Author: thependulumswings staff

Ten Piece Nuggets-Random

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

It’s February 1st, the middle of the winter.  You need some warmth and comfort.  What better way is there to get that than to digest some Ten Piece Nuggets?

They’re served one at a time and randomly below.

  1.  Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau says that he tested positive for Covid-19.  Is he hiding from the convoy of truckers in Ottawa who are opposed to the jab, while he is vaxxed, boosted, and positive all at once? The irony.  It says here that he tucked his tail and ran.   He blasted them via a taped message calling their actions “racist” amongst other lies about their cause.  It’s always a good day to play the race card.  Should Canada insist that he go get tested for conniving cowardness as well?
  2.  If Trudeau and California Governor Gavin Newsom switched jobs in the middle of the night how long would it take for anyone to notice?  Newsom was caught on camera multiple times during the Rams/49ers NFC Championship Game yet again thumbing his non-masked nose at Californians who are under his mandate to mask up while indoors at work, events, and school.   He denied doing so.  Cameras don’t lie, people do.
  3.  While Joe Rogan apologized for exercising his right to free speech yesterday, Whoppi Goldberg exercised hers on The View.  The longtime co-host claimed the Holocaust “isn’t about race,” adding, “it’s about man’s inhumanity to man.”  There was no joy in Joy Behar’s face.
  4. By afternoon she apologized.  “On today’s show, I said the Holocaust is not about race, but about man’s inhumanity to man. I should’ve said it is about both.  I’m sorry for the hurt I have caused.”  That’s how you cancel the Cancel Culture Cops.
  5. And, rather than trying to cancel Rogan, why not ask to appear on his podcast?  He goes in-depth is why.  Superficial answers get followed up.  Fauci should be the first guest.  Rand Paul would jump at the chance.
  6. It was a busy Monday at the White House as well.  President Biden took to the podium to tell the assembled press that his team was trying to “figure out” why so many illegal immigrants were crossing our southern border.  Could it be that there is no enforcement and upon entry you get a free plane ride to a state of Biden’s choosing?  Stand-up comedy is not dead after all.
  7. Unvaxxed truckers cannot enter, but unvaxxed illegal immigrants with no IDs can.   Maybe next week old Joe can try to “figure out” why our supply chain is failing.  Could it be partially due to so few trucks crossing our borders due to the vax mandate?
  8. At least there’s good news for parents on the vax front.  Pfizer and BioNTech plan to submit a request for emergency use authorization for their COVID-19 vaccine in children six months to 5 years old as soon as Tuesday.  It’s even better news for the under-two crowd.  Pfizer reports sufficient immune effectiveness with only two jabs.  But, if you’re three or more you’ll need three or more jabs.  Approval from the “lost its mind” FDA could come early next month.
  9.  Meanwhile, several countries seem to be regaining their senses.  Today Finland joins England, Ireland, and Denmark in ending all covid restrictions.  Remember when the US was known as the home of the free and the brave?  Maybe in two more weeks after we flatten the curve we can join the crowd.
  10.  Changing gears, can the NFL be any hotter?  Four unbelievable games two weekends ago gave way to two nail-biters this past weekend.  We’ve not seen the ratings but we’re old enough to remember when we were told that the NFL was going to suffer for its activism, etc.   Doubtful.  Very.  The “home” LA Rams have been instilled as an early four-point pick over the “visiting” Cincinnatti Bengals.  Joe B. has them right where he wants them.

Less Zoom, doom, and gloom are right around the corner.

 

Think Inside the Box

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Surely once or thrice you’ve been asked to think outside of the box.

A wise CEO once asked a group a few moons ago to think inside of the box.  Why?  To get their attention is one reason.  And, to realize where you are, where you want to go, and how to get there is another.

So, where is America right now, and more importantly for Republicans where is their party in the minds of Americans?

America is seriously divided on a plethora of issues right down party lines.  Each side asks that we “come together as a country” frequently.  What they mean is “agree with us and all will be well.”  The ask doesn’t even sound sincere and it certainly doesn’t work that way.

Republicans are thought of and/or portrayed as white, old, stodgy, racist, set in their ways, and out of touch.

What to do?  How about doing some things that are progressive and democratic at the same time yet reflect conservative views?

Say what?  Well, it’s a lot different than it may sound at first blush.

Progressive also means “happening or developing gradually or in stages; proceeding step by step.” Democratic also means “relating to or supporting democracy or its principles.”

Try just a few on for size.

How about getting all new leadership after the midterms regardless of the outcomes?  Isn’t it past time that old Mitch McConnell for one, arguably the biggest RINO of them all step aside? Just last week he mumbled, “if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans,” implying that Black voters are not Americans.

On Friday, he said he “inadvertently omitted the word ‘almost,’” but then after the news conference ended, he returned to the microphones to correct himself one more time. “The omitted word is ‘all,’ not ‘almost,'” he said. “Sorry.”

Biden is worse tripping over his own tongue, but not by much.  The elephants need a fresh face, voice, and view.

How about having all 50 Republican Senators vote for the SCOTUS black female nominee?  Let’s assume that she is qualified, regardless if opinions vary if she is the most qualified.  The vote is supposed to be cast on qualifications, not political ideology.

Madame VP Harris would cast the 51st vote for her confirmation regardless, but that’s not really the point.  The point would be that America could look at this as “progress.”  Take the lead in celebrating her nomination.  Maybe even a RINO or two could sell it that way as “coming together as a country.”

Eleven Democrats voted for Clarence Thomas.  One was not then-Senator Biden, but we digress.   Thirty-nine Republicans voted for Ruth Bader Ginsberg.   Only one Democrat (don’t Build Back Better Joe Manchin) voted for Brett Kavanaugh.

And, how about looking ahead to 2024?  If you support true conservatism, you’d support it regardless of who espouses it, wouldn’t you?  Nominate the right presidential candidate from the right.  Then choose Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat in name only as your VP running mate.

Sound crazy?  It might drive perpetually in mourning Morning Joe crazy.  But, listen to what she believes in and you’ll swear that she’s further right than any Bush, Graham, McConnell, Crenshaw, Romney, or Rubio ever sounded.

It is after all principles, not sheep in wolves’ clothing that matter most, isn’t it?  And, who wants to be the first Democrat to stand up and say that nominating a Dem female is a bad idea?

Progressive and democratic is the new conservative.

Do you say it can never happen?

Don’t tell Joe Burrow “never.”

Orange and black is the new AFC Champion.

 

 

Churn and Burn

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

If it’s Breyer’s, it’s got to still be good!  Any ice cream company founded in 1866 and still churning today has to be good.

But, with FDA government regulations, even good goes bad when it gets old.  Use by this date or discard the label says.

Yesterday, someone somewhere in the government decided that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s discard date had come up as well.

Breyer’s retirement was reported by the press before he himself made it.  This led to speculation that it had been leaked by a White House eager to appease left-wing critics after its recent legislative failures and court defeats.

Might the party in charge be worried about Republicans winning the Senate in 2022?  Might the party in charge be worried about another Ruth Bader Ginsberg situation?  Out with the old and in with the new.

Multiple sources told multiple members of the press that Justice Breyer was not planning to announce his retirement yesterday. They describe him as “upset” with how this has played out.  Breyer prides himself on not being partisan.

Apparently, the White House prides itself on not caring what Breyer cares about.

Did Demand Justice, a left-wing group formed to oppose Trump’s Supreme Court picks have a hand in forcing Breyer’s hand? The group proudly launched a “Breyer Retire” campaign just weeks after Biden took office.  Demand Justice is quite open about its goal of seeking to overhaul the federal court system to advance progressive goals.

Both WH press secretary Jen Psaki and Paige Herwig, Biden’s point person on judicial nominations, previously worked for Demand Justice.  Coincidence?

Breyer was good until a new flavor, but with similar tastes in thinking, can head to the Supreme Court.  And the new appointee needs to head that way before November.

The White House had little to say about Breyer’s retirement because they said it wasn’t “official” yet.   Odd?  Though they did quickly add that the Biden Administration would follow through on his campaign promise to add a black and female jurist to the highest court.  Odder?

Why not choose whomever they thought was most qualified regardless of gender and skin color?  As a Senator Joe Biden voted against the nomination of Judge Clarence Thomas, probably because he thought that he was unqualified.  Oddest?

Will the administration throw Breyer a retirement party?  If so, will they let him in on when it is?

And, most of all, will they serve Breyer’s Ice Cream with the cake at Justice Breyer’s going away party?

It’s likely, but only if the use-by and discard date hasn’t come and gone like the justice’s has.

Because remember, it’s got to still be good!

 

 

Football Is a Joke.

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

It’s time to lighten it up a bit.

One of our faithful readers forwarded the quotes and jokes about the game of football below.  We blatantly copied nearly all of them for you.  Enjoy as the season is but three games from being over.

First, here are the quotes.

“I make my practices real hard because if a player is a quitter, I want him to quit in practice, not in a game.”
– Bear Bryant / Alabama

“It isn’t necessary to see a good tackle, you can hear it!”
– Knute Rockne / Notre Dame

“At Georgia Southern, we don’t cheat.
That costs money, and we don’t have any.”
– Erik Russell / Georgia Southern

“The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely to be the one who dropped it.”
– Lou Holtz / Arkansas – Notre Dame

“When you win, nothing hurts.”
– Joe Namath / Alabama

“A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall.”
– Frank Leahy / Notre Dame

“There’s nothing that cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you.”
– Woody Hayes / Ohio State

“I don’t expect to win enough games to be put on NCAA probation I just want to win enough to warrant an investigation.”
– Bob Devaney / Nebraska

“In Alabama, an atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in Bear Bryant.”
– Wally Butts / Georgia

“I never graduated from Iowa. But I was only there for two terms – Truman’s and Eisenhower’s.”
– Alex Karras / Iowa

“My advice to defensive players is to take the shortest route to the ball, and arrive in a bad humor.”
– Bowden Wyatt / Tennessee

“I could have been a Rhodes Scholar except for my grades.”
– Duffy Daugherty / Michigan State

“ Always remember Goliath was a 40-point favorite over David.”
– Shug Jordan / Auburn

“I asked Darrell Royal, the coach of the Texas Longhorns, why he didn’t recruit me “
He said, “Well, Walt, we took a look at you, and you weren’t any good.”
– Walt Garrison / Oklahoma State/Dallas Cowboys

“Football is NOT a contact sport, it is a collision sport.
Dancing IS a contact sport.” –
Duffy Daugherty / Michigan State

After USC lost 51-0 to Notre Dame, his post-game message to his team was;
“All those who need showers, take them.”
– John McKay / USC

“ If lessons are learned in defeat, our team is getting a great education.”
– Murray Warmath / Minnesota

“The only qualifications for a lineman are to be big and dumb.
To be a back, you only have to be dumb.”
– Knute Rockne / Notre Dame

“We didn’t tackle well today, but we made up for it by not blocking.”
– John McKay / USC

“I’ve found that prayers work best when you have big players.”
– Knute Rockne / Notre Dame

Ohio State’s Urban Meyer on one of his players:
“He doesn’t know the meaning of the word fear.
In fact, I just saw his grades and he doesn’t know the meaning of a lot of words.”

And, now a few jokes.

Why do Auburn fans wear orange?
So they can dress for the game on Saturday, go hunting on Sunday, and pick up trash on Monday.

What does the average Alabama player get on his SATs?
Drool.

How many Michigan State freshmen football players does it take to change a light bulb?
None. That’s a sophomore course.

How did the Auburn football player die from drinking milk?
The cow fell on him.

Two Texas A&M football players were walking in the woods.
One of them said, ” Look, a dead bird.”
The other looked up in the sky and said, “Where?”

What do you say to a Florida State University football player dressed in a three-piece suit?
“Will the defendant please rise?”

How can you tell if a Clemson football player has a girlfriend?
There’s tobacco juice on both sides of the pickup truck.

University of Michigan Coach Jim Harbaugh is only going to dress half of his players for the game this week.

The other half will have to dress themselves.

How is the Kansas football team like an opossum?
They play dead at home and get killed on the road.

How do you get a former University of Miami football player off your porch? 

Pay him for the pizza.

 

Have another good one?  Drop it in the comments!

 

 

Toothless Crime Enforcement

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

For over forty years the one constant in fighting crime on a national level is McGruff the Crime Dog.  He debuted in 1980 with a series of public service announcements educating citizens on personal security measures, such as locking doors and putting lights on timers, in order to reduce crime.

McGruff did and continues to serve loyally.  But, by 1994, America felt the need to take yet another bite out of crime.

Democrat President Bill Clinton signed HR 3355-Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 into law.  The bill was sponsored by Democrat Representative Jack Brooks out of Texas and Democrat, now Socialist, Bernie Sanders even voted yes along the way to the president’s desk.

The bill is better known as the “three strikes and you’re out” law.   It provided funding for tens of thousands of community police officers and drug courts, banned certain assault weapons, and mandated life sentences for criminals convicted of a violent felony after two or more prior convictions, including drug crimes.

Over time, studies and sentiment have deemed certain aspects of the stringent guidelines with the law too harsh.  Judges, states, and DA’s have eased up on its presumed punitive measures.

The slippery slope to lower bails, lighter sentences, plea bargains, and outright indifference to certain crimes has accelerated in the last decade.  NY and its mayor Bill DeBlasio told cops to stand down time and again.  It stopped its “stop and frisk” policy.

Social injustices and Soros’ money created movements in the streets.  Mostly peaceful protests weren’t mostly peaceful.  Cities, like Portland, worked by day and burned by night.

And, then George Floyd was killed.  And, the US was incensed and nearly incinerated.

Defund the police became the cry heard around the world and measures in some of the US blue states did just that-defund the blue.

So, now where do we stand?

Well, if you’re Cali Governor Gavin Newsom you stood in the trash of the opened boxes of stolen property on the rails of the Union Pacific railroad late last week.  There you took to the microphone (for the photo op) and blamed these railroad robberies on gangs.  Then you apologized in the next sentence, called your words pejorative, and said that you should have called them “organized groups of people.”  That’ll show them.

If you’re the newly elected NY DA you go down the rabbit hole of outlining in a penned memo that most crimes in his jurisdiction wouldn’t be prosecuted and if they were, criminals wouldn’t face jail time except for offenses committed with a gun.

Over the last two weeks, an LA officer was shot and killed, two cops in NY were shot, leaving one dead and one severely injured, a Houston officer was gunned down, and a border patrol agent in Texas was murdered.

And countless others, out on light bond money or none at all, have committed more serious crimes than their last offense.

So, now where do we stand?

McGruff has proven quite loyal, but right now his bark is far worse than his bite.  Our law enforcement has no teeth and the outlaws sense it.

If the three-strikes bill long ago was too far one way, is today’s mess too far the other?

The pendulum always swings.  Doesn’t it?   One can hope.

Kudzu

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

How can you win when you lose?

Stacey Abrams was a big win for the Democratic Party on a national level when she lost the 2018 Georgia Gubernatorial Race. Maybe few saw it then, but looking back you can see it clearly now.

“Voter suppression,” she screamed.  “Vote counting irregularity,” the Dems and their national lawyers who flew in yelled.  Recount the votes.  Recount them again.

Georgia is a have or have not state.  The title to its fertile land was owned by slave-owning, white farmers, and is perceived the same to this day.  The same with its politics.  It’s always about power.

But, in that rich soil seeds of doubt were cast about how we cast and count votes.  And the valuable crops of social injustice and voter suppression were cultivated all over again and spread like nasty kudzu.

“Hmmm?” the DNC pondered.  “How can we fertilize and water this and get it to harvest nationwide by November 2020?”

And, like the much-needed rain to nourish, fell a plague from the sky.  Covid-19 it was called, and its case count was growing like the aforementioned nasty weed.

How can we ask people to stand in line and show a silly voter identification when they could die doing so?  “We can’t,” said many blue states, using a version of the infamous blue flu to approve mail-in ballots, dropbox ballots, absentee ballots, and most of all harvested ballots.

Eighty-one million ballots in all were cast for the next President of the United States-Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.  That’s the highest vote count in American Presidential voting history for one candidate.

Donald Trump nearly lost his mind over losing to a man that may have lost his mind, claiming voter fraud from sea to sea.  “Turn those machines back on,” he squealed.

And, the Democrats roared.  “How dare you contest the fairest election that we’ve ever had?”

Team Trump had no more valid claims of illegal activity than the DNC did in Georgia, but never let facts get in the way of a good narrative.

And, just 14 months later the most voted for President in our history is polling at historic lows.  In fact, a poll yesterday of American adults aged 18-64 had 70% of its respondents checking the box “no, I do not want Biden to run for reelection in 2024.”  Go figure.

That poll was released just one day after Biden held a nearly two-hour press conference, his first in nearly 80 days.

During the presser, Biden pressed on about voting fraud.  When asked if he was concerned about the upcoming 2022 midterms he offered,  “I’m not going to say it’s going to be legit,” Mr. Biden said. “The increase and the prospect of being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these reforms passed.”

Those reforms were two bills, both defeated in the Senate disguised as voting rights bills but were really fed overreach to take election control from the states.

Mr. 81 Million vote-getter is now worried about fair elections with the same laws in place that got him elected.  Go figure.

Jen Psaki, clean up on aisle two.

The kudzu spreads.

 

 

 

 

 

Ten Piece Nuggets-Random

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

There’s some good news and bad news in our world as we know it on 1/19/22.    And today you’ll need to take the good with the bad.  And in a marked departure from our inflationary times, you’ll get 12 for the price of 10.   Yum.

  1.  Good news-  Pfizer said its Covid-19 pill approved by the FDA, Paxlovid, was effective against the Omicron virus in three early but promising tests.
  2.  Bad news-  The treatment will not be available till June when the next variant, if there is one, will be prevalent and Omicron will be long gone.
  3.  Good news-   At least the pill will be free.  Your US Government has already cornered the market, as it purchased 20 million courses of treatment.
  4.  Bad news-  The pill will be free to you, but not our government.  That really means that the pill won’t be free to you any more than all of these other handouts that aren’t free.
  5.  Good news-  Bill de Blasio announced that he would put every fiber of his being into fighting inequality in the state of New York, but would not be running for governor.
  6.  Bad news-  Real estate prices in Florida just took a 5% haircut.
  7.  Good news-  CNN is going to create a “team dedicated to covering misinformation.”  Will episode one cover the Chris Cuomo coverup?
  8.  Bad news-  No new hiring or flights are needed to cover it and bolster our economy as all of the misinformation is already in-house.
  9.  Good news-  In 2021 the stock market fared quite well in spite of supply chain, inflation, Afghanistan, Covid-19, and southern border problems.
  10.  Bad news-  It’s 2022, and the stock market taketh what the stock market giveth.
  11.  Good news-  President Biden will hold a rare press conference today surely giving us hope for tomorrow, one day short of the first anniversary of him taking office.
  12.  Bad news-   Three years to go.  Does he know?

We hope you enjoyed the nuggets-  short and sweet.

 

 

Free and Freedom Aren’t Cheap

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

There’s free and then there’s freedom.

And, free is getting more plentiful while freedom is getting harder to find.

But, aren’t the best things in life free? That depends on where you look.

It costs nothing to catch Omicron, but that’s not the best thing in life.  But, at least our government is doing all it can to help prevent it and all of that is free.

There are free vaccines and free boosters and more free vaccines and more free boosters.  Stand in line.

If you think you might be coming down with a “rare” breakthrough case, there’s free testing too.  All that you have to do is wait in line for one assuming you can find somewhere that has any.

The US government has ordered half a billion on top of another half of a billion tests making its availability for immediate purchase nil and reminding you of your local grocer’s empty shelves.

We are told that the supply chain issue should resolve itself in a week, and then just another 7-12 days beyond that to ship right to your door!  Think Feb 8th or so and all will be well.  And, likely you’ll be well by then, too.

But wait, there’s more!

The government has ordered an untold number of N95 masks and close replicas and will be distributing those soon and free as well.

All of this is an extra good safety net in case your Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare didn’t keep you well during these troubled times.   Remember Bernie Sanders has told us repeatedly that healthcare is a basic human right.  Don’t try claiming Ivermectin on your insurance though.

He also has told us that college tuition should be free.  The avowed Socialist and almost every one of his colleagues from the left is a big supporter of Build Back Better which provides free preschool, darn near free child care, and child tax cuts.

Have a child and you can pay less tax for you and yours to live here.  Makes sense to you?

What about bread? Shouldn’t that be free, too?  If you were willing to stand in line for it, would this government attempt to provide it for you?

If only the wealthy would just pay their fair share, whatever that means.

Freedom, on the other hand, is getting harder to find.

Well, it isn’t if you’re an illegal alien (sorry, migrant) that walks in and gets shipped to, say NY.  Free healthcare and voting rights await your jet’s arrival.

If you fly to Pennsylvania you can even get a free puddle jumper to Delaware as the Penn Governor says that Joe Biden’s home state ought to have some new neighbors as well.

But, don’t write or say the wrong thing on any social media platform.  You’ll be suspended for some time, or if you’re a serial misinformer like Donald Trump you’ll be banned for life.  Freedom of speech isn’t free.

Let’s not get started on attempts to control guns.

You can still have a “mostly peaceful” protest at least.  It’s even a protected freedom to burn the American Flag.  Although, we don’t think the damage done to property gets fixed for free.

Where did all of those protests go by the way?  Is everything that we were mad about getting fixed?  Wait till Summer 2022 and/or Summer 2024 and we’ll see.  We digress.

And, don’t go try to earn a living, or go out to eat unless you follow the mask, social distance, vax, and testing protocol mandates we need to flatten the two-year-old two-week curve.

Freedom is out of style.  Free is trending.

Both are going to cost a lot more to keep this the land of the free and the home of the brave.

 

 

 

Ten Piece Nuggets-Random

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

If you’re already done with the Keto diet New Year’s resolution, or if even if you never committed to it, a good serving of protein never goes out of style.  Our first 10 Piece Nuggets of 2022 are right below and right for you.  We start with the NFL, visit where the world turns, and end with the end of the college football season.

  1. Today in NFL circles is known as Black Monday, the day coaches are terminated.  GM’s are exempt either. But the clock has accelerated.  Urban Meyer and Jon Gruden beat their brethren to the punch.  One got a little handsy in his bar, the other got a little wordy in his emails.
  2. Urban’s former Jacksonville team shocked, and we mean shocked,  the NFL “experts.”  And, with that, the Indianapolis Colts got bounced right out of the playoffs.  The Colts stunk up the joint yesterday, losing 26-11 in a game that was 26-3 till late in the fourth.  WWFICJMHS?  What would former Indy Coach Jim Mora have said?  Playoffs?   It never gets old.
  3. Meanwhile, well west of there, Indy’s loss was The Las Vegas Raiders gain.  They beat the LA Chargers as the OT clock struck zero and backdoored their way into said playoffs. Interim head coach Rich Bisaccia is making the go-forward decision for Raiders owner Mark Davis harder by the week.  The game got very squirrelly at the end as a tie could have put both teams in.  Is that a squirrel on Mark Davis’ head?  We digress.
  4.  The Denver Broncos ousted Vic Fangio on Sunday.  Will the Minnesota Vikings push Mike Zimmer out into the northwest winter today? It’s very likely.   And, expect one or two surprises as always today or tomorrow.
  5. Who?  Bears Coach Matt Nagy would not be a surprise.  Pete Carroll would be a mild surprise.  How about Matt Rhule of Carolina?  He sacrificed Joe Brady, his OC, six weeks ago, but he’s done little to turn the Panthers around. Nothing that the Texans would do would surprise anyone.  The rudderless franchise ousted Bill O’Brien a year ago.  Is first-year coach David Culley safe?   Probably.  He’s cheap labor and the Texans aren’t going anywhere next year even if they had Nick Saban at the helm.
  6.  What were the chances that the San Franciso 49ers would make the playoffs after punting to the Rams while trailing by seven with 1:57 remaining in the game?  To win they needed to force a three and out, prevent the Rams from scoring in regulation, score a TD with no timeouts left, and win in OT.  Next Gen Stats, the authority on such matters, pinned the chance at 0.4 percent.  To state the stat differently, the chances were 1 in 250.  Bingo!  And, just like that the playoff air in New Orleans went poof!
  7. Changing gears, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a board member for Pfizer, agreed with Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel’s prediction that people will likely need a fourth shot of vaccine after the initial two doses and a booster. Gottlieb told Barron’s that Covid-19 vaccines will likely become an annual shot people get every year going forward in the fall.  Money, money, money, goes the Abba song.
  8.  Why as more and more double vaxxed and boosted folks test positive do government officials get angrier at the unvaxxed, even threatening them with economic harm?  Also, why are asymptomatic peeps standing or driving in long lines in the cold to get tested?
  9. Will we have a mandate that holds up?  We’re guessing that Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor thinks so.  Friday she claimed that over 100,000 children were “in serious condition” because of Covid -19.  The CDC has a slightly lower count at 4,132.
  10.  And, it seems like Alec Baldwin is out there just like Orenthal James Simpson once was looking for the real killer.  Baldwin is publically blaming right-wing zealots(reasons unclear)  and “cooperating” with the investigation of the Rust filming death by refusing to turn over his cell phone.  Both are accomplished actors, for sure.
  11.  And, a little lagniappe as we call it in the biz, Georgia is favored by 3 in Indy this evening over Alabama for the FBS Championship.  How can you bet against Nick Saban?  Vegas is telling you something.  Are you listening?  Georgia 30, Bama 24.

Bundle up.

I Pray For You

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

In order to fully understand the story, you need to know the characters.

Brian Kevin Porter, Jr. is a 21-year-old third-year NBA player for the Houston Rockets.  He sunk a buzzer-beating game-winning three Wednesday evening at the Washington Wizards (as they are known now).

Kevin Porter (born April 17, 1950) is a former NBA player.

He played ten seasons with four different teams (the first was the Washington Bullets as they were known then) and led the league in assists in four of those seasons.

Brian Kevin Porter Sr., who is Kevin Porter, Jr’s father, pleaded guilty in 1993 for the killing of a 14-year-old girl, according to a case docket with the King County Superior Court and USA Today. Porter Sr. was shot and killed in Seattle in 2004 when Jr. was but four years old.

Glenn Consor is a former NBA player, turned scout, who finally turned to broadcasting.  Consor has more than 22 years of experience in the broadcast industry, including 20 years with the Washington Wizards (formerly the Bullets) organization in radio and television roles.

Did you get all of that?

So, as the buzzer-beater swished through the twine Wednesday night Consor assumed, incorrectly, that it was a chip off of the old block.

“You’ve got to give credit. Kevin Porter Jr., like his dad, pulled that trigger right at the right time,” Wizards broadcaster Consor said after Porter buried the jumper to give the Rockets a 114-111 victory.

It was a bad choice of words given who Sr. was, but Consor didn’t know what he didn’t know.  Consor assumed, and you know what they say about assuming.  The former NBA Porter is no relation to the current NBA Porter whatsoever.

Enter one more character.  Lebron James.  He’s The King.

“Oh, he thought this was cool huh!!?? Nah we ain’t going for this!” James tweeted. “Sorry but this ain’t going to fly! How insensitive can you be to say something like this? Beat it, man! I pray for you but there’s no place in our beautiful game for you!”

Cancel culture is an ugly game.

By yesterday morning Consor was told of the error of his ways.

Consor, on Twitter, said Thursday he mistakenly thought Porter was the son of the former NBA player who played several seasons in Washington in the 1970s and early 80s.
“I have reached out to Kevin to personally apologize and hope to be able to talk to him soon,” Consor continued.
That should do it, shouldn’t it?
But the King isn’t backing down.  He doubled down after his shootaround (probably a bad choice of a word as well, but we digress) yesterday.  “What he said — no matter if he thought that was his dad or not — was so insensitive, and the words he used — we know the words that he used, I don’t want even want to repeat it — is not even something that should ever be said.”
Come on, doesn’t everyone deserve a second chance Lebron? Or a third?  Or a fourth?
For example, King Lebron lectured Darryl Morey on how insensitive he and by extension, we are towards China.  Calling that foolish is being nice.
He further lectured us on the social injustice of the shooting of Kenosha’s knife-wielding felon Jacob Blake, and the crocodile tears of fully exonerated Kyle Rittenhouse.  Wrong and wrong again.
Thankfully, Lebron is “praying” for Consor he told all.  Sounds good.
Really?  No, he isn’t.  It’s just more grandstand theatre.
Words mean something.  And, sometimes fewer is better.  Consor learned that the hard way two nights ago.
Lebron has a ways to go.