No more waiting

 

     Many days during the Trump administration I would come back into the house after running and turn on Morning Joe on MSNBC and hope to see that Trump had been brought to justice for the crimes he has been committing through much of his adult life.  Needless to say every morning I was disappointed that even with the craziness he caused as President he seemed to always be given a pass for his actions.  So now we at least get to see him have to defend some of his criminal actions even if the outcome of a trial is hard to predict.

      Not surprisingly Republican elected officials have to act outraged that one of their party is now being held accountable for having sex with a porn star and paying her off to keep quiet to cover it up while running for president.   The Republican party has been so corrupted by Trump that criminal acts are explained away as a political witch hunt.  Do you really think the Democrats would be doing the same thing with one of their candidates?  They made Sen. Al Frankin resign for a picture of him reaching toward a sleeping woman as a gag.  Making someone with criminal baggage has corrupted your party in ways that we see every day (i.e. George Santos).

     So it will be interesting to see how this trial and others coming up will be held while Trump is running for President.  Will he have to spend time in a courthouse rather than be on the campaign trail? Will he not attend his trials so that he can campaign?  Will the trials be postponed until after the election?  It should be an interesting year.  And we thought Watergate was a once-in-a-lifetime event. I may have to go back to listening to Morning Joe.

P.S.

       The overt racism that exists in the Republican party is displayed so often with the targeting of anyone African American but their antisemitism is currently shown with how often they reference George Soros.   This use of Soros is code for their antisemitism. 

P.S. 1

Next Tuesday??? Trump's version of a "Bronco chase."

i'm woke, you're woke, we all are "WOKE"

 

     It seems that often the loudest voices are the ones that are trying to divide people into different groups.  They do it to benefit themselves and not to enlighten us.  The need to identify enemies is a sign of personal weakness and prejudice.

    When I hear someone use the term "woke" I want to ask them what woke means.  They probably don't realize what it really means.  Webster defines it as "aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice"  To use the word in a pejorative manner just shows your comfortableness with your own prejudices.  It also shows that you are angry that the modern norms are moving away from a past time when discrimination against certain groups was accepted by the broader society.  Those norms are being challenged because of our changing demographics and we now hear the screaming from those who see the change as them losing their privileged position.  

    The next time you hear someone using the word ask them to define it and bring the discussion around to why they are uncomfortable with our changing world and ask when they want to go back to a world where prejudice was accepted as the way the world works.

The silver lining of the pandemic

     

     The pandemic gave us an opportunity to slow down and re-examine our "work-life" existence.  Even for those of us that are "retired" our over-scheduled daily life suddenly stopped in many ways. Even casual trips to the grocery store pushed us to trying Instacart.  Group meetings shifted to the newly discovered Zoom.   Closed libraries caused us to use online e-books.  Some of these changes have returned to pre-pandemic patterns and others have become permanent changes.

      No where has these changes impacted our world than with how people choose to work.  Having been given the opportunity to dramatically and suddenly change the work-life balance, employees have been given the flexibility work from home in a way that didn't exist before the pandemic.  Having an extra amount of time to have breakfast and read the news rather than fighting traffic for 30 or 60 minutes each morning became wonderful.  To say nothing of not paying for gas and parking.   Business attire was replaced with working in pajamas.

      In moving from 2020 to 2023 we are experiencing the business world thinking that employees are willing to return to a pre-pandemic work world and are experiencing the employee push back.  This is taking two forms.  One is the compromise of flex time with in office work only being 2-3 days a week with the other days still being work from home.  The second is the reality that employees are only looking at working for companies that permit complete work from home.  This type of work allows employees to live wherever they like and are not tied to living in an expensive city where their emplorer is located.  The online technology is constantly developing to make work from home increasingly possible for more professions.  Just stop and think how many things you have to go to a place to transact something that you now do online.  When was the last time you went into a bank to do a bank transaction?  When did you last mail a check to pay a bill?  To say nothing about going online at 1 am to buy something online instead of driving 10 miles to a store the next day.

      The pandemic changed the world expondentially and those employers who don't recognize this reality will go the way that businesses that didn't change with the times have always gone---DOWN.  Think how the digital world destroyed Kodak and Blockbuster who got stuck in an outdated reality.

How to get light and airy pizza crust

    

 One of the ways to judge a good pizza crust is how light and airy it is.  The secret to this type of crust is how you inject air into the crust by kneading the dough.  This video shows how to do this.

Twelve years in on this blog---maybe a time to change

    Today marks 12 years since I have written this blog.  The average blogger I am sure quits much sooner than 12 years.  The bloggers I met when I started writing this blog stopped years ago.

     I started writing this blog to reconnect with Howard County events.  After working in the County for 26 years I had spent 10 years working outside of the County and saw this blog as an attempt to reconnect with what is happening locally.   The blog connected me in so many ways and has brought me 2 new jobs during that time.

    I thought of grouping 3 of my interests and calling the blog "Politics, Pickleball, and Pizza" but that seemed too scattered.  After some thought, I decided to increasingly focus on pizza.  Anyone who knows me knows my passion for pizza.  The perfect food except if you are trying to lose weight.  A guilty pleasure if you eat it only once a week and diet the rest of the week.

     I will focus on making the perfect pizza, unusual pizzas, and probably reviews of local pizza places even though my favorite pizzas are the ones I make.