Woke. Spook. Accomplished. Bougie. The Language of the New Generation.

Languageification was not invented by George Bush, nor is Donald Trump the only practitioner today.   We use language to unite with one another - and to divide as well.

In a recent article online, Alexandria Occoquan-River, the freshman rep from the Bronx (by way of Westchester County), touted during a hearing about student loans that she made a student loan payment online during the hearing, instead of paying attention.  Kids these days - always multitasking on their cell phones!  She said "I feel so accomplished" which is not really grammatically correct.  She owes about $19,000 in student loans which should be easy for her to pay off, now that she's making well over 6 figures as a member of the House of Congress.  Why she didn't just pay off the entire balance during the hearing is unclear.

Well, actually it is clear.  If she paid off the entire balance, that would make her one of the evil one percenters who could afford to pay off their student loans.  By carrying a balance, she can claim to be one of the "little people" who are struggling with student loan debt, even if the amount of debt is less than what it would cost to buy a stripped down Toyota Camry.

But what struck me about the report was her use of language.  She said "I feel so accomplished" which is really a nonsensical phrase.  "I feel I accomplished something" would make more sense to me.  In an earlier video she made regarding garbage disposals, she used the words "woke" and "spook" which I didn't understand at all.  Then again, that's the nature of generations, they each have their own language that they use to separate themselves from others.

It wasn't long ago that the word "disrespect" became popular among African-Americans not as a noun, but as a verb.  Of course disrespecting was not really a verb, but since those days it has entered the lexicon and is now in the dictionary.  And that is the nature of language, it is fluid and changes over time.

When I was a kid, it was the hippie era, and we use phrases like "far out, man!" and "that's cool!"  Our elders were wondering what the heck we were saying, when in fact we weren't saying anything at all, but merely using coded words to communicate with our peers that we are one of them and not one of the others.

So AOC's use of millennial slang is just another pathetic attempt to be "with it" and connect with her perceived "base."   But in a way, it reminds me of the awkward moments when Obama tried to sound "black" before black audiences, slipping to the accent and cadence of the inner city, and not his natural speaking voice.   It reeked of in-authenticity.

Similarly, some of this slang is used to clearly demarcate the "us" from "them".   In the 1950's, the older generation were called "squares".   In the 1960's, it was "the establishment".   In the 1980's it was "the man".   With today's generation, the despised others are written off as "Bougie" or bourgeois (the latter of which is harder to spell).

Of course, that's the problem for Miss Alexia, as she has become one of the others - the establishment.  While she may feel so "accomplished" in making a big payment on her student loan, she knows that many others are struggling to pay off serious amounts of debt, not because the amount of debt is staggering, but only because they studied stupid things in school, got bad grades, now nobody's offering them jobs.  And what jobs are available, they deem to be beneath them.  They're not about to go to work for Amazon after spending four years at expensive University.  Sacrifice is something grandpa did, not for them!

Now that Alexis Jacob Jingleheimer-Schmidt is making the big bucks, and paying off her student loans, maybe she can splurge at Home Depot and buy herself one of those fancy garbage disposals (Oh, wait, she already has one).  Hey, if you're going to go Bougie you might as well go all the way.

Dear New York Times: Stop, For The Love of God, Please Stop!

Every Trump outrage reported by the New York Times only serves to embolden and empower Trump.

In the final months of 2019, we are winding down toward the elections of 2020. And remarkably enough, Donald Trump seems more popular than ever, both within his party and without.  With each outrageous tweet and outrageous statement he makes, his base seems to be more emboldened and more admiring of his policies.

And at the same time, with each tweet, the liberal-left becomes more enraged, delighting both his supporters and conservatives in general.  Trump is basically trolling the left, and the left is falling for it.

In case you were late for class, trolling is a time-honored technique that dates back to the early days of the internet. Perhaps there were precursors to this in our political arena in ages gone by.  Basically, somebody says something outrageous on the internet in order to generate a strong reaction from the opposing party.  If the troll is successful, the opposition appears to be so unhinged in response, they can be easily dismissed as crazy.

If nothing else, it's simply wastes the time and energy of the opponent.  No matter how you play this game, the troll always wins, unless you simply refuse to engage him.

This whole "sharpiegate" thing is a case in point (and for the love of God, can we stop using "-gate" after every political brouhaha these days?).   Trump shows an outdated picture of the path of Hurricane Dorian, which, at the time, was looking like it would go across Florida and eventually hit the panhandle and possibly Alabama or Mississippi.   The press goes nuts!   "He drew on it with a sharpie!" they cry - "this is a violation of the LAW!  He made a false weather forecast as a government employee!"

You're kidding me, right?    But Trump milks it for all its worth - six days' worth - and the media obediently laps it up, trying to "fact check" him again and again (sorry, but fact-checking Trump is an exercise in futility - the Trump administration has "alternative facts" - remember?).   The media tries to paint it that Trump still believes the hurricane is headed toward Alabama, when it already is past Charleston.   This is a pressing issue of the day?   This is the searing indictment of the Trump administration?   This is an impeachable offense?

You are being trolled, my friends.  Stop responding to trolls!  For the love of God, please stop!

Sadly, the New York Times, The Washington Post, and National Public Radio seem to not have learned this lesson.  Perhaps they have not spent enough time on internet discussion groups like 4chan or 8chan or Reddit.  Maybe they should ask their teenage children about this. They could tell them not to be triggered by trolls, as it is merely a waste of time and only makes the troll look better by comparison.

The problem is, the New York Times and other left-wing media outlets - and they are left-wing media outlets, let's be honest about this for a change - act in hysterical response to whatever Trump trolls or tweets on a particular day or week. As a result, the news from these outlets appears to be nothing more than hysterical rantings of an old lady.  Thus, it is hard for people to take it seriously.

Not only that, it emboldens Trump's supporters and those on the right in general. People who are right-leaning read the alarmist headlines in the New York Times and chuckle. They say to each other, "Did you see how Trump zinged them today? They're really losing their minds now!"  Even the "Never Trumpers" or moderate Republicans who are ambivalent about Trump admire the way he's been able to zing the far left. They don't lose any sleep over the fact that the people on the New York Times editorial board are losing sleep.

With each alarmist headline, the New York Times, The Washington Post, and their ilk are doing nothing more than empowering Trump further and further.  Rather than respond to his tweets and taunts, they need to seriously analyze his policy decisions from an objective point of view.  If people can see beyond the raging headlines, they might actually realize that many of these policies work against their personal interests, and thus may be inclined to vote against Trump.

But when they see yet another hand-wringing and pearl-clutching editorial from the Times about how unhinged the president is, they only laugh and assume that the left is losing its mind over the fact they lost an election.

Again, New York Times, for the love of God, please stop this madness!

UPDATE:  A reader points out that Trump is good for the newspaper business as these outrageous stories generate a lot of clicks in thus a lot of advertising revenue. So maybe it is by design that the New York Times and The Washington Post print these alarmist articles reacting to every tweet Trump makes. In other words, they're complicit in the whole deal.

They know that Sharpie-gate is a whole big nothing, but they also know that fervid Trump haters will click on any article that lambasts Trump.

Life Choices, Job Offers, and the Exploitation of Labor (by the left?)

Jeff Bezos has a job offer for you.... don't expect it to pay much, though.  Friend of the working man!

Two recent events in our travels gave me food for thought.   We were staying at Pawnee State Park in Nebraska - right on the lake.  It was beautiful, and we grilled (politically incorrect) hamburgers on the fire.   No power or water, but "dry camping" and it was fun.

The next day we left and stopped in Lincoln at a Shell station to get gas.  Four "dudes" in their 20's were loitering around an aging class-C camper, with a bucket of some sort and a 5-gallon gas tank.  One of them was wandering around, on the cell phone, with a guitar slung over his back.  He had amazing dreadlocks - for a white guy.

In case you didn't know how "dreads" are made, they are not curled or styled.  Rather, you let your hair grow out and never wash it, until the oils and sweat and dirt cause the hair to curl into tight dreads.  You may lose some friends in the interim, as your hair will stink to high heaven.  But once you have that "Sideshow Bob" hairstyle, you can then wash it, carefully, and not lose the curl.   Some fun, eh?  And why again?  Oh, right, making a style statement.

And like with tattoos and piercings, one that may limit job opportunities.  When employers see you with a getup like that, they might rightly question your values.   Of course, there are jobs where it doesn't matter - slacker jobs mostly.

But it struck me as sad that these four young men decided - and it was a choice - to travel cross-country by RV without any money, and instead rely on begging at gas stations for spare gallons of gas and spare change.  Oh yes, they did the "excuse me!" bit with their gas can as a prop, to beg for a gallon as they were "down on their luck" or some such nonsense.  Four strapping young men, in the prime of their life, unable to find work?  Shitty life choices!

If they got haircuts and made themselves presentable, they could easily find jobs and make money the old-fashioned way.  But of course, that involves hard work, and begging is an easier choice.   Plus, you don't have worry about some drug test at work.   Funny as it may seem, getting a haircut and not doing drugs are just non-starters for a lot of people.  When I was young, I thought that long hair and pot smoking defined who I was, and would have refused to do without either.   Then I sobered up, literally, and well, the rest is history.

At the KOA in Lawrence, Kansas (once again, fighting the headwinds that always blow through Kansas) was the poster shown above.  I thought to myself, "Well, here's an opportunity for these young men - and they already own an RV!"   But again, I doubt they would jump on this, as it would interfere with their vagabond lifestyle and require real effort.   But jobs like that abound.   Of course, they pay shit.   But I worked them - at that age.   So could they.

It struck me as odd that Jeff Bezos, who owns the ultra-liberal Washington Post, where Democracy cries in the darkness even to this day, also is one of the largest exploiters of labor in the USA.  People chastise me for shopping at Walmart, saying, "Don't you know they treat their employees poorly and pay then a pittance?"   I doubt either is true, but at least Walmart and the Walton family are not being hypocrites here.   Walmart represents unbridled capitalism at its finest (or worst - take your pick).  But at least they are consistent.   The same people who will "never set foot in a Walmart" have a stack of Amazon packages on their front stoop every night - all crap made in China and packed and shipped by non-union labor in union-busting Amazon sweatshops.

Hypocrisy much?

Of course, no one gets rich working for Amazon in the warehouse - just as no one on the floor at Walmart is becoming a millionaire anytime soon.  Or in fast food, for that matter.   But you do have choices in life, and you can "choose" panhandling because it is a pretty lucrative gig - you can make $10 to $100 an hour, tax-free, in some cities and resort areas, if your pitch is good and you appear to be vulnerable or a victim (get a dog, preferably a cute or pathetic one - it helps).

But we all have choices in life - to grow dreadlocks and live in a clapped-out Class-C motorhome, begging for gas money, or taking a job, even if it pays little, and living within your means.

And for the record, yes, I had to cut my shoulder-length long hair off when I went to work for GM.   It was worth it.

UPDATE:   Amazon just had a job fair for 30,000 employees (!!) unrelated to seasonal hirings.   They do pay $15 an hour minimum, so I guess it is a better place to work than Walmart or McDonald's - but maybe not by much.   It is hard work - they will pay you to quit!   I looked online, and they have 148 openings for lawyers.  Of course, this is a little to late in my career....

A WTF? Story From The Washington Post

When a story never gets around to its point, you know they are lying to you.

I have written about WTF? stories from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.   You can usually spot these stories a mile away, as they don't set forth the who/what/where/when/why/how narrative that most news stories present.  Instead, they start off with some heart-wrenching narrative designed to "hook" you into the story, before they drop bombshells later on.   Or, as in the case of today's story, they just meander off into nothingness.   Oh, wait, I guess I'm doing the same thing here...

A story yesterday in the Washington Post tells of the USDA moving to Kansas City.   There is no mention of who planned this move and why or whether it was a Trump administration initiative or just something that was in the pipeline all along (You have to go to real news sources to find out that!).  The article meanders around telling tales of woe of employees who must choose between getting a new job, retiring early, or moving to Kansas City. The piece finally comes to a crash-landing in transgenderville, telling the sob story of a man who lost his wife to cancer, his son to opioids (stolen from his wife's nightstand, much as my late sister's was) and is now "transitioning" to another gender.   What the fuck any of that has to do with the USDA moving to another city is beyond me.

It is just another "we're all victims here!" type of article, making the case that everyone is a victim of circumstance or unseen others - preferably Trump.   But I had to call bullshit on this story early on, as the premise of the article - that no one should ever be forced to move, ever, for a job - is completely flawed.

Yet the media loves this premise.  Jobs are gone from places like Flint, Michigan, and the government is expected to create new ones, rather than have people move away to places where there is work.  The corollary to this argument is that companies like Walmart have an obligation to keep money-losing stores open in places like Appalachia, so that the people living there with no jobs, no prospects, and no retail outlets, can stay.   A third corollary to this argument is that we should build homeless shelters and low-income housing in resort towns, so "the homeless" will have a place to live, even if the middle-class can't afford to live there.   These are all absurd arguments, but all embraced by the left, which is why Trump will, sadly, win again in 2020.

My parents had to move several times during my Father's career (and later, retirement), from Boston, to New Jersey, Connecticut (twice), New York (twice), Egypt, California, Illinois, Maryland, and Colorado.   We picked up and moved, and it wasn't always easy, but then again, it wasn't all that hard, either.  Myself, I have lived in New York, Connecticut, Michigan, Virginia, Florida, and now Georgia  - since age 18.   I went where the jobs were good or the living was good, and walked away from places where it was expensive to live or there were no opportunities.

We are a migratory species - our brethren have moved across the planet, occupying any ecological niche they can find survival in.   When conditions change, most migrate away.  Those that don't, often suffer and die.  Migration is, in fact, a hot issue today, what with half the planet wanting to head North to a better life in the Western Democracies - and you can't blame migrants for that, we do have it pretty well here (by design, of course).   So, the "burden" of having to migrate from expensive-to-live-in Northern Virginia (what with the high cost of living, horrendous traffic and all) to a nice place like Kansas City, seems, well, kind of trivial compared to what folks from Central America or Central Africa are going through.

Why would they want to move the USDA or at least a portion of it?   Probably a number of reasons. Washington DC is getting to be an expensive place to live - which is one reason why we left.   The Patent Office, for example, built a new headquarters and then outgrew it within a few years.  Adding on is impossible, as all the land in the area is spoken for.   And one reason the USPTO left Crystal City (future home of Amazon) is that they were chopped up into a number of leased buildings or portions of leased buildings.   So today, most Examiners telecommute to work and "hotel" one day a week at a shared office.   There no longer is any compelling reason to be physically present - and no reason to be physically present in or near Washington, DC.

And in the past, some have argued that the USPTO should move to somewhere more affordable - or closer to industry and technology centers.  It may yet happen.

So in a way, it makes sense to move a USDA research center to the heart of agricultural country.   But I am sure there are other reasons as well - Senator Klaghorn wants the new research center in his district, so he can claim to "bring home the bacon" and get re-elected.  Act Shocked.

In our little town (where one of our car ferries recently tipped over - so sad!) we have the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, where a lot of federal cops go to train (most border guards, included).   It has been a political football of sorts, as competing Congressmen and Senators make "economic" arguments that the center should be relocated to their State, and our representatives have to fight to keep the center here - it is a major employer and economic engine in the area.   All those cops need a place to stay (and eat) when they come here for two-week training!   One particular local landlord and restaurateur would surely go bust if FLETC left!

Again, act shocked that politics plays a role here.  Ever wonder why "Mission Control" is in Houston, Texas and not Florida?   Why the NASA Space Flight Center is in Alabama?   Everyone got a "taste" of the moon rocket budget back in the day - and continues to do so, today.   It is the same reason Boeing and Airbus have factories all over the world - so that each customer gets a "taste" of the manufacturing jobs in the overall process.   You want the contract, you have to play ball.   Again, act shocked!  After all, the world is supposed to be "fair" - right?   Tell that to the Taliban.

OK, so I am just as guilty of meandering around a topic as the Post at times.  But the point is, moving for a job is not a horrible thing - but actually can be a good opportunity.  The idea of "staying in your hometown" is just idiotic, as is the idea of the "Family Homestead" is a myth for most of us.   One of the people weepily profiled in the piece said they just bought their "forever house" in Fairfax County - and now have to move!   Having been in the Real Estate market in NoVa (and Mark a Realtor(r)), I can tell you that "forever" in Fairfax county is, on average, five years.   The best thing you can do with Fairfax County is to escape from it.

Sadly, the Post addresses none of this, choosing instead to wallow in victimhood.   The story starts out with a "woman" weepily packing up photos of her dead family, and ends up revealing that the woman in question is transgender.  I am not sure how this relates to the USDA relocating at all. Maybe Trump killed his family and forced him to "transition"?  The fact that the person in question is retiring to a beautiful retirement town is sort of attenuated. 

But, of course, as we all know by now, transgender people are victims, always, when they are not "heroes" of course.   And of course, being transgender is trendy, so the Post loved this "hook" in the story, even if it made the story entire incomprehensible and uninformative.

It isn't just shitty journalism, it's shitty writing, too.

UPDATE:  We drove through Kansas City yesterday - not a bad place, except that I-70 goes from three lanes to ONE lane in the middle of town, and as you might expect, there was a wreck there (they were removing it as we arrived, so there was no delay).    Seems like a nice place to live, and it struck me that this WashPo article is an example of mid-west bashing - perpetuating the impression that people on the "coasts" look down at folks in the "flyover" States.   This sort of article just hands Trump a re-election victory.    Imagine you live in Kansas City and you read this article -  where people are tearing their hair out at the thought of moving to your town.    Pretty shitty article and a pretty shitty thing to do.

Less IS More!

Sometimes owning less allows you to do more.

We are about halfway across Nebraska and stopped to see the golden spike, a giant tower in North Platte which allows you a birds-eye view of  one of the world's largest rail switching yards. We are in a commercial campground and there are a number of people in different types of RVs.  We talked to a couple of them, and came to the conclusion that sometimes having a smaller trailer is better than having a giant bus motorhome or big 5th wheel.

We were talking with one couple, and they talked about all the problems they are having with their new motorhome.  I explained to him how the Weibull curve works and suggested that maybe these problems will resolve themselves shortly after warranty repairs are made.  It struck me that the complexity of these types of vehicles mean that there will always be all sorts of esoteric problems that you cannot fix yourself.

We took a tour of the Wanderlodge factory in Georgia before it went bankrupt.  We saw the chassis of one of these motor homes being put together.  Between the two frame rails, it looked like black snakes were wrestling,    The space between the frames channels was entirely filled with different types of wiring harnesses, pneumatic and hydraulic lines, as well as water lines and whatnot.  It just seemed like a nightmare if ever you had to repair one of these lines, once the body was assembled to the chassis - rendering these hoses and wires inaccessible..

On top of  mechanical complexity is also the difficulty of driving such large rigs. One nice lady I was talking to told me that they are very careful not to get off the interstate unless they know in advance the clearance height of every road, as well as whether or not they can turn around. They very rarely go to a campground with back-in sites.  They want pull-throughs or nothing at all.  They would rather  park at a truck stop or Walmart parking lot, than go to a state park, because you can't fit big rigs into the small sites at state parks.

All during the evening, and indeed even through to today, we've been watching people with these enormous rigs try to wedge them even into these pull-through sites. One older man struggled for nearly an hour trying to pull this fifth wheel into a pull-through site which should be a one-shot deal. This morning, we saw somebody try to pull into a pull-through site and they decided it would be easier to go into the site backwards because that way the slide-outs could slide out and not hit the utility pole.

Speaking of slideouts, the couple with the warranty repairs said their slide out 8", but only on one corner, due to an actuator failure.  Things like that would twist things up, and it did, cracking tile inside the coach.   Another motorhome owner told us he jacked up the coach with the stabilizing jacks (a real bad idea, but they all do it) and it twisted the coach so much the windshield popped out. Yet another was having a driver's side window repaired because when it was towed a year earlier, the stress of lifting the front end causes the whole body to buckle.   Ouch.   That was a quality coach, too, not some cheap Class-A gas model.  Oh, well, at least they haven't covered the coach with "Lemon" signs - yet.

Sometimes, it seems, having it all means having less. We love our little trailer which to us seems rather huge.  After spending 15 years with a 17-foot travel trailer, 21 feet seems a little unwieldy at times, but we can still turn around in a parking lot if we had to. This means we can pull off the road if we see little historic plaques or tiny county parks and go there for a picnic.  We don't have to worry about backing up, as the motorhome crowd does, as when you are towing a car it is often impossible to do.

The only time we've had trouble with the size of our rig was when we tried to get on a ferry in BC and found out they were limited to 40ft and we total 41 feet with the truck.  As a result, we had to sit there in shame while everyone passed us to board the ferry and then eventually had to back up a quarter mile up the ferry ramp which was not enjoyable, but then again wasn't impossible either, particularly with a backup camera on the trailer.

If we had one of those big motorhomes towing a car, we would have had to unhitch the car, back the car up the ramp. and then back the motorhome up, and then re-hitch the whole thing. Of course, if we had such a large rig we probably would have been aware of the length restriction in advance, as you have to think far in advance when driving such huge rigs.  This kind of kills spontaneity.

Sometimes less is more.  Having a less stuff allows you to do more things and have more fun and worry less. Having a fancy brand new motorhome or fifth wheel trailer is nothing but a lot of worry. The night before last, we were parked in RV Park and an elderly gentleman got out of his truck, which had a huge dent in the front fender.  We'd seen him previous night in another park a couple hundred miles down the road.  I noticed, that night, that the side of his camper, which was nearly brand-new, also had a huge dent running down the side with one of the cabinet doors nearly shorn off.  Clearly something went horribly wrong, and they  must feel awful about it.

That's the problem when you're towing a 40-foot 5th wheel trailer with 4 slides.  It may seem nice to have all that space and room, but you have to tow it down the road and this can be difficult to do. This can get particularly difficult when you get older and start losing your faculties.

Maybe less IS more.