In yesterday’s Under the Fedora I mentioned both that the reason I had not made it to CPAC lately was my full time job and also how DaTipJar has been falling short to the point where this will likely be the blog’s last year.
Well it only took 24 hours for things to get worse.
Things have been nasty at my work for a couple of years. The normal peak seasons at Christmastime that were crazy during the Trump years lasted less that a week. We closed two warehouses in the area and every single temp worker at our place was let go.
All of this despite the insistence of the media/left that our economy is absolutely fantastic and we need to thank the Biden Administration for it. Well I’ll give them this much, I do give Joe Biden/Obama credit for the economy we have. I got another dose of that economy last night.
Yesterday we were told that my shift, the 2nd shift is to be eliminated. I don’t know what my new shift is going to be but the end results at minimum are
a 4% pay decrease
Daily mass at best eliminated for 3 days a week and at worst eliminated completely
A 67% chance that I’ll have to give up both running the parish Adoration and my two hours
The joys of early mornings and rush hour traffic
And not only a shift no longer corresponding with my wife but because she sleeps in a recliner due to hip issues an excellent chance of waking her each morning and disrupting her sleep every day.
At my age and with the economy we have there is not much I can do I’ve done two of the three things that can be done.
I’ve arranged a Mass with all of us at the company as the Mass intention.
I voted for Trump today when I had the chance.
The only other thing I can do is ask you to consider hitting DaTipJar and or Sharing this post for that purpose. I’ll cut back and we’ll get by the best we can.
But if you would like to give a hand it would be most appreciated.
The vast majority of the people I work with have Spanish as their first language. They came here a decade or more ago. I don’t know if they came legally or not at the time but many if not most are now American citizens and they are scared for their jobs, their managers are scared for their jobs and as a guy about to hit 61 who had planned to work till 70 I’m scared for my job.
Even with COVID four years ago we were not.
And let me note, we are scared for our jobs after our company closed two warehouses in our area and laid off every temp we had.
Without a turnaround of the economy I don’t see how we avoid either further layoffs or a reduction of our workweek to below 40 hours.
That the democrats are polling over 40% is beyond me and I would bet real money that a lot of the folks were I am are going to vote for Trump because they know who was in charge when they were able to make a living and who was not.
They don’t care about mean tweets they care about feeding their kids and virtue signaling stuff like this
DeSantis supporters:
Are there any conditions under which you would vote for Trump in the 2024 general election?
I’m curious to hear responses because I’ve seen a split on this topic amongst the pro-DeSantis crowd.
— Cryptid Politics (pro-DeSantis) 🇺🇸🐊 (@CryptidPolitics) March 2, 2024
doesn’t enter their radar.
The only reason why I have no idea who will win in November is:
I don’t know that Biden will be the Dem standard bearer no matter what happens in the primary
I don’t know if Trump can win beyond the margin of fraud or if the GOP is taking steps to prevent it
Today after mass I hit Market Basket before heading home. There are two advantages to such a trip.
You get a chance to buy the “manager’s special” meats usually discounted 10-20%
The donuts at their bakery are not only cheap but very good
With money very tights you look for a bargain here and there so rather than going out I figured find a nice steak and cook at home and if you can get it at a discount because the sell by date is tomorrow, so much the better.
When you first go into the Market Basket that I frequent there is a section just before the butter that usually has various breads that are offered on special. It’s handy for people who don’t want to hit the bread aisle at the other end of the store. I happened to glance at it and noticed they had the Market Basket Canadian White, a bread that I buy regularly at that area and I stopped cold.
The bread was marked at 2 for $5.
I do the shopping regularly at the house. I’ve seen the bread prices fluctuate over the years. I’ve seen a loaf of Canadian White as high as 2 for $4 and I’ve seen it marked down as low as .99 to get it to move. Over the past few years the regular price has stood stead at $1.79 though occasionally I’ll see it at 2 for $3 and buy an extra loaf to freeze.
I have never seen it at $2.50 a loaf. That’s a full 25% markup from the normal “high” price for the product.
I’ve seen the inflation that has been murderous in the country for the last three years. I’ve seen it in the price of all kinds of things, but to see it in the price of something that’s a basic staple as a loaf of bread and realize what that does to the people (and to the taxpayer because they’re paying that extra price for all those groceries) puts just how bad the economy is in bright focus.
And the worst part about it is that none of this needed to happen. This decline was a choice by those who decided that it was imperative to make a change at the White House and damn the consequences.
To a lot of people making the decisions that have led to this, a loaf of bread is nothing, but multiply that loaf by tens of millions struggling to meet basic needs and you have a powder keg just waiting to go off.
I have a lot of little things to say but not enough for an under the Fedora Day so today we’re going to give Don Surber the sincerest from of flattery and imitate his Saturday Link Fest with a few other thoughts:
First at Stacy McCain’s site we have a story about how thanks to a family squabble an iconic business will close:
The litigation later forced the family to change the name of its original location to Tony and Nick’s Steaks in 2022. Anthony Jr.’s two sons — Anthony III and Michael, who were also employed at the sandwich empire — followed him out the door, taking copies of the company’s financial records with them and turned them over to federal investigators. Those documents revealed that Lucidonio Sr. and Nicholas Lucidonio hid the success of their business from tax collectors by keeping two sets of books almost from the day the sandwich shop opened.
While one might have an opinion of members of an Italian (Sicilian?) family turning in another member of their family to the feds may I humbly point out that if they weren’t cooking the books it wouldn’t be an issue.
As my Sicilian parents who owned business taught me young, “Always pay the government first because they’re the only ones who can take from you before you go to court.”
2nd: Was at the bank today figured it would be an easy time since I needed to convert three $20 bills into two 10’s six 5’s and ten ones so I can make change if people at St Cecilia’s church want to buy tickets to the WQPH 89.3 FM Shrove Tuesday Brunch on the 13th (Details here). I figured it would take about 30 seconds invoving:
Opening the draw
Counting the bills
Giving them to me
Not anymore. Now a machine is involved so instead the teller has to
Take the last four of my social
Feeding my bills into the reader
Do tons of typing into the computer
Wait for the machine to spit out the bills when the typing is done
Print a receipt for the bills
Give me the bills and receipt
Machines don’t make everything easier
3rd: Over at Pirates Cove Mr. Teach notices climate folks trying to link “climate change” to ancient plagues. to wit:
While modern medicine has advanced considerably since the time of the Romans, this data offers insights into how diseases might change in our own changing climate. “Within the scope of the current climate change it is of major importance to understand the links between climate and human health and we unfortunately do not understand these links as well as we would like,” Zonneveld said. “Investigating the resilience of ancient societies to past climate change and relationships between past climate change and the occurrence of infectious disease might give us better insight into these relationships and the climate change induced challenges we are facing today.
One would have thought that an empire that could conquer so much of the known world, invent formalized sanitation, arches, pioneered early medical tools, concrete, the first bound book, and so much more, would have known not to use fossil fuels, hair dryers, ice makers, and plastics
It never ceases to amaze me that tens of millions have absolute faith in the never ending predictions of doom to come in 30 years when my own local forecast for Sunday has changed three times in the last 72 hours.
4th: I’m told the Doctor that I’ve had for the last 30-40 years or so is about to retire. Baring a major accident/incident before July I will likely not see him again.
This means I will likely have to get a new doc who doesn’t know me or my family or my past. This is normal but I’m not looking forward to it. If there was one thing I had no doubt about with my old doc it’s that he cared if I lived or died. Given what we’ve seen from the medical profession the last few years it will be very hard to get that impression from a stranger.
Of course as I’m in the back nine it more a question of what do I want to die from because in the end I have to die of something.
5th: The New Neo has some thoughts about the Jean Carroll defamation case and the type of precedent it sets:
I don’t think lawsuits like this one should be actionable, whether they be against Trump or anyone else. It should not be legally actionable defamation to say your accuser is lying about you and that you’re not sexually attracted to her. Nor was Trump ever found criminally liable for raping her, because the statute of limitations had run out by the time she made her accusations. I doubt her rape case would have held up in a criminal court anyway – unless it was a court composed of jurors or a judge who hated the defendant.
I predict that once leftists and left leaning institutions like universities are charged with defamation for insisting on their innocence in cases and have judgements made against them the injustice of this will suddenly become clear to the left.
Unexpectedly of course.
6th: If anyone is interested we have some openings in both the 1972 and the 1997 league for Dynasty Baseball.
If you’re up to it and have an interest give me a shout because the window for all of this is closing.
7th: Since I quoted Don Surber for the title of this post it behooves me to mention an interesting twist to the old “learn to code” crowd:
ITEM 14: What the nation needs is coders who learn to mine.
CNBC reported last month, “The U.S. is running out of miners. More than half the nation’s mining workforce, about 221,000 workers, is expected to retire by 2029, according to the Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration, and the number of candidates willing to fill those slots is shrinking.”
Smart people are urging and/or putting their kids into trade schools where basic “manly” skills are taught as it’s becoming increasingly clear that the American left has basically evolved into the passengers of the B Ark of the Golgafrinchan fleet
8th: Since we mentioned the need for coal jobs it’s worth noting more layoffs of Journalists: First this week at the LA Times (Via Legal Insurrection):
As a general rule, most people are sympathetic when they hear about others who have lost their jobs due to layoffs, company closings, and the like.
But in the case of the now-former employees of the Los Angeles Times, that sympathy is in short supply among conservatives and others who were frequent targets of the paper’s agenda-driven news and opinion divisions.
On Sunday, Legal Insurrection reported that the left coast newspaper had announced that staff cutbacks were imminent, with around 100 people set to be let go. In response, unionized employees staged a one-day walkout and demanded, among other things, “to swap traditional seniority protections for those related to diversi
In an internal email this morning, Business Insider CEO Barbara Peng announced that the company is laying off 8% of its staff pic.twitter.com/VY6HIt7ktc
I look forward to the plethora of articles from those journalists remaining insisting that the economy is better than ever. Perhaps AI can write them at the LA Times and Business Insider.
The NFL league championships are this week and from the NFC we are guaranteed a great story of overcoming adversity no matter who wins, either Detroit FINALLY making it to the Superbowl with a rejected QB or San Francisco making it led by the very last pick in the draft born the year Brady was picked and drafted 63 places later than him (262nd).
In the east you have Lamar Jackson the pre-emptive MVP facing Patrick Mahomes who now has made the AFC title game in his first six seasons as a starter. Comparisons to Tom Brady and questions if he will beat Brady’s six titles and ten Superbowl appearances are already flying but in the end no matter what he achieves when people ask who was better the record will show that when facing Tom Brady in the AFC Championship game or the Superbowl he was 0-2 against a Tom Brady at age 40 or over.
10th and last at Elder of Ziyon which is a must visit during the Israel Hamas war they note a rather amazing phenom at the UN, collective memory loss:
Q: Given the UN’s big role in Gaza, UNRWA, has there ever been any indication to the UN that tunnels are being built under the city?
UN: Not to us. I mean… it seems to me that all this infrastructure was built in a highly secretive way. I mean, I see it just as an observer… To think that the UN had any understanding of what was… any information about those operations, I think, is… No is clearly the answer to that.
This is even though the UN has admitted in previous years that tunnels were found underneath their own schools.
In fact, former UNRWA Gaza director Matthias Schmale admitted that it is a “safe assumption” there were extensive tunnels under Gaza, in a 2021 interview:
If it wasn’t for the fact that Hogan’s Heroes was a fictional show I’d swear that the UN was recruiting heavily from descendants of the guards at Luft Stalag 13 for their uncanny ability to know nothing and see nothing.
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