Dissecting the Trump years

 Taxes

Everybody thinks problem 1 is taxes. Nobody likes throwing money down a black hole. But here is what really happened with the Trump Tax Cuts:

People who are genuinely poor got nothing but more pain. The next few quintiles got a little more take home pay, but what happened to that nice Tax Refund check that came in time for Spring Break? And the top payers got the BIGGEST break which is pre-programmed to grow to 2025!

which leads me to Dow 30,000.

On election day, the Dow Jones industrial average was down on the year. It wasn't until the results came in that it worked its way back up to a new high. Yet who chose to pat himself on the back?

The Wall

We were promised that Mexico would pay for the ludicrous wall.

Funds were diverted from FEMA as a hurricane bore down on the Florida panhandle. Literal billions have been diverted from the military. And the wall has holes.

Florida

In many ways my new home state, Florida, is amazing. The weather is consistent. Sunny every day with an afternoon thunderstorm to cool things off. The eye  of Hurricane Irma passed right over my house and a few tiles got knocked off my roof and a few bushes got windburn. The power was out for a few days and some trees got knocked down. Sounds like Connecticut, no?

And Florida politics is very interesting. We have a Republican candidate for governor who ran on the platform "I am endorsed by the President". No other substance at all. The  Democratic candidate was a low budget Mayor who came out of nowhere. We are in for an interesting couple of months until November. 

I am outraged by the attack on a Mosque in Egypt. It essentially left an entire village of widows and children.

I am even more outraged by the "News" coverage. I just read a lengthy article about "was it Militants or Terrorists". https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/isis-raises-stakes-egypt-mosque-attack-n823986

Baloney. If families were terrified, it is terrorism. That includes the maniac driving down the sidewalk in New York City and the shooter in Las Vegas. They are all Terrorists and should be treated as sociopaths.

An Open Letter to Microsoft

You have the most interesting marketing it has been my experience to deal with. You get a stable OS (XP) and you stop supporting in favor of a highly buggy and unreliable Windows 8.1. Meanwhile, you are working on Windows 10 (what happened to 9?) it works OK until your computer refuses to boot and you have to go back to factory settings losing all your downloads and apps.

The most interesting part of this is you introduce OneDrive. So at least I didn't lose all of my documents. Now your marketing department has decided to cut the OneDrive in half while Google Drive, Dropbox, Box are all adding space.

And you sit there and scratch your heads ..
"Gee Whillikers why are people totally angry at Microsoft?"
"Why aren't people replacing their stable Windows 7?"

I think the real question is: Why does anybody at Microsoft still have a job?

Oh yeah .. I wrote this blog using the new featureless Microsoft Edge .. and Blogger gave me the message: The browser we detected is unsupported and may result in unexpected behavior.
Please choose from our list of supported browsers for the best experience.

Thanks again Microsoft for another lousy computer experience.

Surveys

As if we aren't inundated with enough spurious nonsense, what is it with the surveys. Almost everything I do requests a survey after I have had a successful transaction of some kind.

• Yes i bought Doggie Poop Bags
• Yes I am happy with my purchase
• My hand remains clean
• The poop gets tossed
• The salesperson rang out my puchase with the same stupor he has for every customer

Seriously. I am in the store for 2 minutes, and spend twenty minutes telling some machine how great the experience was.  What a PIMA (Pain In My A**). If the bags leaked, or there weren't 25 bags in a roll, or if the salesperson was actively an idiot, believe me, you would hear from me. I really don't want to or care to share about every purchase I make.

Are you listening Amazon.com?

At the end of each Chuck Lorre episode, there flashes a so-called Vanity Card It is mostly drivel ..  just the thoughts that came pouring out. And since Chuck is a funny guy, they are usually funny .. though sometimes very dark. He has decided it is a chore to do those cards, so I find myself moved to pick it up.


Vanity Card #1

I saw a great ad on TV last night. KFC poked a little fun at store-bought roast chicken. Mom and Dad are about to cut into yet another plastic container of chicken and they look around the room. A kid is stomping around in a space suit made of discarded chicken containers. There's a plant hanging from the ceiling in a discarded chicken container. They move aside a dining room centerpiece made of discarded chicken containers and put a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. The reason I found this ad notable, is it is the first ad that I can recall scanning backward to see over again. it took my two tries to "get" the space suit. In this age of super repeated dull boring attack advertising, I find it refreshing that an ad can be so entertaining that it fought my senses to break through to the point where I Tivo'd back to it.

Shrimp costs have Red Lobster in hot water: Associated Press

Shrimp costs have Red Lobster in hot water: Associated Press



I know. I said no more rants. But this article from Microsoft money is just another prime example of Microsoft trying to shoot  itself in the foot.it is article about Darden restaurants. the stock symbol is nowhere to be found in the article. I wonder how much longer Microsoft is going to get away with not considering its customers. Hey, Microsoft! I am typing this on my Android tablet.