Things That I Don't Believe Anymore (#2)

Originally, I wrote this 50 item list in 2014.  So I've gone back and added another fifty items that have occurred since then.....making it a hundred now.

It's my general list of things that I just don't believe anymore....since growing a bit wiser and more cynical: 

1.  Ghosts.  I'm sixty-three and have yet to ever turn a corner and find some ghost standing there.
2.  Bigfoot.  Bogus....as much as you get.
3.  Loch Ness Sea Monster.  Nice tourist attraction to a remote lake in Scotland with no gimmicks.
4.  That Jonah got swallowed by a whale.  It's a nice and tidy story, but there's no whale with the capability of swallowing a guy.  So, I think it's just a fish story that got told over and over, bolder and bolder, until someone wrote it down.
5.  That religions can be non-violent.  Either Islam is a bogus deal or it's not a religion.
6.  Feeling safe in an American urban area setting.  I can't think of any major town or city in the US where I feel one-hundred percent safe.  After you watch enough crime reports, and notice the rate of assaults or robberies.....it's just not that safe.
7.  Nutritional and safe food.  After you start reading the sodium, sugar and additives listing on anything sold today.....there's just nothing that you feel is really nutritional or safe.
8. The flight getting to where you desired, on time.  I tend to arrive at airports, march through security with ill-feelings, and have this fifty-fifty feeling that we will get to the final destination on time and without issues.  Planning a back-up situation, is now mandatory in my mind.
9.  A four-star advertised hotel actually being a four-star hotel.  I'd say that about forty percent of all hotels saying they are four-star....aren't.
10. Universities producing real degrees and real graduates.  I tend to see four-year university programs as a Walgreens-like operation....money in....degree out....and a very marginal individual pretending to be smart and capable.  I'm also of the mind that a graduate in 1897 of a four-year university.....was probably twice as capable as kids graduating today.  This also relates to bogus professors pretending to be worth a $120k salary and a $75k a year pension deal.
11. Honest politicians.  It's zero chance that all one-hundred Senators could pass an an ethics audit or a Constitutional quiz.  Most simply are lobbyist-Senators or agenda-Senators.....none represent their state or their peers of the state.
12.  Safe food at restaurants.  Between questionable vegetables and fruit.....sanitary habits of the employees....and marginal health inspections.....nothing is absolutely safe anymore.
13.  TV ministers being dedicated to their religion.  After you've seen enough fall from grace....you come to realize that the character and honesty of ministers go into a spiral after they hit the big-time and start staying at five-star resort hotels.
14.  Stop and frisk being a racist thing.  If you walk around a big-name city on a routine basis, and you have some worries about crime because of assaults.....you start to ask who was the general culprit of the assaults.  And after a while.....stop and frisk is the only method to keep people honest and force people to act 'human' while in public.
15.  The NCAA bowl process being fair.  No, it's not fair....nor will it ever be fair.  It's about a group trying to protect the interest of the twenty biggest university football programs in America, and ensure profitability....end of story.
16.  Oswald was part of a big conspiracy.  Lee Harvey Oswald was a nutcase....even his brother has admitted that.  Now, if you ask about Jack Ruby.....I'm of a slightly different mind....wondering what the heck Jack was thinking, and if Jack was part of the conspiracy business.
17.  CNN is neutral.  Up until around 2002.....I probably still believed in the great story of CNN being objective.  Since 2005.....I'd say they are a lousy group of journalists, with no investigative ability, and it's remarkable that they still run the network.
18.  MSNBC is neutral.  Well.....even if a earthquake was to occur on Monday afternoon in California and trigger 1,200 deaths.....by Tuesday night....they'd be right back onto some political agenda story out of DC being the number one story.
19.  Fox News is unbiased.  They pick up a hundred stories, and maybe seventy are told in an unbiased way....which leads you to question the remaining thirty which are fairly biased.  You'd like to believe them entirely, but it's just about impossible.
20.  The Bible being a pure document with historical impact.  Basically, all of the New Testament chapters are written around 150 AD, and it's not consolidated for another 200 years (getting translated into Greek around this point)....with dozens (maybe hundreds) of individual copied documents with slightly different versions of various stories.  Then the Catholic Church picks up the Greek document....translates it again....into Latin....with more slightly different versions of various stories.  Then around eight hundred years later....it finally starts getting translated again into English, French and German.....with even more slightly different versions of various stories.  So, it's simply not anything related to copy version ONE.
21.  Republicans and Democrats working together.  Maybe at one time (up until the 1980s).....they could find fifty percent of all topics which they generally agreed upon.  Today.....it's impossible.
22.  National Parks run for their preservation.  Most all National Parks are run by agenda groups, with differing views of what is OK, and what is fouling environmental concerns.  It's almost mafia operations, with different groups fighting over funding, territory, and status.
23.  Teddy Roosevelt was a pure Republican.  You could have taken the top ten political ideologies of the time (1900) and found that Teddy had bits and pieces of all of them.
24.  Watergate was about corruption.  Watergate is an episode where some White House staffer's wife had illicit affair photos being held in the Watergate Hotel complex where a room area was rented by the Democratic Party, and the break-in was related to getting those photos.  The rest of the Watergate affair.....about trying to deceive the public on what happened in the weeks after the event.
25.  People and companies pay their fair share of taxes.  Basically, your Senate and House folks, over the past hundred years....have written eighty-thousand pages of exceptions and credits.....and a vast number of people and companies....along with religions and charities.....are bogus tax-payers.
26.  The 2008 economic collapse was due to President Bush and his policies.  If you spend ten hours reading and examining the entire collapse.....there's roughly fifteen different causes.  Trying to simplify it all back to one person and one cause....is a pretty comical method of acceptance, and what you'd typically get from a three-minute segment of the Today Show with Matt Lauer.
27.  Sixty Minutes does great investigative journalism.  This was likely true up until the 1990s.  At that point, they became a lame group of journalists....over-paid....and lacking any pure skills for the trade they pretended to occupy.
28.  The pilgrims were prepared for their "mission".  If you had to sort through history and find the most ill-prepared and most lacking group for the job.....this was it.  One-hundred-and-two got off, and it's safe to say that they were screwed within minutes upon landing on the beach.  Landing in November....was the worst time of year, and their food supply was marginal at best.
29.  Global warming, global cooling, climate change is real.  Up through the 1990s.....I believed in the global cooling saga being told.  Once they stood up and said "stop"....we screwed up....it's a one-hundred-eighty-degree twist, and it's really global warming.....I had to ask why would you and your genius, along with the models....find such a vast difference in opinion in such a short time.  There should have thousands of the global cooling experts to stand and say the same thing.  Instead, they all just grin, and say we are version two of the whole story.  After that.....I lost total faith.  Now that we've moved onto climate change, and dumped both global warming and cooling....with no one challenging that trend....I'm pretty-well convinced.  None of this works.
30.  We must sponsor NPR across America.  Well...no, there was a time when we didn't have jazz, opera, classical music, and news networks.  I've kinda noticed over the last decade.....NPR's stations have cut back on classical, opera and jazz.....pushing news constantly.  Sadly, there are dozens of news outlets in every region now....so I question the necessity of NPR being pushed as a federal tax revenue project.  If they want it run.....dump the federal government contributions.
31.  Barry Bonds.  Barry was a decent thirty-homers-a-year player.  I think from the early 90's on....his production level was bogus, and he should have retired with five-hundred homers max.  Steroid use?  That's the problem....you just don't know.  Hall-of-Fame guy?  No.  He'll never make it and that really drives home the question of who Barry Bonds was in reality.  Sammy Sosa?  Same story.
32.  EPA is saving the environment.  In the first ten years, this might have been true.  I think their regulatory power has gone beyond anything one could imagine from the 1980s.  I think special interest groups and agenda foundations mostly do the homework and just press for regulations and rules to punish companies and private owners.....with no real representation by the little guy any more.
33.  You have no choice.  I've come to view life as a vast menu of choices, and those who feel they are bound to only one choice....are refusing to think for themselves.  There is always a choice.
34.  You need money to be happy.  Well....you need some money....just not a lot of money.
35.  We are alone in this universe.  Sadly, I'm of the mind that we will eventually come to find the other worlds with other races....and find that some are vast worst than our own, and some better.  And a few of us on Earth will feel as though we've lost much of what there was to live for.
36.  Life is fair.  Basically, life is about a continual walk, where there are some obstacles, some hazards, and some terrible things along the walk.  Some of us will make it, and some won't.  It's not about fairness....it's just a statistical thing.
37.  Jersey Governor Chris Christie ought to be president.  After this whole toll-gate episode occurred, I've come to regard Christie at the level of Tony Soprano.  He gives a good talk....but he's got a questionable character.
38.  The original Ferguson story.  After about a week, there are bits and pieces that came out....suggesting that this eighteen-year-old kid might not be so pure and clean.  Maybe the kid brought most of the mess upon himself, and maybe the cop did one stupid thing during the whole act.  The problem is.....convicting the cop is almost impossible if the autopsy shows the showing distance to be very close and the the kid over the top of the cop.
39.  Bernie Madoff was a genius.  There were obvious signs from the early stages of Bernie's fund, and dimwitted investors never questioned anything....neither did their tax accountants.....and neither did the SEC.  Bernie was an idiot, but they were as stupid or more so.....in terms of lacking investment understanding.
40.  Historians always tell the true version of history.  Generally, after a while and a vast amount of reading....you come to realize the idiots who write high school and college history books.....tend to lean toward their version of history, which fits into their dialog and big-picture.
41.  Don King is crazy.  I'm of the mind that Don King knew exactly how to get millions to pay into a pot and make one section of entertainment (boxing).....pay at a maximum rate.  Don wasn't crazy.....Don was a genius.  And today?  We've taken all the lessons Don taught us, and done the same thing with wrestling, football, and various sports.
42.  Wrestling is real.  It's the most bogus sport in existence.
43.  A top one-hundred show on rock-and-roll's greatest hits is always truthful.  No, it's not.  It's usually rigged with various gimmicks to push some folks higher than others.  Trying to compare Elvis with Madonna....doesn't work.  Trying to compare the Bee Gees with the Scorpions.....doesn't work.
44.  Small towns make their chunk of revenue off property taxes.  Well.....NO.  Most all small towns of 1,000 residents.....make their general big chunk of money....off fines that the local cops enforce.  That's why you have nine cops who mostly hand out traffic-tickets.
45.  People know better.  Around a hundred years ago....we outlawed booze consumption and sales.  It took roughly ten years for us to stand and admit.....we were pretty wrong about this.  We've proven over and over.....we aren't exactly knowing better.
46.  Cruiselines are safe.  No....they meet one group of health inspectors, and pass one marginal inspection.  After that.....you are on your own.
47.  Columbus was the first guy to land in America.  There's substantial evidence to show various Viking and Irish characters probably landed in America before Columbus.  And some evidence strongly supports the idea of Chinese discoverers being around as well.
48.  Michael Jordan was the greatest NBA player of all time.  Basically, I rank both Larry Bird and Magic Johnson above Jordan.  Watching Bird for two hours....was like watching a dozen fat lady opera singers belting out a torrid and epic song....weeping over frustrations and lack of play from the opposite team....and truly amazed that Larry wanted to win so badly compared to everyone else on the court.
49.  Judge Judy is fair.  No....Judge Judy listens to the story, finds either some truth or some lie, and renders a verdict.  She's not fair.....she simply applies the law, as written.  And I will admit.....she is entertaining as she reaches a verdict.
50.  Life is short.  You know....if you want it to be short....then you will feel that way.  If you want it to feel extra long and tedious.....you will feel that way.  If you want it to feel corrupted and terrible.....you will feel that way.  If you want to make it just a simple adventure, with no compass or map.....you will feel that way.  It is....what it is.

So, the next new fifty:

51.  Joe Biden is competent.  Well, you have to begin with the problem that since the 1980s, Joe probably hasn't worked more than 25 honest hours each week, and just suggesting he might need to pull forty hours....each single week, you are tiring Joe out mentally.

52.  Putin doesn't know what he's doing.  Oh, he knows precisely what he's doing and the world is like a chessboard to him.  

53.  Gitmo will last forever.  No, I think it'll be completely shutdown by the end of Biden's term.  

54.  This inflation mess will only last through 2022, then end.  No, I suspect you are looking at inflation being around into 2023, and probably 2024.  A lot of people are capable of handling multiple years of this.

55.  NY City will survive with it's population of 8.4-million (2019 numbers).  No, by the end of 2023....there's probably a million-person loss in the mix.  Blame it on Covid, crime, taxation, and just dissolving infrastructure....but folks are finding the reasons to leave.  

56.  Covid came from a wet-market.  No.  If this were true, and Chinese really believed it.....virtually every single wet-market in China would have dissolved away/closed in 2020.  It's a lab accident.

57.  False flag operations are rare.  No, across the US....probably on a hour-by-hour basis.....some government idiot/policeman/FBI agent/banker/private detective.....are creating false flag situations.  We just aren't smart enough to realize how screwed-up things really are.

58.  Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide.  No, I seriously doubt it, but the world is probably a better place with him dead.

59.  Crisis actors are bogus.  Well....NO, there are probably over 20,000 Americans who dabble in the art of crisis acting.  There are high periods, and low periods, but they all enjoy the acting.

60.  Canada will survive the trucker strike.  No, by mid-summer, I think this Trudeau will have to flee the country (probably to Costa Rica), and the nation may end up in some revolutionary situation.....where it's broken into different countries.

61.  All of MKUltra as a conspiracy is false.  No, there are probably several elements to it which actually occurred, and it's just best that we not know the entire story or how much government money was spent on the program.

62.  Trump was the 'answer'.  No, I think he simply brought up twenty-odd proposals that no Republican/Democrat would discuss in public, and then tried to advance them.  Some actually made sense.....some were never going to provide pay-back.  This weird business of attaching a 'Jesus-factor' or a 'Satan-factor' to candidates/politicians.....has royally screwed-up the whole landscape we live in.

63.  You can fix California homelessness by building more homes.  No, at least two-thirds of the people in this category are long-term dopers or mentally incompetent (should be in a facility).  Trying to figure more homes does the job.....is just wasting government funding.

64.  The TV show....'The View'....provides intellectual chatter.  No....you could get the same level of mindless chatter by handing out cannabis to a couple of New Jersey housewives, and just letting them chat for an hour on live TV.

65.  Misinformation is a marginal threat.  From 6 AM on, across the entire day....you are probably getting a minimum of twenty bits of misinformation on average....from local news, state news, and national news.  

66.  The Conners TV show is superb viewing.  No, once they fired Roseanne....this garbage show Conners....is like some 2-star soap opera without much humor.

67.  The Afghanistan 'comedy' of 2021 was the fault of the Pentagon.  No, since the smoke cleared.....it is obvious that the State Department, and Biden WH team are hopelessly lost, and Joe Biden is unable to run more than a 1-ring circus (instead of the 3-ring type).  

68.  Major networks like ABC  and CBS can still produce quality TV programming.  No, that era has ended.  The Netflix, Amazon, and Showtime crowd have the quality programming now.  

69.  Fake Twitter accounts are a minor issue.  No, some folks figure now that 20-million fake accounts exist.  

70.  People who now identify as transgender....are pretty locked in.  No, there's no evidence to say this number stays at a constant, with some people likely even flipping back after a year or two.  It's a trendy thing, and then goes through a process of trending in another direction.

71.  A $100 HDMI cable is better than a $15 HDMI cable.  No.  I might agree that the cabling itself is higher quality, but if you figure the two items you are hooking up....will only last about ten years, then the $15 cable is good enough.

72.  There was only one single Oswald.  Well....no.  There are bits and pieces of the Warren Commission report which has Oswald at two locations, at the same time, and it repeats.  This occurs in the high school years, the Marine years, and the period before November 1963.  There's either a second Oswald, or a stolen identity problem. 

73.  Reality TV is real.  No, it's mostly all scripted.  

74.  You need to use 'cleanses' or anti-toxin crap for your body to heal.  NO, the whole purpose of the liver is to do the cleaning necessary.  If you just ate a reasonably balanced diet, and avoided heavy consumption of booze....the liver does the job.

75.  Tech support is important.  No, you can probably ask some 14-year old kid to hook up your printer, or add an App to your phone, and he'll do the job for a pack of smokes or a six-pack of beer.

76.  Ivermectin was designed originally for horses having worm problems.  NO.  It was made for human consumption, and the use for animals came later.  This BS story by news networks needs to be corrected.

77.  MLB, the NFL, and the NBA can survive in the Covid era.  No, the business plan for profit and salaries....cannot survive with the current Covid mess.  

78.  A fair sum of people are really interested in the Prince Harry/Meghan news of the day.  No.  The people who are watching this intently.....would be the same crowd who show up at a NASCAR race....waiting for the big accident to occur.  

79.  No one is going to prison for the 'spy-on-Trump' situation.  No.  The geek responsible has very little options other than admitting guilt and who hired him.  He's going to do some serious jail-time.  The next guy or two after that.....who did the hiring/paying...will probably go to jail as well.  Beyond that....no one else will be sent off to prison.

80.  It's legit for houses to gain 50-percent in value over ten years.  No, under normal condition....home prices don't escalate like that, unless it's a umbrella-mess in the making.  

81.  It's perfectly ok to eat bacon daily.  Well....no.  This is one of those things that you might want to just keep to a once-a-week situation.  

82.  Baldwin having zero responsibility in the gun-firing incident.  No, maybe there's five or six things at work here, but when the prosecutor decides upon a court case....I think Baldwin might need a legal team and figure a guilty situation might mean a year or two in prison, for mostly stupidity.

83.  Elon Musk is occasionally wrong.  No, I've yet to see a single Musk achievement that I'd classify as stupid or wrong.

84.  A new I-Phone is worth $900.  No.  An older model Samsung Galaxy going for $150 does the same basic job.  

85.  A talk-show host can't beat legit TV networks.  No, there's no doubt that Joe Rogan and his 11-million (always expanding) have the edge over legit TV now.  Over the next two years, I think Rogan will expand out to 20-million, and even have two or three million listeners in Europe/Japan.

86.  Drama-less Biden replaced max-drama Trump.  No, if you measured out week by week, it's hard to find the Biden-index of drama being less.  If you counted minute-by-minute of being in front of the camera each day.....Trump probably had three solid hours each day of TV viewing (live).  Biden?  There are entire days each week where there is no viewing of him.

87.  VP Harris being incompetent.  No, I would disagree.  She's like the kid in the class who never studied for a test, and walked in....took the test, and usually got between 65 and 75.  She's always been this way, and not likely to improve.

88.  No other American city will become like Detroit.  No, I'd say presently that Seattle and Portland are working hard to be a Detroit-copy.  

89.  Neil Young is still recognized today.  No.  Probably over 90-percent of America has never heard any of his tunes, and would not recognize him if he walked into their living room.

90.  Covid 'fog' (in the brain) is real.  Well....no, so far, no one has established a test or a proof that x-person has it, and y-person does not have it.  Nor has anyone found/developed a rehab program for it.  

91.  E-cars don't explode.  No, after you view enough of the reports, there's some ways for a short to occur, and the car burns up.  Maybe it's just one car out of a million on a monthly basis.....but there's obviously some potential threat and parking within a garage might not be that smart.

92.  When the 'Office' ended production, the chatter ended.  No.  It's shocking on how much people talk about episodes of the show today, and individuals have gone back to watch a second, third, and fourth time.  

93.  The Hispanic 'walkers' (the guys/gals who just crossed the border) are a threat to jobs in America.  No, they've simply taken up the simple jobs which require little to no skill.  You know....the ones that stupid Americans have lost interest in performing.  

94.  If you pursue happiness, you will find it.  No, I think this suggestion is a failure for 50-percent of people on this path....looking for happiness but failing.  

95.  Opiate addiction will one day be curable.  No, I just don't believe that.

96.  Victim-people live happy lives.  No, I think the victim crowd is pretty turned on and thrilled about being victims.  There's no happiness to it....just a sense of purpose.

97.  Vitamin D is fully understood.  No, I just don't believe that discussion anymore.  It's treated like a mystery item.

98.  No one watches TV shows from the 1970s/1980s anymore.  No, it's evident that probably ten-percent of American society regularly watches old shows still today.

99.  You are not capable of doing much of anything yourself, without help.  No, that philosophy has come and gone.  

100.  Marvel movies never fail.  No.....after watching Eternals, I can say that some good storylines simply don't translate well into movie productions.