Weekend Senior moments

 An elderly Floridian called 911 on his cell phone to report that his car has been broken into.

He is hysterical as he explains his situation to the dispatcher "They've stolen the stereo, the steering wheel, the brake pedal and even the accelerator!" he cried.

The dispatcher said, "Stay calm... An officer is on the way." 

A few minutes later, the officer radios in "Disregard." he says "He got in the back-seat by mistake."
TELL ME THIS WON'T HAPPEN TO ME!

 As a senior citizen was driving down the freeway, his car phone rang.

Answering, he heard his wife's voice urgently warning him, 'Herman, I just
heard on the news that there's a car going the wrong way on Interstate 77.
Please be careful!'
'Heck,' said Herman, 'It's not just one car. It's hundreds of them!'

TELL ME THIS WON'T HAPPEN TO ME!

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me

    After watching the Senate trial yesterday I thought of the saying in the heading as the way the House impeachment managers should close their case.  To all those Republican senators who thought the first impeachment would teach Trump a lesson have to now realize that this time their vote not to convict is on them.  When they don't draw a line on insurrection as being a case to convict a president they are undermining democracy with a peaceful transfer of power in this country.  Every senator who doesn't vote to convict is saying that their political alliance with the Republican party is stronger than their alliance with our democratic form of government.  They can all wear their lapel US flag pins and stand for the national anthem but we will know how phony they are in their allegiance to what our country represents. Shame on them this time as this vote is on them.   Those Republican senators should have their names going down in history alongside the leaders of the Confederacy from the 19th century.

P.S.

    New lapel pin for Republican senators

P.S. 1

   George W. Bush getting the saying all mixed up!

P.S. 2

     It will be interesting to see how Republican Senators such as McConnell, Shelby, Grassley and Inhofe who all voted to convict Bill Clinton for lying about having sex with an intern vote.  This time they will vote about when a president tried to overthrow our democratic form of government. Don't be surprised if they feel that lying is more of a crime than insurrection. 

Maryland Vaccine Hunters

    

      The frustration of the system for vaccine signups in Maryland is shared by everyone who doesn't fall easily into one of the designated priority groups like health care providers or teachers.  Right now Howard County is not scheduling anyone in the 1c category and there are many in the 1b group that are not getting appointments.  School personnel seems to be the priority right now in our County.  If you are in the 1b or 1c categories I have some suggestions that might be more successful with the pharmacy sign-ups.  Set up accounts with all the pharmacies in Maryland that schedule appointments.  This includes Walgreens, Rite Aid, CVS, Safeway, and Giant.  This will get you to an appointment faster when the appointments become available.  The appointments go fast so you don't want to have to set the accounts up when you learn there are appointments.  It is frustrating not knowing when appointments are available and have to refresh the webpages at all hours of the day.  Monday mornings are the best time around 7-8 am but any morning during that time period is best.

     Here is a Facebook group that makes the monitoring for an appointment easier.  It is called Maryland Vaccine Hunters and it has over 1,800 followers.  When one person finds a pharmacy with appointments they post the information on this page.  I have been tracking this page for a couple of days and it is not unusual to see 20-30 people get an appointment after something is posted on the page.  Yesterday it was the Walgreens pharmacies that people had success with but it can change each day.  The information now is that CVS will start posting appointments on Thursday morning.  Checking the Maryland Vaccine Hunters page each morning starting around 7 am until 9 am can give you the jump on the appointments that go quick.  The websites get overwhelmed quickly and it is not unusual that being too late will get you an error message.  That is a sign of an overwhelmed site.  The pharmacies don't seem to have made their web portals equipped with the capability to be flooded with people trying to access them all at once.

    Feel free to share this post with others looking for an appointment.  Let's hope new vaccines get approved quickly so this shell game of a system can be retired.

Bumbling and incoherent Trump defense

    After hearing a powerful case presented by the House members prosecuting the case against Trump and Rep. Raskin's summary, we saw an incompetent defense of Trump's 3rd rate defense team.  You knew it would be bad when the first defense lawyer mistakenly started by saying he was there as a prosecutor.  He had to quickly correct himself to say he was there as a defense attorney.  I don't blame him for not wanting to defend Trump.  The second defender of Trump today had trembling hands and kept drinking water for his dry mouth.  His impassioned talk was incomprehensible in what point he was trying to make and ended with him tearfully reading a Lincoln poem about our ship of state that had no relevance to the case he was making.  At least a defense attorney for a mass murder would have an insanity defense to explain why their client shouldn't be convicted but all Trump let his attorneys use was that he was no longer President.  After that 44 Republican senators still voted that the trial should not proceed.  Would they have still voted that way if the rioters had got to Pense?

The trial of "The Donald"

    

   As the trial of Donald Trump begins today we should all realize what will be played out.  What will happen in the Senate today reminds me of what it would be like if a bank robber had a jury trial made up of one half bank robbers. I am sure that the bank robbers on the jury would vote to not convict their fellow bank robber because he was no longer in the bank pointing his gun at the tellers. Of course, this was the trial situation because the fellow bank robbers held off the police entering the bank until the bank robber finished and came out of the bank. If inciting a riot to overthrow a legitimate election isn't grounds for conviction of impeachment then there are no grounds for removing a president constitutionally unless your party has a 2/3 majority.   This "trial" will not be decided by the merits of the evidence presented but by the political calculations of Republican senators and their fears of being primaried for voting for conviction.  For Democrat senators, the political calculations align with the facts of the case.

P.S.

   We never knew to what extent the Trumps would go to get revenge when they left the White House but we never thought that Meliana would steal the White House shower curtains for a going-away dress!!!

P.S.1

   For anyone interested in the trial of "The Other Donald" here it is.