Nobody Asked Me, But...

A Quick Lap in the Cesspool That Is the News.

1. Pardon my silence over the past few days: I’ve been working on a few projects that pretty much had me on the go either early in the morning or late into the night or late into the early morning, as the case may be.

2. So, it looks like Michael Cohen will have the last laugh on Trump. Maybe ol’ Donny should have pardoned him after all. He is sure running short on allies and the bleeding is only gong to get worse!

3. Y’know, I’m not much for conspiracy theories. I don’t believe the government is hiding alien technology, I believe Oswald acted alone, there’s no cabal running the world — well, maybe this last one might have some legs. For instance, it would not surprise me to find out that energy and food prices have been skyrocketing in retaliation for the Great Walkout from jobs during the COVID epidemic.
   It works like this: American capitalism has, for forty years, tried to find ways to tie workers to their individual jobs. Why? Because a free job market would make wages skyrocket.
   During COVID, people suddenly realized there were an awful lot of employer-driven myths about work that simply were not true, including “working from home doesn’t work” to “you need this job to live.”
   During COVID, none of those mattered much. Employers adapted because they had to, and employees adapted because they could.
   Well, clearly, this could not stand! Hence, we’re seeing yet another tactic being employed (pardon the pun) to try and make people grateful they have jobs: makle the world so expensive workers won;t dare look for a new job since it might mean they’d be out of work.

4. Guillotines, in other words. Guillotines.

5. Also in labor news today: Amazon wouldn’t be pre-emptively filing lawsuits — the vote was Saturday, which means the suit had to be prepped and ready to go by Friday afternoon — unless they knew the vote was not going their way. As someone who has both run in and monitored a union election, there is no legal way to know the outcome before the vote is counted — short of running an exit poll, which admittedly Amazon can afford to do.

6. Oh. Speaking of “conspiracy theories”…
   See, this is why I have a really hard time buying “the moon landing was faked,” among others. Here we have one of the most disciplined arms of one of the biggest tyrannical regimes in world history and they couldn’t even keep the Great Leader’s story straight, but you think a half million NASA employees and contractors are under NDAs?

7. Say goodbye to Las Vegas. No, seriously. They won’t even have enough water to fight the fires much less fill the Bellagio fountains.

8. Blunt, Burr, and Portman wouldn’t be retiring if they thought they stood a chance of winning. I feel very good about the midterms, at least in the Senate.

9. I’m a lifelong Mets fan (OG, in fact. I went to games at the Polo Grounds). I’m cautiously optimistic every season in April and May as they seem to hang around the top of the division.
   When they win, they tend to have a strong month of June, either rolling off a long win streak (11 games is the team record) or somehow performing feats that establish their bona fides like hitting a game winning grand slam against one of the toughest opponents in the division.
   So things like this give me hope this season.

10. Finally, they wanted to make sure I got up there in time to watch the ballgame. Yes! I am officially on the ISS!
    Well, my DNA is…and soon, to the moon!