Observations:

 1.  New CEO of Twitter (Parag Agrawal) says that the company (Twitter) will not be 'bound' by the first amendment (Free Speech).

After a long pause and bit of pondering....I thought about the term 'bound'. The first amendment allows for free and open discussion, free ability to assemble (in a yard, church, cornfield), and the ability to exchange ideas without limits on conversation.  

So this guy Agrawal is basically saying he's all for hindering free speech, not exchanging ideas and stopping the ability to assemble?  The first amendment does nothing to bound.....it unbounds anything in its path.  

How Twitter will exist under Agrawal?  I'd suggest you are looking at the light at the end of the tunnel....their demise.

2.  Someone did a poll on Biden's Build-Back-Better.  52-percent of people have something negative to say about it.

3.  Just my hunch....Chris Cuomo on CNN?  He's got about 30 to 60 days of employment left before they launch him into a non-news job.  

4.  Just a page six story.....the FAA came up and admitted around 700 other Eppstein flights that no one seemed to know about.  Who was on the flights?  Unknown.  

5.  What the defense said the first day of the Jussie Smollett court episode?  They say Jussie was a victim....of a highly sophisticated team of twins....then tossing the label of 'highly intelligent' on the two.  Basically, he's labeling his own client as non-intelligent and non-sophisitcated....in doing so.  

The question is....will a jury believe this?

CNN Today

 I tried to watch a CNN piece today.....where they had three folks trying to explain President Biden 'poor' numbers.  Approval rating as of today?  36-percent.

About 10 minutes into this....you just felt it was like listening to some 5th grade kids trying to explain why the Professor couldn't get the Skipper/Gilligan off the island, or why the Power Rangers were so lame.

Look....Joe Biden doesn't care if he has a 1000-percent approval rating or a 1-percent approval rating.  He got elected to replace Donald Trump....so you gotta just accept him being the one running things.

As for CNN even doing this?  They might as well drive a RV around NY City's east side, and go looking for robbers.  People that voted for Joe really don't want to hear CNN explain things.  

Odds of the approval rating getting below 30-percent?  It just doesn't matter.  Joe's going nowhere, and you just need to get used to it.

Plan Nine

 This morning, without much in the news....I ended up watching Plan 9 From Outer Space (1956).  Well....I attempted to watch it.  After about 45 minutes of it....I started to flick it a minute ahead for every eight minutes.  

So for the basic story....there's some aliens who are concerned about Earth folks creating a doomsday bomb.  They've come to Earth with some plan (fairly marginal if you view their advance society) to halt the whole thing.  Some of this involves use of dead bodies.....which makes little sense.  

Script-wise?  It's like you hired four doped-up guys to write some 3 x 5 inch index cards, and just hand them out to the actors....to fake their way to a 80-minute movie.

Why I went and watched it?  There's talk that Hollywood wants to take the movie....redesign it, and make a 2022 version of it.

So here's thing....in the 1950s....drive-in movies were fairly popular, and some studios saw a great moment when you'd go and hire some folks to make a double-header.  With this concept, you had two movies announced for the weekend (back to back)....making people think they got tremendous value (one entry ticket) for two cheapo movies.  

Total cost for the movie?  Wiki says $80,000.  That would be $770k today.

Could you rewrite the whole thing to make sense, without it being a comedy or come off as fairly fake?  I'm not sure about this.

The thing is....from the 1950s/1960s....there are just a ton of bad movies....all designed for drive-in theaters, and people of that era have a fond memory.  You can go back and ask a 75-year old guy about his evening of watching 'Plan 9', and he start to grin.....to talk over 'Wanda' or 'Betty' and the lusty evening he had.  He remembers her bra size, her use of the word 'tantalizing', and the memory of that Saturday evening.  He remembers literally nothing about the movie, or the aliens. 

Kind of funny, if you think about it.

The Problem With Michelle Obama Running in 2024

 In the past ten days, if you pay attention to MSNBC or CNN....the folks are already talking past the mid-term....to 2024.  1,075 days?  Yeah....it's that far away.  

The necessity?  Well....I think the Einstein-crowd has figured out....Joe Biden can't run, and any hope of VP Harris regaining some popularity is now gone.  

The three folks I'd figure to be in the Democratic Primary: Mayor-Pete, Stacey Abrams, and Senator Booker of NJ.  

Mayor-Pete will survive through twenty-odd primaries, but from the first four (that truly matter)....pretty much zero chance of winning any of those.  

Abrams and Booker figure heavily into NH, SC, Nev, and Iowa.  

We come to the new chatter....that Michelle Obama will go out in 2022 and do a few 'talks' (like Hillary Clinton was famous for) in urban-magnet places (I figure NY City, SF, Chicago, and LA).  

I think political players will ask what office she's ever held, and she's in a lower position than Mayor-Pete.  If you went to resume material?  I can't think of a single President or VP, from the past two-hundred years with such a dismal resume.

If she had left DC in 2016 and done the Hillary route (gotten a NY Senator job)....it'd be different.  

So we have a person with a 3 x 5 inch index card resume, and simply gives speeches.  Yes, she was married to Barak, but that really doesn't say much.  

On the Iowa-SC-NV-NH route?  There's just a 1-percent chance should carry one single state, and most cases....she'd likely finish in a 3rd or 4th place.  

I turn and face the CNN/MSNBC crowd, and just stand there....shaking my head.  You might as well start a rumor that Oprah will run, or maybe Colin Kaepernick.  In Iowa-SC-NV-NH for those two?  It's a one-percent chance as well.  

If you ask me....Joe might as well run a 2nd time.  

Omikron?

 When I heard this new Covid name....Omikron....my mind asked questions:

1.  It sounds like some bad-guy alien that Captain Marvel or Ironman would go and fight.

2.  It sounds like a disco in Amsterdam with Russian hookers.

3.  It sounds like one of the Transformer guys.

4.  It sounds like a SF deli sandwich, with lots of goat cheese. 

5.  It sounds like some forbidden Soviet secret test site out of the 1950s.

6.  It sounds like a South Korean zombie series.

7.  It sounds like a failed Chrysler 1970s model.

8.  It sounds like a WWE professional wrestler with LED lights made into his shorts.

9.  It sounds like some planet that Captain Kirk and Scotty visited, where Kirk messed around with the Omi-women, and Scotty messed with the Kron-women.  Neither ever discussed that trip ever again.

10. It sounds like a budget beer that you'd pick up at the liquor shop....with some Amazon-like Norwegian gal on the label, and it's 16-percent alcohol.  

The Terrible Woes of Crossing State Lines

 Over the past month, I probably watched about three hours of MSNBC and CNN.....mostly covering the Rittenhouse court case.  So it's an odd thing that they dragged out and verbally hyped....at least twenty times....that Rittenhouse had crossed state lines.

So I pulled out the map eventually.....thinking he must have driven 300 miles by himself, and crossed the state line.

Well...NO, from where he lived....it was a 1-minute drive (1-mile) to the state line.  Kenosha, the city?  After you pass the state line, it's a three-minute drive (I-94) and roughly a 3-mile distance to the city limits.  

This hype....over and over about crossing state lines?  After you reflect upon the drive....it's like some 9-year-old kid trying hype up the idea of dragons possibly existing in the woods.

As a kid....living 3 miles south of the Tennessee state line....I had probably crossed the line about a hundred times myself (on my Honda bike) by age 15.....without parental consent.  With a car, between age 16 and 18.....I probably crossed another 200 times by myself, without parental consent. 

In the Air Force, I got to talking one time with a guy who'd gotten dragged into a family issue....someone had to go across four states and pick-up Grandma....to retrieve her.  No one in his family (father, mother, older siblings) wanted the duty (Grandma talked an awful lot).  So this guy volunteered....driving from the south part of Missouri to Miami.  His age at the time?  Sixteen (he'd had his license for three months).  

In the minds of these CNN idiots....all this state crossing of lines is just terribly serious for some juvenile kid.  

From the kids I knew in 1977....you could have entrusted any of them to drive from Bama to California....by themselves.  Some might have gone a thousand miles out of their way, on some weird route.  But there's no chaos in some kid crossing state lines.  

Joe's Gas Problem

 Yesterday, the average price of unleaded fuel in California was $4.71.  

What happens when January arrives and Joe's action resets the price of fuel up (not down) to $5.00?  

Whether the White House believes it or not....there is this clock ticking and the Joe-action gimmick needs to show something.  If the price escalates 30 cents....you can figure that the primary action for the mid-terms....gets real interesting.