Tweedledee

Once upon a time...  There was a world without Twitter.  No one wanted to buy it for 40 billion plus dollars.  No one spent 3 billion to buy up 9.2% of it to become its leading shareholder.  No one sent evil tweets.  No one was banned from it.  No one had even heard of it.  It didn't exist.  Somehow this world went on.  Where was this place?  Well it was right here, same place you're in now.  It was just 2006 and anytime in 2006 before July.  That's not so long ago.  We're not talking about going back to some golden era like Prohibition or WWII.  Even the Millennials, can remember 2006.

Here are some statistics.  There are 396.5 million Twitter users in this world.  But as we've learned some of them are fake.  Certain celebrities got caught buying up thousands of fake members so they could look more popular than they were.  206 million of all Twitter users, Tweet in a given day but 75% of them are not in the US of A.  That means 54 million Americans Tweet on a daily basis but that also means 276 million do not.  54 million is very close to the 53 million Americans who use illegal drugs.  Not that there is any relationship between the two numbers.  We just want to put the whole Twitter thing in perspective.  In short, if you've never used illegal drugs or never sent out a tweet, does it matter?

Now here are some tweets.  

'It's my birthday.  I have 382 followers can I get 400?'.  

'What is your favorite place you traveled to?'

'Do you believe that writing by hand improves the stories?'

And, we left the names out here to protect the innocent but on this next one you might guess, as this guy has been banned.  'Lock her up.'

But once again, if you never saw these, would it matter?

Now please do not perceive this article as some kind of a pejorative swipe at Twitter.  We love Twitter.  We're on Twitter.  In fact, you might be reading this via Twitter.  So, Vive le Twitter!  And, we hope as always that we gave you a few smiles and we hope we've added a little perspective  Maybe we've broadened the horizon a bit.  But once again, if you never saw this, would it matter?

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The Guillotine

The word started as a whisper.  Then it popped up in an article here and there.  Then it got a little louder and started coming off of the lips of GOP House Reps.  Now, Kevin McCarthy GOP Minority Leader of the House of Representatives is warning against it.  That word...  Impeachment!

If the GOP that's short for Grand Old Party aka The Republicans can retake the House this fall, they want to impeach Old Brains Joe Biden!  Hell, there's evidence the old boy and his son have been taking bribes.  This would be easy, a slam dunk.  No shifting through years of emails, phone calls, recordings and the taking of depositions.  All they'd have to do is check the bank accounts.  And, of course the safety deposit boxes.  Where did all the money come from?

Now put this together with the ongoing and never ending investigations of former President Trump and former Presidential candidate HerHillaryness, then throw in all the Celebrities and Talking Heads who have been wished away to the Cornfields on a somewhat regular basis and we say it's time to bring back The Guillotine!

 

For those of you who don't know, The Guillotine pictured above is a very old, very quick and extremely efficient form of execution.  The huge blade is suspended above the neck of the condemned.  Then the blade is dropped and gaining momentum as if falls, it chops the head off of the condemned, in a nanosecond.  Like we said quick, clean and efficient.  Probably far more humane than hanging, electrocution or even lethal injection which if not done properly, can get very messy and painful.  Hell, even when those methods work properly, they gotta hurt.  But with the Guillotine, it's just Swoosh and the recipient is off to Eternity.

The Guillotine reached its zenith of renown during and after French Revolution.  Once they were done with chopping off the head of the King Louis IVI and his wife Marie Antoinette, The French Assembly, our version of the Congress, started taking off each other's heads.  Why?  Well it was the money.  After the King was gone, it was what do we do with all the money.  Try to remember this.  It is always, the money.  That's what people are always screaming about.  It's not what they're saying, not the words, not the slogans, not the passionate causes or anything else they're yelling about.  It's the money.  It's why wars are fought.  It's why husbands kill wives and vice versa.  It's who gets what.  It makes people scream.

Hell, even the recipients might prefer it.  No more endless investigations.  No more indictments, real or threatened.  No more Impeachments.  No more endless apology tours that never work, as people don't want apologies, they want blood.  No more trying to resurrect dead careers.  No more being whisked away to some unheard of cable channel or obscure podcast no one watches.  No, just the finely sharpened blade, swoosh and only one person to make an explanation to, Saint Peter.

And, then when enough heads have been tossed and enough blood has been spilled, maybe the screaming, the yelling, and the hurling of accusations will subside.  Maybe.

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If It Looks Like The WWE...

We decided to add a new adage here and it's...  If it looks like the WWE, it is the WWE.  Now just in case you didn't know or never heard, the WWE stands for Worldwide Wrestling Exhibition also known as Professional Wrestling.  Professional Wrestling should not be confused with College or Olympic Wrestling, which are real competitions.  Professional Wrestling is synonymous with the term FAKE.  Professional Wrestlers do not actually hit each other over the head with chairs or jump off the top rope of the ring and land on their opponents.  Professional Wrestling is all choreographed and rehearsed.  Occasionally, something goes wrong and someone misses a cue and someone actually gets hurt.  But that's an accident not by design or a result of an actual competition.

So when Will Smith on his way to accepting his academy award for Best Actor stopped to slap Chris Rock, it looked like the WWE.  And, as we said.  If it looks like the WWE it is the WWE, which is as you know now, synonymous with FAKE.

But it was curious to watch people cheer Will Smith on or accuse him of all manner of perfidy.  You know the usual inanities that pass for supposed thoughts on the "issues" of the day but are merely people yelling.  "Look at me please!"  If only for a few moments.  Our favorite was Will being accused of "toxic masculinity".  Toxic masculinity or any form of masculinity would have been a shot to the solar plexus followed up very quickly with an elbow to the jaw or mouth.  And, it would have left Chris Rock on the floor trying to find his teeth.  Not a little slap that couldn't have squashed a grape, your grand mama could easily have ducked and only left Chris, trying not to laugh too hard.

But the idea behind this pantomime, stems from the ratings for the Oscars being in the tank for the last decade or so.  And, the hopes now, that if viewers think, that the presenters and the actors might start hitting each other when they win, lose or just don't like something someone says, maybe they'll tune in again.  Just like...  You guessed it fans, the WWE.

Of course with that in mind we nominate for next year's host of the Oscars, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson.  He's an actor.  He's funny.  And, he started out in Professional Wrestling.  Don't worry about anyone taking an actual swing at him.  None of them are that dumb.  No, this would all be choreographed just like the...  WWE.  

And The Rock, could even show them how.

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Stormy Weather

Stormy Daniels has defiantly and loudly proclaimed that she will not pay President Trump!  She will go to jail first!  For those of you who forgot or didn't know, Stormy Daniels along with her then attorney Michael Avenatti sued President Trump over a non-disclosure agreement, that she broke.  Then she and Avenatti ran around to every talk show that would have them, to tell of her tale of woe.  Which was she had a "date" with President Trump and then she got 130K to keep her mouth shut.  Then she got threatened to keep her mouth shut even though she'd gotten 130K to keep her mouth shut.  This was keeping her mouth shut after the "date", not during it.  

Now Stormy Daniels is not some reticent little waif, caught in the glare of a modern day media maelstrom, so we're not being salacious here.  Stormy is both a celebrity porn star and sex worker.  You can google her if you don't believe us.  And, according to her, the "date" with Donald Trump was a paid for affair.  But she wound up losing her lawsuit against Donald Trump, because it was pretty hard to show how the $130K, hurt her in any way.  Then the court also ruled that she had to pay President Trump's legal fees.  She appealed that decision and now she's lost that appeal.  But she says she will never pay.  We understand that too.  It's not the money.  It's the principal of the thing.  If she pays, she'll be the first sex worker in the history of the profession and it's the world's oldest profession, to have paid the client.  It's a dangerous precedent.  It's that slippery slope you always hear about.  And, it might ruin the whole thing.  We mean, if the sex workers wind up paying the clients, it will defeat the whole purpose.

Lucky for Stormy Daniels there are no debtor prisons in the US of A.  She'll have judgements that might be enforced against her future earnings but no jail.  She will not follow her attorney Michael Avenatti and Trump's attorney in this matter Michael Cohen, into the Hoosegow.  And, she should be happy about that.  But 'I will not pay Trump!  I'll go to jail first!' made a great headline.  And, in this age of narcissism and me, me me all the time, maybe that's all she wants here.  Maybe that's all she ever, really, wanted.

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"Single Combat"

Elon Musk and we like Elon Musk, has thrown down the gauntlet.  He has challenged Vladimir Putin to "single combat".  No word from Vlad as yet.  We're not sure what kind of a fight this would be.  Does Elon want a caged match like in the WWE?  In which case, it would all be choreographed and rehearsed like most everything else we see.  Or does Elon mean an MMA brawl where it would be all holy hell and for real?  Does Elon maybe even mean with weapons?  Like in days of old, with swords and axes and stuff?  Either way, the winner according to Elon, would get Ukraine.

What Elon would do with Ukraine we have no idea.  Would he be the President instead of Zelenskyy?  Hell, why not?  He would be the guy who saved the place.  Think President Grant here.  Maybe Elon could build electric cars there?  Or put up another launching pad for Space X?  But why would Vlad go for this?  Vlad lost thousands of guys, millions of dollars of stuff and if he lost the "single combat", what would all have that been for?  And, he might be dead.  We're not sure of Elon's fighting prowess but he's only 50.  Vlad on the other hand despite all the pictures of him with his shirt off and others where he's in a karate Gi, is closing in on 70.  That's the age where you can't touch your toes anymore and just bending over is a challenge. Single combat?  Not an viable option.

But we like the idea.  We mean if heads of state actually duked it out to settle conflicts instead of getting a whole lot of innocent people killed.  Now, this is not such a hot idea for America, as we had to go all the way back Dwight Eisenhower to find a President who actually kicked some ass in his life.  This was before his heart attack of course.  But all the others were either too old, too ill or no one could ever remember them being in an actual fight.  Before Ike we have to go all the way back to ole TR, Teddy Roosevelt.  Maybe if we could dig up Andrew Jackson, this might work for us.  Old Hickory was in some real duels, actually killed a few guys and always came out on top.  Barring that though, this is not a good idea for the US of A.  But for other countries this might work out just fine.  Saddam Hussein might still be running Iraq.  And Hitler?  Well you probably would never have heard of him.  Unlike Saddam who had to whack a whole lot of people in his rise to the top, Hitler only had to make speeches.  So, Hitler would probably be some homeless, WWI, PTSD Vet, wandering around Vienna, muttering "Mein Kampf, Mein Kampf." while he tried to sell his bad paintings to unsuspecting tourists.

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Missed Opportunity

The NFL has suspended Atlanta Falcons Wide Receiver Calvin Ridley for a year. Why?  For gambling!  Seems he placed a parley bet on his own team for $1,500.00.  We find this a little hard to digest here.  Why?  Well, if you've watched any NFL games in the last few seasons, they advertise betting and the betting sites before and during the games.  Also, late at night when most degenerate gamblers are still wide awake.  The NFL wants people to bet via FanDuel, DraftKings or Caesars.  So, it's real easy to see how a player, any player might easily get confused.  "Don't they want me to bet too?"  Especially when you realize that the average NFL player has been banging his head into other players for at least a decade or so. 

But we think the NFL missed a great opportunity here.  Instead of suspending Calvin Ridley, they could have put him in one of their commercials where he explains the parley bet to all the fans.  That bet is a little complicated.  Especially to the novice bettor.  And, the NFL wants them too. 

We also wondered if it would have been all right with the NFL, if Calvin Ridley bet on the other teams and the other games?   We mean if his team is not playing and he's sitting home in front of his TV watching Monday or Thursday night Football and the commercials come on?  He's just another fan at that point.  And, he's got the head banging part down pat, so he'd fit right in with the rest of the fans who have been banging their heads into walls, as they watched their bets fail to cover the spread and their rent or mortgage money, along with their kids college fund, go down the drain. 

Speaking of College what if Calvin had bet the College games on Saturday, or the NBA or MLB?  What would be wrong with that?  What makes Calvin Ridley different from anyone else?  Why should he be out of work? Why can't he watch his rent or mortgage money, along with his kid's college fund, go down the drain, just like everyone else?

And, speaking of MLB, when are DraftKings, FanDuel or Caesars going to wake up and get Pete Rose to do their commercials!  Pitchers and Catchers have reported to camp and Opening Day is just around the corner. Ole Pete may be 80 years old but he's still compos mentis.  And, if there ever was a guy who could tell people the who, the what and the how to bet on baseball, it's the guy with the most base hits in the history of the Major Leagues, Charlie Hustle himself, Banned for Life from Major League Baseball for gambling, Pete Rose.  C'mon guys don't let this become a missed opportunity. 

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Argue?

The President of the United States said.  "Vladimir Putin may surround Kyiv with tanks but he'll never gain the hearts and souls of the Iranian people."  Now who can argue with that?

And poor Kanye.  Kim has left him and he is beside himself.  Like we mentioned a while back, Kim has been married a few times but poor Kanye...  Well Kim was his only wife.  Kanye has tried dating others.  He even found a young woman who looks just like Kim but it's not working.  So Kanye has turned his heartbreak and subsequent ire on his replacement, a guy named Pete Davidson.  Pete Davidson is some kind of an actor/comedian but not in the same league as Kanye, entrepreneur, producer, actor, music video Artiste and just all around artist supreme.  This kind of reminds us of when Elvis's wife left him for her Karate Instructor.  And, Kanye has tried tweets, Tik Tok and gone on a few other locales to launch his tirades about Pete Davidson.  All to no avail.  Kim is still with Pete Davidson.  But since Kanye is a music video Artiste and all around artist supreme, he finally rolled out a music video on Pete, where he cuts Pete's head off.  Now we live in an age of political correctness and people getting divorced left and right, especially celebrities.  Then they all move on to someone else, so we have to like a guy who still believes in.  "All is fair in love and war."  Kanye wants to bury his rival and that's old school.  It's Medevil even.  Think the movie 'The Last Duel' here.  Who wants to argue with that?  Don't.  Kanye might cut your head off next.

And we have to make a correction.  We didn't think Putin was going to invade the Ukraine.  We thought he was going one way and he went the other.  We were wrong.  We apologize.  Unlike most everyone else in this journalism thing, we don't just forget about a faux pas and move on like nothing happened.  And, yeah we kind of put this at the end of the article hoping no one would notice too much.

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