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Rants July 8, 2012

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1. Did you hear that a man recently suffered the first reported injury from using fireworks in Maine since the new fireworks law took effect? We read that the man tried using a blow torch to dry off a firework that had gotten wet. He received 17 stitches in his face after it blew up. Unfortunately, he is still able to vote.

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2. Today we’re going to talk about advertising. --- Marketing a product, and we’ll start with this great observation from Steve: "Your chances of winning Megabucks are about the same whether you buy a ticket or not." On the other hand, there was a fellow in the Coast Guard in Rockland who asked every girl he met if she'd like to go home with him. He said that if he only got one out of 70 it was a great saving in time, effort and money. If you don't ask, the answer is already "NO".

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3. You might not believe this so I’m going to ask you to Google it and read it for yourself. I don’t want you to think that this is a joke or that I’m saying something silly I made up to make you laugh. I’m reading you a quote. Quote: “Texas GOP declares: "No More Teaching of 'Critical Thinking Skills' in Texas Public Schools" Let me repeat that by reading this second quote that is in this article: “The Republican Party of Texas has issued their 2012 political platform and has come out and blatantly opposed critical thinking in public schools throughout the state.” I’m not going to say a thing about this. You know, there are some things that happen in this great country of ours that simply transcend commentary.

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4. Did you know that ?"researchers at Princeton found that higher household incomes were associated with better moods on a daily basis — but the beneficial effects of money tapered off entirely after the $75,000 mark." Well, I would think so. That's more than twice what we get so I have to wonder how anyone could spend $75,000 a year. Ok, I could spend $75,000 the first couple of years because I’d pay off my mortgage, have the house insulated and buy an electric car, but after you have everything you want, how are you going to spend $75,000 a year? I suppose you could then afford to help poor people or put it in the bank and save it. Even if 20 % of that $75,000 a year went for taxes, you'd be rich. That would leave you with over $1,000 a week. And only one week a month would go for a mortgage payment. But I suppose that most people my age aren't making a $789 a month house payment. But most people my age haven't borrowed $100,000 on their home to buy woodland to save it from "development." We live in poverty today that I might leave a gift of wild forest land to the descendants of my present neighbors. So even though we don’t get $75,000 a year to squander, because we feel we’re doing something for future generations it is obviously not our income that gives us a better mood on a daily basis.

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5. Nice looking young woman was in here at our breakfast table the other day. She and her husband go south and live on their boat whenever it gets too cold in Maine to sleep with a window open. She said, “I was talking with this man at a party one time and he said, ‘You’re a boater.’ Of course anyone who lives on a boat for three or four months at a time usually has a certain look about them so most anyone could tell that I either lived on a boat or had been recently rescued by Sherpas after lying in an ice crevice on Mt. Everest for a week. So I said to this man, ‘Is it my windblown look? And he said, ‘No, you have bruises on your arms.’”

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6. You might not believe this, but it is true. More people lose money in casinos than win money in casinos. I can’t remember the exact percentage but it might be that the house is guaranteed four cents on every dollar stuffed in a machine or dropped on a table. In other words, it wouldn’t matter if you went into a casino with one dollar or a million dollars. If you stayed in the casino long enough, every cent of it would eventually be gone. Because a lot of tax money in a town goes to maintain a casino’s environment --- roads and social services ---, a casino also siphons money out of every town or state where the casino is located. So a casino is no more than an effective device that takes money from its patrons as well as the town or state where it is located. We see that there are billionaires who got that way by owning casinos. Yet, in every casino ad one sees on television it shows someone screaming and throwing their hands in the air in ecstasy as money from the skies falls about their ears. So I seem to be missing something here. How can any taxpayer be in favor of a casino in his state? And why would anyone want to bother to visit a casino when the same results could be achieved by taking money from a pocket and setting it on fire? Please tell me what it is about casinos that I don’t understand.

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7. Please listen to this quote that appeared on my web page: "Click 'like' to join 1,000,000 activists fighting against the Republican cult of stupidity" Yes, this quote appeared on my web page along with a picture of Sarah Palin. This supercilious comment is misleading because it doesn’t differentiate between stupidity and greed. Or stupidity and ignorance. How can you call people stupid when they can determine that the only laws which get passed in Washington are those that pad their already bloated pockets with cash? How can you call GWB and LePage stupid when at the end of every day their rich friends are so much richer and the poor are so much poorer? These people are extremely clever. How can you call people stupid when they can get millions of people to forget that GWB brought the world's economy to its knees with his wars and removal of financial regulations? Blaming Obama for the present recession would be like blaming Roosevelt for Hoover's depression but they are clever enough to do it every day and many people believe it. Could a stupid person get millions of people to believe that red ink is black ink? Wouldn’t you say that anyone who can get millions of people to forget what they read in the newspaper three years ago is not stupid but exceptionally clever? Are greedy me-first super-rich people stupid when they are able to get the poorest people in the country to vote against their own economic interests again and again? Are people stupid when they can get millions of poor people to vote on the basis of religion or "freedom" or sexual orientation which don't cost the rich Republicans a cent? I think not. If anyone is stupid in this country it is the "educated" liberals who stand by while the Republican gimme machine sucks the entire world dry. Liberals not only have not one single idea of how to put a stop to it but can’t even bring 50 percent of the people in this country to realize that it’s happening.

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8. One morning I heard that an entire Maine community is coming out to support a woman soldier who was wounded in the war. It made me wonder what kind of a disability pension soldiers get when they return with no legs or a mind that is no longer functional. You might ask why the community should be expected to support a good neighbor who got blown apart in the service of corporate America. Well, isn't support from the community just another one of the wonderful things that we take for granted as free Americans? I remember a letter from Dr. Jerry in which he said that his children, who have moved to Europe, would find it strange to hear that Americans have public suppers to raise money for their jobless friends and neighbors who have lost their homes --- or their legs while in "service to their country." Yes, you and I know that there are some countries where people do not lose their homes to the banks when they get sick and can't work or are blown to pieces. These are the countries where taxpayer money goes for education and repairing roads and railroad trains instead of guns and rockets. But what these ignorant Northern Europeans don't realize while they're down in Spain with their families for a month of vacation, is that they are slaves to their nanny state while jobless Americans who lose their jobs and homes are as free as feral cats.

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9. Have you ever heard of Agenda 21? I’d never heard of Agenda 21 until recently, so my eyes opened wide when I saw that Agenda 21 has a long-term objective of enabling all people to achieve sustainable livelihoods. For years you’ve heard whispers of an international conspiracy --- and in your mind you could see bewhiskered princes, their Bugattis parked in oak shaded groves by secret moldy castles. You could clearly see them drinking chilled wine from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti while they determined the future of mankind. How disappointing to discover today that the worst you can say of these Agenda 21 conspirators is that they are no more than an altruistic bunch of social workers who are trying to help poor people achieve sustainable livelihoods. But I’ll bet talk radio could make something sinister out of it.

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10. If you’ve been listening to this show since I started making it for you in 1978, by now you know I practice my language skills by reading Harlequin Romances in 7 or 8 languages. I read Harlequin Romances because they are written for people who read on the 6th grade level. It would take me many years to learn how to read Moliere or Thomas Mann in the original, so because I don’t have that much time, I do the best I can with the rather limited intellectual ability I have to work with. One bright summer day while out seeking enlightenment, I went into a bookstore in Camden just in time to see a man buy a book written in Greek. It reminded me of something and I said to this man, “Not many people around here who can read Greek. But this morning when I got out of bed I noticed on the little stand beside my bed a book in Swedish, a book in Spanish, a book in Dutch and a book in French.” The man said, “My word --- who were you sleeping with?”

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11. “Nowadays some kids seem to be sick all the time,” Gramp Wiley shouted as he pounded his fist on the arm of his rocker. “I’m not saying we don’t need those million dollar life-saving machines, but there’s a lot to be said for the good old-time medicine. Back when I was fifteen, before I’d go for a buggy ride with a girl, my mother always gave me a spoonful of lemon juice and molasses mixed with chopped onions. And you know --- I never caught anything.”

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