Yeah…dat be us…trippin’. As in “You’re now free to roam about the country”.

For a little bit anyway.

We were in Daytona Beach last weekend for the Florida Ladies of Elks (FLOE) convention…Connie was installed as the state chaplain and Neil’s contribution was to be her +1 to the banquet on Friday and the President’s Reception on Saturday night. With that completed we headed north for a couple of things.

After an overnight stop in Florence SC we were in Annapolis MD overnight and did a few tourist things there the next day…this portion of the trip was to finish up the MD Eastern Shore things on our US Route 50 trip that we started back in 2019 and got cut short by Neil’s kidney stone in Cody WY. Another overnight stop in Ocean City MD to finish up the eastern portion of the US 50 tour then after a couple things there in the morning we headed back west to the Fairfax area where we used to live for a very nice dinner with our friend Cynthia at Cafe Renaissance and a meeting with our financial advisor and his mentee he’s training in the financial planning area. 

We’re done in this area now…so tomorrow morning we’re headed to Midlothian VA to visit grandson Alex and his parents over the weekend…he’s in school full time now at age 8 so a weekend visit makes more quality granny time. Then a day in Norfolk area to see the Yorktown battlefield from the Revolutionary War and a fort that guarded the entrance to Chesapeake Bay before heading home. We’ll overnight in Charleston SC which just happens to be both halfway home from Norfolk and the location of High Cotton…one of our top 3 favorite restaurants so we’ll have visited 2 of the 3 on this trip.

Neil got some photos…but hasn’t downloaded them and processed them yet…they’re coming next time along with a more complete description of the Fun Stuff© we’ve been having. I do have a couple of iPhone shots he got for ya though…the first is the rainbow we saw at Daytona Beach and the second is a short of them on the Boardwalk at Ocean City in 25 knot winds. Both of the weather phenomena are courtesy of Tropical Storm Philipe which was off of Charleston when we were in Daytona and the NE when we were in Ocean City.

Then in a few weeks we’re off to St. Croix in the USVI for a couple of days…that one will be strictly laying by the pool drinking tropical cocktails with rum and those little umbrellas to wrap up our (we think) last trip of the year.

Ya probably saw on the news how the President went to stand on the picket line with the UAW workers the other day…and this is just plain wrong. This dispute is between the union and the auto companies…and he does himself and the country a disservice by taking sides. On the subject of the strike itself…the union is demanding that since profits are up 40% for the car companies they deserve a 40% raise. Never mind that the profit rise is from the depths of the COVID and the “we really didn’t call it a recession” recession but the demands of both the UAW and the President that the workers deserve a share of the profits is just completely wrong. The profits should be distributed to shareholders who actually own the company and invested in upgrading facilities and remaining competitive…the workers already got their share of the profits except they’re called wages. 

The unions demands beyond the 40% pay raise include an additional COLA every year, restoration of the defined benefit pension plan that all companies used to have but have replaced with 401K plans over the past 25 or so years, a 32 hour work week for 40 hours pay, and an end to the two tier wage system currently in place. Now I’ll agree that the new contract should provide the workers a raise…but considering the average worker makes 28 bucks an hour (58K a year) or 33 (68K a year) for the top tier…plus their benefits which add something on the order of 25% to that so even the lower tier is still making a decent living. I don’t begrudge them a raise…everybody wants to increase their standard of living…but let’s get real. Workers on the auto assembly line are essentially doing manual labor, not high tech work…and the UAW is essentially pricing the US auto makers out of the market with demands like this. And the President putting his thumb on the scale is just plain wrong…and it doesn’t matter which party the President is in or what industry we’re talking about…with the exception of government workers the President has zero authority to involve himself and in fact he has trashed his ability to call both sides in and act like an honest broker of a compromise in this case.

I see where Senator Menendez was indicted…again…and there are calls for his resignation. There were similar calls for the resignation of Representative Santos when he was indicted…and in both cases those calling for them to step down are just plain wrong. Even though indicted…they are innocent until proven guilty and were elected by a majority of their constituents…so until they are convicted either in court or at the ballot box they should stay in office.

And let’s say a prayer that the Senate passed unanimously a dress code yesterday…earlier in the week Senator Schumer said that the former informal code would no longer be enforced at which point Senator Fetterman showed up in his preferred dress of gym shorts, hoodie, and sneakers and Senator Collins threatened to show up in a bikini. Nobody on either side should be subjected to either of those and there should be some respect for the institution and decorum in not dressing for a backyard cookout. Now they’re officially required to have a coat and tie for men and business attire for women with no real d definition beyond that. Those in favor of no dress code are correct in saying that how one dresses is irrelevant to passing legislation…that is true…but please, let’s have a little decorum and not decide to no longer enforce the informal code because of a single Senator who wants to dress like a beach bum.

It looks like the government will shut down in a couple of days…and the media has already started blaming Republicans for doing so…and I guess they’re technically correct as it looks like it’s the House that will fail to pass out the continuing resolution to keep things funded…but in reality it’s really up to both of the parties to negotiate and compromise and unfortunately neither side is willing to give the other side anything in the negotiations. The outliers on both sides essentially say “my way or the highway” and with a very slim majority the Speaker has little room to lose some of his caucus…and the same wacko radicals who are preventing any compromise are also the ones threatening to remove him as Speaker if he passes something with Democratic votes. The trouble with removing him is that (a) it isn’t clear that the Democrats would support the vote to declare the Speaker’s chair vacant and even if it is then both caucuses will have to put up a nominee for a vote in the full house. No other Representative except Mr. McCarthy can possibly win a majority of the Republican side and the Democrat side will either vote lockstep for Mr. Jeffries or enough of them will vote to support Mr. McCarthy so that he wins again. The alternative is that we could have a Democrat being Speaker in a majority Republican House…and that ain’t gonna happen either I don’t think. The Speaker is in a hard place…he came to an agreement with the President back in February and unfortunately the morons in his caucus with a narrow majority decided to burn things down as the Speaker says…they’re just a bunch of toddlers demanding their way instead of…doing their jobs and compromising so that the government keeps running. On the other hand…the Democratic side’s far left isn’t any more interested in compromising than the far right is…but that’s the state of politics in the US these days.

Lastly…out in Oregon the State Court of Appeals has thrown up its hands and asked the state Supreme Court to weigh in on a case. Essentially in the last term a bunch of Republicans in the legislature didn’t show up for work to prevent a quorum and thus stop bills they didn’t like. In response, the Democrats put on the ballot a constitutional amendment in the state that says that any legislator that has more than 10 unexcused absences is ineligible for reelection. That sounds pretty straight forward…but in reality since both sides in various states have done the same thing it seems like the majority is punishing the minority for doing the job they told their constituents they would do…but my opinion isn’t really relevant to the question. The intent of the amendment (which passed and is the law in Oregon) was that absent legislators could not run again. Unfortunately…the law of unintended consequences bit the amendment writers in the ass and that isn’t what the amendment says. What it says that the said legislators are ineligible to run in the next election after the completion of their terms. Now the election for the next term is in November but the completion of the previous term isn’t until January when the new legislature is sworn in…so the actual words in the amendment say they can’t run in the election after the next one. Pure and simple…they screwed up and it’s now up to the state Supreme Court to decide whether the actual words in the amendment are what counts or whether it is the intent of the amendment that counts…and to be honest the intent of the amendment is such a nebulous thing and who knows who gets to decide what that intent was. It will be an interesting case…and my personal opinion is that the justices will read the amendment as it was approved by the voters and the legislators can run again…but we’ll see.

Interesting things found on the net.

Cyas.