This Week's Picks 2019

Here we are back again.

For 17 years, I've done some form of "This Week's Picks".

Before Facebook and Twitter, there was something called "message boards".  Somebody started one for the graduates of my high school. It was called Wheeleralumni.com.   You could post topics and my fellow Wildcats would comment.

It was fun, but I will tell you that some people take  College Football very seriously and do not have a sense of humor if you poke fun at their team.  I call most of these people "Auburn fans".

Ha, ha. Just a joke. Actually, they are called "Tech Fans",

No, really, just joking again. Tech fans are fine considering they are insane. I mean, getting a Tech fan to admit that Tech is a middling team is like pulling teeth. They will pull out all sorts of algorithms to prove that Tech is better than every team in the SEC, including Alabama.

For reasons that can be only described as "Wheeler", the Wheeler alumni.com went away and I went to another Wheeler alumni message board. It was there, I decided to make picks on all of the bowl games. Do you know how many bowl games are played? Billions.

After that season, I decided to join the blogging world. TWP became a weekly blog post because one thing nobody ever tells you about blogging: you have to have content.

2012 almost killed me, blogging wise. I would blog on whatever I found interesting then I would also do TWP.  The next year, I just posted it on my Facebook page. Then I brought it back to my blog. I'm going to try to post multiple posts this year: TWP and Other Posts.

Welcome back.

This Week's Picks!

Jawja vs The Commode Doors: UGA begins its season trying to figure out a way to beat Alabama by playing Vanderbilt.  Usually, UGA starts with Southwestern Northeast State or some other directional school.  Vandy has up and down years if you describe up as "winning more games than you lose". Although UGA is in a minor rebuilding year, they shouldn't have a problem.  Dawgs win.

Bumbles vs Number One:  Finally, the Paul Johnson era has ended at Tech. His "Triple Option" Offense was fun to watch the first billion times you saw it. The Geoff Collins era has begun and his offense is more "conventional" than Johnson's.  It really doesn't matter which offense is played in this game because Tech is playing last year's champion, Clemson.  Clemson is bigger, stronger, and faster than Tech. Oh yeah, they are better too. Don't feel bad Bees, there are 148 other teams in the same boat.  Clemson wins.


Jawja Suthern vs Ellesyou:  If there is a crazier place on earth than Georgia Southern University (Motto:  "It Is Five O'Clock Somewhere"), it is Louisiana State University.  The Eagles of my son's alma mater had a couple of rough years, but it seems like they are back on track. They "could" give LSU some trouble, but I just don't see them winning this game. LSU wins.


Quackers vs War Tigers: In case you didn't know, Auburn fans have a bit of an inferiority complex. Imagine having to be an Auburn fan in Alabama. First with Bear Bryant and all his teams and now with Nick Saban. Maybe that's why the school's motto is "We Can't Have Nice Things". Boy, I really do not like this game for Auburn. I just don't. The Gus Bus is like a Greyhound bus: It is a dog of a way to get around. Oregon wins.


Beloved Owls vs Point University:  No joke, the President of Point University once threw me a touchdown pass in a touch football game. That was the highlight of my athletic career.  My Owls are rebuilding some this year, but they should be okay against Point.  Owls win!

T

Ten Years After

Big announcement time:  Humor Me, my award-winning blog (what award? -this is funny if you can imagine Jim Gaffigan saying it in that voice of his) is now ten years old.

Here is my first blog post from September 1, 2009.  Be prepared to be impressed.

"Humor Me is my blog and its sole purpose is to try to be as funny as possible. That’s it. I’m going to write a lot about College Football, politics, movies, and a bunch of other stuff.

I’ve got big plans for this blog. I’m running my weekly “College Picks” that I’ve been doing as a lark on the Wheeler Alumni pages. I’m thinking about doing a “Mad Men” update each week. I’m sure the President will be doing something for me poke fun at.

One thing: I’m going for laughs about 90% of the time. While I do hold strong opinions about many topics (Lima Beans-yuck), I don’t expect everyone to agree with me a hundred per-cent of the time. I can’t help it if you are stupid."

Looking back, I think I've followed my mission statement: To try to be as funny as possible.  I really don't have any other agenda except to say what is on my mind and to be funny at the same time.

I have written a lot about College Football.  I brought my This Week's Picks over to Humor Me even though I really don't know that much about College Football except Ohio State or Notre Dame will always be in the Top Five no matter their win-loss records.

I have written a lot about politics. An early blog post I am proud of is "The Faberge Egg". (Here it is: https://manisville.blogspot.com/2009/10/fibrage-egg.html ) It may be hard to remember, but there was a time when the President of The United States was not considered an existential threat but rather as a savior from our past sins.  As much as President Orange is vilified now, President Obama was worshipped.

Another early post was  President Obama giving the "Date In Infamy" speech. I was proud of that one, too. I think I got Obama just right. I tried doing it with Trump, but it is hard writing like he speaks. https://manisville.blogspot.com/2010/01/franklin-delano-obama.html

By the way, I said not once, but twice that Trump would never become President.(https://manisville.blogspot.com/2011/04/who-will-not-become-president-donald.html and https://manisville.blogspot.com/2015/07/who-will-not-become-president-donald.html) Despite this, I have been accused a couple of times of being a "Trumpster". I always brush this aside and put it down as "someone who has never read a word I have written".   I call balls and strikes with him. He does some good things. Obama kinda/sorta tinkered with the economy and we never got any economic growth during his administration. He was much more concerned with taking over the health care industry which has been a fantasy of the Democratic Party for years.

But, of course, Trump says things. Hey, the guy is from Queens.

I have written about some "other stuff".  I've written about: artificial turf for Cobb County High School football fields, how to fight on social media, and this strange obsession the left has with political beliefs of people selling chicken sandwiches.

Yes, I did a "Mad Men" recap.  "Mad Men" was probably one of the best television shows I have ever seen and the year I did the recap  (the third season) was when Betty Draper (played by January Jones, hubba-hubba) finds out about Don Draper's (played by Jon Hamm, my wife's second husband) real identity.  The problem was even though "Mad Men" was a popular show, it was not all that popular with my readers.

So, with the help of Dave Barry and The Miami Herald, I did a "24" recap. That was more popular and I would receive urgent inbox messages on Facebook wondering when I was going to post the recap of the last "24" episode.

In this ten year period of time, I have lost a brother, a mother-in-law, a father-in-law, a surrogate grandfather, and a cat.

My wife was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010.  She doing great today.

I had a heart catheterization in 2009. But other than that, I'm as fit as fiddle.

In this ten year period of time, our son has gone off to and graduated from college. He is married and has a house.

Blogger "counts" how many views my posts generates.  I did a post about the Eagles documentary when it premiered several years ago. Blogger says it has received 1947 views.  That is a lot of views considering it was just a link in a Facebook status.

It is always a thrill when somebody says they like what you have written. It is so nice when people comment that I remind them of Lewis Grizzard.  I don't think I write like the Master, but no lie, it is great when you know people have enjoyed your writing.

One person who always complimented me was my pal, Barry Suttle.  He would always tell me I was better than someone in our local paper. He told me I should be published. One day, I was published. E-books on Amazon and they are still for sale.

Barry went to bed one night and never woke up. I wrote a post titled "Barry".  It has generated 4055 views.  It has only been linked to my Facebook status once.

Bob Dylan said, "It's not dark yet, but it's getting there".  I turned 60 years old a few weeks ago. I plan to keep on writing as long as I can. Future topics include: How to get kids off your lawn, Why things were better then than now, and Which flavor of Metamuscil I like.

One more thing. It is difficult writing humor as a hobby when you don't know the basic rules of grammar and you can't spell. For that, I'm grateful that my wife proofreads my posts. Bless her heart.

What Happened?

It is finally here.

That's right, I am officially the big SIX-OH. Sixty (60) years old.

It is time to start thinking about retirement. Then it is time to think about where you are going to get money for your retirement. 

Fortunately, both my wife and I had the gray matter to contribute to our  401k plans so we may not have to rob a liquor store on a daily basis in our old age. ("Stick 'em up sonny and put some cash in this bag. Bless your heart, here's a piece of butterscotch candy and a nice shiny quarter for your trouble")

Of course, I've been thinking about my life and all of the changes that have occurred since 1959.

The day I was born, Dwight D. Eisenhower was the President of The United States.  He was the guy who came up with the strategy that basically saved Western Civilization in World War II. Everybody liked him. In fact, that was his campaign slogan, "I LIKE IKE".  It was called that because 'I LIKE DWIGHT" sounded clunky.

The current President is Donald J. Trump who used to host a game show called "The Apprentice". He was famous for being famous.  We are at almost full employment for only the second time of my lifetime. The economy actually grew for the first time in eight years. Despite this, nobody likes him. If Trump had a (D) beside his name, he would be a hands-on favorite to win re-election and people would be writing songs about him.

How did that happen?  How did we go from Eisenhower to Trump?  How did we go from a Congress being filled with people like Wilbur Mills (Google him) to people like "The Squad"?  It's like the kids from the unpopular table took control of the Student Government Association and then you realized why they were unpopular in the first place.

The top three television shows in 1959 were "Gunsmoke", "Wagon Train", and"Have Gun, Will Travel".   The top three television shows in 2019 were "The Big Bang Theory",  "NCIS", and  "This Is Us".  In sixty years we went from cowboys to nerds. 


Back in 1959, we had only three stations in Atlanta: 2. 5, and 11.  We had a fourth channel: 8, which was the "educational channel", which meant nobody watched it.


Now there are a billion channels and there's still nothing on to watch except episodes of  "The Office"  How did this happen?

The top three popular movies in 1959 were "Ben-Hur", "Operation Petticoat", and "Some Like It Hot".

I can say with confidence that the F-word was not said in any of those three motion pictures.  I'm pretty sure there was no nudity and certainly nobody from The Marvel Cinematic Universe was in any of the films mainly because there was no Marvel Comics.

The average movie ticket price in 1959 was fifty cents.  There is nothing you can buy at a movie theatre now for fifty cents.   Even if you go in the afternoon for the matinee, you have to take out a reverse mortgage.

Music. Wow, music has changed a lot in sixty years.

The top three hit songs of 1959: "The Battle of New Orleans", "Mack The Knife", and "Personality".

So far, the only hit song of 2019 is "Old Town Road" which is by a gay African-American twenty-one-year-old who somehow convinced Billy Ray Cyrus to record a rap song with him. I didn't know any twenty-one year old had ever heard of Billy Ray Cyrus.

These are some lyrics from "The Battle of New Orleans" by Johnny Horton: "We fired our cannon 'til the barrel melted down/So we grabbed an alligator and we fought another round/We filled his head with cannonballs and powdered his behind/And when we touched the powder off the gator lost his mind"

Can you imagine a hit song in 2019 using an alligator for a cannon?  It would be taken off the air.

Here are some lyrics from "Old Town Road" by Lil' Nas X: "Ridin' on a tractor, lean all in my bladder, cheated on my baby, you can go and ask her, my life is a movie, bull ridin' and boobies, cowboy hat from Gucci, Wrangler on my booty" ?

I didn't know Gucci sold cowboy hats.
      
I was born in an era in which everybody smoked cigarettes. There was this crazy theory which said sucking nicotine into your lungs might be bad for you. When I was in high school, you could smoke between classes. Now you can't smoke on earth no more.

The cost of a pack of cigarettes in 1959 was fifty cents.  In 2019, the average cost for a pack of cigarettes in Georgia is $4.92.  It costs a lot to give yourself lung cancer.

Back in 1959, there was this crazy thought that there were two sexes (male/female) and you could use the word "gender" interchangeably with the word "sex". Freaky, huh? There were not any arguments about which pronouns to use in any type of social setting.

In 2019, um, there are more than two genders. In fact, you can identify with a gender even if you were not born with the equipment of that gender.  I don't understand how this happened or why it even happened.

After I reflected on all of this, I came to a conclusion. Some people make things happen. Some people just wonder what happened.  After sixty years, I am in that second group.

The Summer Series: Democrats Blow Another One

Did you catch the new mini-series appearing on the appropriate cable news networks, Democrats Blow Another One?

It stars every obnoxious nerd whoever taped a poster that read SEX!  Now That I Got Your Attention Vote For Me on the wall at their high school.


If you didn't, I don't blame you. It is not near as entertaining as Stranger Things 3 but it is almost as scary.

The show has ten people lined up behind their individual podium and they are asked "questions" by "moderators" in order to see which contestant will face President Orange Tweet in November of 2020.

In late June, the first episode of DBAO had the "presumptive" front runner, Former Vice President "Joe" Biden acting like he's never been on TV before.  He was pressed by Senator Kamala Harris (D-Wacky Tobacky) because while a Senator in the early 1800's Biden did not support forced busing.

This put Biden on the defensive because he thought he was in favor of forced busing to achieve school integration unless he forgot he was against it. Those things happen when you have been around as long as "Joe".   Biden lost several points in the polls but still maintained a double-digit lead in the polls mainly because he's one of the few contestants anyone has ever heard of.

However, Harris got her comeuppance in last week's episode of DBAO when Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-Somewhere) pointed out that Harris actually DID HER JOB as Attorney General of California and put people in jail that broke the law.  This made people happy because obviously, Harris was one of those people that put glitter on her high school posters.

A new character appeared in last week's DBAO. It was a crossover appearance by a member of the cast of the greatest cartoon in the history of television, King Of The Hill.  Fort Blanda's camp barber, Bill Dauterive, is running for President. Who knew?  Wait. I am being told that was not Bill Dauterive but John Delaney, a former Congressman from Maryland but a current lobbyist for Strickland Propane.

Delaney made an interesting contribution to the proceedings when he asked where all the money for all of the programs Democrats want will come from. Since it is illegal to ask such a question when you are a member of the Democratic Party, Delaney probably won't be asked back for next month's episode, but he can still drink beer out back with Hank, Dale, and Boomhauer.

Delaney's faux pas did not go unnoticed by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Got Her Job By Telling Everyone She's A Minority). She said, “I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for”. (Editorial comment: For somebody who looks like she can't open a pickle jar, Warren sure talks about fighting a lot).  This was a strange comment because most of running for President is talking about what we really shouldn't do and can't fight for.

Warren was all in a tizzy because people of the wrong gender and color  were questioning some of her plans, that she is willing to fight for like "Medicare For All", "College Loan Forgiveness", "Open Borders", "Pizza Every Friday" and for the elderly, a free "Clap On-Clap Off" device (Biden and Bernie Sanders have already signed up for that one).

Speaking of Bernie Sanders, he has spent most of the DBAO yelling at people to get off his lawn. He also came out against The Kansas-Nebraska Act, Seward's Folly, The Panama Canal, Prohibition, Tippecanoe, and Tyler too.

Now DBAO has a wild card and her name is Marianne Williamson.  I am not exactly sure who she is or why she is famous. She was on "Oprah" a lot. Williamson is kind of like that girl in high school that wore black lipstick to go with her black hair, black shirt, and black pants. When she opened her locker, you would see a pentagram.

Williamson said on the last program,  “If you think any of this wonkiness is going to deal with this dark psychic force of the collectivized hatred that this president is bringing up in this country, then I’m afraid that the Democrats are going to see some very dark days.”   So. I guess we put Williamson down for fight against dark psychic forces.  By the way, I saw Dark Psychic Forces when they opened up for Uriah Heep.

Believe it or not, that wasn't the comment that was the illest conceived.  The winner for that prize goes to Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D- Notre Dame). He said regarding a bill to raise the minimum wage, “The minimum wage is too low. So-called conservative Christian senators right now in the Senate are blocking a bill to raise the minimum wage, when scripture says, ‘Whoever oppresses the poor taunts their maker."   Let me translate that: the "so-called" conservative Christians aren't real Christians because they oppose the $15 an hour minimum wage.  That Satanic group, The Congressional Budget Office, says raising the minimum wage could destroy million of net jobs.  But, let's not discuss that because why run for President to talk about what you can't do and shouldn't fight for when there is a Bible verse you can take out of context and smack your opponents in the head.

Great And Small

She was not my idea.  I think I've said that before.

Our son wanted a dog. Our next-door neighbor at the time was a lonely widow woman who had called the police on the former owners of our house about their dog.  We asked our son if he would like a cat.  He was always a compliant child and he said yes.

My wife and son (who had just turned seven) went to a local cat shelter called Good Mews and found a gray female kitten who had a white chest and white paws. Her brother was with her. His name was Picasso.  Her name was Dali, as in Salvadore Dali. Some cat people are pretentious.

My wife and son got Dali. They brought her home and changed her name to Gracie because she was gray. I think it was a better name than Dali.

The President at the time was Bill Clinton.  We had just learned the name of someone called "Monica".  I think a certain New York Real Estate developer was still married to his second wife, but I'm not too sure. I didn't pay much attention to him at the time.

From that time on, we had a little gray cat in the house.

Like a lot of men, I never really thought too much about cats, one way or another.

We had one cat when  I was growing up. My mom ran over it.

I know this sounds like that toxic masculinity that is supposedly so wrong but I thought cats were sort of feminine. So I thought we would just put up with the cat until we could get a dog like God intended.

Of course, the little gray cat had another idea. While she liked my son, whose pet she was and she liked my wife, as a fellow gal, the stupid cat literally adored me. So much so I have said, "There have been three females that have loved me unconditionally: my mother, my wife, and this stupid cat".

I tried to act like I didn't like her. But my wife caught me cooing at Gracie, "Who loves his Gracie girl? Daddy loves his Gracie girl. I do, I do, I do love my Gracie girl".  It is hard to look macho when you are saying this.

She would always have to sit with me. She would come up, purring, stand on my stomach and place her legs on my shoulders like she was hugging me.  This ritual went on for years.

Like they say, the days drag on but the years fly by.  The seven-year-old was soon in middle school, then high school, and then college. One day, he brought home a tall blonde that was crazy about cats. Then, on another day, he married that blonde and he was out of the house.

It was Lori and me and Gracie makes three.

Gracie scratched our furniture to death.  She would have these killer hairballs, too. Nothing like waking up in the middle of the night and stepping barefoot in a hairball on the way to the bathroom.

But she made it up to me by licking my nose while I'm in a deep sleep to make sure I knew that her plate is empty and she needed some food in it. I would get up, walk downstairs, and put out a plate of Fancy Feast, which is neither fancy or a feast.  Gracie would watch me, walk up to the plate, take a couple of charity licks and walk off.  The clock  usually read 4:30. In the morning. On my day off.

She could be funny. One time, my next-door neighbor (same house, different person) brought over his new puppy to show us. Gracie comes walking around the corner and sees the puppy.  She turned to me and had the most incredulous facial expression. I didn't know cats had facial expressions except for their general condescension. Her expression said, "What the hell is this dog doing in my house?" She turned around and walked out of the room. 

Six years ago, I had a blog post about her kidney disease, which is very common in cats.

The vet prescribed a pill to be given daily. Giving a cat a pill is truly a skill and I'm happy to say my wife mastered it. How my wife did it, I will never know.

As the years past, Gracie basically peed a lot.  However, in the past year and a half, she started missing the litter box on occasion. As you can imagine, it created a big mess.

Then this past April, I went to the bathroom where we kept her litter box. There was blood on the floor. The vet said it was a Urinary Tract Infection and gave her a shot.  She seemed to get better. But then she got worse.

Most of May and June, Gracie was up all night going to the litter box. She was not peeing as much. When she did pee, it landed on the floor, somewhere in the general vicinity of the litter box.

But, she was still eating well, two cans of cat food a day.  Then it was once can a day. Soon, the food on her plate was half-eaten.

This past Tuesday I realized she hadn't eaten in two days. She was up a lot, going to the litter box, trying to make it, but most of the time failing. There was blood  She was walking like she was almost bow-legged.

We decided to take her to the Vet.  We didn't know if it was "the time" or not.

I got out her cat carrier. For 19 of her 21 years, it was the biggest pain to get her into her cat carrier. Most of the time, she would run off and try to hide. It would take weeks to get her into the cat carrier.

I put in on the floor and opened the cage. I said, "Do you want to go see Shelia?" (the front office staffer at the Vet). Gracie strolled in.  Right then I knew it was "the time".

That still didn't make it less painful when the Vet told us we needed to have Gracie put down. Gracie was two months away from being 22 years old. In human years that is 104 years old.

It was quick.  Gracie was given a sedative. She growled when she was given the shot but it was the last time she felt pain.

She was absolutely the sweetest cat I've ever been around. Of course, it was because she was my cat and I was her person. There is no greater love than between the grumpy dad and the pet he didn't want.
 
She was just a little kitten from a shelter. The shelter told us she had feline HIV and probably wouldn't live to 7 years old. She lived three times longer.

She didn't have to worry about predators, cars, or dogs. She had her run of the house and could basically sit anywhere she wanted. She didn't have to hunt for food. She had a house full of humans who would play with her and love on her.  She basically won the cat lottery.

We did too.

It Is Always Something

I remember it quite well. I was in Indianapolis to participate in a pitch meeting to obtain the Burger Chef account when I watched Neil Armstrong take his first step on the moon. All of us in the room which included Pete, Peggy, and Don were amazed by what we just saw.

Wait a second. That didn't happen to me. That happened on Mad Men.  I saw Armstrong on the moon in the den of the original Manis Manor at 460 Holt Road in Marietta, Georgia.  I remember it being very late and I could barely keep my eyes open. I wasn't yet ten years old.

It is even more remarkable now than it was then.  Apollo 11 made it to the moon with 60's technology. The fact they had radio contact still amazes me. There are parts of my house where I can't make a phone call on my smartphone.

But you know what happened.  After several landings on the moon, it became old hat. All they brought back were rocks. Man, they must have been nice rocks with all of the people dying in Vietnam, man.

That part of it was really too bad.  We basically put a man on the moon in about twelve years since Sputnik was launched. That's an unbelievable short period of time to accomplish something so incredible.

Of course, American's agenda-setters (The Washington Post and The New York Times) are allowing us to look back at that time, when Americans came together to achieve a common goal, with pride.

If you believe that, I have some moon rocks to sell you.

WaPo, as everybody is calling it now, ran an article about NASA's race to the moon by noting:

"As NASA worked relentlessly to fulfill John F. Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the moon by decade’s end, it turned to the nation’s engineers. Many of them were fresh out of school, running the gamut from mechanical to electrical engineers, because that’s mostly what was taught in universities, and almost exclusively to white men."

For some weird reason, NASA turned to the nation's engineers to achieve the goal of landing a man on the moon before Jimi Hendrix took the stage at Woodstock instead of the nation's liberal arts majors. They were male mechanical and electrical engineers. Which means they were really into math.  This was before the time of pocket calculators, too, so we are dealing with men that used slide rulers. (I'm not sure how to use a slide rule. I can barely use a pocket calculator.)

There were the ONs: The Original Nerds. They all have one problem: the color of their skin.

The Post goes to say, "In archival Apollo 11 photos and footage, it’s a "Where’s Waldo?" exercise to spot a woman or person of color."

I have an idea. Let's not play a "Where's Waldo"  exercise to spot a woman or a person of color. 

The New York Times ran an article titled, and I am not making this up, "How The Soviets Won The Space Race For Equality".  They ran it because when everybody thinks about equality, they think about the Soviet Union.

History shows the Soviet Union sent  Valentina Tereshkova into orbit on June 16, 1963, twenty years before America sent Sally Ride into space.  But, and the Times article did not state this, Ride was the first LGBT astronaut into space. Take that Khrushchev! USA! USA! USA!

The Times noted: "Ardent female fans in the U.S.S.R. saw her triumph as a welcome reaffirmation of the Soviet commitment to gender equality, while women outside the Soviet Union took it as proof that there was no limit to what women could achieve".

I'm not an expert, but I would doubt her "ardent female fans" saw her as a "welcome reaffirmation of the Soviet commitment to gender equality" because they didn't think in those terms. They probably thought that she was lucky to get out of a stink hole like The Soviet Union.

The Times article ends "Cosmonaut diversity was key for the Soviet message to the rest of the globe: Under socialism, a person of even the humblest origins could make it all the way up."  As long, of course, a person of humble origins didn't disagree with the state. They would find other places for you besides a rocket ship, comrade.

All of this is part of our New American past-time called "Naw, it wasn't that great".  You hear it all around. Hipsters say The Beatles weren't all that great.  There were other Liverpool bands just as good.  Yeah, Abe Lincoln freed the slaves and saved the union, but have you noticed that wart on his face?

Yeah, the moon landing was great and all that, but did you see that picture of Misson Control? All white men.  They probably smoke and drank too much.  Yes, that was a slide rule in his pocket and yes, he was happy to see you.

We have a generation of clickbait followers where nothing is ever good enough.  Heaven forbid we look back at something with pride.

There's nothing wrong with pointing out facts. Yes, it was mainly white men at Mission Control. But does the color of their skin diminish what they accomplished?

We'll do better next time.

Liz's Big Idea

The news media has apparently decided, without any votes being cast, that there are five (count 'em) five major players for the Democratic Party's nomination for President in 2020.

They are Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Kamala Harris, Senator Bernie Sanders, and Mayor Pete Buttigieg.  You may notice  Congressman Eric Swalwell is not listed. That is because Congressman Swalwell looked at the facts and realized nobody has ever heard of him that didn't watch the 24-hour news channels 24 hours a day, so he dropped out of the race. Or maybe, it was because of the vicious pounding he took in this blog a couple of weeks ago. Either way, he is out of the race and now there are only 500 Democrats running for their party's nomination.

The Big Five contains two very old men, a gay man of a medium-sized city, someone who wants to relitigate forced school busing, and a person who went out telling people she was a member of an aggrieved minority group when it happened to benefit her career.

That's who I want to focus on today; our buddy, Elizabeth Warren, Senator from Massachusetts.

Like the rest of The Big Five, Elizabeth Warren wants to fight.  She is always saying she is going to fight unlike the party's last nominee, the wallflower called Hillary Clinton.  On her website, Warren says she wants to  "fight to build an America that works for everyone, not just the wealthy and the well-connected".   If you want to join her in this "fight", she has conveniently added boxes showing $10, $25, $50, $100. and other, you know, just to make it easy for you.

Unlike the rest, Warren has decided to talk about her "plans" for the county.  She has "plans" out the wazoo. She has a plan for immigration. Politico says, "Warren calls for eliminating criminal penalties for people 'entering the country without authorization' but would leave in place civil penalties for illegal border crossings."   Translation:  Hey, y'all, just come on in.

But to me, Warren's plan on "student loan debt" really piqued my interest.

If you know anything about college, you know college is expensive for reasons that are not actually very clear.  The kids have to borrow money to go to school.  But there is a catch: you have to pay the money back. I know it sucks kiddos, but that's the way the world goes round. Just wait till you get a job and that stupid boss expects you to work and not look at your Instagram.

Warren, however, has come up with a "plan".  What if, by magic, it turns out the student didn't take out a loan, but rather, was given a gift?  Warren's plan is to cancel student loan debt.

Forbes magazine reports, "The ambitious student loan forgiveness plan would cancel student loan debt for more than 95% of borrowers, and would entirely cancel student loan debt for more than 75% of Americans with student loan debt. Warren believes that her plan would reduce the wealth gap in America and provide an economic stimulus to the middle class to increase home purchases and help start small businesses."  (Just for the record, Warren believed for years that she was a Native American.)

Forbes notes that student loan debt is the second highest category of debt behind mortgages and by 2023, 40% of the student loan borrowers could default on their loans.

Specifically, Warren's plan is this:

• Cancel $50,000 in student loan debt for every person with household income under $100,000.
• Provide substantial debt cancellation for every person with household income between $100,000 and $250,000.
• Not tax as income student loan debt that has been canceled.
• Also, make private student loan debt eligible for cancellation.
• Streamline the student loan debt forgiveness process using data and income information already available to the federal government.    (Forbes, Zach Friedman, 6/17/19)

Question: where will Warren find the money to pay for all of these loans?  Answer:  From the money tree. Her campaign says it will be a 2 percent tax on "Ultra Millionaires".  These are the 75,000 families whose net worth is over $50 million in net worth.  Fortunately for me, I made only $49 million last year, so I would be exempt.

I decided to see what the average voter thinks about this so I did what any well-rounded person would do. I created a highly scientific poll on my Facebook page.  I asked people to vote Yay or Nay on student loan forgiveness.

I had 60 responses. All were Nay.

Granted, most of my Facebook friends fall into the demographic category political scientists refer to as "old farts", but all of the reactions were negative.  The closest anyone came to a Yay was my pal William Joseph Wade III of Bangkok, Thailand  who said,  "Well they forgave banks that made much worse decisions than many of the students who had to borrow money just to find decent jobs." 

Bruce Burns, who was in my second-grade class, probably reflected the general mood of my friends that responded by saying, "HELL no. But one thing we should do is to crack down on schools that encourage students to go $200k in debt for junk degrees like 18th Century Bavarian Hygiene."

For the record, I did remind him that there is a big market for 19th Century Bavarian Hygiene majors.

I would say Warren's plan probably won't go over well in Middle America for the simple reason most Americans think if you borrow money you should pay it back unless something catastrophic happens and you graduate with a history degree from a small state school in the early '80's.  

But what do I know? I spent two years saying Trump would never become President.