Someone really smart once said that the universe bends towards justice. I’m not really sure if the universe bends at all. I’m just a mere cog in the machine of life, so no mysteries have been revealed to me over the years. However, it seems that things in the financial world might be trending that way. I’m certainly not an expert in the stock market or investment game. I let our broker handle our retirement accounts and all of that. However, I can do some simple math and the whole hubabaloo around Truth Social and the parent company that went public just wasn’t mathing as the kids say.

According to reporting, Trump owns 60 percent of the stock and it opened with a 5.1 billion dollar evaluation just for his share. My crack math skills (and fingers on my calculator) tell me that meant that the company opened with an evaluation of around eight billion dollars. It’s been awhile since I taught Economics, so the details might be fuzzy, but it seems to me that eight billion dollars is a lot of money. It seems fantastical that a company that doesn’t really produce anything, is hemorrhaging cash, and losing users left and right would somehow be worth that amount of money. Then again, I thought Elon Musk paid too much for Twitter by a factor of ten.

Apparently, I wasn’t alone in this thought. A stock that opened at 71 dollars a share is now barely over 30 a share in less than two weeks. Now comes the funny part. According to the details of the deal, Trump cannot sell his shares until six months after the company went public. Even then I think there are some rules in place that will make it somewhat challenging. Of course, I am not a corporate lawyer or financial expert, but it seems to me that 30 is less than 71. It also seems that a company that has never actually made money and has nothing really to sell is likely not even worth 30 dollars a share. The stock has been bleeding between five and ten percent value every day it has been traded.

This hammers home two points every red blooded American should understand before stepping into a voting booth. First, the stock market is not a great indicator of the economic health of the nation. For one, most Americans don’t have enough to invest heavily in the stock market. Secondly, there are enough examples of horseshit evaluations like this one to demonstrate that looking to the stock market for any kind of accurate perception of the economy at large is foolish.

The second point is that justice is not swift even in cosmic world of universal justice. Yet, in this case it is almost better. You had to know that when the stock opened up, the orange menace saw the eight billion evaluation and saw dollar signs in his head. He saw all of his financial woes coming to an end. He was finally going to be a big boy billionaire. A stock drop from 71 to 1 would be hilarious, but it is so much better to see it just leak away slowly every day. It allows him to get into the mode of thinking of “if it stays here I can still be a billionaire.” The best news would be for it to reach that mythical worthlessness just one day before he is eligible to sell. That’s cosmic justice. That’s the universe finally bending to whack him on the ass. May it be so.

Living way outside the path of totality this time, I watched it on TV. Then had to get busy writing to my County Commissioners. The MAGAts are coming for them, and they need back up.

Fort Bend is not the only red county I’ve lived in that has ‘issues’. A little over a year ago I wrote about our Constitutional Sheriff Songer hiring his fellow Constitutional Sheriff, former GOP Senate and Gubernatorial candidate Loren Culp to mind the county jail. Well, the chickens have come home to roost so to speak, and the hen house is in really tough shape. The Commissioners had to call a special meeting, voted to Shut Down The Jail, and contract the jailing to the Northern Regional Correctional facility just across the Columbia in The Dalles. You know, the professionals. If you thought a rural county like Klickitat (population 23,000 or so) should be able to handle their law enforcement and holding facilities, you’d be wrong. Once Mr. Constitutional Sheriff Songer got a taste of national attention, I guess he couldn’t get enough. So here’s what got him more notice.

A year ago, a young Native American man going through fentanyl withdrawal was being held in the jail. No intake examination or medical screening. No medical treatment. No detox protocols. No mental health care. In a solitary cell with means for him to commit suicide. And so he did. Now his parents are suing. The only screening was a risk assessment by a corrections officer, who wrote that the man had no signs of mental health issues, was not acting strange or under the influence, not disoriented or confused, had never attempted suicide, no signs he was vulnerable. Yet other records show he was not fully conscious when he arrived, and his (available) county records showed past reports of attempted suicide. That’s ONE.

Then last fall, a woman who had been in the jail for two months (for a parole violation) ended up in the hospital in deteriorating condition, ”covered in bugs, potentially septic and smelled ‘like dead rotting flesh’ according to an on-scene officer”.  She was treated and has since been released. If you dare, you can find more here, but it’s a tough read. You know these guys hate it when public tv and radio get on their case. And like all good MAGAts, Songer and Culp are blaming the State of Washington for their mess. That’s TWO.

Add to all this a great big bill from the hospital for treating people from the jail who are left to fester, and the Commissioners also have a budget crunch added to the tale of woe. That’s THREE STRIKES, you’re out. So good on them for doing the right thing and proposing to contract out to professionals who can deal with the prisoners humanely. But the blowback from the Sheriff, his posse, armed wanna be LEOs and the red hat crowd is huge. They are overflowing Commission meetings, snagging up all the spots on the zoom links, and scaring the bejeezus out of the rest of us citizens like the commissioners who are just trying to do a good job for the county and all of its citizens.

Damn, I was hoping for a rapture today. But they are still here.

Not to belabor the point, well OK, belaboring the point, did you hear that after learning that their advertisement fees were being funneled to Ted Cruz’s Truth and Courage PAC, a PAC completely devoted to the re-election of Senator Ted “Cancun” Cruz, iHeartMedia advertisers are bailing?

It’s true.

“BP America told the Dallas Morning News it was unaware ad revenues from the podcast benefit the Truth and Courage PAC, a political organization that list its primary goal is ensuring Cruz is reelected to the U.S. Senate. The energy company said it’s since stopped buying ad spots on the show.”

Yes, the oil company that is co-responsible for the worst oil spill in US history was horrified to learn that they were feeding filthy lucre to benefit the re-election campaign of the man who read Dr. Seuss’s “Green Eggs and Ham” to an empty Senate chamber.

They just informed the media giant that they must “…remove our messages from any podcasts that direct advertising revenue to campaigns, PACs, or political parties.”

When you lose the business of the oil spill king of the world, British Petroleum, because they are averse to the idea of politically supporting you, something is seriously wrong with your message.

Pot, meet kettle.

I’ve done a couple of things I shouldn’t have. I decided to share a meme I saw on social media on my own Facebook wall. Instead of going into a long-winded explanation I thought I would just show you below. Consider it a bonus cartoon for the day.

Of course, my conservative friends and family were up in arms. The most hilarious exchange came when a former classmate uttered that you know who the bigots are based on who is sporting Biden gear. I naturally pointed out that we don’t buy Biden swag. We don’t buy swag for any politician because we aren’t a cult. Biden could sell bibles, tee-shirts, hats, action figures, shoes, fake degrees, steaks, Vodka, and any other assorted nonsense with his name on it. No one would buy it anyway because our allegiance is to the country and to ideas.

Be that as it may, I thought I would offer a few words on the red hat that our patrons could borrow when talking with their conservative friends, coworkers, and family members. When asking whether a red hat makes you a bigot or not you should consider the very basics. If you are suggesting that you want to “make America great again” then you are suggesting that America is no longer great. So, exactly when was it great? What were the precipitating steps and actions that caused it to no longer to be great? I’d imagine many of those folks would be stuck by some of the verbiage used there, so you might give them a few minutes to collect their thoughts or you might treat them as a hostile witness.

I imagine many of them (if they are older) are thinking of when they were young and everyone “knew their place.” If they are actually young then they are longing for the days their parents or grandparents described. Immediately, two things come to mind. First, memory is a tricky thing. We often remember what we want to remember and forget what we want to forget. If we are unhappy now then we likely remember the past more fondly. This belies the truth because if we are unhappy now then we were likely unhappy then. Secondly, even if life were good for us we have to come to grips with the fact that it was worse for others. So, saying you want life to return to what it was then you are either choosing to ignore that little fact or you are actively bathing in it. My guess for most of those folks is the latter.

Simply put, it is a backwards looking sentiment. I don’t want to look backwards. For one, life quite literally sucked for large groups of people. Even if I could say it was good for me then I would have to acknowledge that conditions are different enough to where that life is impossible to replicate. Of course, there I go again with the big words. I finally went off on a different discussion with a so-called “thinking conservative”. He prattled on and on about how gun control wouldn’t work and so I literally shouted, “then make a suggestion!” That’s the point, They don’t have any. Their platform has literally become, “whatever THAT guy says” and THAT guy doesn’t have any ideas. He never did. We can make this a referendum about the man, but one of the ways to win is to simply point out that THEY have no answers for the problems they are highlighting. They just have grievance. They want to prevent US from successfully passing any of our own suggestions. So, I would say it is put up or shut up time. If you want that mythical great past you long for then it is high time to tell us exactly how we get back there. Spell it out for us. Give us a step by step blueprint. Of course, they don’t want to do that because they know the majority doesn’t think that way. It’s a lot easier just to complain.

So a couple of days ago, I was at the beauty shop fixing a leak under Thelma’s sink when I heard a loud groan that came from Juanita, Thelma, and all of their customers. I looked up at Juanita Jean, and all I could see was disgust.

“Here’s a little known fact,” she spat, “Cruz doesn’t have skin.  He’s just a sack of bones held together by unearned arrogance.”

Then, seeing me look puzzled, she pointed to the 19″ black and white TV she has mounted on the wall above the mirrors.

A news segment on KTRK had just ended.

By all accounts, it was a good one, so I did the Google later on, and this is what I found (click on the link, if you want, to hear it all, but I extracted the relevant discussion below).

https://abc13.com/videoClip/14608956/

Shannon Ryan, who is hot, by the way, asked Cruz a question that I swear caused steam to blow out of his ear holes:

“So if an entity which employs lobbyists is giving hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to your re-election efforts, how can you say that you are not being compensated?”

Ted answered in a way that directly addressed the apparent conflict of interest presented by his iHeartMedia arrangement.

I’m kidding.

He responded: “Heh heh, you know it really is sad…uh..what’s happened to the media. Which is the media exists right now, seemingly to parrot left-wing Democrat attacks. The group that brought that attack (…hold on a second lemme answer your question…you asked the question…I know you’re not asking about it). The group that brought that attack is a left-wing Democrat attack group, and by the way, you know what you didn’t mention in your question? The fact that they filed a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee raising these same issues…you know what the Senate Ethics Committee did? They threw it out. They said ‘it has no basis in law…”

They then cut to a more Cruz-friendly scene of adoring voters, voiced over by hot hot Shannon Ryan, explaining that the complaint was filed in 2022, well before Cruz’s PAC received its $630,000 cut of the podcast’s ad revenue.

So I guess if Ted Cruz had any skin at all, that would have definitely gotten under his. And like his previous Cancun adventure, this doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon.

Summing it all up, Juanita quipped, “You know what else she didn’t mention, he’s a block away from being justifiably punchable. That video was pretty spectacular, though.”