Escapism...

The Dictionary defines "escapism" as:

     "The tendency to seek distraction from complex conditions or situations, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy." 

Remember when you took the kids to the Saturday afternoon matinee?  To see a cartoon or two, and then the main feature?  Usually a rip-roaring, Indiana Jones-styles adventure than left you glued to your seat?  Or a Jurassic Park sequel?  Or maybe Goodfellas, perchance?

Yeah, when was the last time they made a movie that caused you to have that reaction?   Most of the stuff they pump out today, in The Chuckmeister's humble opinion (What?  you didn't know I'm a movie critic?), is pure dreck.  I get the opinion most of the movies today are made to make the Chinese happy.  I cannot remember when a movie caused me to lift my admittedly-porky nether regions out of my Barcalounger and drive on down to the Bijou.  And pay $16.00 to get in.  And pay another $20.00 for some popcorn and a Coke.  For a couple of hours in a big, dark theater where I can forget who and what I am, and all of my manifold problems, and lose them in the Big Screen.  I can pretend to be James Bond for just a little bit.  I can even remember the night I stood in line to see the original "Star Wars" release.  Now that was Hollywood of yore... 

And then last Sunday night came and went.  

Like so many other Americans, I wasn't tuned in to last Sunday's academy Awards.

That's become a trend; not watching the Oscars, that is.  From a time long ago when the Nation stopped in its tracks so everyone could watch their favorite movie stars get a little golden statue from one of their peers.  50 Million of us sometimes.  When 50 million was a lot bigger percentage of our population than it is today.

But Oscar has shat in his nest as of late.  Last year the telecast drew an all-time low of just over 9 million viewers.  It was on track to do even worse this year until Will Smith rescued it; he "smacked the sh*t" out of Chris Rock, as he said.  Per his own description.  And then the entire world tuned in.  The viewership raced upward to more than 15 million in just over a minute.  "Rescuing" the telecast, if you want to look at it that way.    

Apparently Will Smith's wife has been cuckolding him all over Hollywierd for the past decade or so.  She has an "open marriage," she says.  I'm not so sure he does, but she does.  Chris Rock decided to pick on Jada Pinckett, Will's wife.  He made a joke about her baldness.  He's a comedian.  He tells jokes.  That's what he does.  That's why they hired him as the host.  And that's why people chose to attend.  But I guess he didn't know she contracted a relatively mild autoimmune disease called "alopecia," which causes one's hair to fall out.  You'll excuse me if I barf.  No biggie.  Not fatal.  Not even painful.  Except to your psyche, if you're a "B-List" movie star.  Like Jada Pinckett.*  

Or her husband, Mr. Will Smith.  Who took umbrage at the joke, walked up on the stage and assaulted Chris Rock.  As in, committed a felony.  In front of 15 million viewers.  Where wer the cops?

All this caused me to take a closer look at this here Academy that hands out the little golden statues.  Turns out there are more than 160,000 members!!!  Dues-paying members!!!  And from what we're told by those who know, less than 2% of all those "actors" make a living acting.  

Actually, we're told the number is closer to 2,400.  And thank God for the explosion in cable channels, or that number would be less than one-fourth of what it is.  Just those few folks are earning enough to keep the wolf from the door.  The others?  The dues-paying others?  They're all working at the local Beverly Hills restaurant.  Or building houses.  Or toiling at a theme park.  

But up to now we've held these few "stars" up as somehow special.  We've imbued them with our hopes and dreams, and dote on their every podcast.  We've believed they could do no wrong; that they were somehow sacrosanct.  Well, fellow Patriot, no longer.

The final stake in the heart of Hollywood Escapism occurred last Sunday night.  The Death of Escapism, I'm calling it.  That's the day that Will Smith "smacked the sh*t" out of America.  He poked a hole in the Hollywood balloon.  We now know who and what they are.  And we don't like it... 

*  Will Smith was offended over a joke about alopecia, an autoimmune disease.  A disease for which the only side effect is hair loss.  My wife of 37 years died of an autoimmune disease called "Aplastic Anemia."  Her side effect was far, far worse...

Simply Observers...

I'd like to remind my tens and tens of Patriotic readers that they are likely among those of us who've sat by in rapt attention over the past couple of years, and watched in horror on 24/7 cable TV as the Looney Left tried to tear America apart.

Break it.  Destroy it.  Set fire to it.  Burn it down.  And to then hopefully rebuild it in their Utopian vision?  Someday, maybe?  

One can only surmise.

It unfolded nightly, on our big screen TV's, night after night.  Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Portland, Seattle, Rochester, Minneapolis.  And the reportage depended upon which channel you were turned to.  Fox showed it all.  MSNBC said it was all due to racism.  CNN's reporter stated it was a "mostly peaceful protest" whilst standing in front of a burning courthouse.

We've been nothing more nor less than observers; if we don't live in the 50 or so Big Blue Cities "up  north,", where Democrats reign, that is.  It's there where the "War" has unfolded.  It's there where those in charge elected to sit back and watch as members of Antifa and Black Lives Matter set a torch to pretty much everything north of I-70.  And it was there that anything worth tearing down, was torn down.  

53 cities, actually.  In which more than $1.5 Billion Dollars in damages was done.  More than 1,300 cops wounded.  13 were murdered!  Up there, up north, while we watched.

From down here.  In relative safety.  

So it's kind of important to remember that although those of us who live in the Sun Belt share no blame for this monumental fiasco, we've been paying a terribly steep price.  I mean, have you seen the gas prices here in Taxifornia?  And we'd like them to get back to normal just as soon as possible.  Once they've cleaned up their streets and rounded up all their criminals and deported all the illegal aliens and restored good order, that is.

Oh, I'm sorry.  I must have had a brain fart...

But while they set about cleaning up the nest in which they have shat, if they ever do (we won't hold our collective breath), we'll just keep on keeping on.  Getting up, going to work, paying our taxes.  After all, somebody has to!

Some Unsolicited Advice...

I was wading hip-deep to a tall Indian* through that bane-of-our-existence we call the Internet the other day, and came upon a bit about Kanye and Kim West's kids:

     -  Saint

     -  North

     -  Chicago

     -  Psalm

Not that I routinely give a goodgoddam about them or their spoiled kids, you understand.  Just sayin'

Seems they chose to name their children by randomly opening a dictionary and randomly picking out a word.  I'm sure I must have glanced at one or more of their names before, whilst meandering through a supermarket check out line most likely, but I never saw them all grouped up tight together like that before.  I kept thinking to myself about the burden on them it must be to carry these names throughout their lives.  About what these kids are going to do every time they try and introduce themselves!  Or make a plane reservation!  I mean, "Hello, this is Chicago West?"  Or, "Hi, my name is North West."    

Really?  

So I thought to myself.  Now that Kanye and Kim have separated, and she's found a guy with something "else" to offer, or so I hear, they likely won't need anymore new kids' names.  But if they get back together, they just might.  And hey, if "Kan" and Kim (let's call them "KanKim," shall we?) ever reconcile, they'll need some outside help, 'cause their efforts so far really suck.  So, fellow Patriots, here's some kids' names in case KanKim get back together:

     -  Curdle

     -  Ditch

     -  Bile

     -  Lawn

     -  Newark

     -  Flotsam/Jetsam (in case they are twins)

     -  Burgle

     -  Fluff

     -  Tomato

     -  Pasta

     -  Mucous

     -  Lettuce  

     -  (and for good measure, Smegma**)

My loyal Patriot readers know they can count on me to rise up and offer help to my suffering compatriots.  You didn't know I had a degree in Psychology?  No?  Yeah, well, I can offer advice and counsel in just such circumstances as this.  Like KanKim.  So, as always, The Chuckmeister's here for you, kids!  Just call.  Anytime.  Baby.  Boobie...

*     (Native American Indigenous Personage) 

**   (Look it up)

The Making of a Conservative...

In an convo with one of my lovely daughters the other night, she asked me how I came by my rather "loud" and shall we say, rigid, political leanings.  I said I'd try to bring her up to speed.  

I grew up in a home ran by two professionals, I told her.  Both of my parents were real estate brokers, and insurance brokers.  We lived well.  Because my parents worked their asses off.  So I came to know what comes from an eternal struggle.  End of story.

So you can also understand I came by many of my beliefs at an early age.  So when I finished up my military service, and college, and then paid my dues working for a succession of yuuuge corporations, I started my own company.  Of course I did.  As I once described it during a lecture I gave to a class of MBA candidates at Pepperdine University, "entrepreneurism is a disease for which there is no cure."  I was fully prepared for what was to come.  As prepared as anyone could have been.  But I knew going in that there was a class of folks who'd be hiding in the bushes, trying to take from me any success I might enjoy.  Instead of trying to achieve their own, I might add.  So I had my hand on my wallet going in.  Even so, God, was I ever surprised...

There was not a single day, in those entire 37 and one-half years my wife and I ran our company, that someone, somewhere, wasn't trying to put their hand in my pocket.  Deeply.    

And most often that "somebody" was the gubmint.  Usually the State, but the Feds wanted their pound of flesh also.  It was a near-Herculean effort for my wife an me to try and hold on to some of what I earned.  I spent ten of $Thousands on accountants, each of whom was charged with protecting me from a rapacious Gubmint.  A gubmint that wanted to peel me like a grape.  I even had to buy a piece of the Oakland Convention Center as a tax dodge.  

Those who don't start and run their own companies, the 97% or so, have no idea what it's like to try and be an entrepreneur in the more socialist states.  States like California.  The one in which I unfortunately live...

This experience made me believe the best form of government, as I informed my gorgeous daughter (one of four!), is the one that stays out of your speech, out of your wallet, out of your educational choices, out of your church, out of your gun cabinet, and out of your bedroom.  Yet here's the reality: I pay taxes.  A lot of taxes.  A bit less than half of America pays taxes.  But half of America...doesn't.  And yet, that half wants some of my hard-earned money.  I told my daughter that's reality.  That's the windmill against which I am tilting.  And have forever been tilting.  

Ever since I chose to become enlightened and choose Conservatism...

I think my daughter has begun to finally understand.  As the saying goes, the first step is for the scales to be removed from one's eyes...

Your Tesla Runs on Coal...

Those of you who've succumbed to the siren song of "free" motive power wrapped in a shiny, stylish new sedan that will "go a long way" toward saving the planet, you might like to know your Tesla runs on coal.

And so do all the other plug-in electric vehicles their manufacturers are foisting on an unsuspecting public.  

A bit brash?  I'll defend my research.  And you just might be surprised...

60.8%?

Yeah, that's the total percentage of electricity currently produced here in America using oil and gas.  60.8%.  That's waaay over half, doncha' know.  Not quite 20% comes from "renewables" these days, including wind and solar, so the energy under our feet will continue to power our cars well into the future.  No matter what John "Lurch" Kerry has to say.  So while you're paying a fortune for a Tesla so you can "save the planet," or just show your ass to your wasteful neighbors, I'm sorry to have to focus your attention on that number stated before:  60.8%.  Why?

Because the little college kid that O'Biden tapped to be Transportation Secretary, the one who's spitting image of the "Who Me?" guy on Mad Magazine, the one who wears his "gayness" like the Red Badge of Courage, the one who took his first year in office off because of a "paternity leave," but that's just me, sniffed recently that if we really want to save money on gas, we should buy electric cars.  Yeah.  Buy cars that cost an average of $60,000, or more, often much more, when a normal, internal combustion car priced at $30,000, barely half as much, can produce nearly the same fuel economy and not foul the Earth.  

Yeah, I know.  Longish sentences.  

Here's a little bit of info for you.  To "fast charge" a Tesla up to 80% of battery capacity at one of those roadside chargers can take as little as 45 minutes.  That's the good news.  You'll pay $0.35 cents a kilowatt hour to transfer that energy from the power plant, which may be fueled by hydrocarbons, to your car.  That works out to about $6.00 a gallon.  That's the bad news.  Or, you can wait 8 hours and pay only $0.13 cents per Kw by charging it at home.  Or beside the road.  Your choice.  A choice between negatives, I'd say.  Or, you could fill up that half-price Toyota at the gas station next door and drive away.

Just remember, you're saving the planet...

Oh yeah, in spite of the fact that every single commercial you see on TV is for electric cars, I thought I'd also pass along another statistic of interest:  Total 2020 Plug-In Hybrid Electrics (PHEV's), not including the fully hybrid Prius-types, like my good friend Geoff West drives, equated to less than 1.8% of total auto sales last year.  The good news for this category, I guess, is that it's up from 1.4% in 2020.  Surprised?  Yeah, the entire category is still less than 10% of total auto sales.  So why are they advertising so furiously?  Because electric cars are cheaper to make!  There's not much to them.  They're all just fluff and pretty sheet metal, fancy Nappa leather seating areas, and a ton of batteries under your feet.

Batteries filled with rare earth minerals, like cobalt.  This stuff is harvested in the dirtiest way imaginable, and from the most repressive places on Earth.  Like China.  Not America, China!  And oh by the way, when that expensive, one-ton battery pack winds down, it may not be placed in landfills or recycled.  They must be buried, deep down, like nuclear waste.  Oh, and they're known to spontaneously combust.  Causing both vehicle and structure fires.   

Feel better about your purchase?  

Would you like to know what's in that battery box down there, under your feet?  Panasonic is currently selling Tesla its "Cylindrical" Series rechargeable batteries to make their little grown-up golf carts go.  They retail for $7.80 each.  The latest Tesla Model S uses 7,800 of them.  Wired in a series.  And then funneled through some Elon magic to an electric motor which drives the wheels. 

I'm pretty sure Tesla gets a volume discount from Panasonic on its batteries.  At least there's that... 

So before you fork over $100k for a shiny new Tesla, or any other electric vehicle, ask yourself this:  Where's all that electricity going to come from if the power plants can't get oil and gas?  Unicorn farts?  And then how much is it likely to cost to connect that grown-up golf cart to the wall with the meter spinning wildly? 

Face it:  Your Tesla currently runs on coal. 

So go forth into the remainder of your day knowing this: The Chuckmeister, your Scribe Without Portfolio, is always on the job.  And like that joke of a newspaper back in the Swamp, the one owned by Laura Sanchez' bald boyfriend, I conduct Fact Checks.  

And this is one they will not like very much, at all...    

The Angel of Death...

I've remarked before in this inauspicious little blog that those who don't pay attention to history are doomed to repeat it.  Russia's pariah dictator Putin might want to pay attention to that old bit of advice...

Have you ever heard of the "Angel of Death?"  No?  Well, I'm guessing Mr. Putin has.  That's because the woman who earned that fearsome moniker was Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko.  She was a fourth-year university student in Kyiv when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.  She immediately joined the Army and insisted upon the infantry.  Even though she was already a trained nurse, she wished to employ her citizen marksmanship training in support of her country.  She'd been a sharpshooter all her life, but soon graduated to becoming a sniper.  And not just any sniper.  Possibly the most famous sniper in the world.

She was from Odesa.  That's in Ukraine.  Ukraine was a free country until gobbled up by the U.S.S.R.  But she fought for it anyway.  And boy was she good with a rifle.  She's credited with 309 confirmed kills.  And likely twice that number, if truth be told.  A full 37 of those confirmed kills were enemy German snipers!  She became so famous she was pulled from the front lines and sent abroad to raise funds for the war.  Think about that for a minute: a Russian sniper - a Ukrainian sniper - toured Canada and the U.S. of A. to raise money for their war.  She was given a medal by Eleanor Roosevelt and a shiny new Colt pistol as a part of our honorarium.

She went home, finished her studies after the war, became an army major, and lectured against authoritarianism until the end of her life.  

I wonder if Mr. Putin is growing his own "Angel of Death" with his illegal invasion of a sovereign country?  Or maybe several of them.  After all, Putin's trying to take Odesa, Lyudmila's home town.  And Ukraine is fighting back, for it's life, against Russian invasion.

Is this some major-league irony, or what?

This little history lesson has been brought to you by The Chuckmeister.  We'd better be happy we have an ocean on either side of us, or we just might have to grow our own "Angels" some day as well...  

A Few Factoids...

I, The Chuckmeister, am intensely interested in the things going on about me.  Interested enough that I do research on those topics that captivate me.  I assume others do so as well.

But for those too busy to worry about such stuff, like you maybe, here are a few factoids you can use to unpack recent events occurring in our perilous world:

     -  Russia is a big country.  Reeely big.  So big it's 12 and 1/2 times the size of Ukraine.  Which is the size of Texas.  Now that's BIG!  

     -  Did you know that Russia inhabits fully 11.7% of all the habitable land area on Earth.  More than twice as much as Country Number Two (Canada)?  Didn't know that, didja?  

     -  Russia is so big (how big is it?), it has nine time zones.  NINE!  Yet, more than 85% of its citizens live within 120 miles of Ukraine.  That's in the far, far western part of Russia.  Everybody in the East herds yaks and fishes for a living.  Moscow, Minsk and St. Petersburg, where the Russians mainly live, are all within a short car ride of Ukraine.   

     -  You might like to know that Kyiv, Ukraine's capitol city, was founded in the year 815 a.d.  Some 1,200 years ago.  Moscow, on the other hand, was a tent city trading village on the Volga River at that time.  Russia, remember, is in Asia.  Ukraine is in Europe.  Kinda' pokes a hole in that Putin proclamation, "Ukraine is part of Russia!"    

     -  Russia's main export, in fact it's main source of income, is oil.  It has lots and lots of oil.  It is, as missed-by-some John McCain once derisively noted, "A gas station masquerading as a country."  So the higher the price of oil, the more foreign income Russia earns.  Did you know that Russia's economy is 1/20th the size of the U.S?  That's 5%!  These guys rattle sabers pretty well.  The result of which is:  Stability = low oil prices.  Turmoil = high oil prices.  Get it?

     -  Yeah.  The more turmoil it can cause in the world, you may have noted, the higher Russia can force the price of oil.  Conservatives know this innately.  Democrats don't know this, and have a defect in their DNA that prevents them from ever learning.

    - Thus, when they assume power, our Country goes straight to Hell.   

     -  Russia is also 4 times the size of China in land mass.  And up to recently, has been an enemy.  Biden's so mucked up the scene that they are now Best Friends for Life.  You see what an old buzzard who has no idea which direction's up can do to a world when you let him drive the Ship of State? 

     -  Did you know that Russia has 120,000,000 people, and Ukraine has 44,000,000?  One-third the population in one-twelfth the land mass?  We know that Russia's "replacement rate" is upside down.  It's down to 1.4 to one.  Unsustainable as a society.  Maybe Putin is trying to recruit a bunch of new citizens to rule, at the point of a gun?  

     -  Oh yeah, and China has some 1.7 Billion residents.  So many it can't feed them all.  That's why it used to buy food from us.  And Ukraine  China bought more than HALF its grain from Ukraine up until Xi's best-friend-for-life invaded a sovereign country.  Grain has yet to be planted in Ukraine.  No plantee, no grow-ee.  That's Chinese for "starve."     

     -  Ukraine was a nascent democracy.  Not perfect yet, but trying hard.  Russia is a repressive autocracy, rapidly degenerating into a full-blown dictatorship.  To Putin having a thriving democracy on its borders is a threat to its soviet-style existence.  When your serfs can watch TV from across the border and see folks living The Dream, you can't keep 'em down on the farm.  But he's sure as Hell trying...    

     -  Russia is a "cancer" on the countries of the world.  Of which, 141 just voted to give Russia the finger.  That leaves only  6 which didn't.  We could now reasonably call them the "New Axis of Evil."  They are:  China (duh!), Saudi Arabia (what, not enough gold-plated Rolls Royces?), Cuba (commies gotta' stick together), North Korea (Hermit Kingdom heard from), South Africa ( Wha?  They're blaming NATO and the U. S. for the shi*storm in Ukraine), and India.  

     -  South Africa?  Isn't S.A. a democracy?  Well, used to be, but now that's questionable.  The repatriation of White-owned land, companies and farms currently underway are worrisome.  And India?  India!!! Isn't India a democracy?  A successful democracy of more than One Billion People?  Shouldn't a democracy vote with the rest of the free world in condemning Russia?  Yeah, well, it should.  Exceppppt, if you'll take a look at the map, you'll notice that India is located smack right up next to Russia.  Like, sharing several hundred miles of border.  And I'm guessing they've adopted the old philosophy of "discretion is the better part of valor."  And valor seems to be in short supply in freedom's used-to-be best friend, India...

     -  Perhaps having a wild man on your border, thrashing about and breaking things and killing people, like India has with Russia, and 8 other countries now have as well, one might think it would have an effect on how one views the current World View.  Like maybe trying your best to sidestep the kerfuffle.  Just sayin'

     -  Russia is threatening us with nuclear warfare if we support Ukraine with offensive military weapons.  And they've got some 4,000 nukes on hand in their inventory.  We've only got 1,200.  Only!  Now then, boys and girls, each of our nukes is located either in a land-based ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) site, or located deep in the heart of a nuclear submarine.  Each of these missiles feature ten "MIRV's," or Multiple, Independently-targeted, Re-entry Vehicles, which are fancy words for nuclear bombs.  And each of these nukes is just about 10 megatons is size.  That's about 1,000 times the nuclear force of the bombs we dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.  And they wiped out some 6 square miles and 100,000 citizens each.  Imagine what 1,000 times that much can do?  Times ten?  Times 1,200?  Point being, it would take about 7 nukes to destroy Russia and 4 to wipe-out America.  Buh bye, Russia.  Buh bye world... 

     -  So then, to summarize (my opinion):  We have to ask ourselves, is Putin crazy, in addition to being evil?  For if he is, he'll risk nuclear war.  And any nuke he sets off will be met with what we euphemistically call, "Mutually-Assured Destruction."  That means he sets off one, we set off 100.  Our missiles will cross paths with each other in the air, waving as they go by, and proceed to then wipe out all civilization, everywhere.  Then resulting in "Nuclear Winter," covering the Earth in a deep-freeze from which it would take the Earth at least 1,000 years to recover sufficiently to sustain life once again.**  So, if Putin's evil but not crazy, he'll never risk nuclear warfare.  And we should box his ears back with extreme prejudice starting right now, today.  

     -  I'm on the side of making Putin afraid of us, instead of the other way around.  Unfortunately, our disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan rendered that impossible.  I hope we don't have to wait for a Republican Administration to turn that around.  And if so, I hope there's something left to protect.  It's nice to be loved.  But in this case, dealing with a murdering dictator, it's far, far better to be feared... 

*     The archeologists tell us that our Earth, some 4 billion years old, has seen at least three civilizations rise from the ashes, resulting in vast, technonologically-advanced societies, and then destroyed themselves in nuclear warfare.  Looks like we could well repeat history.........