Letter to my Senators

Senator Cantwell (Murray)

I expect you and every Senate Democrat to join Senator Merkley and filibuster any and every nominee to the Supreme Court who is not Merrick Garland. This is not about treating Republicans the way they treated President Obama; Republicans were never in the position of having a seat stolen from them. You have more justification than they ever had.

What Mitch McConnell and the Republicans did in denying Merrick Garland a hearing was unconscionable; if you allow Republicans to proceed, you are basically telling the American people, and millions of voters like me who have supported you (I have) and who voted for President Obama, that what Mitch McConnell did was OK, just a matter of tactics.

I will vote for and fully support anyone but you in a future Democratic primary if you do not do everything possible to stop Donald Trump's first Supreme Court nomination. They stole it. Raise your voice in protest.

Thanks,

Dennis

How to Show Respect for the President

Fortunately, Republicans have shown us the way. Yes, they're Republicans, but they have control of the Presidency, the Senate, and the House, and apparently that was what a lot of Americans wanted. Fine. We can follow their example.

Claim That He Is Illegitimate
Donald Trump himself was for years the chief proponent of the stupid, baseless, racist notion that President Obama was not legitimately President, because he was not born in the United States. Trump absolutely deserves the same treatment he extended to President Obama, who did, by the way, win the popular vote easily, twice.

Democrats are already questioning Trump’s legitimacy based on his losing the popular vote by a wide margin, or based on Russian interference in the election, but don’t forget it doesn’t have to be true or even make sense. Millions of Russians voted for Trump illegally! NASCAR broadcasts brainwashed audiences with subliminal messages! Anything is fair game, as long as it works. True, Democrats are less likely to get behind that sort of idiocy, but remember, you can just make stuff up if it helps.

Oppose Everything
Mitch McConnell and John Boehner showed us that the best way to honor an American President, and the will of the voters, is unprecedented obstruction of everything the President proposes and everything the people voted for. If you can find common ground, pretend you cannot, so that no legislation can be said to have bipartisan support. Filibuster every bill, no matter how petty. Force everything that passes the Senate to have 60 votes. Hold up judicial appointments, just for spite. Screw over the American people, then blame the President for not working with you.

Block His Supreme Court Nominations
Again, Mitch McConnell shows us the way. Make up a bullshit reason: “We should wait until a President wins the popular vote, or at least comes close.” Or just say we can do whatever we want, don't need a reason - call it the McConnell rule. Then Chuck Schumer can go to Donald Trump and tell him to his face that one of his greatest pleasures in life will be denying Trump any Supreme Court nominations. Trump absolutely deserves no less than the respect shown to President Obama.

Claim He’s a Failure
Does anyone remember Karl Rove? I remember Karl Rove. Before Barack Obama ever took office, Rove was trying to blame him for the stock market tanking. Fox News personalities continued to claim that the Obama Presidency was a failure even during the first couple of years, long before it made any sense to come to such a conclusion, and of course shortly after George W. Bush had crashed the economy, started (but not finished) two wars, screwed up Hurricane Katrina, disgraced the nation by claiming torture was OK and opening Guantanamo, and, you know, actually failed pretty much across the board.

The important point here is that you don’t have to wait for any solid evidence of failure. Start practicing the phrase “failed presidency” now, then label everything that Trump does as a failure. Even if, say, the stock market more than doubles during his Presidency. Or he saves the auto industry. Or pulls the country out of a recession. Or kills Osama bin Laden. Failure, failure, failure. It’s what Karl Rove would do.

Encourage Open Racism
Admittedly, this one will be difficult. I just don’t know how much barely-closeted hatred there is out there for older white men with bad toupees. Even the small hands, it’s funny, but it just doesn't get anyone's hatred revved up. Anyway, I do not really believe that there is a large enough collection of small enough minds on the left side of the political spectrum to make bigotry work the way it does for Republicans, but perhaps we can try to learn from the other side.

What is clear though is that Republicans, by consistently making it clear that the first African-American President was unworthy of their respect -- from shouting “You lie” to refusing to compromise or work together on anything to failing to vote on his judicial nominations, and much more – have encouraged, nurtured, and incited open racists who used to at least feel that opening their stupid mouths in public would expose them for the bigots they are, but now feel they are part of the political mainstream again. Republican leaders must have realized at some point that some pretty despicable groups were feeling energized by their actions, but they either didn’t care or, quite possibly, saw it as a side benefit that would draw more voters to their cause.

Anyway, we don’t really have a significant white-man-hating base that we can rally against Mr. Trump, but we also should never forget that Republicans decided that unleashing open racism was an appropriate way to respect the office of President of the United States.


So when it comes to respecting the next Republican President, giving him a chance, working with him where we can, taking the high road, putting country before partisan squabbles, etc., I recommend that we follow the many examples of the last eight years, the examples that were just ratified by sort of close to half the voters, and especially the examples of the Republican leadership and Donald Trump himself. Let’s show this President all the respect he deserves.

My Experience Working for Amazon

This is not actually my personal experience. It is, however, my son's.

I worked for Amazon as a warehouse worker (a picker, if you will) recently, and I want to share my experience. This is not a story of gross mistreatment, horrible working conditions, meager pay, or bad bosses. It is however a story of bait and switch, dishonesty, disregard for workers, and tossing people aside when you are done with them.

I have another job, testing video games. I get paid to do that. I really like it, but it doesn't pay much. So when a local staffing firm (called Aerotek) advertised for "over one hundred" positions in the local warehouse supporting Amazon Fresh -- Amazon's grocery business - and paying $13.50 an hour, it represented a significant potential upgrade for me. There were full-time and part-time positions, so they said, with potential mandatory overtime. Forty hours per week plus overtime could have easily doubled what I had been earning, so I called.

I knew that some Amazon warehouse workers have shared horror stories on the Internet, but I am 21 and in decent shape, so I figured I would probably be OK, and if it was really awful, I could quit. I did not quit my other job, which at least has the benefit of being very flexible.

Before I could start, I went through an orientation that Aerotek told me would take one hour, but in fact it took three. At the orientation, I signed up for three weeks of shifts. But here was the first sign that something was off: I was told that I would be working for Amazon Prime Now for three weeks, then shifting to Amazon Fresh, because Amazon Prime needed people for the Christmas rush. This was three weeks before Christmas.

[When my dad heard this, his first word was "bullshit." That turned out to be a fair and accurate assessment.]

Amazon Prime Now is a service I had not even heard of, where people can order from 25,000 or so of the most common products people need, and Amazon will deliver them within two hours. It was a little farther from my house than Amazon Fresh, and traffic getting there was bad, but for three weeks, no problem.

I worked for Amazon Prime Now right up until Christmas, including up to 11:00 on Christmas Eve. My shift was 3:00 - 11:00, and I was there early every day and worked a full shift except when they sent me home early, never missed any time. I understood what to do quickly and, as far as I could tell, came close to matching the speed of the permanent employees. The work really was not bad, and I did it to the best of my ability. However, I only ended up working 9.5 days in three weeks. We were not scheduled close to full time, and there was no overtime.

Perhaps I could mention here that I am a recent college graduate. This is what I am doing to generate some income for now.

I contacted Aerotek before Christmas about switching to Amazon Fresh. Their response was that Amazon managers were on vacation, so wait until after the new year started.

I emailed my contact at Aerotek again at the beginning of January. This time I got no response at all. I tried again. No reply. I asked about the 2.5 days I worked but was not paid because no one explained the time card requirements. Again no response.

Aerotek is not going to commit wage theft. We got that straightened out when I called and spoke to the right person. But let's face it: They never intended to give me the job I signed up for and was promised. They lied, because they needed people to collect orders for wealthy customers who wanted last minute stuff for Christmas right up until Christmas Eve, and they knew it would be a hard sell to get people to commit for two or three weeks of part-time work. After I did a good job, did everything I was asked, they just wanted me to go away as quickly as possible, and they couldn't even be bothered to send a quick email and say they did not have anything for me.

I was not dealing with Amazon directly, but Aerotek is doing their bidding. So I guess the thing I would note from all this is that, yes, Amazon continues to push the limits of customer service, but there is a human price to be paid for that convenience, and Amazon is happy to extract it. To put it a little more bluntly, they treat their customers extremely well, but they treated me like garbage. I do not think that I am the only one.

New Year Resolution

Once again this year, I made a resolution for the new year. I am not a big believer in New Year's resolutions - I always figured that any day is a good one to start working toward a goal, so why wait for January 1 - but once again this is in honor of our friend Kelly from Boy Scouts, who died way too young, and whose daughter asked us at his funeral just before Christmas 2015 to make resolutions, because Kelly always did, and he was very excited about them.

Last year's resolution was to make at least two posts a month on this blog. I only posted 14 times in 2016, but there is a big difference between making a resolution and keeping it. The point here is just to make one.

So my resolution is that I will try to broaden my cooking repertoire. This is not about fancy recipes or becoming a world-class chef. Rather, I find myself needing to make dinners more often these days, so I need ways to put together a quick dinner after work. I do that sometimes, but I have gotten complaints lately about the simplicity of my meals and the lack of variety. This is partly due to my need for diabetic-friendly meals, but all the more reason to have to put some effort into it.

The other day I made orange fish, which involved actually squeezing the juice out of three oranges, but it was an easy recipe. I thought it was only OK, but people seemed to like it.

Maybe meat loaf will be next.