1589 Orphan States

1589 Orphan States

Nevada, Utah, Mississippi, Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii. The states that don’t participate in Powerball.

Alaska and Hawaii are orphan states because they are nowhere near the rest of the country.  

Nevada?  If they allowed the almost-national lottery, the casinos would suffer.  If the casinos suffer, the whole state suffers.  And given the water problems and the presence first of Howard Hughes and now Sheldon Addlebrain, Nevada suffers enough.  At least Hughes kept to himself.

Plus how would you like to see all those showgirls, washed up club acts and hookers panhandling on the streets of cities in adjacent states?  Can you imagine Wayne Newton sitting on a streetcorner in Arizona holding a sign that says “Will Croon for Food?”

Mississippi, Alabama and Utah?  Well… that’s Mississippi, Alabama and Utah.  

Easy enough to cross state lines to buy tickets.  Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee, Arizona, Colorado, California, Oregon and Idaho don’t send cops around taking down numbers from out of state license plates.

So the country’s first lottery billionaire could come from anywhere.

Americans need to go nuts about something.  How American is it to get nuts about money!  Especially about really really big money.

Many states, even though they allow the game realize that lotteries are a de facto tax on the poor.  Not as bad as a flat income tax would be, though bad enough.

But it’s not the Bill Gateses that buy the tickets.  Well, we don’t know for sure what Gates or anyone else on the Forbes 400 List buys, but no one has ever spotted a Koch brother on line at a 7-11.

Who buys these tickets?  Poor and what’s left of the middle class.  How much do they cost?  Two bucks. But people who buy Powerball also buy state lottery tickets and play the slots, the horses, fantasy football, and on and on.  None of these games cost much if you play once or twice.  But as more people play, your chances of winning diminish.

This is not a diatribe against gambling.  Some of us have played a horse or two and even won a few bucks, maybe lunch money. But never enough to cover the month’s rent.

Old saw: Patience is a virtue.

Not always so. When you’re on the line that leads to the lottery machine, patience is a vice.  The real winners are those of us who don’t have the patience to wait our turn and leave.

Shrapnel (On a Cruz edition):

--Where are the birthers? If Cruz is a “natural born American citizen” because his mother was, what about Obama? Even if he had been born in Kenya -- which he wasn’t -- his mother was an American citizen and what was all the fuss about.

--Cruz’s mother was born in Delaware, Obama’s in Kansas.  Cruz’s father wasn’t a citizen at the time and neither was Obama’s. You can’t have it both ways so parental citizenship either is or isn’t the standard and birth in a state either is or isn’t, but not both.

--Somewhere along the line the constitutional definition of “natural born citizen” has to be determined.  No one wants to give it to the current Supreme Court. The apoplectic responses would probably kill all the justices… an act of cruelty or an act of kindness depending on your view of them… but not both.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2016

1588 Macy's

1588 Macy’s

Macy’s probably is the country’s most recognized store of its kind.  And when it announced it was closing 40 of its 770 branches and cutting 3% of its workforce on one of the worst trading days in recent memory, its stock price was one of the few that rose.

It wasn’t much of a rise, about 2%. But by that logic, it could have boosted its stock higher by firing a larger percentage of its employees.

And to continue that train of thought, it could have made a killing by simply closing all of its stores.

Such is the logic of Wall Street.

Macy’s is your old Aunt.  Someone you rarely think about and rarely call or visit, but always is kind of hovering in the margins of your life.

Macy’s is the can of soup that’s been in your kitchen cabinet since the Bronze Age, the one you stumble over when you’re cleaning and decide to cook only to discover it expired before Ronald Reagan was sworn in for his second term.

Macy’s is the largest snail mail spammer that pours a cascade of confusing coupons into your mailbox and your life each month.  And like that can of soup, many of them expire before you can figure out how to use them.  Or whether to.

They had a lousy 2015 winter season this year.  As did most everyone who tries to sell anything from a physical building and in person.  Hence, the closings.

Actually, there are two kinds of Macy’s: the Miracle on 34th Street and all the rest.  The “main” store is a tourist attraction in the heart of midtown Manhattan where crowds gather, where everything sparkles, where the best merchandise and the most of it is placed.  You know.  Thanksgiving Day parade. July 4th fireworks.

In most of the rest you can bowl in the aisles without fear of injuring yourself or anyone else.

The magic doesn’t carry into the rest of the country from that “main” location.

Why is main in quotes?  Because the headquarters is misplaced in Cincinnati.  You can run almost any kind of a national anything from anywhere in the midwest. But not something so New York as Macy’s.

Why is it in Cincinnati? Because that’s where Federated Department Stores comes from. Federated bought the chain years ago and tried to figure out what to do with it.  They’re still working on that one.

No dissing of the Midwest meant here.  But you can’t run a mid-price NYC department store from anywhere else in the world but NYC.  

That concept works in reverse too.  The Cadillac division of General Motors wrote its own obituary when it moved its headquarters but not its factories out of greater Detroit and into lower Manhattan. It’s just a matter of time.

And look what happened to the New York Jets when they moved to New Jersey. Almost the same with the New York Giants.

Shrapnel:

--Anyone catch Obama’s town hall meeting on guns last night?  If you didn’t here’s the essence:  “I’m spending my final year in office going door to door across this great land of ours and personally confiscating all your guns while Joe Biden handles the day to day chores at the White House.”

Grapeshot:

-The President also said “Michelle doesn’t want me to leave Biden at the White House because he snores and tosses around a lot in his sleep.”

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®  

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2016

1587 Sandbagged

1587 Sandbagged

The problem is sand.  Yes, sand.  Plain old ordinary stuff you find at the beach.  And at the beach, it’s not a problem.  Elsewhere, it’s a different story.

Here are some examples:

Suffolk County, Long Island’s former top non- appointed or elected law enforcer, police chief James Burke has been arrested and charged with obstruction and civil rights offenses.  Other cops may follow.  And the district attorney may have some questions to answer.  What is Long Island?  It’s a glacial deposit, a giant sandbar. To use the strongest form of criticism short of libel or (heaven forbid!) assuming guilt before conviction Sand must impede enforcement.

In the south and midwest, rivers are overflowing their banks and what is failing to keep them under control?  Sand bags.  Tens of thousands of tons of sand unable or unwilling to stem the rivers’ tides. (No, rivers don’t have tides, but you get the idea.)  Sand must be weak.

In the high desert of Oregon, armed militiamen took over a federal wildlife refuge in the ongoing war between “sovereign citizen” ranchers who want to use federal lands and the federal government.  The leaders have used social media to recruit followers.  They’re “willing to kill and be killed” to get their way.  If the feds come in and start shooting, it’ll be Ruby Ridge all over again.  People who say they know the situation from the inside quote those soft spoken good ole boys saying they want to be martyrs.

What’s the high desert of Oregon made of?  Sand.  Sand can make you cuckoo or at least increase your cuckoo-osity.

And then there’s the Middle East.  Syria, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen, Libya and Jordan.  There, everyone’s doing battle with everyone else.  ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah,  the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Taliban.

What’s the Middle East made of? Sand. Sand can make you crazier than a bunch of American gun nuts because the gun nuts, one way or another will go away.

So here’s the evidence:  Sand impedes proper and effective law enforcement.  Sand doesn’t impede floods.  Sand attracts people who don’t believe the government governs them.  Sand causes wars.

What more evidence do you need?  We must build a wall against sand on the southern border. We must seek covering topsoil for Long Island, the Oregon high desert, and the Middle East.  Only then will we be free of this terrorist substance.

The people rest.

Shrapnel (sand edition):

--Sand apologists say it’s not all bad.  They point to Silicon Valley as a wellspring of goodness.  They don’t yet have Windows 10.

--Sand pacifists say it’s just nature and we can’t and shouldn’t try to tame it. But we always fool with nature. Check out your car’s exhaust pipe.

--Kirk Sand builds guitars that work like a Rolls Royce and sound like a chorus of angels.  But they’re so expensive, almost no one can afford one or live long enough for one to be completed.

Grapeshot:

-The Sands Hotel attracted Sheldon Adleson and turned him into a misguided political influencer.

-Tommy Sands turned popular music into maple syrup.

-Sand in your gas tank will kill your car.

-Sand paper hurts when you sit on it, especially if you’re not wearing pants.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2016

1586 Kale, Kale, the Gang's All Here

1586 Kale, Kale the Gang’s All Here

Uh oh.  Kale can make you sick.  It says so right in Woman’s Day Magazine so it has to be true.  (Bet you didn’t know there still is a Woman’s Day Magazine.)

A news guy with impeccable credentials and excellent reputation posted the article on Facebook.  Two more reasons to say it has to be true. (Name on request.)

But wait.  Isn’t kale supposed to be the miracle veggie that cures everything from iron deficiency anemia to beriberi, to ingrown toenails and dental cavities?

Doesn’t it help lower your cholesterol, ease digestion, maybe even lower the risk of some cancers?  The website World's Healthiest Foods says all this and more.

But here’s part of the article in Woman’s Day:  

In a recent study, molecular biologist Ernie Hubbard found that kale—along with cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and collard greens—is a hyper-accumulator of heavy metals like thallium and cesium. What's more, traces of nickel, lead, cadmium, aluminum, and arsenic are also common in greens, and this contamination affected both organic and standard produce samples.

Plus it tastes awful and it looks and chews like a green Brillo Pad soaked in Angostura Bitters.  So now what do we do?  

No more “cleansing” juices, kale/broccoli/cauliflower and fruit juices in which we sneak in kale?  Do we decommission our Ninja blenders and Nutribullets?  Send Fred Waring back his Waring Blendor?  (That’s how they spelled “blender” when they first came out.  Honest.)

How much arsenic really is in a handful of kale?  Or Aluminum? Or Cadmium?  Has anyone actually died from kale poisoning?

Broccoli, sure.  But kale?  No one uses enough at a time to do any real harm, right?  Cabbage?  Sure.  Especially when it’s made into coleslaw.

When someone in a TV mystery drama kills someone with arsenic, they slip small quantities into food and drink. It builds up.  Voila! Murder.  But as anyone who watches the daily Forensic Files marathon can tell you with PhD level authority that crime labs can find that stuff in a corpse.

Since the marathon went on the air (it seems like ten years ago but it wasn’t) arsenic and antifreeze poisonings have plunged.  Who would willingly eat enough kale to die?

Where are the nanny-staters who want you to stop smoking, drinking, having coffee, pot, sugared beverages, fried chicken and gluten?  Has one single charity been formed?  Why is there no Mothers Against Kale?  People for the Ethical Treatment of Edibles (Peta.) Where are the FTC, the FDA, the CDC?

Where are the supermarkets with a buyback program?

C’mon gang, here’s something unworthy that’s easy to give up.  You don’t even have to make a New Year’s resolution to break later.

Shrapnel:

--Fred Waring lived and died in State College, PA and was born in nearby Tyrone.  Appliance dealers and departments were so shaken by his passing in 1984 that they removed anything with his company name on it from their shelves.  And you still can’t buy one anywhere in either town.

--If low pay isn’t a good enough reason, here’s another one to keep you from a career in journalism.  The Business Insider website reports that the stress level is 95 out of a possible 100 points in a report from the Labor Department.  On the other hand, that’s a lot lower than urologists (100%,) Police, fire and ambulance dispatchers (99) and acute care nurses (97.)  Oddly enough, air traffic controllers didn’t make the list, which casts suspicion on the whole study.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2016

1585 Happy New Year 2016

1585 Happy New Year 2016

May your dreams come true at a greater rate than your resolutions succeed.  After all, today a .300 hitter is considered a batting savant. Winning half your games is considered a “winning season.” And whether you say the glass is half empty or half full, it’s still at 50% of capacity.

Resolutions are kind of like Soviet five year plans.  They sure sound good when you hear them. They look good on paper.  Rarely do they turn out as expected.  Or wanted.

In at least one respect, they were better than the resolutions you made for 2016.  Everyone knew and accepted they were unrealistic, maybe even fakes.  Really, in 1928 did anyone expect the USSR to achieve full industrialization by 1932?  Of course not.  The dopes in Washington may have.  But no Russian worth a ruble did.

So what makes you think you’ll be able to fit into that bikini, graduation suit or your Smart-For-Two “car” at some point this year? Face it. If you take up 1 and ½ of the two seats now, you’re unlikely to take up less than 1 ⅓ by January 2017. You still won’t have room for a passenger. And in fact, you may even take up 1 and 9/10.

Which brings us to negative resolutions. Long time listeners or readers of these pieces are familiar with this radical concept.  Resolve to gain ten pounds, drink more coffee and bourbon, smoke more than the usual pack a day and be kind to animals.  Since resolutions almost always fail, so will these and you’ll be better off for it.  Added bonus:  no guilt when you fall short.

How did we get into the resolution trap?  Far as we can tell it started with the Babylonians who promised things to their gods a little over 2,000 years ago.  The Romans did much the same. It didn’t really become a big deal in America until the great depression.

Sometimes we’re slow to pick up on things.

But “new” is a big deal here.  So making resolutions or fresh starts at the beginning of a new year is completely in character for us.

If you don’t believe “new” is a magnet for Americans, test yourself.  Monitor your reaction the next time you hear the word.

Shrapnel:

--Times Square got through the annual New Year celebration with the feared terrorist attack.  Six thousand additional cops on hand.  That’s a good number but no one’s saying how many more than usual that was, if any.

--Assuming the hotel fire in Dubai was not arson, and considering the number of high rise fires there this past year teaches us an important lesson.  Safety rules make sense and Dubai’s may not be strong enough or enforced vigorously enough.  Remember that the next time you wander around a mall or a hotel or a supermarket closer to home.

Happy New Year from the entire staff and management of this blog.  That’s me. I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2016

1584 Three Little Words

1584 Three Little Words

No, not “I love you.” Not “Go to Hades.” Not even “Stop the music.”  These three little words are “I don’t know.”

How refreshing this kind of conversation would be:

Bob Schieffer: Sir, in hindsight, what could you have done differently about the rise of the Soviet Union?

Franklin D. Roosevelt: I don’t know, Bob. I just don’t know.”

Or

Wife:  Why can’t you remember to turn the garage lights out when you’re finished in there?

Husband:  I don’t know.

No one likes to hear those three little words.

The other day someone wrote an advice column about things to not say in a workplace.  Top of the list? “I don’t know.”

What?  All of a sudden we’re all supposed to be know-it-alls?

Sometimes I don’t know is a good answer.  If a stranger asks directions and you don’t know, you tell him and he finds someone else to ask.  Public service on the ground. (Or you can play a joke: send the questioner in the wrong direction.)

Saying you don’t know makes you feel stupid.  Even if the question is stupid.  Albert Einstein asks the stranger on line ahead of him at McDonald’s “What is the cubic root of 17?”  (The answer is just over 2.57, in case you’re curious.) Even if you know the answer, what good is it?

Feeling stupid about a question like that is defeatist. This points out the difference between “stupid” and “ignorant.”  Ignorance is curable.  Or at least treatable.

But some people are reluctant to say those three little words because they fear being thought of as a dummy.

Sometimes you can avoid this problem. Here’s an example.

Guy on a train platform: “What time’s the last train to Clarksville?”  Other guy on a train platform: “I don’t know, but I have a schedule, let’s look it up.”

Many of us don’t carry train schedules or “Best of the Monkees” song books, though either might come in handy.  

If you don’t know the answer -- whatever the question -- say so.  You may look like a dope.  But you’re being honest and at least indirectly helpful.  Not as helpful as having and giving the answer. But helpful nonetheless.

And for those of you who won’t take “I don’t know” for an answer, something should be done about you.  What?

I don’t know.

Shrapnel:

--Lessons from Trump. Like a small New England or West Virginia mining town, Japan says it won’t admit refugees from Syria.  “No big wave of foreigners here,” they say “we don’t have the room.”  

--We don’t hear much about what may be the most important decision the next president will have to make, picking a nominee  for associate justice of the US Supreme Court.  Clinton or Sanders will give us the other Clinton or Obama or someone like them. But who would a President Trump or a President Huckabee pick?

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1583 The Paper Clip Theory

1583 The Paper Clip Theory

When was the most recent time you went out and actually BOUGHT a box of paper clips?

Gotcha!

You CAN’T remember.

But you have one, maybe more than one. It’s on your desk or in a drawer or on a shelf somewhere in the house or the office.

So, how did they get there? Maybe you inherited them from a poor uncle (everyone talks about RICH uncles. How about the poor ones; the middle class ones?)

Maybe they just appeared. Poof!

The conclusion: there’s a finite number of paper clips in the world, and they just keep circulating. It’s a non-renewable resource, but one that’s not likely to be exhausted, like, say, oil, Brazilian rosewood, or Buicks.

You get a bunch of papers in the mail, and they’re clipped. You save the clip. Use it again when you need one. You send it to someone else who sends it to someone else. Eventually, one or more come back to you and it’s not because of your magnetic personality, either.

The physicist Stephen Hawking has not responded to inquiries about a “big bang” theory of paper clippature. He’s a bit busy these days, and slow to answer his e-mail. But there’s word in the scientific community that he will soon deliver a paper on the anti-magnetic properties of black holes in space and may postulate that that’s where the clips come from.

There are factories that make them, you say. Oh yeah? Have you ever seen one?

“Invention” of this marvel is generally credited to a Norwegian working in Germany in 1890, Johann Vaaler. It is said he needed a device to pin together the extra vowels and consonants in his name.  The extra “a” kept floating away and the extra “n” kept falling off. But is this true? Perhaps. But what was his inspiration, really? Maybe the paperclip was the work of a higher spiritual being.

(There’s also speculation that the American William Middlebrook was the inventor, and he too had extra letters in his name, i.e. “l”, “d” and possibly “o.”)

Thus, the “Intelligent Design” theory of paper clippage.

Some theologians and their followers assert that this marvel of technology had to be thought up by an outside intelligence, that it is too ingenious for the human mind to accomplish on its own. (What they are really saying, of course, is that it is too ingenious for THEIR minds to grasp.)

They insist that their notion of the origin of paper clips be taught in science classes, alongside the big bang and “ever circulating” theories. This would require the rewriting of every science textbook at huge costs to already financially pressed school districts.

So, in the end, this battle is about money, not science or even theology.

Shrapnel:

--After umpteen upgrades and new versions, Microsoft word still doesn’t allow punctuation in its title blocks. That’s the bad news.  The good news… Word doesn’t easily allow APA or MLA formatting either thus eliminating two of the greatest sources of interrupted reading inflicted on anyone who is forced to read or write anything in those so- called styles.

Grapeshot:

-Why do word processing programs have to fool with the spacing in the middle of the page? (see above.)

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015