This caught my attention on the nightly news a few days ago but I wasn’t sure I got the facts correct. The news item had to do with fast-food restaurants and how they are doing with no dine-in business.
If you’ve ever tried to get down Jefferson Street in Greenfield at any rush hour you know that McDonald’s drive-thru window may be the
The thing today, especially with the virus threatening our ever move, is home delivery of groceries and the pick and click services offered by chains like Walmart and Kroger’s.
We’ve successfully completed a click and pick at Kroger’s and just submitted another. We had to wait several days for our turn and didn’t get all we ordered. But the pickup was clean, safe, and quick. I pulled into the appropriate parking space, an attendant asked through the window for my name, and in a few minutes, they returned from the building with our order, which they quickly and neatly placed in the back of the mini-van.
Before now there’s only been one time in my life where I felt comfortable telling anyone anything about football. I have never been a hardcore sports fan and much of what little I know I acquired by osmosis from teaching and drinking beer with high school coaches.
In 2012, however, I was in NYC waiting for my daughter and granddaughter to shop themselves out and I took refuge in a corner tavern. Sitting at the bar a couple of stools away from a young woman the Saturday college football game was on the nearby wide-screen TV. Something happened in the game that she didn’t understand and she turned to me for an answer. Luckily it was something I knew something about and with that and a little bullshit, I came away with her thinking I was an expert.
Continue reading Just In Time For The Super Bowl, Let Me Tell You Something About Football
I’ve never eaten in an In-N-Out burger joint but frequently hear others raving about how good their food is. Anthony Bourdain once said that he never left Los Angeles without stopping for at an In-N-Out on the way to the airport.
While surfing around YouTube I came across the video below and in watching it a lot of my last two years of college were brought to mind. During most of that time, I was a swing manager at a McDonald’s in Whittier, CA. The restaurant was a corporate-owned store and that’s where I learned that the real name of McDonald’s was Franchise Realty Corporation with offices in downtown LA.
Everyone should know that the costs of pharmaceutical medicines in America are out of control. I’ve used this example several times and it is nothing special, just what millions of Americans experience every time they go to the drug store. A friend found himself suddenly facing a needed life-altering drug that runs him over $1,900 a month.
While I don’t know any of the manufacturer’s arguments for that drug costing so much I can easily assume, and likely be correct, that a degree of excessive profiteering is somewhere in the formula.
Continue reading What You Must Know About Your Medicine’s Cost
As the old radio news reporter, Gabriel Heatter used to say, “There’s good news tonight.” Just as fast as things went bad for Lordstown, OH, things suddenly got brighter. General Motors has announced it is joining with the Sout Korean company LG to build a new lithium battery factory in Lordstown to pave the way for the companies near future plans for Electric Vehicles (EVs).
While it will take a while the joint effort plans to hire 1,100 new workers but GM refused to address whether any of these would be rehired from the 1,600 laid-off workers from the closure of their auto manufacturing plant in that city.
According to the Wall Street Journal, there are now over 234,000 women truck drivers in America and the number is growing. While women few than 10 percent of truckers are women there doesn’t seem to exist any disparity of pay between men and women drivers.
It might be noted, however, that the trucking industry is currently witnessing a growing number of layoffs. Long ago the industry became a prime indicator of economic health. Full employment in the trucking industry indicates that people are spending their money, factories are operating at capacity, and the cash registers at retail shops are ka-chinging!
I don’t know how long it’s been since any of you have been down these roads but here’s your chance to see what things look like today.
I was headed to the Amish surplus food store on Duff Road and like so often, I opted for the more scenic and less traveled backroads.
This trip began at the west edge of Greenfield and proceeded to Centerfield Road, Bridges Road, SR 771, Small Road, and finally, Duff Road.
By the way, if you’re looking for a great way to stretch your food budget you may want to visit the Dent & Bent on Duff Road. They have an ever-changing inventory of foods that are nearing their “best used by” dates. They’re open daily except for Thursday and Sunday.
Enjoy the ride!
For as long as there has been an American “war on drugs” the nation of Columbia has been a target. Sitting at the top of South America, Columbia has been a major supplier of illegal marijuana and cocaine for decades. Arguably, no one knows more about growing pot and coke than Columbia.
Well, according to National Public Radio Columbia is putting all this experience into legal business opportunities, supplying the world’s needs for medical marijuana. NPR says:
“Colombia is on track to become a medical marijuana powerhouse. The South American country now has more than two dozen legal cannabis companies that have invested more than $600 million in building new facilities. The government legalized medical marijuana in 2016 and the country now exports products to Canada and the U.K.”
Do you ever wonder when wealth becomes, obscene wealth? Well, consider this.
“$70,000 per minute. According to Bloomberg, that’s how much money the Walmart-owning Walton family has made in the year since Bloomberg’s previous list of the world’s richest families. The Waltons top that list this year, with wealth of $190.5 billion. The Mars, Koch, Al Saud, and Wertheimer (of the Chanel fashion house) families round out a top five. The 25 richest families in the world
Continue reading The Waltons. No, Not John Boy, The Other Waltons!
Since Dayton and El Paso, there’s been lots of talk about placing pressure on the CEOs and shareholders of big box stores, like Walmart, Cabellas, Bass Pro and others to change their gun policies. So far there doesn’t seem to be any mad rush to comply and just this morning it was reported that the CEO of Walmart said that they would not be changing their current procedures. The same newspaper article reported this:
Reality check: Smaller gun shops and gun shows make up a much larger piece of the vendor pie than big retailers do, and a lot of transactions take place in cash.
Continue reading It’s As Easy To Buy A Gun As To Fall In Love
I was coming home from Wilmington recently and came upon David’s Drive, a newer road that leads over to the north side of Wilmington Air Park. So, I turned right to see what I could see.
Once the road reaches the airpark it takes a hard right and parallels the facility for some distance. The first thing that caught my eye was a large plane sporting the words Prime Air sitting beside a large building bearing a number of Amazon phallic trademarks (Yeah, you’ve seen those boxes and thought the same thing, haven’t you?).
House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, is trying to call the opposition to Trump’s racist and misogynistic statements the work of communists who are against freedom. What a crock! All my adult life I’ve known that the average American couldn’t write a textbook definition of communism. They also struggle with defining socialism.
Communism, as the world has known it is an authoritarian, totalitarian form of government that has, in fact, stripped its inhabitants of their freedom. North Korea and China are communists countries, as is Cuba. Communism is supposed to be an economic system in which the nation’s wealth is distributed equally amongst its citizens. Well, it never was successful at that and instead became just another way to suppress the freedoms and rights of people while the rulers lived high on the hog.
Continue reading Crying Communist Plays to the Ignorance of the People
Continue reading Tanks, Cars, SUVs, Robots, and Steam Drills
A fellow I know solicited input on Facebook about area builders who do pole barns. Several suggested contractors were named and I suggested a local Amish contractor who I know to be hardworking, honest, and dependable.
The very next response was from a person claiming that, “the amish [sic] charge double of what anyone else would. And the money you pay them doesnt [sic] go back into our infrustructure [sic]. So keep that in mind when you hit a pothole on your way to work.” The next post after that was, “…sometimes they are cheaper because alot [sic] of them have 10-12 year old working and they don’t pay workers comp insurance or into social security. And they fill up the waiting rooms everywhere they are offering free health services eye exams or dental care.”
Several things immediately came to mind. First, neither have mastered basic punctuation, spelling, and the rules for capitalization. Secondly, both are obviously prejudiced and biased against the Amish and I’ll assume the Mennonites as well. And lastly, they are both just plain ignorant of reality.
Continue reading Amish Reality; There’s Just No Shortage of Ignorance
