Change...

Change for the sake of change, is not necessarily good.

Nor necessary.  

Let me give you an example.  The very last American car with hand crank windows was the 2025 Jeep Wrangler.  This year's Wrangler comes standard with power windows.  As well as every other American car and truck.  

Why?  For purposes of standardization.  To stock both hand crank and power window lift assemblies is costly to the manufacturers.  They don't know how many of each to order or stock, thus increased costs.  So the manufacturers order only power window assemblies from their suppliers.  And then fold the cost of power windows into their new car price tags.  Like they're doing you a favor.  And you keep on buying them.

Is that a good thing?  Depends upon whom you ask.  For me it is.  I can remember having to stretch waaay over the seat to reach the far right window so as to crank it down.  For those lazy summer drives with the wind in your hair.  

But those power asemblies often go bad.  And that's a $600 dollar repair charge.  At least.  And they add extra weight.  As do every other motorized button you push that does something for you you could easily do for yourself.

And they add an extra cost you might not want to spend.  My first new car was a 1962 Chevrolet Impala Super Sport 409 cube, 409 horse.  4-speed, posi-trac, bucket seats.  Honduras maroon with black interior.  $2,824.00 out the door.  And it weighed only 2,890 pounds.  Of course, it had no air bags or anti-lock brakes or any other modern safety gear.  And they all add weight.

As in, the average new 4-door sedan weighs at least 4,200 pounds.  That's 1,400 pounds more than my '62  Impala.  Is that good?  You have to buy extra $6.00 a gallon (California) gas to cart all that extra weight around. 

And the average new car costs $51,190.  With $750.00 a month payments for 84 months.  That's not a good change.  Not for me, not for you.  

And when I was coming up we knew that next year's car would be bigger, faster, more powerful, prettier, and handle better.  With 18 colors to choose from.  Pink and lime green and a nice toasty brown.  Today?  Every car looks the same, next year's car won't be any better, it won't be faster or handle better, and it for sure won't be lighter or cost less.  In fact, it just might be worse.  Heavier and slower and guzzle more gas.  And 80% of all new cars are black, silver, or blue.  Have those changes been for the better?

I'd say no.

Another one?  Sure.

I remember when I was a kid, back when Christ was a corporal, there was one thing that held true to every family, no matter whether they were Black or White, rich or poor, or from the North or the South.  Come dinner (or supper) time, every member of the family had to have their ass in a chair around the dinner table or they didn't eat.  How's that for a sentence?

There was no Internet.  No cell phones.  No laptops.  No Facebook or Google or X or Instagram or TicTok.  And only 3 channels and they were all black and white.  No place to have your face except looking at your mom and dad. And sister Kate and brother Mike.  You spent that half hour catching up with your family.  About the happenings around your house.  And then  you went off to study or out for a date.  But you never, ever missed those few moments.  Have we progressed?  

I'd say no.  

We now live in our own little bubble, completely divorced from our family and friends.  Or even wife or husband.  I've said for years that the 'Net is the bane of our existence.  That it will bury us.  And we should sh*tcan it.  Today.  We should go back to the days when family and friends came first.  When we went out to meet girls instead of hoping our dating sites would bring us a girl- or boyfriend.  Face it.  We've devolved.

Just because you can order a thing from Amazon and have it delivered before sunrise tomorrow doesn't mean you should.  And just because Elon can cause a rocket booster to bring itself back to Earth in one piece doesn't mean we should care.  Good for him, not necessarily for us.  

There is almost exactly twice the number of souls in Armerica now as of the day I was born.  And we're paying a price for that crowding.  We are less friendly.  And helpful.  And caring.  And more self-centered.

I fondly recall the nights will my girl in a Pizza Hut consuming a large, 3-topping pie, a carafe of White Zinfandel, and walking out with change from a $20.00.  After leaving a good sized tip. And then heading for the drive-in movie just as the sun goes down.  I remember seeing Dirty Dancing and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly as a double feature.  Windows all cranked down, eating popcorn and drinking Cokes.  With the breeze blowing through our car.  I pine for the good ol' days.  They'll never come back, and that's a shame.  And those who never experienced them don't know what they're missing.

So I say get back to having dinner at 6:00 with your family.  Then turning off the TV and shutting off your cell phones and playing Monopoly with your clan.  You just might enjoy it...

 

The Worst Investment You Can Make.

If you read the Chuckmeister's bleatings, you know I'm not in favor of today's higher education process.  Not what it teaches, how it teaches it, and how much it costs.

The big name universities and colleges that cost at least an arm to attend.  Upwards of $30,000 a year for tuition at state schools, and up to $90,000 a year at the Ivy League institutions.  There are 23 University of California universities, which report that you can expect to spend $150,000 for your 4-year education.  Tuition, fees, housing, food and books.  Not including a car to get there, or the gas to put in it.

For what?  They have professors that all to often profess anti-American vitriol that just might brainwash your little sons and daughters.  You send them off to learn, and they come home as socialists.  Or worse.  That, in my opinion, is a bad investment.

And as a college graduate, I'm quite familiar with what you must do to get that all important sheepskin.  To wind up finally able to hold it up to prospective employers, secure in the fact that it will grant you an extra few $Tens of Thousands a year in salary.  And a quick rise to the executive suite.

You expect wrong.

I'm here to finally provide you with some evidence that I was right all along.  The Secretary of Education's office just dropped a stastistic that should chill those of you who are paying through the proboscis for your kids' education.  My research just came up with the answer to all-important question:  How many new college graduates land a job in their major field of study, as of 2025?  Ya' ready?

                            31%

That's the good news.  It was only 20% in 2024.

And worst yet, more than 51% are working in a field for which a college degree is not necessary!

That should scare the crap out of whomever is paying for their student loans!  They have to work to pay their rent, and the job they trained for either no longer exists, or its already occupied.  Only those who have majors in engineering, medicine, nursing, laboratory sciences, pharmacy and law can count on a job when they graduate.  Those with degrees in social sciences, communications, or other non-specific majors will, as I've wryly offered in the past, will be asking, "Would you like fries with that?"

The Harvard Business Review had a article a couple of years back that indicated fully one-third of the jobs today's college attendees are attending college to attain, will no longer exist by the time they get their degree.  Artificial Intelligence is erasing many of the jobs we've long believed will always exist.  No longer.

If you wish your kid to get a degree, my suggestion is for them to go to a junior college for two years.  Get the requireds out of the way on the cheap.  By then they'll likely know what they want to do when they grow up, and then have them go to a college or university to attain it.  But by then they'll also find out whether it will still exist by the time they do.

That last part is uber important.  The Harvard Business Review recently reported that fully 40% of all the jobs in major fields of college study will not exist by they time one graduates.  Artificial Intelligence is eliminating entire career fields while we watch.  

I say go to college if you'll graduate with a license to practice a skill for which a degree is necessary.  Law, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, or engineering are classic examples.  A major in Medieval Lesbian Poetry is not.  Nor is psychology, finance, social sciences, computer programming, or so many other yesterday's news major fields.

Think about it.  UPS starts their truck drivers at $176,000 a year.  A degree in social sciences starts at $56,000 a year.  A full-time job in a California McDonald's pays $48,000 a year. You make the choice.  

And then prepare to live with it... 

Poor Puree (Part Deux)

My spleen is so large it needs venting several times a day.  And requires me to write about those ventings at least once a week.  So here goes...

I come from an era where very little pissed me off.  And that which did, I did something about.  Today?  There's so many things that piss me off, there's simply no way to resolve it all.  But my A.I. therapist tells me to cough up that hairball and let everyone know how I'm feeling.  I've therefore picked three more you might enjoy reading about.

1.  Mail-In Election Ballots:

I awoke to a raging blizzard that early November morning.  I was 9 and my Dad had told me to get dressed as he was going to drive me to school.  He wanted to show me something special on the way.  I would have normally mounted my new Schwinn Black Phantom* for the 10 block ride.  But that day I'd be riding with Dad. 

I jumped into the car quickly to get out of the snowstorm.  Dad then drove me the few blocks it took to reach our nearest poling place.  We saw the line around the block of people waiting to vote.  In a blizzard.  All wearing winter coats and hats, with scarves wrappped tightly around their faces.  Dad said the only thing we owe our Government is to vote.  To show up and stand up and express our preference via a vote.  Just like the several dozen waiting in line that day.  

That memory sticks with me like glue.  

Dad had scarlet fever as a kid, so his heart was too weak to enlist in the Big War.  In spite of his illness he volunteered at the Sunflower Ordinance Plant in Kansas to build the 500 pound bombs our boys dropped on Germany.  He was that patriotic.  And I got my patriotism from him.  Voting where I came from wasn't for a week.  Or a month.  Or, like California, for a season.  Voting was a day.  And that's how it should always remain.  

Just like Florida, which has 23 million residents yet counts votes in one day.  California mails ballots to everybody, plus a few extra million just in case.  And then counts votes until they have all they need to win.**  Maybe someday someone will turn California back around to the place it used to be when I got here.  But until then, it reeks of socialism.  And its residents seem to be so accustomed to being mistreated by those it hires and pays to serve them, they keep on voting them back in.  It's like an advanced case of "Stockholm Syndrome."  You're taken hostage and kept until you fall in love with your captors.  And then forget what it was like when you had freedom.  

I arrived here exactly 50 years ago.  Back when it was a center-Right State.  Remember, we had two terms of Ronnie Reagan, two terms of Pete Wilson, two terms of Deukmajian, and two terms of Ahhnold Swartzenhoozits.  And then 16 straight years of all Democrats, all the time.  16 years of Democrat governors.  16 years of Democrats in statewide offices.  And 16 years of the Legislature being 2/3rds supermajority Democrat, so they could pass anything they wanted.  And they have.  Some of the dummest damm laws one could imagine.  Look around you.  This is what you get if you vote Democrat in November...

2.  Sanctuaries:

There's a "Supremacy Clause" in our Constitution. That means the Federal Gubmint takes charge should state laws and Federal laws bump into one another.  Such as regards immigration, to include who gets in, and who goes out. 

Even so, there's 256 counties, cities, townships, and villages in our Great Country which have declared themselves "sanctuaries" from Federal immigration laws.  Think about that.  They've decided to pick and choose which Federal laws they wish to obey, and which they do not.  And they can't do that.

Sort of like a Chinese restaurant.  One from column "A," and two from column "B."  And surprisingly, the Feds haven't made them pay a price for their intransigence.  Yet.  Although the Feds are now considering pulling all immigration and enforcement personnel from airports in sanctuary cities.  Such as New York City, Chicago, San Francisco and Lost Angeles.  Just in time for the Olympics.  

This action would keep international passengers from disembarking in those cities.  Depriving those cities of hundreds of millions of $Dollars they receive from those services.  I'm hoping they will. Maybe they can be coerced into following the law.  By holding a symbolic gun to their socialist heads.  I doubt it, but maybe.

Just imagine if we, the public, were to treat those cities' laws the same way.  You get stopped for speeding and you tell the cop you've declared a "sanctuary" from their driving laws.  Or refuse to pay their property taxes until they start acceding to Federal law.  The reason tens of millions of illegal aliens have set up housekeeping in sanctuary cities is because of their posture on following Federal law.  

Maybe it's time we make them pay.  I think we should.

3.  HOA's:

I'm betting you'll be surprised when I tell you how many of your neighbors and mine are living under the cruel and regimented thumb of an HOA.  That stands for "Home Owners Association," doncha' know.  And the answer is...

                              35% 

Yes friends, one-third of us live in concentration camps with neatly manicured lawns.  With homes all painted the same shade of tan, and mailboxes all pointing the same direction.  And back yards free from swing sets and bird feeders.  And God help you if your property is different in any way from the HOA rules and regs.  If so, they'll fine you into the Stone Age.  Or, only $100 at a time, now that the courts have gotten involved.  It used to be $1,000's at a time until the courts' recent ruling.  

Truth is, HOA's boards of directors are made up mainly of those who never had any authority of any kind in their entire lives.  They were the postal carriers, and the secretaries, and the cashiers from Wal-Mart.  They always had a boss telling them what to do.  And they didn't like it.    

And then they retired and moved into an HOA-managed development.  Then ran for the board of their HOA, got a clipboard and a pencil and a ruler, and started looking for violations at YOUR home.  They're filled with venom and fueled with righteousness.  They're finally able to talk back to somebody for the first time in their lives.  To order folks around.  And they're going to take it out on you.  In spades.

Please, Fellow Patriots, do yourself a favor and make sure there's no HOA running things in the home you're thinking about buying.  I didn't, and wound up being pursued by a retired professional quilter (!) all around my kitchen for trying to install solar panels on my roof.  She yelled at me for fully 30 minutes after having been awakened by a hammer falling at 7:05 a.m., 5 full minutes after their legal starting time.  

She then called the sheriff and highway patrol.  And the city's permitting office to see if the job had been officially approved.  Before long there were 2 Samoan solar panel installers, 4 HOA board members, their poor, mistreated husbands, and a sheriff's deputy and a policeman in my back yard.  Trying to figure out if the installers could start installing. The HOA's rules said they could.  The quilter broke down and admitted herself for psychiatric treatment. 

I've owned 12 homes in 4 states and never before had an HOA trying to ruin my life.  The good news is there's not too much of it left, so this problem will naturally go away before long.  Make sure it doesn't happen to you.

So these things piss me off.  Maybe you too.  And I intend to keep writing about them until they stop.  It's cathartic.  It makes my spleen feel better.  Maybe yours too.  Or maybe you're piss off-free and just need to read how others are suffering.  If so, keep reading.  It's good for us both...

*   That bike cost me $120 of my newpaper route money.  And it was so special then its worth more than $3,500 today.  Wish I had it back.

**  I attended Rep. Dana Rohrbacher's relection party at Skosh Monahan's one night awhile back.  Back when Orange County, CA was turning from bright red to purple.  He was so far ahead on Election eve that we all toasted his return to Congress.  Where he'd  been for 30 years.  Excepppppt, two weeks later a ballot harvester pulled up in front of the Secretary of the Election's office to drop off 250,000 ballots.  Which put Dana's opponent into the lead.  Like what just happened to Pratt in Lost Angeles.  They just keep on counting until they get it right.  Remember the Golden Rule:  He who has the gold, rules...

Poor Puree.

There's a few things in this life that really piss me off.

Maybe you have a few as well.

I thought to myself, self!  Why not share those things with my Fellow Patriots, a few at a time, over the coming 15 years.  Or sooner should God choose to take me sooner.  So I hereby vent my enormous spleen and share a few of mine, today, right here in River City.

1.  Undertrained Police Officers.

     It started, I think, back in 2020 - 21.  Back when the nervous lily-livered snowflake Progressives decided to "Defund the Police."  You remember that, right?  Almost immediately the good cops, those who weren't near retirement and those who were early in their careers, bolted for towns that weren't into defunding them.  Leaving behind only those steeped in their own anger.  Mad as Hell they had to work for people that hated them.  So they stuck around to continue predating the poor, unsuspecting public.  Like lions on the Serengheti, swooping down on the poor motorists, blue lights ablazing.

That led to a severe shortage of cops, particularly in the Big Blue Cities.  Leaving cities 25% or more understaffed.  So they started hiring anyone who could fog a mirror, and rushed them through training to get them on the streets.  The streets where you and I were traveling.  

Did you know it takes a beautician two full years of both classroom and on-site training to become licensed?

Did you know it takes a German cop 2 full years of training before they're released on the autobahns?

And did you know it takes as little as 22 weeks for a policeman/woman/other (California, doncha' know) to get his/her/its badge?  And gun, and taser, and baton, and mace, and handcuffs?  So he/she/it can presume to make sure we obey the 366,345 laws we poor Taxifornians have on our books?  66,000 more than the Federal Government and almost twice the number #2 New York has on its books?

I know from my psychology training that fully 3% of everybody out there is either a sociopath, a psychopath, a drunk, a drug addict, a felon, or those suffering from any of a few dozen disorders.  These are the folks you meet driving toward you on the Streets of America.  The ones sitting beside you on the next flight you take.  The ones behind you in line at Starbucks.  

And that goes for cops, too.  Maybe more than 3% of cops are mentally challenged.  Maybe the ones who couldn't get the job of their choice and are taking cop-hood as a second or third option and are angry every day.  Or those who were bullied on the playground as a kid and now want to get even by bullying us?  

All I know is we taxpayers have hired 880,000 policemen, sheriffs' deputies and constables in America, and paid them damn well, to extract from us as much money as possible on the thinnest of reasons.  Presumably those they report to feel we just don't pay enough taxes.  And they want more.

The average ticket price in Taxifornia is $790.00.  That's a week's pay for going 10 over the speed limit, or making an illegal turn, or rolling through a stop sign.  Seems to me there ought to be a lot more of that protecting and serving, and a lot less of that charging and collecting...

Perhaps the only way to avoid these road pirates is to avoid the Big Blue Cities.  I know I do...

2.  Parking:

America's a big place.  We need cars to take us from where we are to where we want to go.  And when we get there we have to find a place to park our steeds.  And therein, as Shakespeare once said, lay the rub.

If it's a town we're going to there's meter maid waiting around the corner to write us a parking ticket just as soon as that little red flag pops up.  And a tow company to drag our cars off to the impound lot.  

And if it's a stadium, where we have to pay at least a leg for a ticket to the Big Game, someone picks our pocket for $50.00 more to park our cars.  Can't they just charge more for the ticket and let us park our cars for free?  Or make it $20.00 for the beer instead of $14.00?  It seems there's always somebody trying to figure out how to get into our jeans for another $Dollar.  And I for one don't appreciate it.

3.  The Tipping Culture:

The concept of tipping your waiter or waitress started in 1780's Jolly Olde England.  The diner would toss a tuppence to his serving wench "To Insure Promptess."  

Flash Forward to Present Day.  Making ends meet in a restaurant has always been a fraught situation.  It used to be that the old "30-30-30" proposition held sway.  Thirty percent for rent and insurance and such.  Thirty percent for labor.  And thirty percent for food and related costs.  Leaving 10% for profit.  A fair return.

Now?   A recent Harvard Business Review article shows that more than half of new restaurants go tits up in the first year.  4 out of 5 go down by the fifth year.  And 19 out of 20 by Year Ten.  Why would anyone go into a business with almost guaranteed failure?   A chef who always wanted his own restaurant.  A manager who always wanted his own restaurant.  And a hedge fund star who always wanted his own restaurant.  That's who.  

And they all soon learn that earning even 1% or 2% of sales is tough as an old boot.  So, even though they hire, train and manage their wait staff, when they can't pay their bills they start looking for ways to cut costs.  And cutting their wait staff pay is among their first  options.

It's a Faustian bargain.

We have always been okay with paying the wait staff 10% to 15% for good service.  Or even 20% if we're feeling flush and they performed really well.  But now the restaurant owner has begun brainwashing his staff into believing that the diner should cover their rent and child care.  They've now started posting that a 25% tip, or even 30% or 40%, is expected.  And the waitress is the one who's expecting it.   Leaving us, the diners, to face down an angry waiter/tress if we don't feel like paying for the restaurant's employees.  Leading to arguments at tableside.  Or even worse.  Many of us have just stopped dining out.  And I don't blame them.  I have.  If we're expected to pay their employees, how about we bring our own waiter to the restaurant?  Or even wait our own tables and save the tip?

This is a serious problem that does nothing more than kick the restaurant's bankruptcy filing a few weeks or months down the road.  A sad state of affairs for what is an old and potentially lucrative career if the waiter is good.  If this continues unabated they just might wind up with nowhere to work...

4.  The Name Mohammed:

Did you know that the name "Mohammed," or its multiple spelling varients, is the most popular mens' name in the world?  Upwards of 150,000,000 people are named Mohammed.  In the Middle East, Northern Africa and Pakistan, up to 90% of men are named Mohammed.  

Can you imagine if a cop bursts through the door of a Lebanese hookah bar and yells, "On your feet, Mohammed, you're under arrest!"  Everybody in the place stands up and reaches for the sky.

Every Muslim has three names.  Mohammed is the given name, their middle name is optional, and the family named is Number Three.  We're told they call each other by their middle names.  So why Mohammed as Number One?  I'ts obvious an honorific.  But those who quit breathing for a few minutes and then come back to life, often report they met and talked with Jesus.  Has anyone ever come back to life and said they talked with Mohammed?  I think not!

I'm proposing we should pass a law here in 'Murica that no one can be called Mohammed anymore.  I'm suggesting we replace Mohammed with "Barry."  Or "Frank."  Or perhaps "Kevin."  Sounds better and they might even like it.  

That's quite enough spleen venting for one day.  I'll post a few more in the coming days and weeks.  I'm sure you cannot wait...