Stock Chatter

 Yesterday, some question came up to Speaker Pelosi over the idea of banning House members from stock trades....she basically rejected the suggestion, without a lot of words.

Here's the thing....the system we currently has reached some point where it's obvious that some members of the House/Senate (maybe half of them) are actively engaged in the futures/stock trade business.  

If you tried to ban them?  Well...their spouse or kids would be the ones engaging then.  

I think this is a dead-end discussion....none of them want to give up the practice, and any alternate path is doomed for failure.

I'd rather see every single trade of the political member, and their spouse....reported within 12 hours of the transaction.  Let all of us know how they invested and assume our own risk following them.  

The $4.99 Thing

 I sat today and spent an hour looking at this new news vehicle.....CNN-Plus.

So here's the deal.....to get this streaming news 'stuff'.....you sign up and pay $4.99.  

There's the suggestion that you could see 'other' stuff via CNN-Plus that you wouldn't see on regular CNN, but I sat and pondered.....what 'other' stuff?  Would there be conversations with Donald Trump?  Would they tear loose with real investigative journalism?  Would they really give me something that doesn't exist on regular CNN?

I'm pretty skeptical.

I really don't care to hear about Cuomo talking about his brother.  I don't want any more Hollywood news.  Frankly, I'm not interested in fashion or trump Hollywood women.  If you drag another animal doctor out to talk over Ivermectin as a horse-dewormer....I'd just turn the whole thing off.

I'm just at a loss to figure how people would get themselves hyped up to watch CNN-Plus, and pay $4.99 for it.  If you offered up some deal where some naughty-clothed French gal read the news and some bumbling Brit would throw custard pies at her, or something really comical in the delivery of the news?  Yeah, I might try that for a month.  

Comment by Brian Williams

 This past week....Brian Williams (NBC News) left/retired-out....of his 11 PM MSNBC show.  You could say that they were looking for a fresh new guy, and he'd run out of 'gas' here in the final five years.

So his quote at the end of the show was: "The reality is though, I will wake up tomorrow in the America of the year 2021, a nation unrecognizable to those who came before us and fought to protect it, which is what you must do now."

An 'unrecognizable country'?  

Well....back in 1975 to 1977....my final two years on the farm....I have this vivid image of rural NW Alabama, what little urbanization I'd come across in life (mostly Huntsville, Birmingham, Nashville, etc), and a general feeling of safety.  

Today?  It's a place where you aren't sure about your safety, your level of society, the continual surveillance you have to maintain (being vigilant), news-propagandists, worry over the twelve paranoid-schizophrenics that you will encounter today, and some juvenile-acting politician acting like a 4th-grade kid.

Depending on your daily travels....at least ten people will want to talk about Covid, either in a constructive way, or a lecture-type situation, or just admit some Jesus-like situation has reshaped their view of society in the middle of a pandemic.

You have relatives that you try to avoid....mostly because they want you to convert over this such-and-such religious political persuasion.  They feel you need 'healing' or that you've got too much Trumpism in your behavior.

You turn on the local news to have some marginally qualified journalist trying to hype you up or giving some 3rd-grade behavioral 'fit'.  

You find about 90-percent of whatever comes on TV....to be a 'joke', and for some reason can accept watching the 1971 episode of Bonanza....'The Night Virginia City Died' as being acceptable.  Even the episodes of Gilligan's Island....which you've seen forty times each....seem agreeable.

You've reached a level that 'Doctor Doom' guy for the government comes on, and you don't even hesitate on the mute-button.

Brian Williams is correct, but it's mostly too late to wise-up or resolve the path ahead.  He should have said something thirty years ago.

Short Piece on Ivermectin

 Every week, I read around twenty-odd medical studies.  So this week, I came to the topic of Ivermectin (you know.....the horse-dewormer or miracle drug for Covid).

So back in 2014, the US government went to study the idea of Ivermectin for another purpose. The idea?  Using it for alcohol addiction.  Logically, at least in the studies.....if you used the stuff for seriously addicted folks....it lessened your 'need'.  

It was apparently a successful study....but went nowhere.  Why?  No explanation, but the fact that its so cheap.....it's not a money-maker for the drug-industry.  

When It Comes Down To The News

 I basically want eight things:

1.  I want the raw facts in a simple format....maybe one slide would be enough on one topic.

2.  If you mention a place....put a map up.  Most people have no real idea where Mongolia is, or how big the Sahara Desert is....or the general location of Mexico City.

3.  No story should be complicated enough to require more than two minutes of talking.

4.  What Senator so-and-so says is not really that important....so just quote the quote to two lines, and avoid a six-minute interview.

5.  If you have to do a Covid-story.....don't run video in the background of some women getting jabbed.  Some of us get nauseous when seeing injections.

6.  Avoid physical descriptions of women (saying she weighs around 190 pounds). It automatically makes me utter the phrase.....she seems 'chunky'.  If you gotta be direct on weight....you might as well say she was marginally attractive, or she carried a lot of extra weight on the butt.  None of this is helpful in telling the story though.  

7.  Avoid talking about social media frenzies.....like Facebook people got all junked-up over this verdict, or how Twitter people fell apart when such-and-such gal uttered this phrase.

8.  Frankly, try to model your news after Paul Harvey's 15 minute piece of the news.  

Conspiracy Story That Was True

 This is a little history story about a conspiracy story that was hyped-up to be negative and would later be found to absolutely true.

As 1920 arrived....the Prohibition Era was dumped upon Americans.  What started as a development to halt consumption of booze/alcohol....turned into a problem for people that favored alcohol.

People then figured out that you could brew your own booze....if you had the right ingredients.  By 1925, it was decided that something had to be done.  

Quietly, without saying a lot....the US government went to the companies that made legit commercial/industrial alcohol.  They instructed (guided) the companies.....to add some ingredients that would make highly dangerous for consumption.  They figured.....with a warning on bucket/barrel.....that was enough.

Between 1926 and 1933 (the end of Prohibition)....it's generally figured today that around 10,000 Americans died of chemical poisoning through the consumption of homemade alcohol.

Treated as a conspiracy?  Probably for more than thirty years....this was quietly discussed and treated as a joke.  By the 1960s, a lot of this information finally filtered out.  It was no longer a conspiracy.....it actually did occur.  The 10,000 number?  This is one part of the story that you can't be sure about.  It's estimated to be 10,000.....but it could just as well be 100,000.  

Wallace?

 Over Sunday's show.....Chris Wallace announced that his appearance on his Sunday chatter show (via Fox News) was going to be the last one.

The wording, if you gaze around various news outlets....was that Chris was leaving Fox. 

I pondered over this.  It's simply not a true statement.  He's not leaving Fox News.....he had zero options, they were not going to offer another contract.  

What Wallace says now...is that he's going over to CNN-Plus.

What's CNN-Plus?  Well....originally (1999)...it was the CNN attempt to create a Latino-CNN gimmick.  They gave it ten years, and deemed it a failure.

In the past year, they decided to bring back CNN-Plus but as a streaming news site (not Latino news).  

Is there a need for it?  My guess is that they are packaging this in a way....in three years....to sell it to someone (maybe Meta/Facebook....maybe Twitter).  

As for this being a big deal with Wallace leaving the Sunday talk show?  I'd argue that twenty-odd people are standing there and ready to take over the show.  It's not much of a big deal.