We Used To Sing, California Here I Come. Now We Sing, California I Ain't Coming.

California Is At It Again

This Blog Posting was actually mostly written last year. I have unsuccessfully tried to get an update to all of this Foolishness but I can’t find updated information. However, based on how slow our legal system oozes it way through our lives, I feel fairly certain that this Craziness is still oozing.

Coffee may be bad for you:

• A Los Angeles Superior Court ruled against Starbucks and 90 Other Cafes and Gas Stations, penalizing them because they couldn’t definitively prove that coffee doesn’t cause cancer.>How does one prove a negative? Someone accuses you of being a bad person. You counter that you are not a bad person. They counter your counter by saying, “Prove it”.
• In addition to slapping a cancer warning on each cup of coffee they will sell in the future, the companies may have to pay millions in civil penalties and lawsuit settlements.
• At issue is a chemical called Acrylamide, which is created when coffee beans are roasted.
• It’s also common in other foods, including bread, cookies, cereals, potato chips and French fries.>Why aren’t these other evil products being attacked by California?
• Under California’s 1986 Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, better known as Proposition 65, Acrylamide is listed as a likely human carcinogen.
• Notice Prop 65 does not say Acrylamide is a Human Carcinogen but only a likely Human Carcinogen and that’s all that is needed to extract ungodly sums of money from the victims of Our Court System and the State of California.
• California’s cancer list relies heavily on junk science and with Acrylamide the evidence is questionable at best.
• These tentative concerns derive mainly from studies that examined its effects on lab animals, not humans.
• The American Cancer Society says the doses of Acrylamide given to rats and mice have been as much as 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than the levels people might be exposed to in foods and for humans “there are currently no cancer types for which there is a clearly increased risk related to Acrylamide”.
• The evidence is so scant that even the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer admitted in 2016 that there was “no conclusive evidence for a carcinogenic effect of drinking coffee” and its review of more than 1,000 studies turned up evidence that coffee may actually reduce the risk of some types of cancer.
• The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer is the same alarmist outfit that thinks everything from red meat to working the night shift causes cancer.
• However feeble the evidence, Proposition 65 encourages trial lawyers and their front groups to sue on behalf of the state by offering them a cut of the civil penalties.
• Last year these types of cases yielded $25.6 million in settlements, and more than three-fourths of that sum went to the lawyers.
• A very famous (infamous?) trial lawyer brought the case against Starbucks and 90 other cafes and gas stations.
• He is working on behalf of something called the Council for Education and Research on Toxics.
• This is the same “nonprofit” and attorney also sued McDonald's and Burger King over Acrylamide in 2002.
• The Starbucks shakedown was easy in part because under Proposition 65 the co-defendants bore the burden of proof.
• The 7-Eleven chain decided to settle, paying $900,000.
• For the remaining defendants, the trial lawyer is now seeking civil penalties as high as $2,500 per person for each “exposure” since 2002.
• This will add up to a huge sum of money in a state with roughly 40 million residents.

This ought to be that point where the judge says to the Trial Lawyer some or all of the following...

Counselor, the amount of money you are asking for is an unmitigated waste of the court’s time! Do you understand how much money $2,500 times every cup of coffee sold by these California businesses in the last 16 years is? This court does not even know how that final sum would be determined! If you not nuts, you are certainly stupid! Get the hell out of my courtroom!

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Did you hear it? I did. I heard the other shoe drop.

The state of California is penalizing businesses because they couldn’t definitively prove that coffee doesn't cause cancer.

Below are the guts of one of many articles that can be found that not only say coffee is good for us but we ought to drink many cups a day to increase our chances of living a healthier life.

(CNN)…

Yes, go ahead and grab that cup of coffee, or two, or more. New research suggests that doing so may improve your health and help you live longer...

• In a new observational study involving close to 20,000 individuals, people who consumed at least four cups of coffee daily had a 64% lower risk of early death compared to those who never or rarely consumed coffee.
• The reduction in risk was more significant once people reached the age of 45, suggesting that it may be even more beneficial to consume coffee as we get older.
• These findings echo the recent results of another large observational study, which found that coffee drinkers appear to live longer, regardless of whether they consume regular or decaf coffee. 
• Coffee has also been shown to reduce the risk of many diseases, including Type 2 Diabetes, Liver Disease, Colorectal Cancer, Alzheimer's and Skin Cancer.
• In recent years it has come to light that Coffee is loaded with antiioxidents. Many are naturally occurring antioxidants found in the coffee bean, while others are created during the roasting process. It's these compounds that science links with positive effects in reducing the risk of several diseases.
• Some of the compounds commonly found in coffee "have been related to Better Insulin Sensitivity, Better Liver Function and Reduced Chronic Inflamation", said V. Wendy Setiawan an associate professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and the lead author of one of the recent studies on coffee consumption and longevity.

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Our courts are out of control. Are we on the verge of having a lawyer contend in court something along these lines?...

Your honor, everyone on that plane was killed in that horrible crash. My client was not on that plane but he could have been and, if he had been, he would have been killed with all the rest of the passengers that were killed. If he had been killed, his wife would be a widow and his 6 children would be fatherless through no fault of his or their own. The sadness they would have experienced is hard to imagine.

I am therefore compelled to ask this court for more money than $2,500 times every cup of coffee sold by those California businesses in the last 16 years discussed in Fella’s silly blog posting.

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

Lagniappe: This comes from a fed up Californian on April 16, 2018…

“Regarding your editorial “Attack of the Killer Cappuccino” (March 31): I intend to bring a class-action lawsuit against the Council for Education and Research on Toxics citing the scientific fact that stress causes cancer. The council is causing me severe, debilitating anxiety with its cancer warning about coffee. Judge Elihu Berle’s decision makes me extremely stressed out as well, so he (they, or she, to use the correct gender pronoun since I don’t want to be arrested for using the incorrect gender pronoun in California) must be sued also. Anybody with me? After all, the council can’t prove that it is not responsible for causing cancer.”

Go East Young Man

“Washington is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable. Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country.”

— Horace Greeley

How things have changed. Now California is shoving people back to the East. Horace is still right about Washington but there is a lot of East between California and Washington and California Businesses are heading East in bunches.

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The business consulting firm Spectrum Location Solutions recently estimated that 660 California companies have moved 765 facilities out of California since 2017.

(Read the above paragraph again.)

This includes 10 corporations that have moved their headquarters out of San Francisco.

Discount brokerage firm Charles Schwab was founded in San Francisco in 1973 but it just announced it is relocating its corporate headquarters from San Francisco to lower-cost-and-low-tax Texas.

Schwab has many Good Business Reasons for making this move. Thinking from a Business Point of View can you quibble with any of these reasons?…

• Schwab will pay much lower taxes in Texas.
• The Lone Star State imposes a 0.75% Franchise Tax on Business Margins (total revenue minus compensation), which is substantially less than the Corporate Tax Rates in California (8.84%).
• The city of San Francisco also imposes a 0.38% Payroll Tax and a 0.6% Gross Receipts Tax on Financial Service Companies.
• Texas has no Individual Income Tax, while the top rate on Income and Capital Gains in California is 13.3%.
• The Lone Star State’s Housing and Energy Costs are substantially lower.
• The Average Monthly Rent in San Francisco is $3,870 compared to $1,200 in Dallas. This means Schwab workers and executives can have a Higher Standard of Living, and More After-Tax Income, at the same salaries.

Up until now the State of California has combated the loss of tax revenue caused by all these companies leaving because of High Taxes and High Regulations by raising the Taxes and Increasing the Regulatory Burden on the companies that have not left.

The Governor has said raising the Taxes and Increasing the Regulatory Burden on his remaining businesses is the only logical course of action he can take.

When a reporter questioned this “Logical Course of Action” the Governor looked at him with complete disdain and said, You are being silly. I can’t tax companies that have left the State. I can only tax Companies that have not left the State and by golly I’m going to make them sorry that they are stupid enough to have their businesses in my State!

Yep. That ought to fix the problem…Or will it?

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

You’ve Got To Be Kidding!

I was stumbling around the Internet a few days ago and I came upon an article with this title, The Most Disappointing Planes and Choppers in Aviation History. Of course, I read it top to bottom.

The article did have some strange looking Flying Machines. Rather than see each one as a failure I saw each one as an Experiment. Without mankind’s attempt to try and do something different we would still be pulling unstable carts full of our stuff that only had one wheel because no inventor had gone to the trouble to dare to try and invent the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th wheels.

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To my utter shock and amazement I found that the people who put together their list of what they considered to be Aviation Failures had included The Wright Flyer!

In case I just went right by what you know about aviation history, allow me to be more specific…

These IYI’s included the first airplane that was put together by Wilbur and Orville Wright! They actually included the machine that started everyone everywhere flying anywhere. Aghhhh!

Here is what these nut cases had to say about The Wright Flyer…

“Here is how the Smithsonian Institution describes the Wright Flyer: “the first powered, heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot aboard.” They did not mention that it could not last over 59 seconds mid-air. On top of that, it was hard to manage and covered only 852 feet. The aircraft only ever flew four times on the 17th of December 1903. Pilots just gave up on it after that.”

The point should not be that it was Hard To Control or it Only Flew 852 Feet or it Only Flew For 59 Seconds or it was Only Flown 4 Times and then Orville and Wilbur “gave up on it”!

They did not give up on it! They went back to the drawing board to put together the Apollo Moon Landing Program to get us to the moon and back only 66 years later.

The shortcomings pointed out above were not the end of the road. They were the shortcomings discovered on the beginning of the road.

Hey, IYI Guys, The Point is... It Flew!

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Other “failures” on the IYI Most Disappointing Blunders of Mankind List…

• The Model T Ford because it was not a 2020 Cadillac.
• The entire Apollo Program because it only went to the Moon and fell woefully short of making it to Mars.
• The Gutenberg Printing Press because it only printed one sheet at a time and could not hold a candle to the High Speed Printing Machine that puts out the New York Times.

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

Lagniappe: Have you Googled “IYI”? If not, I’ll save you the trouble. It is the abbreviation of, “Intellectual Yet Idiot”.

Baltimore You Have Major Problems and We Are Gratified That You Are Taking Action to Address Your Problems…Or are we?...Or are you?

Baltimore’s Problems

Ø Baltimore violent crime has spun out of control in recent years.
>There were 342 homicides in Baltimore in 2017.
>This is the highest homicide count in the nation.
>2019 is the fifth year in a row that there have been more than 300 homicides and there is still more than a month remaining in 2019.
>To add insult to injury, the number of homicides is climbing in Baltimore while it’s falling around the rest of the country.

Ø If that’s not bad enough, the city has an astounding amount of poverty to go along with crushingly high taxes.

Ø Baltimore isn’t even offering much hope for future generations because it has some of the lowest-performing public schools in the country, despite the fact that the city annually spends about $16,000 per student.
>In 4^th and 8^th grade reading, only 13% of city’s students are considered proficient or advanced.
>In 4^th grade math, 14% were proficient.
>In 8^th grade math, 11% were proficient.

Ø To top it all off, the city is contending with a heaping helping of corruption.
>The past three Baltimore mayors have resigned in disgrace.
>Former Mayor Catherine Pugh, who at one time was billed as a “reformer”, resigned in May and has been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, seven counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States and two counts of tax evasion.
>Pugh was originally caught in a scheme allegedly involving kickbacks for selling her children’s books to hospitals, in which she was able to pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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Baltimore Has Decided To “Fix” Something Else

Rather than addressing these serious problems, Baltimore’s politicians have opted for empty virtue-signaling. The residents of Baltimore are the ones left holding the bag, literally and figuratively because their leaders have decided to look right past all the above terrible and growing real problems and have Banned Plastic Bags.

That ought to do it…Or ought it do it?

This Blog Posting could end here but the Late Paul Harvey happens to be visiting Fella today and he is shouting at me to tell you the Rest of the Story.

The problem Ole Paul is shouting at me about is the fact that Bag Bans are not just annoying and inconvenient but they also add up to little more than Virtue-Signaling of being “Environmentally Conscious” but not actually Helping or Saving the Environment but only Brushing by it. There’s even evidence that such bans end up doing harm to the Environment.

A study by University of Sydney economist Rebecca Taylor in Australia found that banning plastic bags certainly caused customers to use fewer plastic shopping bags.

Warning: Some “Scientific Analysis” might stop right here and take solace in the Use Fewer Bags as Case Closed and Mission Accomplished.

Plastic Bag Bans Just Might Do More Harm Than Good…

Ø People begin to use other kinds of plastic bags to make up for the lost supply of the Banned Bags.

Ø The study found that in areas that had plastic Bag Bans, there was a surge in the use of the thicker 4-gallon bags, which use more plastic.

Ø Many customers actually reuse plastic bags for lining wastebaskets, among many other secondary uses but now they have to find something else to do these jobs.

Ø The laws also create a huge uptick in the use of Paper Bags, which—according to some research—are actually worse for the environment than Plastic Bags.

In the meantime, all the Baltimore Problems described in the 4 Bullet Points at the beginning of this Blog Posting are continuing to continue.

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

Lagniappe: In the Warning above I put “Scientific Analysis” in quotes. Not all things out of the world of science are carved in stone. Science is always evolving. It’s called Progress. It should not be called Mistakes.

I am presently reading a book by Mike Rowe named The Way I Heard It. It is like the next iteration of The Rest of the Story.

I know you are tired of me by now, so I’ll try and be quick…

Ø One of the shows Mike Rowe hosts for the Science Channel is How the Universe Works.

Ø He is sometimes called into the studio to re-record a piece of a show already recorded because new information has been received that corrects/contradicts the Prior Recorded Science.

Ø One of the quotes that needed to be corrected was that there were “approximately one hundred billion galaxies in the known universe”.

Ø Within a week a new method of measuring the cosmos had led astronomers to revise the number of galaxies from 100 Billion (that’s 100 Thousand Million) to 2 Trillion (that’s 2 Thousand Billion).

No matter how you look at it, the first estimate was not close but it was Scientific Fact at some point in time.

The Youth Of Today Have It So Hard. I’m Glad I Have Advanced Beyond Their Pressure-Filled Age Level.

I just read another article about how today’s young people have it so hard. The article tried to convince me that they are under constant pressure to succeed and to survive, in the Dog Eat Dog world of today.

The picture that is painted of what they have to go through far surpasses anything faced by those who came and went before them…Or does it?

The article gave several examples to prove its They Got It Tough Contention…

• They have to cope with the constant pressure of having to keep their Smartphones charged. What could be worse than having a cell phone go dead right in the middle of a really important Tweet?
• How about the hour upon hour of laying in your bed unable to fall asleep worried about whether your mother had made a mistake when she only offered that Admission Official $100,000 to get you into that snotty Ivy League College instead or the $125,000 he had hinted might be a more “acceptable” figure. The way he had verbally underlined the word “acceptable” has really been keeping you on edge for days now.
• From personal experience I know the shock and horror of walking into a Jacuzzi with my Smartphone in the pocket of my swimming trunks. Actually this is probably worse than the What Could Be Worse Tweeting Catastrophe in the first bullet above.

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I was really beginning to Feel Modern Youth’s Pain when I started to think that maybe when compared to times past their pain may not be as painful as I think they think it is.

Imagine you are a Young, Skinny, Wiry Fellow Not Over 18 in the Spring of 1860 and you need a job badly. You need a job so badly that you respond to and accept the job offered by the following poster…

Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over 18.

Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily.

Orphans preferred.

Wages $25 per week.

You, young skinny man (you could not weigh over 125 pounds), have just become a Rider for the Pony Express!

• It was determined that a pony at full gallop could travel approximately 10 miles a day.
• You are expected to travel alone, day and night, regardless of weather.
• You could stop at one of the Pony Express Stations (approximately 10 miles apart) to switch ponies and get water.
• Only after traveling 75 to 100 miles could a rider switch out with another rider and rest.
• Since the riders would be traveling alone, they were subject to the elements and attacks from Wild Animals, Native Americans (back then they were Indians) and Bandits.
• Originally, the riders were armed with guns, but eventually most of the weapons were taken away to lighten the load. Speed of travel and carrying capacity were more important than the Skinny Riders.

There turned out to be some light at the end of the tunnel. The Pony Express went out of business after 18 months. It had earned approximately $90,000 but it had lost more than double that amount.

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Somehow, Keeping Your Smartphone Charged, Bribing Your Way Into Snotty Schools and Taking a Jacuzzi Dip With Your Smartphone in Your Pocket does not seem to measure up against being a Skinny Orphan on a Fast Pony Without a Gun.

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

Note to President Trump... It could be worse. You could have been born Abraham Lincoln.

Many news organizations opposed Lincoln from the beginning – much as they have President Trump in our time.

Negative attacks on Abraham Lincoln…

• “Within 90 days from the time Lincoln is inaugurated, the Republican Party will be utterly ruined and destroyed. His path is environed with so many difficulties, that even if he had the ability of Jefferson and the energy of Jackson, he would fail, but he is a weak and inexperienced man, and his administration will be doomed from the commencement.”
• “If he takes that radical section of the Republican Party, the conservative wing of it will cut loose and repudiate him. If, on the other hand, he courts the conservatives and pursues a moderate conciliatory policy, the radicals will make open war upon his administration.”
• “his election was a rash experiment, his administration is a deplorable failure.”
• “As President of the United States he must have enough sense to see and acknowledge he has been an egregious failure. One thing must be self-evident to him, and that is that under no circumstances can he hope to be the next President of the United States … (he should) retire from the position to which, in an evil hour, he was exalted.”
• “evidently a person of very inferior cast of character, wholly unequal to the crisis.”
• “Lincoln was “a barbarian, Scythian, yahoo, or gorilla.”
• “a frontier hack”
• “an idiot”
• “the original gorilla”
• “is universally an admitted failure, has no will, no courage, no executive capacity… and his spirit necessarily infuses itself downwards through all departments.”

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

I Am In A Quandary. I Need Your Help. You Could Go A Long Way Toward Helping Me Out Of My Predicament By Answering One Simple Question.

I wrote a Blog Posting in January of this year that contained this excerpt…

This kind of thing happens all the time in the Middle East...Someone says to a Middle East Extremist, “Why are you so determined to kill that guy drinking coffee over there? He looks just like you.”

After asking this perfectly logical question the questioner gets this indignant response from the guy who wants to kill the Coffee Drinking Other Guy, “Do you know nothing about history? Do you not know what his people did to my people in the year 1277?”

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I don’t want to imply that all people in the Middle East hold long-standing grudges…Or do I?

I just need a bit more specific information. Was the guy who wanted to kill the Coffee Drinking Other Guy talking about 1277 BC or 1277 AD?

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

Hillary Elizabeth Selfie's Chickens

Hillary Clinton’s Strategy for getting elected in 2016 was to take a Selfie with Everyone in the Good Ole USofA.

When I wrote my Blog Posting about this I thought I was joking around (I have been known to Joke Around) but it seems the Strategy did not die with Hillary’s Defeat.

Enter Elizabeth Sometimes-I’m-An-Indian-and-Sometimes-I’m-Not-An-Indian Warren. She is actually attempting to Selfie her way into the White House on Steroids.

Last night I heard her say she had taken her 75,000^th Selfie. My heavens! Are they really keeping track of how many Selfie’s they take? If this works, it will be conclusive proof that the Smart Phone has made all of us Stupid.

Below, between the asterisks is the link to my May 8, 2017 Silliness about Hillary and her failed Pantsuit Nation Take a Selfie with Everyone in the Good Ole USofA Campaign. After that you will find that Pantsuit Nation has been taken over by Elizabeth’s Wear A Sweater In The White House All The Time Campaign.

Yea, I played around with the term “Pantsuit Nation” but I did not invent the term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantsuit_Nation

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Here is the promised link to the May 8, 2017 Blog Posting…

https://forii.blogspot.com/2017/05/if-you-are-sad-hillary-lost-it-is-safe.html

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You really ought to have something better to do than read these articles below. I am just listing them to make my point that Taking A Whole Bunch of Selfies is an Actual Vote-Getting Strategy … AGAIN!...

• https://time.com/5683099/elizabeth-warren-selfies/
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/09/18/frederick-douglass-photos-smashed-stereotypes-could-elizabeth-warren-selfies-do-same/
• https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/voters-wait-hours-elizabeth-warrens-selfie-line-strategy/story?id=65251043
• https://news.yahoo.com/inside-elizabeth-warrens-selfie-strategy-135837940.html

I’ll stop now but this list could go on forever…Or could it?

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One final Wise Guy Commentary…

Somewhere back in Political History a savvy politician came up with the Catchphrase, “A Chicken in Every Pot”. (The phrase has been attributed to 4 Presidents between 1920 and 1936 but actually it goes back to King Henry IV of 17^th Century France who reputedly wished that each of his peasants would enjoy "a chicken in his pot every Sunday").

Thank heaven this Blog Posting is about to come to an end but I promise you it’s going to have a great big ending thanks to the Town of Fitzgerald, GA.

It seems Fitzgerald, Georgia is planning to build a 62 Foot Tall Chicken that will cost $150,000, use at least 16 tons of steel and include an apartment inside that town officials intend to rent to visitors.

Hats off to Fitzgerald’s Mayor who will go down in history for replacing, “A Chicken in Every Pot” with…

“Why Don’t We Just Build A Big-Ass Chicken?”

Read all about it… https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/why-dont-we-just-build-a-big-ass-chicken-small-georgia-town-plans-to-build-world-record-rooster

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

Millennial, You Are In Danger!

I've officially now have gone over the hill and am careening down the Slippery Slope. I sent this out as an EMail and not as a Foolishness...Or Is It? Blog Posting.

If you want to read it again, have at it...If you don't, don't.

Personally, I'm going to listen to Kitty Kallen one more time.

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Here is the Blog Posting...

I’m not going out of my way to impugn Millennials but we must face facts…Or must we?

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Picture these radio transmissions in your Mind’s Eye (whatever that is) between an Old Timer Combat Flight Leader and his Millennial Just-Out-Of-Flight-School Wing Man…

Ø Old Time Flight Leader: Millennial 22, heads up! Bandit approaching you at 2 O’clock High!

Ø Millennial 22: I object to your transmission regarding my being high. I have not been high since last night.

Ø Old Time Flight Leader: Forget your highness, jerk! You are in danger! I say again. Bandit approaching you at 2 O’clock High!

Ø Millennial 22: I appreciate your concern but what is this 2 O’clock High Stuff you keep talking about? Does this have anything to do with an old-fashioned wrist watch with those little Mickey Mouse Hands on them? I never did figure out what those hands were for. You should understand I am from the digital age. Request a more modern way of warning me of the danger you are so worried about. OK, try again. Explain 2 O’clock and don’t say anything about High or I will turn this thingy around and head back to Happy Hour early.

Ø Millennial 22: Hey, what’s that big noi…

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

Lagniappe Bonus: From an era when singers depended on strong vocal cords and actual singing and not screaming and tattooed necks: https://www.last.fm/music/Kitty+Kallen/_/Little+Things+Mean+a+Lot

Communities Around The Good Ole USofA Are Telling Other Communities Around The Good Ole USofA That They Know What’s Good For Other Communities Around The Good Ole USofA And Threatening The Other Communities To Start Thinking As They Are Told To Think Or Economic Pressure Will Be Brought Upon Them To Correct Their Thinking.

So Far I Have 140,804 Views of My Blog. I’m Right Behind Justin Bieber…Or am I?

In this country we once had a bunch of Freedoms. Now we are evolving into a nation of We Know Better Than You Know and, if you don’t do as we tell you to do, we will organize my fellow clear thinkers to stop buying your Cheez-Its and, if that does not work, me and my fellow clear-thinkers will come into your grocery store and stomp on your Cheez-Its.

Once upon a time we used to be able to make up our own minds about what we liked and disliked but now we are being told what we have to like and dislike. I like the old days (where I come from).

For example, the City of Galoshes depends on the sale of Galoshes for its survival. The City Council of Galoshes has determined that any City, Town, Village, Hamlet, Cardboard Box in Los Angeles or San Francisco or Portland or Seattle that does not support the City of Galoshes by buying their required assigned annual quota of Galoshes is no friend of the Galoshenites of Galoshes.

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If the above paragraphs sound silly that’s because they are silly. However, the very fabric of this Good Ole USofA is being turned into a confusing quagmire of dos and don’ts and if you don’t do your required dos or do do your forbidden don’ts, you are subject to harsh penalties.

You can bet that all of this craziness has something to do with the Once Great State of California because craziness in the Good Ole USofA usually gets its start in the Land of Fruits and Nuts.

If you want to read all about it, you can read the Lagniappe Link at the bottom of this Blog Posting.

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Actually, City Governance has now become easy in the Good Ole USofA. Find out what San Francisco is doing and do the opposite. 

Here is a partial listing of what San Francisco is demanding of us…

Ø Eat one package of Rice-A-Roni (the San Francisco Teat) every day for breakfast (the flavor is optional for now but that may change in the not too distance future).

Ø Take a ride on a Trolley every day. If there is not a Trolley where you live, move to a place where there is a Trolley where you live.

Ø Each of us must accept the fact that the $1,000,000 Cardboard Box is the wave of the future.

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

Lagniappe: Before you read the link below think back to those thrilling days of yesteryear…

Ø When Americans had the right to express themselves openly without fear of seeing throngs of demonstrators marching outside their place of business.

Ø When we did not see signs that read…”We respect your right to think for yourself. We just hate you for thinking for yourself.”

Ø When your customers came into your Grocery Store and said to you…”I could not disagree with you more about what you just said but I’ll buy your Pork ‘n Beans anyway because you have a right to think what you think and Pork ‘n Beans aren’t that important”.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-16/san-francisco-22-states-for-restrictive-abortion-laws

Lagniappe #2: Would it not be great if Californians loved Kumquats and Kumquats could not be grown in California and the other 49 States refused to sell them Kumquats?

Stop Them From Stopping!

To gather information for this Blog Posting, I searched: “Idling at drive-thru restaurants is causing Global Warming”. If you want to check me out to see if I made up the idea for this Foolishness, have at it.

Come to think of it, the Drive-Thru was invented way back in 1930 when the Grand National Bank of St. Louis, Missouri set up the first Drive-Up Teller Window. The Drive-Up/Drive-Thru Window has been around a very long time. This means that the Drive-Up/Drive-Thru Window just might be the single biggest cause of Global Warming…Or might it not be?

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Drive-Thrus which allow a customer to pull up to a business’s window in their vehicle while exchanging cash for goods, often fast food, are beloved for their speed and convenience but they require waiting in a line of other cars, which all have their engines running.

Multiple City Councils in the Good Ole USofA are imposing bans on Fast-Food Drive-Thru Windows after this much-loved feature was linked to Global Warming.

Drive-Thru Windows are now under attack because they are seen by some as causing Vehicle Noise and Air Pollution, and several City Councils across the US (this is not a complete list…Orchard Park, NY, Creve Coeur, MO, Fair Haven, NJ, Long Beach, CA, Minneapolis, MN) have moved to ban restaurants from adding them to their business.

At this point they are not requiring that existing Drive-Thru Windows be bricked up but only that new construction cannot have them. The bricking up law will come later.

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This may come as a shock to you but I agree with these Forward-Thinking City Councils, however, I think they need go further.

Why are we stopping at Stopping and Idling at Fast Food Drive-Thru Windows? If we are going to fix this problem, we ought to go to the Heart of the Problem.

I say let’s Get Rid of Traffic Lights! To think of the amount of Vehicle Noise and Air Pollution these lights create boggles the mind! Add to this the humongous amount of wasted gasoline and we have a Worldwide Crisis of Epic Proportions!

Did I just hear some of you bring up the possibility of increased Traffic Accidents? Those some of you disappoint me. So what if there are a few million more traffic accidents. I think it is a fair trade off when you think there will be millions of drivers who will not get into accidents and, therefore, they will be rewarded by getting to their Fast Food Drive-Thru Windows Lineup sooner!

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Oh my gosh! I just realized there is a major problem with my otherwise perfect Get Rid of Traffic Lights Idea.

If the Drive-Thru Windows would be eliminated, people would be forced to park their cars and go into their Fast Food Restaurant and buy from the counter. This would increase the wait time at the counters.

Do you see the problem? You don’t? Again you disappoint me.

Because parents will be standing in line this extra time, more babies and fur babies will die in hot cars than ever before.

If you think I am getting carried away by warning about Hot Car Baby Deaths, click below…

https://www.kidsandcars.org/how-kids-get-hurt/heat-stroke/

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

Are The Bad Guys Smarter Than The Good Guys?

Sergeant Schultz on Hogan’s Heroes used to say, “I know nothing!”

If Sergeant Schultz were a Modern-Day Computer Hacker, he would be saying, “I know everything!”

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If there are any Good Guys out there, they are not very good at stopping the Bad Guys (Hacker Guys) from having their way with us.

Here is a string of headlines I found on the Internet about what the Hacker Guys (Bad Guys) have been finding out about us.

These Bag Guys Are Very Good At Being Bad…
Ø Approximately 200 million Words with Friends and Draw Something accounts reportedly accessed.

Ø Comodo Forums Hack Exposes 245,000 Users' Data.

Ø Over A Billion Malicious Ad Impressions Exploit WebKit Flaw to Target Apple Users.

Ø New Critical Exim Flaw Exposes Email Servers to Remote Attacks.

Ø Exclusive — Hacker Steals Over 218 Million Zynga 'Words with Friends' Gamers Data.

Ø More SIM Cards Vulnerable to Simjacker Attack than Previously Disclosed

Ø Hacker Releases 'Unpatchable' Jailbreak for All iOS Devices, iPhone 4s to iPhone X

Ø Microsoft Warns of a New Rare Fileless Malware Hijacking Windows Computers

Ø DoorDash Breach Exposes 4.9 Million Users' Personal Data

Ø Outlook for Web Bans 38 More File Extensions in Email Attachments

Ø iOS 13 Bug Lets 3rd-Party Keyboards Gain 'Full Access'

Ø 1-Click iPhone and Android Exploits Target Tibetan Users via WhatsApp

Ø Russian APT Map Reveals 22,000 Connections Between 2000 Malware Samples

Ø Microsoft Releases Emergency Patches for IE 0-Day and Windows Defender Flaw

Ø Update Google Chrome Browser to Patch New Critical Security Flaws

Ø IT Firm Manager Arrested in the Biggest Data Breach Case of Ecuador’s History

Ø Smominru Botnet Indiscriminately Hacked Over 90,000 Computers Just Last Month

Ø Thousands of Google Calendars Possibly Leaking Private Information Online

When I used to listen to the Radio as a child back in the Old Days (where I come from) I thought every criminal (bad guy) had been caught or was in the process of being caught. 

If any of these Hackers are being caught, it is a well kept secret. All we hear about in the news are reports about them perpetrating their Dastardly Deeds but we never hear about them being apprehended and punished.

Many years ago I read about a Teenage Virus Maker in Europe who had been caught. His virus had cost companies worldwide millions of dollars. He was sentenced to house arrest and prohibited from using his computer for 6 weeks. At his “sentencing” the judge told him to be careful because a lot of people were really mad at him.

We can only hope that today’s Caught Hackers (if there are any) are being more severely punished than this Computer Deprived Teenager.

Would I kid u?
Smartfella