Month: December 2022

This week I was planning to write about immigration (which nobody can agree on) but then our Lame Duck Congress passed a $1,800,000,000,000 Inflation Increase Act.

Will Rogers had the perfect description of a Lame Duck Congress. “It’s like where some fellows worked for you and their work wasn’t satisfactory and you let ’em out, but after you fired ’em, you let ’em stay long enough so they could burn your house down.” (DT #1980, Dec. 8, 1932)

The bill has over 4000 pages of fine print and Senators had only a few hours to read it. It’s a Democrat bill, but 17 Republicans voted for it, maybe because it has several million for border security. Those Republicans missed the tiny paragraph that it is for securing the borders of Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries. No money to protect our own border. So, it’s okay for ‘em to wade across the Rio Grande, but not the Nile.

There’s $3,000,000 for “Bee-friendly highways.” First, bees don’t need a highway; they fly. If you want to make our roadsides friendly to bees, stop mowing. That would save a few million and attract bees. However, if you get a flat tire, that’s bad enough without being attacked by a swarm of hornets.

And former First Lady Michelle Obama gets $3,600,000 for a trail. I guessed it was to build a walkway from the back door of their mansion at Martha’s Vineyard to the beach. But it’s in Mississippi. Will she fly from Massachusetts down to Mississippi every morning to walk her trail? Besides our former President has $70,000,000. Let him give his wife a trail for Christmas.

Stanford University made News this week by publishing 13 pages of banned words. Words they want replaced include: immigrant, handicapped, grandfather, American, and the colors black, white, red, yellow and gray. This was compiled by a grad student who wrote it as a thesis for a Master’s Degree. But “Master” is banned so they gave him/her/it/them a Ph.D., which appropriately for this research, means Piled Higher and Deeper. (I’m joking about the grad student. The list was made up by employees and a couple of professors in the information technology department. That wasted more money than paying a lowly grad student.)

I heard that a quarter of toys are bought by adults for their own pleasure. If you think this is a new fad, read the first Will Rogers quote below.

Historic (Christmas) quotes by Will Rogers:

“I am too busy replacing presents to write today. I bought some mechanical and electric things for the kids and wore ’em out playing with ’em myself.”  DT #120, Dec. 23, 1926

“Men, act surprised this morning as if you didn’t know the tie was coming.”  DT #121, Dec. 24, 1926

“Well, tomorrow is ‘wish’ day. Everybody is ‘wishing’ somebody something, and I guess it’s just as well everybody don’t know what they are being ‘wished.’ But, generally speaking, we do have good cheer in our hearts on Christmas. ‘Course, we can’t hardly wait till the day is over and to get back to our devilment again.” DT # 1379, Dec. 24, 1930

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Reeder family. And from the Will Rogers family.

Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) found out he is disliked by both Democrats and Republicans. You’ll remember that President Biden pushed for a huge spending bill for at least $2.5 Trillion. Only two of the fifty Democrat Senators questioned that massive bill: Manchin and Sen. Sinema (D-AZ). They stood up to the other 48 for months. Republicans cheered them from the sideline.

Eventually, in July, Manchin (and Sinema) agreed to vote for a much smaller $750 Billion bill with a misleading name, Inflation Reduction Act. That allowed the bill to pass, 50-50, with VP Harris breaking the tie. In return for his support, Manchin was promised that Congress would vote to speed up the process of approving energy projects, especially new pipelines for oil and natural gas.

Removing ridiculous roadblocks to new energy projects is popular for the average American because of inflated prices for gasoline and home heating. Why delay pipeline construction for four years when it should be approved in a few months?

But a bill introduced last week in the Lame Duck Senate, left out the promise to Manchin. He got blindsided. Democrats don’t like that he forced them to cut almost $2 Trillion from their “Inflation” bill. Republicans don’t like that he agreed to spend $750 Billion.

Oddly, President Biden lashed out at energy companies for spewing methane (natural gas) into the air from oil wells while opposing construction of pipelines that would transport that gas to electric power plants, businesses and homes. On a bigger scale, the lack of rapid permitting is keeping us from becoming energy independent again and exporting adequate supplies of LNG (liquefied natural gas) to Europe to replace Russian gas.

Meanwhile, our Strategic Petroleum Reserve is being drawn down by President Biden to artificially lower the price of gasoline. And the largest storage of crude oil in the world, located at Cushing, Oklahoma, is also far below capacity.

Elon Musk has released more disturbing news about Twitter. We learned that before the 2020 election, high officials in the FBI and other federal agencies were meeting weekly with Twitter employees, encouraging them to ban comments from Conservatives and anyone who was pro-Trump or anti-Biden. This included any information from Hunter Biden’s computer. Yes, these officials were in the Trump Administration, including FBI General Counsel James Baker. Then a few months before the election, Baker left the FBI and began working as General Counsel for… Twitter. When Musk learned about these shenanigans this week, he fired Baker and about 80% of the other employees.

Time magazine named Ukraine President Zelensky as its Person of the Year. Considering the liberal slant of Time, I’m surprised they didn’t name James Baker instead. For 2023, I hereby nominate Elon Musk.

Considering the actions at Twitter, Facebook and most of the mainstream media, are you surprised at Trump’s reactions since the November 2020 election? We don’t have to agree with or condone his comments to understand his frustration.

Imagine if individuals in your company, organization or family were secretly working to undercut your leadership, how would you react when you learned the truth? You might vehemently express your displeasure, including a few posts on Twitter.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:

“Now they [Senators] wouldn’t be so serious and particular if they only had to vote on what they thought was good for the majority of the people of the U.S. That would be a cinch.” WA #78, June 8, 1924

“Senators are a kind of a never-ending source of amusement, amazement, and Discouragement.” WA #345, Aug. 4, 1929

“This is a very momentous Congress that is in session. They have appropriated more money than any Congress ever did, but I guess that is all right; we are not paying our national debt, anyhow. We just keep on adding to it, so it don’t matter how much it is.” Radio, June 11, 1933

The sins of Twitter were revealed by Elon Musk Friday evening. If you happened to be watching CNN or MSNBC (or the Utah upset of USC) you may not know that Twitter employees were acting as agents for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Biden family. They routinely blocked any negative information about Joe Biden, including blocking anyone who tried to share that information.

The most blatant example was in October 2020 when a computer belonging to Joe Biden’s son was analyzed by the New York Post. Emails and documents showed that Hunter Biden received millions of dollars from the Communist Chinese government and that 10% was reserved for the “Big Guy.” Hunter’s ex-business associate Tony Bobulinski verified that Joe Biden was the “Big Guy” and was actively involved in the deals. You probably remember that Joe Biden called it Russian disinformation. So did Twitter and most major news organizations. The most blatant and influential lie was a letter signed by 50 former Intelligence Agency officials.

Without knowledge of this incriminating information, a record 80 million people voted for the “Big Guy.”

About the only people who knew the truth about the laptop computer before the 2020 election were ones who watched Fox News. Here’s a shocker: CBS News announced a couple of weeks ago that their investigation had verified the information on the laptop was authentic. Wow, it only took ‘em two years. In response, MSNBC proudly announced they were also investigating Hunter’s computer and, with luck, could have an answer by December 2024.

A railroad strike was averted. Back in September, President Biden bragged that he had negotiated a new labor contract with the unions. Actually, the only agreement he got was to postpone any strike until after the November election. After he failed again last week, he passed the buck to Congress. They passed a law requiring all rail workers to accept the 24% wage increase, with one sick leave day, and a requirement they will not strike for two years. (That’s conveniently right after the 2024 election.)

I’ll admit I know nothing about railroad labor negotiations or what role Congress or the President can play. Do the railroads have to pay all the costs, or are taxpayers stuck with part of it, such as sick leave days? Do the workers already get paid vacations? And finally, if inflation had remained at 2% instead of 8%, would the unions have demanded a 24% raise?

Historic quote by Will Rogers:

      “Unions are fine things… A strike should be the very last means for it is like war. It always falls on those who had nothing to do with calling it.” DT #2186, Aug. 6, 1933