It’s a Friday in the Realm, and I am here in my Hunker-Bunker at 0500 Pacific working my fingers to the bone to provide you the headlines that caught my eye, seasoned by my stupid commentary as a chaser.  I had to go far and wide this morning to find something that didn’t provoke a “meh’ in me.

First, the Headlines that Caught My Eye This Morning:

1.  U.S. GDP grew at a 4.9% annual pace in the third quarter

2.  Israel’s Army Is Ready to Invade Gaza. Its Divided Government May Not Be.

3.  Grandson of ‘Dear Abby’ to Take on Biden in Primary

4.  Court Rules on Law Requiring Sterilization for Gender Change

5.  Iran’s foreign minister: Armed groups are poised with ‘their finger on the trigger’

6.  A federal judge says Georgia’s political maps must be redrawn for the 2024 election

7.

Not much to work with here…  could one of you go out and do something to make some news?

Next, My Stupid Commentary Based Solely On the Headlines:

Remember, I haven’t actually read the articles attached to the headlines.  I may have heard the story on the radio

, but other than that, I am just winging it here.  I could be totally correct, or spectacularly wrong.  That’s the fun here.

1.  “Unexpected” GDP Growth.  From my personal POV, this past fiscal year was making up for the previous two years of a shrunk economy.  This past quarter was phenomenal in the hospitality industry here in Seattle.

Did Joe Biden do that?  No, of course not.  It’s fun to claim it, but that wouldn’t make it so.  He neither promoted the growth nor stood in its way.   I said this during the Bush administration, the Obama administration, the Trump administration and I am repeating it again now:  current administrations have very little to do with the performance of the immediate economy.  It usually takes 4-8 years for the policies of an administration to effect the economy.  It’s only the unexpected disasters that will immediately effect the economy.  Like a global pandemic shutting down the global supply and trade.

2.  Israel will go when Israel is ready.  The longer they wait, the more Hamas burns through the fuel they use to provide ventilation in their ‘underground city’ of tunnels.  THIS is the goal of Israel:  go after the tunnels to eradicate Hamas.  Then, they have to figure out a way to prevent them from digging more tunnels after this is over.  One idea I heard was to drill a series of tunnels from the sea  running vertical across the width of Gaza.  Any attempt to tunnel would cause that tunnel to flood.

As much as Israel would love to completely obliterate Hamas, they cannot do it without killing tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians, which would cause an escalation in the war, and the loss of support of many of Israel’s current allies.  It is also sure to draw the US into the conflict.

Talk about red-headed step-children, the Palestinians are the one group in the entire world that NOBODY wants.  For all the rhetoric among all the Arab nations over the past 70+ years, there isn’t a one of them who want to take the Palestinian people in as their own.  Israel can’t even GIVE the Gaza strip to Egypt as long as there are Palestinians on it.

3.  I would be happy to see an organized slate of challengers to Biden.  But some guy nobody has heard of?

If the 2024 presidential ticket was Biden v. Trump, then I’d vote for Biden, just like 60 percent of the population who do not want to see Trump as president ever again.  But if it were Biden v. Anyone Else?  I’d have to give the “Anyone Else” a good, hard look.  It would be a hard “NO” on RFK Jr. or DeSantis, but Haley…?  Scott?  Someone young, without baggage,  and well, normal?

I like Biden because he isn’t doing anything.  Oh, he does manage to gargle out a few statements that will rile some people looking for things to be riled about, but if you actually see what it is that BIDEN is doing, it’s really not all that much.  Biden could take a nap from 0900-1100 and again from 1300-1500 and nobody would notice.  It’s because Biden is actually acting “presidential”.  He’s delegated all of his work to his cabinet, which is what an effective executive does:  delegate.  The bad executives don’t delegate, and they try to do everything themselves, up front, to gain ALL of the ‘credit’.  Those types of executives usually end up with all the blame in the end.

I have a confession:  I have never sat down and listened to Joe Biden address anyone since he’s become president.  He might as well be speaking Klingon — it doesn’t matter to me.  It’s all rhetoric.  I’m more interested in what he is doing or not doing.  More importantly, what is he doing or not doing that is effecting MY life personally.  Right now?  I’m good.  There is no such thing as “utopia”, so “the promise of a better future” is just a slogan.  We make our own happiness, not some elected clown.

4.  Japan wanted to sterilize transsexuals?  Gender reassignment surgery does that by default.  There is no going back from that.

5.  Iran is being bombastic.  But they do have to be very careful and not actually cause more of the groups they finance and supply to fly off the handle and enter the fray.  Iran has a lot more to lose than they can ever gain.

6.  Georgia, like Alabama, aren’t drawing political maps as much as they are trying to reduce the influence of their black populations.  A politically-drawn district is like the one that Gym Jordan represents.  Apparently that’s considered ‘constitutional’.

7.

What I’ve been streaming:

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmHiSRUp_cE[/embedyt]

The show centers on Alec Mercer, a world-renowned professor of behavioral psychology with a unique insight into human nature. Mercer lends his expertise to an array of high-stakes cases involving governments, corporations, and law enforcement. However, he meets his match in a female domestic terror suspect who turns his world upside down.

From the Meme box: