I had errands so I missed the hearing. I recorded it, but had missed the opening statement so I was watching the re-play. I don't know if it is just my TV, but the audio is terrible, it cuts out every 5 seconds while Durbin is giving his opening statement. It makes it un-watchable.

I can't help but wonder if it is purposely, (Durbin is talking about our long history of Slavery). C-SPAN seems to favor the right wing these days.

Now, I can barely stand it.

What I like about it: Neutral Moderators, and hearing the Voices of Americans

Lately, I find myself yelling at the callers for being so ignorant/stupid. So many Americans just don't have the ability to think clearly. OK, that is putting it nicely.

Fucking Morons
(seem to have no idea how serious the threat of nuclear war between Russia and the US would be)

I mean, it could be the end of life as we know it. Use your brains, morons.

Asking for a friend....

This friend of mine has had such an interesting life, but he finds himself now, in his late 60's, busking for dollars playing the Blues in Balboa Park in San Diego these days to help pay his rent.

What a Life this man has had. I knew him as Jim Wood of the Honolulu Doggs back in the 70's-80's. This man was a Rock God, hair down to his waist (his brother was in the band too, they all had loooooong hair) He can sing the Blues and play the harmonica like you wouldn't believe. He legally changed his name and now goes by Saint James Harris Wood. I still call him Jim.

So after the death of the Honolulu Doggs (how I would love to hear that band play together again.... I was kind of a groupie at the time, but it was my gal friends who slept with the band members, I kind of stayed off to the side at that time) he later moved to the mainland and got interested in Punk, and other crazyness of the rock music scene back in the day, and then, as so many musicians of the time, he got involved with drugs. Bigtime.

I had lost track of the band and had moved to the mainland myself when I was around 19. I'm 60 now. Only in the last year had he resurfaced on facebook and I found out what he had been up to all those years.

He robbed a bank (with a toy gun)! Got caught, and then spent the next 18 years in jail. 18 Years! I can't imagine losing my life like that. That is probably why I would never even contemplate robbing a bank.

When he was in prison, he became a writer, and he wrote prolifically! and in my opinion he is very good. I am an IT Tech, and have great computer skills, so I am now helping him put a bunch of short stories together to put out a book. (I hope he makes a lot of money from it)

He is a very entertaining person to talk to, he is very funny, and has an interesting outlook on life. I probably wouldn't recognize him, his beautiful waist-long hair is long gone.

But he can still sing! and play the blues harp. I still get chills when I've heard recent recordings. I just want to help him out in any way that I can. He tends to blow out his harmonicas (they don't make them like they used to), and so I just bought him (via amazon) a set of 5 new blues harmonicas. He got them today, and so he said he is definitely going to be in Balboa Park later today to play. He plays there often. Always on the weekends, and if he is needing money, week days as well.

So if you ever hear a Blues busker, in Balboa Park playing guitar, harmonica, and some kind of drumming thing with his feet I think, take the time to listen, or talk to him. He is a very interesting person, I bet he will have you laughing in no time. Give him a dollar if you can. He served his time, and had a rough adult hood, and, he is really really very good.

Tell him the gal (from Napa) that bought him harmonicas sent you (he wouldn't know the name Nictuku).

He is a good guy. He will always be a Rock N Roll God in my book.

Long Live Rock N Roll!

This video below is an example of why I love this guy "Pierogi" so much. He is so much more than a scam-baiter (People who call up scammers to waste their time so they don't scam others). He is much more about getting as much information to help the victims of these scammers. I started watching his videos a while back and I'm pretty much hooked. He is a Hero (a blue-haired Hero) in my book. I get so angry knowing that thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of elderly people in the United States are being scammed like this. Help your elderly relatives. Have them watch some of the videos to learn about these scammers. Or tell them to never (ever) respond to an unsolicited call or email. Verify the information by looking up the number on the back of your card, or from a bill, or the official web site. Sadly, even googling for info is no longer safe, the scammers pay for google ads so their scam sites come up when you do a search. I'm in IT, and I can recognize these sorts of things, but I think it is too much for our elderly. We just have to do whatever we can to help protect them. I would like to see some way that this can be stopped, but there is so much corruption in India, where many of these call centers are. Money talks there, and they pay off the police to protect the call centers. One of the largest call centers has 550 employees! Can you imagine how many people they are scamming a day? A month? A year?

Anyway, back to my hero where a victim is helped, and she tells her story. Check out his other videos (be careful, you might get hooked like I am. I watch his live streams on Twitch whenever possible)

Euphoria (Series on Netflix - Wrong, it is on HBO Max! sorry about that) has got my stomach all tied up in knots.

I know it has been around for a while, but I've not watched it before. The description about teenagers dealing with what life has to deal them just didn't really interest me, but a friend of mine mentioned she liked it and so I thought I would give it a try. (I'm usually more of a Sci-Fi fan)

I'm a 60 year old Woman. I grew up in a totally different time. Yeah, in the 70's and 80's, (sex, drugs, and rock N roll) I was considered quite a wild child. I mean, I was a teenager, in Hawaii. We had our friends, we went cruizing, we went out the window at night and went skinny dipping, and I won't even get into the drugs of the 70's and 80's), and of course there was sex and peer pressure. But there was no social media.

It was nothing like what our teens have to deal with today. We did not face the intense kind of peer pressure our teenagers of today face. I just can't.... imagine... how I would feel as a teenager today. I would probably commit suicide if I was. My heart is breaking for the next generation.

It is brutal out there. Other kids are so mean. Yeah, they were mean back in my day, but we didn't have all this social media to deal with, and there was a big Peace and Love movement still going on.

I'm only on episode 3 of this series. I'm not sure I can make it through more. It is just so disturbing, so heartbreaking. These young people don't stand a chance. What is the next generation going to be like?

Do I sound like an old lady screaming 'Get off of My Lawn'! I hope not. I know every generation is considered to be reckless and out of control by the elders.

I consider myself fairly open minded. But if what I am seeing in this series is anything like reality for the teens of today, it just wrecks me. I don't know how they cope.

I think this series is useful, to bring to light what all is going on, maybe start up some conversations (like this post). Much of it is the same (Girls are either Whores or Prudes in this series is not much different than girls are either Good Girls or Bad Girls, as my grandmother would say).

I think it is useful that it might open the eyes of some of the older people like me, to help realize what the youth of today's America faces. (So we can help them). I don't want to see the series banned or anything, but I also hope they are not just making money off of sexualizing teens. Not all boys are so disgusting, not all girls are either. But these kids in this series freak me out. So ... callous, hateful, hard, empty, loveless, confused.

I don't know what the point of this post is. Just curious to see what anyone else might feel about it. (and I'm glad that I don't have any teenagers, I would want to take their phones away and keep them protected from all this garbage (which I know is wrong), and would probably yell at them, not to stay off of my lawn, but to put the god damn phone down).

-sadness

.... I wonder why this has fallen by the wayside in the MSM?