Yes, I'm Still on Vacation
I’m a bad vacationer. It’s at the end, after the politics. But I am officially ON VACATION from my job. Not my political work, but my day job.
The world hasn’t stopped, and there are lots of things going on that I just HAD to write about. First though, I hope all of you had a Merry Christmas and Festivus for the Rest of Us, and are still enjoying Channukah and Kwanzaa. Happy upcoming New Year, and remember - stay safe out there, it’s amateur night. People who don’t drink all year (and therefore don’t practice) drink on New Years and then drive. BE CAREFUL!!
The MAGA Civil War
I’m loving this, since I’m in the “give them enough rope” camp. The cognitive dissonance of it just makes me belly laugh. The fascist regime plans to deport the people who build houses, undertake hospitality (I wonder if they’ll raid Mar-a-Lardo and his other properties), and make sure we all have food. But hey, let’s import “the best and the brightest” on H-B1 visas because Americans aren’t smart enough. And let’s do this, they say, while doing away with the education that would enable Americans to have the skills they need1.
Looking forward to how this plays out. Certainly, they’ll up the number of H-B1 visas because tech loves paying lower salaries to foreigners, but there will be blowback on this. I work in tech, and over the years have seen Americans not get tech jobs strictly because they need to be paid more than the foreigners who come here, and remain tied to that one employer.
Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal
We all know the plan: buy Greenland, make Canada the 51st state, and retake the Panama Canal. Here’s the fun quote:
“World leaders are flocking to the table because President Trump is already delivering on his promise to Make America Strong Again,” Trump transition spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement. “When he officially takes office, foreign nations will think twice before ripping off our country, America will be respected again, and the whole world will be safer.” Source.
Let’s take that apart. Can someone please explain to me how Greenland is “ripping off our country?” Face it, they’re not. The country is also not for sale.
Canada as the 51st state? First, Canada is part of the British Empire, and while the sun has set on the Empire2, the Orange Menace would need to take on the rest of the Empire (including England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Australia to name a few) AND Canada is a constitutional monarchy. Plus - they’re not giving up what they have already in Canada, like government health care and the inability to lie on TV. (You have to get a streaming service to see Faux News, for example.) Not to mention what the process would actually be. This article has a great frame, and one of the things they mention is that Canada is comprised of 13 provinces and territories, meaning 63 “states” and until we get the Electoral College vanquished…..ah, sigh….just kidding, it’s never going to happen.
It strikes me that the only way to get Greenland, or Canada, or the Panama Canal is through military action. All three countries have said HELL NO to the idea. Therefore, we’d have to invade. We don’t have a good track record. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan didn’t work out so well for us. Now, we did successfully invade Grenada in 1983 - but we sent more than 5,000 troops into a country of 100,000.
Point is, the WORLD will not respond kindly to the Orange Menace invading three sovereign states. Perhaps Don the Con should read Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. WAIT. There’s no comic book version and he doesn’t read.
Friday
Mostly, though, I’m looking forward to noon, this Friday, 3 January, when I will be plopped on the sofa tuned to CSpan to watch the impending catastrophe that is the 119th Congress. I will still be on vacation, and can think of no better comedy show with which to spend my afternoon.
The first order of business for a new House is to elect a Speaker. Only after that is accomplished can the members be sworn in, and actual work begun. And there’s work: for example, the debt ceiling expires the day before, and they should probably do something about that. Janet Yellin has said that she’ll be using extraordinary measures, and that will buy a few months, but hey, Rethuglicans in the House - consider working ahead.
Next, on the 6th of January, Congress needs to certify the election of Von Shitzenpants. The 12th Amendment stipulates the process. But the Founding Fathers never considered what would happen if there were no operational House. And if there is no Speaker, there are no members, and therefore, no House, no written process. I doubt it’s Constitutional for only the Senate to certify.
And so, I bring you, the “Mike Conundrum”. If every elected member of the House shows up, and if every elected Rethuglican votes for Mike, he’ll win. Barely. But he’ll win the Speakership. Tom Massie is a hard no. Scott Perry is a maybe. Andy Biggs, Victoria Spartz, Troy Nehls, Tim Burchett and Josh Brecheen are undecided.
Mike can lose ONE vote, and that’s Massie. One more, and it’s potentially the Kevin McCarthy 15-vote imbroglio all over again. I know, I know, you KNOW the math and are holding out hope that it will be Hakeem Jeffries, who is good for the full 215 votes of the Democratic caucus3. The actual vote tally is not just “Mike” or “Hakeem Jeffries”, but people can vote “present” which can throw off the absolute count.
The “Mike Conundrum” is whether all the disparate Rethuglican voices can come together and accomplish something all on their own. I have my doubts. But then again, I was wrong about their inability to pass a CR last week, they got that accomplished. OH YEAH with Democratic votes, after Mike reneged on the original agreement. I doubt there’s any desire on the part of the good guys to help out the bad guys this time around, especially since it’s THEIR party electing THEIR leader.
Cue the popcorn.
Why I am bad at vacations
I am a recovering workaholic. I worked my first job out of college for a little over 4 years. At the time, there was no “use it or lose it” rule about vacation time, it just accrued. At my first job, we were granted comp time when we worked overtime. Putting those two things together, when I left to go to another company, my first job had to pay out both my comp time and my unused vacation time. It totaled to one full year of salary.
About 15 years later, I was going to take a vacation. It was less something I really wanted, but I had won a contest at work.4 My prize was two first class airplane tickets and $1,000 to spend on vacation. Since it was a road job, I had literally months of free hotel nights. And to get the $1,000 and the plane tickets, I had to use it THAT YEAR. I was flying out Saturday morning, and spent most of Friday making sure everything was in place, and talking to the call center to make them PROMISE that they’d call me if anything came up so I could fix it.
On Monday morning, unknown to me, something bad happened. Had I known, I could have fixed it that morning. Instead, things ballooned, and when I returned, I needed 6 weeks to undo the damage. When I asked why they didn’t call me, I was told that I’d been there for 5 years and hadn’t taken a vacation, and they thought I deserved some time off.
I am only on vacation now because my employer shuts down for everyone at the end of the year.
OK — I’m going back to “vacating” now.
People are NOT inherently “smarter” because they were born in one country or another. While in every country there are people who are relatively smarter, and those with other skill sets, it’s the educational system that TEACHES kids what they need to know to be able to be productive members of society. Therefore, if we put the money (and the culture) into our educational system, we could rival anyone. Like we used to.
…and Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead (sorry, couldn’t help myself).
One little wrinkle that could bring this down to 214 is Dwight Evans (PA -3). He had a stroke in May, went to rehab, and hasn’t been back to Congress since. His people say he IS coming to get sworn in. How did he win the election? His District is D+39, plus no one ran against him. I am not making this up.
It wasn’t a raffle-type contest, it was awarded on the basis of who hit the most markers.
At least you took a brief breather. Take another breath before you jump back in. The candles of Chanukah remind us that miracles do happen (even if they are man made).
Welcome back!. You may be a workaholic (recovering) but I am a Vacationaholic. Work, while I actually enjoyed many of the positions I held over the years, was merely the means to get the money to travel and see the world.
I totally blame the US Navy for my affliction. Had they not put me on a great big boat and sailed me off to Viet Nam and Hong Kong, and Singapore and The Philippines, and so many other fun and exotoc places, I may have been content with simply staying put in San Francisco.
That travel bug is still active within me. But as I recover from my 2nd hip replacement this year, I'm working on a cooking concept for 2025 - Cooking The Countries A-Z. As the UN counts 195 countries in the world, that would be almost 4 years at 1 country per week - and that's without vacations! - so I think I'll just choose one letter per week - and see where we go from there...