AT&T Persecutes Its Own Retired Employees -- Breach Fatigue -- Couch Potato Congress

The former programmer and human-resources worker is among potentially hundreds of ex-employees whom AT&T Inc. has dunned in recent years for what it calls pension “overpayments.” AT&T sometimes has enlisted a collection agency to recover the money, a move retiree advocates, pension lawyers and some former Treasury Department officials call unusual.   WSJ

The biggest corporations are the meanest ones when they

go after little people who they want to force to pay

for bookkeeping kerfuffles that were not the small fry's fault --

these giant corporations all have hearts made of basalt.

Never think an octopus has generosity;

what they give with one hand they take back eventually. 

“We may adjust to this being the ‘new normal,’” he said, adding that “digital natives and younger generations may perceive their personal data — in a distorted sense — to never have been private, so what’s the big deal with it leaking out on the web anyway?”  Experts call this behavior “breach fatigue.”    NYT

I guess my private data isn't private anymore.
It's public as a billboard and I don't feel very sore.
If someone opens up accounts in my name, that's okay;
my credit score is low enough that I won't have to pay.
And if they use my name and pix on dating apps, well then--
if the girl is pretty I can only say 'amen.' 
Someday I'm going off the grid, and then Big Data can
find out all about me only from my used bedpan . . . 

Veteran senators on both sides of the aisle are angry about the decision because it feeds the idea that they just want a long vacation and that Congress is a lazy institution that just needs to work harder.   Washington Post

A Congressman once was so slack
he liked to sleep in and not yak.
He figured the less
he did was success --
and voters kept sending him back.

Ink-Stained Wretches, Begone! -- How Much Money do Street Performers Make? -- Goats Invade Boise!

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — President Trump devoted the majority of his time at a rowdy rally here on Thursday targeting the news media, deriding the reporters present as “fake, fake disgusting news.”   NYT

Have you seen the one trick pony,
giving crowds his thick baloney?
He thinks writers are the cause
of the death of Santa Clause.
Making noise but not much sense,
at least he is not on the fence.
He'll have to eat his words, I fear,
when all the jackals turn and jeer. 

Stuart Markus is a full-time musician with one of the wackiest gigs around. Most summer weekends, he plays for the Maserati and Ferrari crowd at Gas Hampton. The gas station, with its celebrity customers, fancied-up bathroom, live entertainment and colorful mural, is an unofficial gateway to the Hamptons. And it may be the best spot to play for tips in all of Long Island.  WSJ

The street performer works a craft
that many people think is daft;
he stands out in the heat all day
for coins and dollar bills, oy vay!
But I, for one, will never scoff;
at least he cannot be laid off! 

It is Friday. It is summer.

And so, with those disclaimers out of the way, we now bring you a news report about dozens of goats that briefly took over a neighborhood in Boise, and Twitter along with it.   Washington Post  

The news sometimes is very slow,

which makes reporters feel quite low;

they'd rather have a murder scene

or something on the British queen.

Paul Manafort is good for laughs,

and uses lots of paragraphs;

but readers tire very quick

of horses dead beat with a stick.

And so today we get to read

about some goats and their stampede

through Boise streets and lawns and parks --

too bad it couldn't be aardvarks.

Or tigers or a pachyderm . . .

Now that is clickbait, I affirm!

I think it's time to get my Kindle;

the news today was just a swindle. 

Grandpa's Ghost Story

Of the several ghost stories I tell the grand kids from time to time, this is the one they like best:

THE HUNGRY OLD LADY

There once was an old lady who lived by herself in a meadow that was surrounded by deep dark woods. And this old lady was always hungry. She had a barn full of cows and pigs and chickens, and each morning she'd wake up and think to herself "I'm so hungry I could eat a cow!" 

So she'd go out to the barn and kill a cow to cook it all up, hooves, tail, udder, and all. She ate the whole animal in just one day.

When all the cows were gone she woke up one morning and said to herself "I'm so hungry I could eat a pig!" So she went out to the barn and killed a pig to use its blood for sausage and fry the rest of it up for bacon and chitterlings.

When all the pigs were gone she woke up one morning and said to herself  "I'm so hungry I could eat a dozen chickens in one sitting!" And so she went out to the barn and killed a dozen chickens and ate them raw -- feathers and all! She had long brown teeth. 

 But now there was nothing left out in the barn to eat -- not even a mouse. So she went out into the meadow and caught frogs and tadpoles and toads and turtles to cook in a big pot to eat. Soon there weren't any more frogs or tadpoles or toads or turtles left in the meadow. So she went into the deep dark woods to dig for roots. And while she was in the deep dark woods digging for roots she found a big hairy toe. It looked like it had a lot of meat on it, so she snatched it up and put it in her basket and came back home. When she cooked up that big hairy toe it was the most delicious and filling meal she'd ever had! She went to bed that night as happy as a flea on your nose.

But along about midnight a cold dark wind came up and started to blow black and mean. The moon hid its light and all the little animals in the forest went deeper into their holes and nests, because there was a faint voice that came up with that cold black wind, saying:

"Hairy toe! Hairy toe! I want my hairy toe!" 

But that old lady snug in her bed didn't hear a thing -- not at first. She was too comfortable and full of hairy toe stew to hear anything but her own snoring. 

But the wind kept blowing real mean, and the voice got louder:

"Hairy toe! Hairy toe! I want my hairy toe!"

Now the hungry old lady heard the voice at last. It seemed to be coming from the meadow. She pulled the covers up and began to shiver and shake.

Now the voice was at her garden gate:

"Hairy toe!" "Hairy toe!" "I want my hairy toe!"

She heard her garden gate creak open and then shut with a crack.

Clomp. Clomp. Clomp. Something was walking up to her front door! 

But now the old lady relaxed a little. She had locked the door before going to bed, and nothing could get in through that big stout door . . . 

CRASH!

The front door was smashed open and something began coming up the stairs. Clomp. Clomp. Clomp. It was at her bedroom door, breathing real heavy. Oh, that old lady was scared to death now! She pulled the covers clean over her head.

Her bedroom door flew open and that old lady just had to take a peek. It was a gigantic hairy man, with glowing red eyes, standing in the doorway. He said:

"Hairy toe!" "Hairy toe!" "I want my hairy toe!"

The old lady was scared out of her wits, and yelled:

"I ate your hairy toe!'

The giant hairy man with the glowing red eyes screamed back at her:

"I know it!" and ran up to her bed . . . 

The next day all the neighbors round about came tiptoeing over to the hungry old lady's house, to see what all the racket had been about the night before. They found her in the kitchen cooking a stew in the biggest pot they had ever seen. She invited them all to stay and gave them each a bowl of stew. It was the most delicious and filling meal they had ever had . . . 

Сидя на заборе

В последний раз, когда фигура национального известности отказалась рассматривать возможность участия в президентских выборах, еще в 1927 году, когда Кальвин Кулидж лихо сказал журналистам: «Я не хочу бежать». Это была действительно большая новость, потому что старый Silent Cal уже был президентом Соединенные Штаты. С тех пор почти каждая национальная фигура в самых разных областях рассказала прессе, что они не исключают будущей президентской заявки, что они сохраняют свои возможности открытыми. Мэрилендский губернатор Ларри Хоган посетил с журналистами в тот же день, сказав им, что «вы никогда не говорите никогда». Другие недавние политики, которые еще не выбрасывали шляпу на ринг, но явно рассчитывают расстояние, это сенатор Джефф Флек из штата Аризона и губернатор штата Огайо Джон Кашич.

После обширных исследований и интенсивных мечтаний мы придумали следующую низкую оценку на высоких профилировщиках, которые действуют в преддверии президентских выборов в 2020 году:

Джастин Трюдо. Хотя нынешний премьер-министр Канады Трюдо сказал, что хотел бы видеть, что Соединенные Штаты имеют бесплатное всеобщее медицинское обслуживание и неограниченный доступ к poutine.

Элон Муск. Он уже чирикает, как Белый дом, поэтому, возможно, он просто разогревается в ручке Twitter на 2020 год.

Владимир Путин. Так что, если он не американский гражданин и ненавидит демократию? Это не остановило Обаму, не так ли? Когда Путин приходит на свой большой волк с Трампом, он просто может решить остаться в свободной спальне в Белом доме для ночлега - посмотреть, как это выглядит.

V posledniy raz, kogda figura natsional'nogo izvestnosti otkazalas' rassmatrivat' vozmozhnost' uchastiya v prezidentskikh vyborakh, yeshche v 1927 godu, kogda Kal'vin Kulidzh likho skazal zhurnalistam: «YA ne khochu bezhat'». Eto byla deystvitel'no bol'shaya novost', potomu chto staryy Silent Cal uzhe byl prezidentom Soyedinennyye Shtaty. S tekh por pochti kazhdaya natsional'naya figura v samykh raznykh oblastyakh rasskazala presse, chto oni ne isklyuchayut budushchey prezidentskoy zayavki, chto oni sokhranyayut svoi vozmozhnosti otkrytymi. Merilendskiy gubernator Larri Khogan posetil s zhurnalistami v tot zhe den', skazav im, chto «vy nikogda ne govorite nikogda». Drugiye nedavniye politiki, kotoryye yeshche ne vybrasyvali shlyapu na ring, no yavno rasschityvayut rasstoyaniye, eto senator Dzheff Flek iz shtata Arizona i gubernator shtata Ogayo Dzhon Kashich.

Posle obshirnykh issledovaniy i intensivnykh mechtaniy my pridumali sleduyushchuyu nizkuyu otsenku na vysokikh profilirovshchikakh, kotoryye deystvuyut v preddverii prezidentskikh vyborov v 2020 godu:

Dzhastin Tryudo. Khotya nyneshniy prem'yer-ministr Kanady Tryudo skazal, chto khotel by videt', chto Soyedinennyye Shtaty imeyut besplatnoye vseobshcheye meditsinskoye obsluzhivaniye i neogranichennyy dostup k poutine.

Elon Musk. On uzhe chirikayet, kak Belyy dom, poetomu, vozmozhno, on prosto razogrevayetsya v ruchke Twitter na 2020 god.

Vladimir Putin. Tak chto, yesli on ne amerikanskiy grazhdanin i nenavidit demokratiyu? Eto ne ostanovilo Obamu, ne tak li? Kogda Putin prikhodit na svoy bol'shoy volk s Trampom, on prosto mozhet reshit' ostat'sya v svobodnoy spal'ne v Belom dome dlya nochlega - posmotret', kak eto vyglyadit.

Why America hates reporters -- Back-to-School Sale: Bulletproof vests -- America's Pig Feet Stockpile Increases

The baby wearing a “CNN Sucks!” pin pretty much summed it up.
NYT

Reporters had better beware.
We're ready to give them the air.
They only detail
the national fail -- 
and do it with way too much flair.

School administrators consider the likelihood of a shooting real enough that some districts are buying active-shooter insurance.  WSJ

Before my kids go back to class

I'll insure them 'gainst guns and gas.

I'll also invest

in bulletproof vest --

and maybe a helmet of brass.

The cost of pork overall in China has increased 10 percent since May, according to the Agriculture Ministry . . . the price of pig heads, tails and feet in the eastern province of Shandong jumped 7 percent from May to late July, due to American tariffs . . .

Washington Post

Just think of all those poor Chinese

who munched our trotters with such ease

but now because of trade war trials

can no longer show greasy smiles.

Their local swine have too much gristle,

making porkophiles all bristle.

Just think how badly you would feel

if bacon disappeared for real.

The pork barrels that Congress keeps

should go to China in great heaps

so they don't start in eating pumice
and come to take our piggies from us!    

Watching Keeping Up With The Kardashians—the American reality television show that glamorizes wealth, plastic surgery and fame—could make viewers colder towards impoverished people, according to a new study.  Newsweek.

Like, why not send the homeless off to North Dakota, dude.
Cuz hangin' round the shoppin' malls, they always seem so rude.
A beggar always kills the buzz when shopping in SoHo --
their fashion statement is all wrong, and tacky, dontcha know.
When clubbing very heavily I cannot stand the sight
of immigrants in sweatshops who are working overnight.
If poor people got face-lifts that would make things very cool,
and maybe I'd invite them to a party at my pool. 
But otherwise keep them away -- they are depressing, man;
they stand around on beaches and keep me from getting tan! 

Candidates no longer go door to door; they just text you -- Beer is for losers -- QAnon

Welcome to the age of the political mass-text. Candidates in this year’s midterm elections are still sending mailers, putting ads on TV and knocking on doors to drum up support. But they’ve added a new, hard-to-ignore tool to their arsenal: personalized text messages sent to voters’ phones.

NYT

Candidates now are so lagging

that they must do all of their bragging

by texting away

before 'Lection Day --

which leaves voters with their heads wagging.

“Every consumer today drinks on average one bottle of beer less a week than they did 20 years ago,” Heineken’s U.S. CEO, Ronald den Elzen, told an industry conference last year. “If this is not a wake-up call that we have to do something, I don’t know what is.”   WSJ

Alas for the foaming brown brew!

The young folk are saying 'adieu.'

The flavor of hops

to them is just slops -- 

they've all got a fancy corkscrew.

As Will Sommer’s QAnon primer in the Daily Beast put it: “The general story . . . is that every president before Trump was a ‘criminal president’ in league with all the nefarious groups of conspiracy theories past: the global banking elite, death squads operating on orders from Hillary Clinton, deep-state intelligence operatives, and Pizzagate-style pedophile rings. In an effort to break this cabal’s grip, according to Q, the military convinced Trump to run for president.”

Washington Post 

It takes a consenting adult

to join a conspiracy cult;

with minds ill at ease

with more than just sleaze, 

they need a ride on catapult.

An effectual struggle to be made

. . . notwithstanding our many strugglings, which have been in vain; yet I trust there remaineth an effectual struggle to be made.
Mosiah. Chapter Seven. Verse 18.


My struggles are never in vain;
there's purpose behind the sharp pain.
Impurities bled
right out of my head
make room for celestial gain. 

***********************************************************************

Please read my profile in the LDS Deseret News at:  https://bit.ly/2O4rFNU

The Sleepover That Never Happened

It so happened that at the age of seven I was to have my first sleepover -- at my pal Wayne Matsuura's house, across the street from me on 19th Avenue S.E. in Minneapolis.

Wayne and I had been friends ever since my memories began. There never was a time when we weren't pals -- thick as thieves, our mothers described us somewhat sourly. I had to be actively discouraged from hanging around Wayne's house at all hours of the day and night. I would have gladly taken all my meals there; Mrs. Matsuura served rice every night with great lumps of  tangy sauteed meat and vegetables, with sweet pickled daikon on the side. A notoriously picky eater, her cooking seemed to me to be the complete opposite of my mother's bland Midwestern hash from leftovers and tuna casseroles. Looking back, I'm sure I hurt her feelings many a time by baldly asserting that I wished I could eat over at the Matsuura's every day, because Mrs. Matsuura really knew how to cook. Consideration for the feelings of others was never my long suit as a child. It still isn't, sixty years on.

I had angled for a sleepover at Wayne's house for more than a year, throwing out broad hints about how clean and comfortable his basement was -- filled with bean bag chairs, a ping pong table, and a workbench where Wayne fiddled with a crystal set he ordered from Boys Life magazine that promised to bring in the broadcast wonders of India and Patagonia but only managed a scratchy reception of the local U of M student radio station KUOM. He also had a fine and orderly chemistry set, with rows upon rows of crystals and chemicals and gooey liquids and reams of litmus paper -- unlike my own chemistry set, which I had managed to incinerate during a particularly daring experiment with Clorox bleach and powdered manganese.

And there was a chest freezer, too -- chock full of Fudgesicles. I knew better than to aspire to sleeping up in Wayne's bedroom -- we weren't even allowed to play with his chaste Lincoln Logs up there. But the basement, and the Fudgesicles, would do just fine.

Came the day when all my finagling paid off and I was invited to spend Friday night sleeping over in the basement. Puffed up with an unseemly pride, I grandly told my sisters that I would not be taking my ease with them in our shared bedroom that night -- I had made other arrangements. Sue Ellen chose to snigger at my social coup, wounding me deeply by implying my old bedwetting proclivity would probably return to haunt me. Snubbing her completely, I gathered up my bedding and the cheap plastic crucifix that hung above my bed (I was not really religious, but I was deeply superstitious.) Then I marched over to Wayne's house as the sun began to set. 

We spent the evening constructing a robot out of some old cardboard boxes that Mr. Matsuura kept under the basement stairs. Not having anything for legs, we put it on roller skates. Wayne dumped a bundle of loose wires and some spark plugs he got from out in the garage into the trunk of our robot. We tacked yellow rubber gloves on each side for arms. The shoe box head we filled with a large dirty sponge from the laundry sink -- it looked remarkably like all the illustrations of the human brain we had ever seen in encyclopedias. And then Wayne bored two holes in the shoe box for eye sockets and stuck in two pen lights he kept on his work bench. He turned them on, and our robot seemed to come to life, with his eyes glowing eerily straight ahead. I had the unfortunate inspiration to draw in a mouth with large fangs with a Magic Marker. Wayne and I stepped back to inspect our handiwork.

"Looks pretty good" said Wayne.

"Sure does" I agreed. " I bet our robot could beat Frankenstein if we could start it up with a big ol' battery." 

This gave Wayne an idea. He shook the Eveready batteries out of his dad's electric lamp and put them inside the trunk of the robot. 

"It could even beat the Wolfman now" said Wayne.

"Yeah" I replied uneasily, "if it was alive, you mean. But it's not. It's just a hunk of junk, really -- isn't it?"

"Oh, I dunno" replied Wayne speculatively. "There's lots of wires in there that might pick up the electricity from the battery and start somethin' up. It might make him move around a bit tonight. Maybe."

I gulped, audibly.

"Naw" I said with a bravado I did not feel. "Your mom'll make us take it apart tomorrow anyway before she gives us breakfast, I bet." 

But Wayne was in a mood to give vent to weird fancies.

"What if it started to move tonight after we fell asleep? What if it rolled right over to us and tried to make us robots, too? With some sort of radioactive ray."  

We both relished the cheap, hair-raising sci-fi movies that were the main fodder of drive-ins back then. Most of 'em featured some kind of fiendish ray from Dimension X that would turn anyone, even sweet little boys like us, into insane zombie monsters. I didn't care for Wayne's current train of thought, and attempted to divert his attention into more cheerful paths.

"How many Fudgesicles you think we can sneak out of the freezer tonight?" I asked hopefully. But Wayne was not to be distracted.

"Maybe we should put a bottle of calcium chloride inside, next to the battery -- that would sure give it super powers if it started up."

I was beginning to dislike our corrugated creation very, very much. 

Suddenly Wayne exclaimed: "I've got it! I'll put my crystal set inside it so it can have telepathic powers. Give us orders to build a flying saucer to go to Mars or somethin'." 

That's all I needed to hear. A killer robot let loose in the basement, hypnotizing me with radioactive rays and talking me into going to Mars to become a slave. My nervous bladder was ready to void in terror. I picked up my bedding and crucifix, told Wayne I had a belly ache, and scampered across the street to the safety of my own robot-less bedroom.

I was never invited to another sleepover again. But I didn't really mind. Wayne had revealed all the mental instability of a mad scientist that evening, and I didn't intend to be murdered in my sleep by one of his mechanical creatures or wake up with an extra head sewn onto my shoulders. When we graduated from high school I joined the circus and Wayne went to work at the Sears warehouse. Where they had plenty of cardboard boxes . . .    

2020 Census will bring major upheaval to Congressional representation -- Meet your meat -- Tax cuts for the wealthy

A citizenship question on the 2020 census has already drawn challenges from states that fear an undercount of immigrants and a loss of federal funds. But demographers say there could be even deeper consequences: The question could generate the data necessary to redefine how political power is apportioned in America.   NYT

The Census gets my name and age; my address and my weight.

I'll tell 'em I'm retired and I do not have a mate.

If they want anymore than that I'm gonna slam the door;

I don't like nosy parkers who do nothing else but schnorr. 

Fifty-eight percent of consumers say they are more concerned about the treatment of animals raised for food than they were a few years ago, according to a 2017 survey by market-research firm Packaged Facts based in Rockville, Md. As a result, language on packaging and menus is describing meat in more detail than ever before, linking food on the plate more directly to the animal and its provenance.  WSJ

I don't wanna know that the cow

I'm eating once pulled a farm plow.

I don't care a fig

that ribs from my pig

were used in the practice of Tao.

The Trump adminisration is considering a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans through a change that would not need approval from Congress, officials said, a move that would follow a package of tax cuts last year that also benefited the super-rich.   Washington Post.

Consider the poor plutocrat,

whose upkeep on his black silk hat

and stable of mares

and sunk Facebook shares

means giving up his baccarat.