Gridlock

Yeah…that, and the “it was fine when we did it but not when you do it” attitude of our politicians is about it.

Before that though…and update on us.

When last I posted, I neglected to talk about Connie’s performance with the Fort Myers Mastersingers and the Gulf Coast Symphony. On Sunday 11/13 the symphony did a benefit concert to raise money for folks that were rendered homeless by the hurricane. Neil had a nice seat in the orchestra section and Connie had an afternoon dress rehearsal. Since it’s about 30 miles down to there from the house…he went along with her and sat in the Green Room (backstage area where performers gather before a performance…and in this case it was actually painted green) but it was cold enough in there to hang a side of beef so he was glad when the rehearsal was over. We headed over to a nearby place to grab dinner…the University Grill as the concert hall is on the campus of Florida Southwest University…Neil had a couple of Old Fashioned cocktails and Connie a single glass of wine as she was singing. Neil had a gourmet burger and I can’t remember what Connie had. Once dinner was done we headed back to the concert hall…Connie had her performing dress and heels in the car so she changed in the concert hall and he put her other stuff back in the car…then he headed out to the lobby to wait on doors opening.

The concert was…mostly…a pops type concert with a lot of Broadway tunes and included both the Mastersingers and a pair of local singers…a soprano and a tenor who both sang movie/Broadway tunes. The Mastersingers selections were a variety of slightly more classical pieces and the concert was topped off by the 4th movement…well, parts of it anyway…of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony which is also known as the Choral Symphony and includes the text of the poem Ode to Joy by Friedrich Schiller. You’ve heard both the tune and the singing a bunch of times but may not recognize the words…but then they’re in German so that’s not really surprising I guess.

The entire symphony takes ab out 70 minutes to perform and the 4th movement which is the only one the soloist (soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor and bass) and chorus participate in is about 25 minutes out of that…so since the audience was mostly not a classical music audience but a pops audience they severely limited (i.e., cut out the preparatory parts) the movement down to about 5 or 6 minutes…essentially they started the movement at the point where the entire chorus (there were no soloists for this part) comes with the triumphant ending section which still takes about 5-6 minutes.

A good time was had by all…and money was raised for those hurt by Hurricane Ian…and we headed home afterwards.

The remainder of the week…as I previously discussed last time…was pretty much a bunch o’ nuttin’. Connie had another Mastersingers concert on Wednesday night…mostly it was the sub-group attached to them called the Intermezzo Group which is composed of folks with Alzheimers so they sing mostly simpler songs. The Mastersingers helped them in a couple of songs…and the concert was at a local Presbyterian Church that is completely round and has brick walls. The Intermezzo group was up near the sanctuary area and the Mastersingers were around the rest of the outside of the circle…and with the 3 dozen or so Mastersingers there and the brick walls the sound was pretty darned spectacular…especially in the couple of songs they did that were sort of a round kinda thing (like row, row, row your boat of kid’s groups) with a lot of contrasting layers.

We had dental cleaning appointments on Thursday…yay.

Sunday was Neil and Connie’s 46th wedding anniversary so they went out to a place down south a ways named Deep Lagoon. They had cocktails, wine, and essentially a series of small plates from the appetizer menu…raw oysters, bacon wrapped scallops, lobster bisque (Neil) and clam chowdah (Connie) before finishing dinner with oysters Rockefeller with spinach and cheese and garlic. They sat at the bar…naturally, they almost always do that because you meet a much better class of bum sitting at the bar as Neil says…and then headed home where we had a couple of chocolate lava cake sort of things heated up in the microwave to make them lava like again then he added chocolate and butterscotch syrup and whipped cream. They both thought it was an excellent dinner and an even more excellent anniversary celebration.

Ok…on to gridlock.

With the Republicans in charge in the House and the Democrats in the Senate without a filibuster proof majority…and a Democrat in the White House…we can look forward to no real changes in anything for the next two years. Of course…the House will investigate Hunter Biden and the Democrats will claim that it’s just a political witch hunt…which truth be known it’s probably not…and the Senate will try and impose ethics requirements on the SCOTUS…which truth be known probably isn’t within their constitutionally granted powers and would not be approved by the House anyway…and both sides will spend the next two years pointing fingers and blaming the other side.

Meanwhile…fixing the issues facing the country…which include the imminent bankruptcy of both the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, the economy, foreign policy, abortion, and the myriad of other political issues that neither side agrees on but are of importance to the majority of voters who are mostly in the center instead of being out on the fringes…just ain’t gonna happen.

I see today that the likely incoming Speaker of the House says that he will bar some of the most strident Democrats from their desired committee positions…and naturally the Democrats are all butt hurt over that. Seems to me that the Democrats did the exact same thing to Marjorie Taylor Green (who is admittedly a total moron and idiot) and with the Jan 6 Select Committee…but Democrat leadership says that isn’t the same thing…the Republicans are engaging in political bias and islamophobia while they were just taking committee assignments away from insurrectionists…and the Republicans say the exact opposite things.

In reality…the Republicans are playing politics now that they’re in the House majority…just like the Democrats did when they were in the majority…and in reality neither of them are paragons of virtue. Denying duly elected people committee memberships is just stupid…but at least in this particular situation the Republicans are just responding in kind to what happened when they were in the minority. That isn’t right…but it’s the way politics is these days.

I’m pretty disgusted with the whole lot of them…very few of them are either honest or care about getting things done or doing their jobs…and that goes for both sides who are essentially held hostage to the extreme members of their caucus. Most people are more towards the middle of the spectrum politically and either left of or right of…but are mostly center. Unfortunately…the wacko extremists on *both* sides rule the roost and the primaries and we end up with shitty candidates from both parties in the general election to a large extent.

No photos this time…but a couple of Interesting things found on the net.

AskNot