also in Iowa and dishing out insults to Biden way more clever than Biden’s Trump-Derangement-Syndrome.

Biden….my state’s former senator.

A loser. Nothing’s changed there.

WHAT’S GOING ON IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC?

All I know about the Dominican Republic is that it’s somewhere near Haiti. Like many central American countries, it has a wonderful clime and warm Caribbean waters.

Now, all of a sudden and for no apparent reason, Americans vacationing there are dying. Healthy relatively young Americans suddenly dropping dead of what would appear to be natural causes.

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here Six American tourists have mysteriously died in recent months at resorts in the Dominican Republic. The FBI is helping local authorities investigate these deaths.

Robert Wallace traveled the world with his wife and friends say he worked hard and played even harder. But his niece said he fell ill almost immediately after drinking a scotch from the minibar at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino and was dead just three days later in April.

David Harrison of Maryland died at the same resort last year. He and his wife had taken their 12-year-old son to the Dominican Republic to celebrate their wedding anniversary. The Hard Rock Hotel & Casino said it's confident that all operational protocols were followed.

Miranda Schaup-Werner and Yvette Monique Sport died at the Bahia Principe resort. Their death certificates list the cause of death for both as heart attacks. But Felecia Nieves, Sport's sister, questions that.

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Adding to the sudden and odd, former Boston Red Sox baseball player ,David Ortiz was shot in the Dominican Republic. Details on this are few as of this writing, save he is back in Boston and safely under hospital care. -------------------------------------

IT’S TIME FOR THE….

Political cartoon of week

Thursday-6/13/19

POLITICAL MISCELLANY

It’s been somewhat of a slow news day today but there are a few things from yesterday worth additional commentary. Also, some things on Wednesday worth a small mention…

First, there’s the infamous Quinnipiac poll that has President Trump being defeated by many of the current Democratic contenders for presidential nomination. Supposedly Trump will be landslided by Biden, Sanders, Elizabeth Warren with Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, or Corey Booker coming up the rear.

Come on. Anybody believes that I got a bridge to sell, cheap. Some minor imperfections but the price is good. Rush says this is all a setup to give the Democrats a reason to “investigate” if those poll numbers don’t hold after the 2020 election.

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Of course I did not mention that, heh, Joe Biden says he’s going to cure cancer.

I wouldn’t vote for Biden just for his shameless hubris.

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I’ve been hearing how upset the Dems are about how that helicopter crash blacked out the magnificent testimony of John Dean. I remember this so well because I told my niece about Dean’s scheduled testimony…”WATERGATE!” I shouted. “ Why can’t they leave Trump alone?” My niece then told me she would sit down and listen to Dean as she was home at that time. I was a bit excited that I piqued her interest. Then the helicopter crash and there was no coverage of the wonderful and honest John Dean.

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So the administration is claiming executive privilege over the contentious issue of a citizenship question supposed to be on the 2020 census. The Supreme court is supposed to rule on this matter quickly.

If it isn’t established that the census participant is or is not a citizen of the U.S. what’s to stop everyone in Nigeria, France and/or Norway to submit a census?

The Dems do not want anyone to know how many illegals are in the country because…well it might make us mad.

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Finally, heh, Bernie Sanders gave a speech on what he called “democratic socialism” yesterday. He said that most of us are living paycheck to paycheck and are only a sickness or accident away from economic disaster.

I think this is true but I must ask wise Bernie how this is different from the past 50 years. Average people tend to live paycheck to paycheck, it’s no crime. If we didn’t need our next paycheck then why work? And yes, a big sickness or surprising accident would set most of us back financially.

But this is America. We live with it. We have social agencies to help us deal with it. We have family. We use our wonderful heads in this free country and we survive.

Somebody tell me what is Bernie’s point?

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It’s time for the weekly ….

…NOT POLITICS BY PAT

I am a widow who lives by herself. Like many women, I had a wonderful husband who did a lot of the things that I must now do. One job husband had was changing the furnace filter. I know this but didn’t think of it until one day the furnace stopped working. The filter was clogged after five years of pet hair.

So I decided that it was time for me to tackle those somewhat small jobs that were driving me nuts.

In one week I fixed the toilet seat, cleaned and updated the dishwasher, and I put the wheel back on the trash cart.

The toilet seat kept slipping off, most times when I was sitting upon. This, as you may imagine, was very annoying. I kept pushing down on the “tab” things that affixed the seat to the toilet but it wouldn’t flatten. Finally I took the thing off and sat down to study the manner. It was then that I noticed a little arrow instructing me to “turn” the seat tab to properly affix. Boom, it worked and I can do my business without fear of fall.

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Mark Levin is one of my favorite pundits but I have to rant. DOES THAT MAN SPEND ANY MINUTE OF THE DAY NOT HAWKING HIS DAMN BOOK?

Understand I’ve read quite a few of Mark’s books but dag, if I read the things do I have to listen to his endless promotions as well?

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This past Sunday was Pentecost and I submit that the Holy Ghost is my favorite of the blessed trinity. I look upon the Holy Ghost as a drop of God placed in all of us. I know God is God and He can do anything. But to have God in us at all times is God’s gift to us. At least as I see it.

Friday-6/14/19

AMERICAN TANKERS HIT WITH TORPEDOES IN GULF OF OMAN

Seems like little skirmishes like this are happening frequently around Iran.

Iran, it would seem, is mad. They don’t like that President Trump stopped sending them money like Obama did.

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HERE The attacks appeared to use relatively sophisticated weapons, according to early assessments, and came within roughly 45 minutes of each other in the Gulf of Oman, where four tankers were attacked last month in an incident the U.S. blamed on Iran, which Tehran denied. The U.S. military has built up its military presence in the Persian Gulf in response to what American officials said were threats from Iran, sending an aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, and its strike group to the region.

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This looks like irritation more than anything. Iran, is the suspicion, is trying to start a flare up with Trump. Then Iran can begin investigating Trump for collusion.

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WEEKLY EDITORAL BY PAT

About monopolies….

I’ve been hearing about Google, Facebook, Twitter….et al….being investigated for being a monopoly.

And I, few people know, spent the first fifteen years of her employment life dealing with the biggest monopoly….ever.

First, let’s quickly go over just what is a monopoly and why the gubmint considers that a bad thing. Google is probably as close to a monopoly around but the company didn’t plan it that way. A new technology came upon and Google was the first, biggest and most aggressive on the scene.

Sort of how it happened to AT&T.

Back in that era, it was AT&T that began and built telephonic communication across the fruited plains. AT&T, when they hired me, consisted of three sub-entities. Western Electric, where I worked, was the monopolist manufacturing arm for such as wires and cables. Bell Labs was the arm of the company that improved things as needed or implemented new procedures. The local phone company, in my case the Chesapeake and Potomac phone company, was in charge of such as signing up customers and billing them.

At the time I was hired at Western Electric (WE), Ronald Reagan had just been elected and on my first day on the job I heard about the monopoly breaking up under Reagan and for the next fifteen years every aspect of my life was affected by this monopoly issue.

The reason AT&T was a monopoly and was allowed to remain so for many years is that it was AT&T that put up all the phone poles across the country, that manufactured the wires that were connected by the poles, that made the curly cords that connected home phones to those overhead wires. AT&T was given much leeway in that you couldn’t have “Joe Blow’s Pole and Wire” company install poles and wires in Indiana, Pennsylvania and California. Or “Mary Jane’s telephone pole company with attached wires” setting up in New York, Florida and the east coast. In order to get America connected effectively from coast to coast, it became a protected monopoly. Indeed WE manufactured the ocean cable that connected America to the rest of the world. You couldn’t have every Mom and Pop making wires that work here, not there. Or putting up poles in backyards or burying cable in corner ponds.

AT&T needed freedom from competition to get the country connected.

But at the very day I was hired by WE I was on notice that AT&T, WE’s parent company please understand, was going to lose its monopoly status and Ronald Reagan was expected to do it.

So monopolies are not necessarily bad things. AT&T connected the country.

After being on the job at WE maybe five, six years, indeed the monopoly was broken up. President Reagan did the deed and, heh, it needed to be done.

Look at America now! We all have cell phones and communication comes from cell towers, not wires stringing phone poles across the fruited plains. There are curly cords still around but not many.

AT&T was a monopoly that served a purpose but had it not been broken up we’d no doubt still be tied to landlines. Although, heh, can’t keep AT&T down. The company is still very much involved in cell phones and such and are, one might argue, the perfect company for same.

WE in Baltimore finally shut down completely when I’d been employed there for fifteen years. We stayed in business making wires and such for over five years pass the official dismantling of the monopoly because people still needed cords and such as technology transitioned America to a more modern form of mass communication involving cell phones and towers.

This situation is in no way similar to the Google, social media sites that have congress all atwitter. Indeed Google does hold a huge share of the market in terms of queries that allow advertising and links that companies seek.

And yes, Google, and Facebook especially, do tend to have a political bent. And I suppose, as the argument goes, they should be impartial.

I don’t know if Google should be mandated to not take political stances. But Lord do we need the gubmint to tell us when to wipe our butts?

Competition will take care of social media sites that displease their customer base. Conservatives will avoid liberal sites and liberals will avoid conservative sites. New mass social media sites will rise up to fill the void.

I say leave it alone. The country will grow and thrive without Google. Unlike AT&T, which undertook the task of hooking up the country, Google got started and there was a vacuum ready to be filled.

I shall decide for myself which social media sites to use. For unlike AT&T I would have no choice to switch phone companies or stop using the wires made by Western Electric.

If Google and Facebook block out or insult enough customers, another one will come right along.

We don’t need the gubmint involved in this.

Saturday-6/15/19

THE AMERICAN FEMALES AT THE WORLD CUP

First, let us establish that soccer is not an American sport. Americans play football, where the contenders beat up on each other, knock them down, sometimes punch out a tooth or two. The rest of the world likes soccer and so do a few Americans.

Thus I am surprised that the female American soccer team, playing for the world cup in the week just passed, was so doggone good. I’d think any other country in the world could beat an American team in that, well they have a culture more attune to soccer.

So the American female team beats a team from Thailand with a score of 13-0.

America got 13 points and the Thailand team got…well, zero.

The big flap is about the American team and what they call lack of good sports manners.

Indeed it is not considered good manners to over-do the winning. Did the American team really need to keep scoring goals after, say, 8 or 9 points?

The concept is that it’s a bit cruel to over-do it.

To add to what is considered American bad manners, the American females carried on like nutjobs every time they scored a goal.

So first, so goes the criticism, the American females could have just stopped with the endless scoring. Second, at the very least, after each score, with the backdrop of broken-hearted and humiliated Thai females, the Americans could have cheered, but not like nut jobs.

I saw a video of all the shenanigans going on in that game and I suppose the American team over-did it a bit. And even here in America we have an accepted notion that beating a team with over-the-top scoring is considered bad sportsmanship.

I think that American team should be proud, sure. But hopefully they learned a lesson about class, winning and humility.

SARAH SANDERS RESIGNS END OF THIS MONTH.

Scuttlebutt has it that the current Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, might run for Governor of Arkansas some day.

That’s just idle gossip as her father is Mike Huckabee, former Governor of Arkansas.

Frankly I think Sarah did a fine job. She handled that aggressive White House press corps with strength and dignity.

Here’s wishing her well and may we someday call her Governor Sanders.

ENDING THE WEEK WITH A SATURDAY GIGGLE