Let's All Do The Same Thing At The Same Time Every Year!

You have choices in life, whether you realize it or not!

It is the "Holiday Season" again and everyone is miserable.  I am reading online, tales of woe from people who "have to go to Mom and Dad's house" for Thanksgiving and they find the whole experience boring at best, horrific at worst.  Either they sit around eating for three days, or go shopping on one of the worst shopping days of the year.  If they are particularly unlucky, the asshole Uncle chides them for not supporting Trump.

Family, what's not to like?

I find it hilarious that people say "I have to go" when they don't.  If you are a kid, even a college kid, I guess you have no choice.  But as a grown adult, with children of your own,  you can have your own Thanksgiving - or no Thanksgiving (Oh! Scary!) if you want to.  Like most of the rest of the world (the vast majority in fact) it can be just another day.  You have choices and being miserable is a choice in many cases, but most people either can't see that or don't want to, as they want something to complain about.

Mark is exhausted from a weeklong effort to set up the Merry Artists show.  Over 6,000 works of art and crafts!  He's done (with an army of volunteers) enough Christmas decorating to do a dozen homes.  So we won't be going overboard at our house this year. And after all that effort, we turned down invites for Thanksgiving from friends.   It worked out for the best - Mark also has a bad cold.

But what about family?  Most are dead, others live far away.   No, I am not buying a plane ticket on one of the busiest days of the year to visit a long-lost relative.  It's OK to say "no" to society's traditions.

Besides, Thanksgiving blows.  Overeating and football - I guess that is America in a nutshell.

But what does Thanksgiving really celebrate?  Sure, it honors the beginning of the genocide of the Native Americans. But it also celebrates our puritanical roots.  Remember, these "Puritans" would begat the same folks, who, not so many years later, would hang witches.  We've been trying to live that down ever since.

Yea, yea, tradition.  Our "Heritage."  But it's OK to move beyond heritage, particularly when it celebrates bad things.  Some Germans still celebrate Hitler's birthday - that's wrong.  Celebrating Puritans landing on Plymouth Rock is equally as bad.  It's not like they were the first to colonize America, either.  As Cole Porter put it, such a shame Plymouth Rock didn't land on them!

Of course, if you love turkey and football, go for it.  I'm not stopping you.  But it is a choice and you can;t bitch about how boring it is or how you hate the Black Friday crowds.  You can't complain about the choices you make.

Myself, I spent Thanksgiving working on the Buggy.  Still, the steering is shot and the brakes are iffy.  But it still runs, I guess,.

It Takes Time For Reality To Kick In

The further you pull a rubber band back, the harder the snap.

When I was a kid, the Vietnam war was going on.  Of course, we were the good guys, at least in the mind of an 8-year-old.  I wasn't aware of the nuances of the war - for example, that we were propping up a minority (and corrupt) Catholic regime in a country that was overwhelmingly Buddhist.  Stores were spread about the "VC" jamming chopsticks into the ears of Catholic Nuns and Priests - stories about as truthful as "They're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs!"

But we wanted to believe as we were the good guys, saving the world from the Nazzies and Hirohito, and pushing back Chinese aggression in Korea.  Hooray for our team!  Every person on the planet tends to believe this about their own country.  No one wants to think they are the bad guy.

And we aren't bad guys.  But sometimes every country does dumb things or even evil things.  It takes a while for people to realize that, "Hey, that was a really shitty idea!" and in some cases, some people never figure it out.  There are people today, in Germany as well as other countries, who think Hitler had the right ideas and "if only..." things would have worked out OK in the end.  The fact that they didn't never seems to register with those folks.

With Vietnam, the first inklings that something wasn't right came from the youth who were being drafted, who wondered why their lives should be interrupted - or ended - to fight in someone else's war on the other side of the planet.  Incidents such as the My Lai massacre created more doubt - although even then, we tended to rationalize those things as "a few bad apples" and thus forgot about it.

We overthrew the corrupt South Vietnamese government and replaced it with one just as corrupt, and failed to notice that the side we were championing was not even popular with the people they governed.

Every evening, in 1968, Walter Cronkite would tally up the dead in a "body count" graphic, and every night, it would be like 257 VC dead and 15 American dead.  We had to be winning!  Eventually they would run out of soldiers, right?

Over time, we dropped more and more bombs - more than we dropped in WW2!  And Agent Orange, mining harbors, and so on and so forth.  The mightiest Army - and Navy and Air Force - were brought to bear against the guerrilla army of a tiny Southeast Asian county (admittedly, supplied by outside forces) and at best could fight to a stalemate.

Some in government started to realize there were limits to our power.  Short of using nuclear weapons or firebombing cities, we could not "win" the war, and even if we did, we would lose in the world political sphere.  After nearly two decades, we called it quits and went home. Shortly thereafter, the North Vietnamese took over and today, oddly enough, don't seem to have too much of a grudge against us, even as we poisoned the land, left unexploded ordinance, and killed millions.

In retrospect, it seemed like a stupid idea - taking over a war that the French had lost, on the pretext that somehow we were preventing the spread of Communism.  Not only did we fail in Vietnam, we tipped over the dominoes in Cambodia and Laos.  One wonders whether we could have done better by embracing the North Vietnamese - as we eventually did - rather than opposing them.  Today, they are a trading partner, and they use us as a wedge between themselves and China.

But still, today, just as there are those who think Hitler was right (and in Japan today, Tojo), there are angry veterans who still believe that "if only..." we could have won in Vietnam.  Hey, we have people still fighting the Civil War - in their minds.  But for the majority of people, the writing was on the wall - it just took us two decades to read it.

The Soviet Union went through the same thing in Afghanistan - and we did as well, decades later.  Our adventure in Iraq accomplished nothing, other than to embolden Iran - leading to the chaos we see in Sudan and Palestine and Lebanon today.

It seems when you invade another country, you eventually lose.  Unless you are willing to bomb their cities into rubble and - as Churchill once put it, "make the rubble bounce" - you can't win.  And even if you go that far, as we did in Germany and Japan, you can't hold onto a foreign country for long.  We let the Germans, even ex-Nazis, particularly ex-Nazis, take over control of "West" Germany after the war.  We allowed Japan its independence, as we realized an occupying Army could never control the country.  Even so, of course, we have military bases in those countries today.

We seemed to forget those lessons when we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan - as did the Soviets with the latter.  And Putin may be failing to appreciate the past as well.  But the average Russian?   Again, it is natural to assume that anyone residing in a country may be inclined to root for their home team, particularly when the propaganda shades their view.  Just as we read the "body counts" every night in the news and assumed we were winning, I suspect Russians are reading similarly biased reports on their news channels and assume that, any day now, Ukraine will collapse.  Sure, Trump may cut off aid to Ukraine, but Western Europe may fill in that void, as they rightfully should, as the war is on their doorstep.

Russian people turned against their own Afghan war when bodies started coming home in bags and the cost of occupying the barren nation started to degrade their own economy.  Putin seems to be keeping dissent in check, through propaganda, lengthy prison sentences for dissenters, and defenestration.  But this only stretches the rubber band further.

Having your son or husband come home in a bag is disheartening.  Having them listed as "MIA" and left to rot in some field - so the Army doesn't have to pay death benefits - is even worse.  Eventually, something has to give.  But it could take a long, long time before that happens.  Remember we were in Iraq and Afghanistan for two decades before we bailed out, realizing there was nothing more to be gained by staying, and we had gained nothing by going in the first place

Can Ukraine last that long?  One wonders.  Even if Russia "won" could they survive decades of insurgency?  How long can Putin - age 72 - realistically live, or be fit enough to lead? Will the next leader be willing to continue an unwinnable war with Western Europe?

Hard to say, other than in the interim, a lot of people will suffer and die for no apparent reason whatsoever.

CVTs Take Over The World?

In the sedan and small SUV world, CVTs seem to be taking over.

A friend of mine wants to buy a "new" car (used car) and has his mind fixed on the VW "Beetle" which went out of production in 2019.  Oddly enough, I found several cars for sale within a 300-mile radius with less than 40K miles on the clock, some with far less.  They are selling for more than the list price when new!

People ask me about cars.  "You know a lot about cars!" they say.  I used to.  I used to know a lot of things, but time marches on.  I try to steer people toward Hondas or Toyotas as they are pretty reliable (with a few notable exceptions) so they don't come back to me later on for advising them to buy a Yugo.  Somehow, though, when you give advice, you always get blamed when things go wrong, which is why I think people seek advice.  It is why I am loathe to give it.

Anyway, he is fixated on this Beetle like a dog with a bone, as his first car he owned was a brand-new 1970 Beetle that he paid cash for ($1999) which you could do back then.  He has nostalgic feelings for the car, and at his age, why not indulge yourself?

But I looked into other small sedans - which can be had brand new for about the same price as a 6-year-old Beetle, and was shocked to see that CVT transmissions have taken over the field.  I wrote about them before and how BMW jumped into the game by putting them in certain models of the Mini.  A friend of mine had one and it blew out at 70K miles.  There was a class-action suit and BMW got out of the belt-drive game.

Nissan, always the Chrysler of Japan (The Number 3 automaker) went all-CVT in their car and SUV lineup with similar results.  Particularly in larger, higher-horsepower cars, the continuously variable transmission seems to fail early.  Even Toyota and Honda use them in their smaller cars, and from what I hear, only Toyota seems to have figured it out with  its "Aisen" CVTs.

When I wrote my earlier piece on CVTs there was choice in the market.  Today, it is hard to find a car without a CVT.  And the reasons are readily apparent.   Ever-stringent mileage and emissions requirements mean that manufacturers have to resort to more and more esoteric technology to meet these goals - for cars at least.  Light trucks and big SUVs have their own, more lax rules.

So we saw the move to variable valve timing, multi-port fuel injection, coil-over ignition, turbocharging, aluminum block engines, and so on and so forth.  Chrysler (Stellantis - I still can't say it) pissed-off their Charger/Challenger faithful by replacing the V-8 "Hemi" (a bit of a misnomer as it had little in common with that storied engine) with a turbocharged V-6.  Heresy!  But the smaller motor makes over 500 HP, perhaps not as much as the venerated "Hellcat" but far more than the base V-8.

Ford was already on the turbocharging bandwagon, with its "Ecoboost" line getting 300HP from a four cylinder engine and hundreds more from its V-6.  Maybe the rumble of a V-8 sounds better that the turbo-whine of the ecoboost, but the latter delivers more power and greater efficiency than the former.  Car companies have no choice in the matter - unless they want to keep buying carbon credits from Elon Musk.

So CVTs are thrust upon us and if you want a "car" chances are, it will have a CVT.  The new KIAs are all-CVT except the performance models and larger SUVs.  You can't escape the belt drive if you are looking at a new car these days.

I am told they are better and perhaps this is true.  People forget that the early days of the automatic transmission were pretty spotty.   There were semi-automatic transmissions and something Chrysler called the Presto-matic or Gyrol fluid drive.  The Buick "Dynaflow" was basically a one-speed transmission (if you don't count reverse) that relied on the torque converter for speed changes.  When mated to the Buick "nailhead" engine it worked, after a fashion, but was no speed demon and certainly wasted gas.

There were further teething changes.  Even after the introduction of the TurboHydroMatic (THM) series of transmissions, which became an industry standard, there were mis-steps by GM.  In the early 1960s, the "Roto-Hydromatic" or "Slim Jim" automatic was put into Oldsmobile and Pontiac cars, and failed early and often.  It wasn't until the late 1960s that the "bulletproof" THM350 and THM400 evolved.  They even put them in Rolls-Royces.

Of course, that didn't mean the struggle was over.   In an attempt to save money, GM de-contented the THM350 and came up with the THM250, which, in theory, was sufficient for the low-powered V-8's of the late 1970s.  A lot were replaced under "hidden warranty" claims as they failed at about 70,000 miles or so.

So, the battle for a reliable transmission never ends, with new technologies and new performance standards always on the horizon.  Newer "dual clutch" automatics do away with fluid couplings, but have reliability issues of their own, particularly in early models.  But over time, the bugs get worked out.  No manufacturer wants to get a bad reputation, as Mini and Nissan have, for exploding belt-drive transmissions.

When you start to make a product in the hundreds of thousands or even millions, well, you figure out how to fix problems.  Early adapters always suffer the most as they end up as the Beta-testers for the company.  But over time, fixes are developed (or the technology abandoned, as in the Mini) and reliability improves.  There is an old joke that GM cars are nearly perfect when the very last one rolls off the assembly line - they finally get it right before pulling the plug.  Sadly, the bulk of sales for any model are in the introduction year, not in the twilight.

So maybe the era of the CVT is upon us.  They are lightweight, cheaper to make, and give better mileage and lower emissions.  And we might not have a choice in any event.  That being said, I am glad I am not in the market for a new car right now.  Maybe if I ever am, by that time, we will have some reliability data on CVTs.

And maybe my friend has the right idea of buying a 2019 "final edition" Beetle (with 9,000 miles on it!) with the standard 6-speed conventional automatic.  Maybe that is why used car prices are spiking, too.

A similar thing is happening in the outboard motor world, by the way.  Old Johnson (OMC) V-4 two-stroke outboards can be rebuilt again and again, and parts are cheap.  With similar new engines selling for five figures, many a fisherman is finding it cheaper to simply "build your own."

That being said, on the other end of the spectrum are ocean-going center consoles with five (5) engines of 500HP each.  Those guys aren't worried about the cost!

Bissell Rocks!

I loved this little handheld vacuum to death!  Literally!

Years ago, we bought a Bissell model 1984 vacuum cleaner and fell in love with it.  It was lightweight, easy to use, easy to clean, held a charge forever, and went under even the smallest furniture.   It's only Achilles heel was the power switch, but I was able to replace that myself.  Over the years it has gotten worn by doing dumb things like vacuuming the sidewalk and such.  But it continues to bring joy, so I bought a second one at Janitorial Equipment Supply for $208 (regularly $299!).

We bought a model 1985 handheld (shown above) which was sold as a "car vac."  Some reviewers complained about the suction power, but I liked it. It even had a power head!  But once again, the power switch went bad and when I went online to get parts, I saw that it was recalled for potential battery fires - a problem we never had. I filled out the recall form, sent in a photo of the data plate and a couple of weeks later they send me a brand-spanking new Model 31783 Icon Pet Turbo stick vacuum, a $200 value, free!  Thanks, Bissell!

I now own five seven Bissell vacuum cleaners now. In addition to the two model 1984's and the late, great model 1985, we have an old corded bag model 1398 that we bought many years ago at Walmart (for under $50) which we left at the condo.  The tenant may have taken it.  By the way, the condo is on the market now.  Make an offer!

We also have a bagless cyclone unit (similar to the 1009) that a friend gave to us when they sold their 5th wheel trailer. We use it at the storage locker where we keep the camper. Eventually, it may go out to Mark's Studio when the old GE canister vac finally throws in the towel (clay dust is hard on vacuum cleaners). (We also have a RIGID portable shop vac, so with the two aging GE's that makes ten vacuum cleaners overall, I guess).

A neighbor was throwing away a model 2482, which is sort of like a dustbuster mounted on a stick. I snagged it because (a) it was a Bissell and (b) it said "lithium ion" on the front, so odds are, the battery was good, and (c) it could be perfect for the camper, as it was small and folded up for storage. I ordered the accessory crevice and upholstery tool from the Bissell site (their prices are about the same as eBay or Amazon) and downloaded the user manual. I took it apart and realized why they threw it away. The filter had never been cleaned and there was a wad of paper in the intake tube, which then clogged up with animal hair. A half-hour of cleaning and reassembly and we were back in business. The previous owners were nice enough to give me the charger plug!

Of course, the 1985 is now ready for the trash and the GE canister vacs will follow it when we run out of bags - they are beaten to death!  As for our older model 1984, if it breaks, I will keep the battery and the dirt canister as spares.  But until then, we can both vacuum at the same time!

As for this "free" vacuum, I believe the power head detaches like a dust-buster, so it may become our new handheld, or make its way to the camper.

 Vacuum cleaners have a hard life. Overall, I am happy with Bissell products - they certainly stand behind them! They work well and are inexpensive to buy.  And they are lightweight, easy to use, and best of all, cordless.

UPDATE: The new vacuum arrived and it is really a thing of beauty - literally.  Battery life so far seems weaker, but it has great suction, a "turbo" mode (which drains the battery faster) and handheld and floor attachments.   Thanks, Bissell!

It's No One's Fault, It's Everybody's Fault!

Bernie Sanders knows what its like to be a working man!

Bernie struggled through life.  He spent over a decade working his way through college, working for GM and UTC and even UPS as a Teamster.  He had several side hustles, including delivering pizzas, tutoring calculus and working as a paid intern at planned parenthood.  Once  he graduated, he started his own business and became a jobs creator, too!

Oh, wait, that's me.  Bernie worked as a handyman carpenter and failed at even that.  He decided to go into politics and became a career politician.  His wife ran a college into the ground.  He became a landlord and owns at least three or four houses, including a dacha on Lake Champlain.  Yes, he is a man of the people and knows of our struggle!

Or maybe not.  He plays the populist card, but like my stinking hippie brother's communist puppet shows,  he has no idea what working in a factory or warehouse is really like, other than in Marxist theory.  And as I noted before, you come down to the factory spouting that commie bullshit, the "workers" will beat the snot out of you.  The workers are very conservative, it turns out.

I have no doubt he is sincere in his beliefs - as was Ralph Nader - just wrong.  The reason the "workers" didn't embrace Harris was because not because they thought the the Democratic Party was not left enough but was too far left.  Bernie is right that the Democrats' platform didn't resonate with workers in steel mills in Springfield, Ohio.  But the reason they didn't resonate was Bernie and AOC and Ohmar.  They became the face of the Democratic party, thanks to Fox News and other right-wing media outlets, and Democrats let that go unchallenged.

There is a reason why, too.  If Democrats distanced themselves from the far-Left of the party, they risk alienating the far-Left voters, who are skittish as it is - often threatening not to vote unless their demands are met.  This is what I call, "hostage politics" and it is quite popular these days.

Meanwhile, moving toward the center to appease moderate "independent" voters didn't work either, as the GOP and its media (and Russian) cohorts painted the Democrats as radicals.  For many middle-of-the-road Americans, the idea of voting for a Democrat was just a non-starter, even if that candidate was Reagan or Trump (who were both Democrats at one time, oddly enough).

The Democratic "brand" has been tarnished and to many Americans, it stands for transgender school operations, litter boxes in the classroom for furries, student loan forgiveness, welfare state, and increased taxes.  Most of these characterizations (if not all of them) are false, but they stuck.  And they stuck because people love rage-bait - they love to hate things.  And Fox News gave them a colorful piñata to whack at.  And it felt good.

So no, it wasn't Bernie's fault - entirely - or that of Reps AOC and Omar.  They represent a portion of the party that is on the leftish side, and the GOP used them to decorate their piñata.  On the other hand, Sanders has some balls claiming to represent the working man, when he has never worked a day in his life as a factory worker or hard hat or fast-food worker.  He has a lot of nice theories about what these jobs are like, but no real hard experience.

America is a conservative country. So are most other countries in the world.  All across the world, right-wing parties are making gains or are in control.  Even "liberal" Western Europe is turning to right-wing politics, in part due to the worldwide immigration crises.   Leftist politics are past their "sell-by" date, worldwide.

Democrats are able to achieve power only when they lean in toward the center and advance centrist causes.  Leftists hate this, but it is part and parcel of "the art of the possible."  If you look back at the Democratic Presidents of the post-war era, you see a lot of centrist and sometimes conservative policies.

Kennedy cut taxes, expanded our role in Vietnam, and even greenlighted a ill-fated invasion of Cuba.  Johnson did expand civil rights and "the great society" but escalated the war even further.  Jimmy Carter was from the conservative South and implemented the deregulation of industries that Reagan largely took credit for (a typical Republican trick, by the way).  And Clinton?  He negotiated the legislation that resulted in welfare being disbanded, replaced by TANF, which provides only five years of "assistance" for your lifetime.

Even poor Obama was called out by the far-Left as being too conservative. Seems you just can't win at this game, no matter what you do!

People complain about our "two-party" system, yet when I went to the polls, there were five names on the Presidential ticket.  The reason why three of them never went anywhere was because no one is that far-left or far-right.  Heck, half the people voting for fringe candidates like Russian asset Jill Stein, do so only as a "protest vote."

So no, the problem wasn't that the Democrats were "not far left enough" but that they were painted as too far left.   But yes, too, Bernie is right in that the Democrats didn't explain well enough how their platform would help the working class.

Tell people you will lower taxes on the middle class and raise taxes on the rich and all they hear is "...raise taxes..." because, let's face it, everyone thinks they are the "rich" particularly when you classify "rich" as someone making over $400,000 a year.  You'd be surprised how many middle-class people make that much, particularly when they have dual incomes at good jobs.

The flip side is also true - they hear about cutting taxes for the lower classes and they think, "tax cut for minorities" which of course is racist.  Act shocked.  Trump's pie-in-the-sky proposals to eliminate taxes on tips and overtime resonated with the working class as he was talking directly about cutting taxes on labor itself.  A waitress who has to cough up extra  money to cover taxes on her tips (which often wipes out the base pay) feels they are being over-taxed.  A factory worker agrees to work overtime, only to see the tax on his overtime pay rocket up (because of the higher pay rate) and appear to negate the time-and-a-half or double-time pay rate.

So yea, maybe Bernie has a point, but his solution isn't the answer.  Going further left isn't going to entice conservative workers.

Of course, people are "blaming"  other groups - young white men who follow Andrew Tate, Hispanics who are conservative Catholics, white women who vote their own rights away, Jews who think that Harris was too soft on Hamas, Palestinians who though Harris was not hard enough on Israel - the list goes on and on.  You can't please everybody, particularly when they have been so effectively divided up into factions.

So, how did Trump do it?  After all, while the Leftists are threatening me with universal healthcare and free college, there are, on the far-right, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, racists, misogynists, and antisemites, some of who have promised violence (or actually engaged in it) to get their way.   How Trump navigates this is interesting.  He "dog whistles" to the extremists ("good people on both sides") which infuriates the Left, but who cares?  Half of the Left is threatening not to vote anyway, as a protest.

Republicans fall in line.  They also have selective hearing.  They might be peripherally aware that odious elements of the far-right support Trump, but they seem to be comfortable with filtering that out.  Meanwhile, if even one Antifa activist expresses support for Harris, well, she's dead to them (Republicans, that is).  Like I said, selective hearing.

There are some on the far-left who want to see the system fail.  I talked with a friend who was upset over the election outcome.  He said, "I hope these fuckers who voted for Trump lose their homes, their jobs, and their life savings - even if it means the same for me!  Maybe only then will they see the folly of their ways and vote progressive!"  It is the age-old argument of tearing down before starting over.   Destroying the village to save the village.  Sucks to be a Villager!

On that note, we made our reservations for a 14-day transitioning (repositioning) cruise to Spain.   Cruise lines move their boats from the Caribbean to the Mediterranean and back, based upon demand.  The fares are very low (~$750 per person) and the ships are sparsely populated.  We plan on renting a VW camper van and exploring the Iberian peninsula, including Portugal, to see the sights and also think about expat living.  We are taking another cruise ship back, to New Orleans, a month-and-a-half later, staying there a while and then taking the train home (sleeper car).  It should be a fun trip.  This summer, we are going to Canada to cool off and see what our options are there as well.

And no TSA, no Karens trying to claim your seat, no $20 drinks at the airport lounge!  Crossing the Atlantic by ship - twice!

And before you say it, yes, I saw the article in the paper today about the "Four year cruise" - it is a scam.  The company has a tired old cruise ship and has a chequered history, even before making that offer.  And the price is ridiculous!  For less than half the $250,00 they are asking, you could spend four years on state-of-the-art cruise ships!