Ham and Dregs

He drinks a DOZEN DIET COKES per day.

He watches at least FOUR HOURS of TELEVISION (and sometimes up to EIGHT HOURS) per day.

He is often surrounded by guests at dinner where everyone consumes STEAKS (well-done) with tons of GRAVY, salad with gobs of BLUE CHEESE dressing topped with BACON crumbles, and MASSIVE slices of CAKE with EXTRA SCOOPS of EXTRA RICH ICE CREAM for dessert.

Melania in the vegetable garden: “He’ll never find me here!!”

He enjoys belittling employees, friends and enemies, particularly in front of others, loves to gossip, and gets moody after a couple of days of “peace.”

No – he’s not a SUPERHERO.

He’s…THE VILLAIN.

You don’t believe me?   Check this out.

It’s sad to learn – from 60 DIFFERENT SOURCES no less, many of who work or worked for him – that a sociopathic toddler daily dirties the rooms where Washington, Lincoln, Kennedy and Obama once stepped.

Talk about bad real estate

Though – full confession — he and I agree on one point. The entire liberal left as well as the vast MAJORITY of the country IS out to get him. We want to get him OUT OF OFFICE before the country crumbles under the weight of his overinflated ego and underinflated supramarginal gyrus.

The latter would be the part of the brain that helps us to distinguish our own emotional state from that of other people and is responsible for empathy and compassion.

Whole studies have been done on this. So perhaps he can finally make himself useful to society in his post-White House years (2018? 2019?) by volunteering his brain for scientific research.

Never gonna happen, Chairy.

Yeah, like that’ll happen. Volunteering, I mean. With nothing in it for him.

Though maybe if Putin orders it so….

Oooooo SHADE

If this sounds like a bit of an irrational rant, well perhaps it is. Rant, I mean. Because it’s certainly not irrational. In fact, reading it over feels incredibly rational. Especially for anyone who has lived in the United States for the past year and endures occasionally watching the news, reading a newspaper or has generally listened in on anyone else’s conversations around lunch or dinnertime.

This weekend my husband and I are finally getting to see Hamilton. This is that musical about one of our greatest unsung Founding Fathers who was never really credited with being a founding father and never became president.

Yet, he fought numerous bloody battles in the Revolutionary War, literally created our financial structures and helped end the international slave trade before dying at age 49.

Not throwing away his shot

No, he didn’t have bone spurs. He was a poor IMMIGRANT whose mother died when he was a child and whose father abandoned him until an older cousin took the poor kid in.

The rest of the story is, as they say, history, if not the type we were all taught in school at least the subject of a 2016 American musical that won the Pulitzer Prize (only one of nine musicals to do so) as well as 11 Tony Awards.

I, for one, would rather have the awards. They’re shinier, no one can take them away and history gets rewritten every few centuries or decades, depending on the era in which one lives.

Get Lin-Manuel’s ready #onlyOscarleft #matteroftime

It’s hard not wonder in which era we all reside. In terms of history, I mean.

Though it’s easy to illustrate we’ve evolved from the time of Hamilton. One doubts he could ever have dreamed a man with no governmental or legal experience – only gobs of money from personal business interests– could assume the presidency when the majority of the country hated him.

#nuffsaid

Certainly, the dentistry is better today. I’ll personally offer myself up as testimony to that. But not to the rest of it.

The burden of proof is on which indeed is more preferable will unfold as the weeks and month trudge on.

Do we choose steak, blue cheese, double ice cream and bacon?

Or do we subsist on something just a little more sensible?

Does googling cute pictures of the Obama family count? #comeback

What history will tell future generations – well, that’s a whole other story – and depends who’s in charge.

But I always check the art of the time if you really want to know the truth. Lord (or whomever you believe Him or Her to be) knows what they’ll find for 2018.

Hamilton — “The Room Where It Happens”

A Taxing Situation

The best part about the Senate Republicans passing this week’s tax bill was watching the video put up by Sen. Jon Tester from Montana – a fairly middle of the road Democrat.

He showed us the bill – all 479 bound pages of it with many hundreds of cross outs and handwritten new lines and paragraphs in the margins – and asked if any of us could decipher it for him. This was because he had literally just received these pages in his office and was being asked to vote on it in just a couple of hours.

Here’s the thing – as an experienced college writing professor I’ve read thousands of pages with handwritten cross-outs and wouldn’t swear to what any of them mean, much less cast my vote for or against. In fact, usually I require students to just resubmit.

It’s even worse with the stuff I’ve written over a lifetime as a screenwriter and journalist. One of my dirtiest little secrets is when I’m on deadline I am often forced to take my OWN scribbly, handwritten pages in hand and beg my OWN husband to translate something I once thought of, then rethought, which I now deem essential.

not mine, but might as well be #saywhaa

Yes he often does this (he knows me and my handwriting far better than I do) and yes this is yet one more of thousands of reasons why I married him despite the fact that the vast majority of Senate Republicans objected to it.

Though it is not merely for that reason that I more than see Mr. Tester’s point.

Let’s face it, almost no one really WANTS to read almost 500 pages in tax law or listen to endless hours of hearings about it (Note: The latter was done prior to the passage of Obamacare, no matter what you’ve heard).

… and the Senate is meeting them

In the same way almost no one really WANTS to go work out every other day, or really WANTS to go to the doctor every year or two for a physical, or really WANTS to go to work on a sunny day or even really WANTS to brush their teeth, be nice to their parents, spouse, friends and/or lovers in those off days when they’re sh-tty and you’re just not in the mood.

We do usually because we know it’s the smart choice and have learned through experience that when we’re not smart we’re stupid and that never ends well.

One way to cope

Often life – and its choices – are no more complicated than that.

We could spend a lot of time here trying to make a case why it’s not good to support an unread or half-read or barely or mostly read bill that will cause 13 million Americans to lose their health insurance, massively slash taxes for corporations, give the bottom 10% of earners in America $50 back in taxes and the top 1% $34,000.

In fact, we could go on about any number of things, but are instead providing just a few links that will explain it all for you far better than WE could:

There’s this one   ….. or this one  …… oh and this one too

Instead, know this:

YOU are in the —

Top 1% if your income is over $481,000.

Top 10% if your income is over $138,000

BOTTOM 50% if your income is under $39, 275.

Ummmm…. what?? #help

What?  That’s right. If you’re making MORE than $39,000 & change per year you’re living LARGE – better than 50% of the country.

Let that sink in – especially if you live in a big city where it’s a lot more expensive to live. Why, you’re practically rich! Or at least on your way! Though where – well, no one can be exactly sure.

But do we really need to be? That’s A LOT of reading.

Is there such a thing as “kidsplaining?” #orisitjustpatronizing

So instead, here’s some daunting math to once again review. Yes, it’s boring and not your subject, but still:

In 2019, if you’re in the bottom 10% of earners you get a $50 tax cut. But if you’re in the top 1% you get $34,000.

And the further good news is if you own or are a corporation you go from paying 35% in taxes to 20%.   Though that lets out about 90% of us, if not more, don’t worry. The new strategy is that all this new found money the rich gets will trickle down to you because THEY will put back in the economy.

LOL #whiteguys

Which means in about a year and a half, here’s what you’ll want to do:

Close your eyes, keep your hand out, go in the middle of the street and try NOT to think about the last time an Uber wealthy person bought a beach house or a new plane and as a result money came blowing back towards you. Or hit you on the head when you weren’t looking. Or reading.

How dumb do they think we are?

Seriously.

George Michael – “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime”