ABC channel 5 in central Iowa hasn’t been on this year (contract dispute), and no one cares. Lately I’ve noticed I don’t even have the TV on during the day. At all. Its usually on at night for company. I can’t imagine a show I’d want to watch. Its all such claptrap. I really don’t think its just because I’m a member now of the “get off my lawn!” brigade. I think modern TV is just really bad.

I’ll flip it to FOX News once in awhile, thinking I’ll find something, but I don’t. Its the same way with the CNBC business channel. There should be something going on somewhere in the world of business that they could make into an interesting story, but there’s not. It is literally beyond their capability. That leaves TCM. All that does is make crystal clear why the Academy Awards only has 1 foreign film category, it highlights how bad American film is.

Thinking about this I wonder if it isn’t that actors today are so ‘small’? Not in stature but in presence? I don’t know. One of the premo examples of this is the remake of the Magnum PI series. Why? Half of the success of the original series was the star and the cast. Tom Selleck, John Hillerman, Roger E. Mosley, Larry Manetti, these new people are Muchkins! Come on! Get real! Be serious! These new guys are the JV Team.

I don’t know. One thing I do know is I’d like to see the ratings for each channels ‘retro’ sub-channel, compared to their main channel. I would not be at all surprised if the old shows on the retro channel outshine the new shows. I’m not talking about shows 20 years ago being good, I mean 40, 50 and 60 years ago. What a wasteland. I don’t know. Maybe its just me. Looking at the 3 channels I try to watch (FOX, CNBC, TCM), politics, business and ‘Hollywood’, the blinders are off for me. I see behind the curtain of all 3. They hide nothing from me now. They no longer have the power of illusion. I see their ugly truth.

[Take as an example one of my favorite actors from the ‘old days’, Robert Mitchum. He’d always had a cool factor about him. I just read his bio maybe a year ago. He grew up in the depression. Left home at 14. Road the rails across the country. Got arrested. Was a prize fighter for a while. Was a medic in WW II (the big one). By the time he got on screen he’d experienced life and a few hard knocks. He wasn’t one of these sissy pant modern day actors who’d never done a days work in their life. He’d been around. His hands had callouses on them.]

I heard this clip on a Christian radio show warning about the evils of the interweb. They said if you’re not paying for the site you’re on, you’re not the customer, you’re the product. Mic drop. Good point. Its like Fakebook, they’re turning more tricks on you than a New Orleans hooker. You, and your data, are being sold. Its like the ‘free trading’ app Robinhood, the reason its free is they’re selling your stock order info to the market makers (I believe that’s correct).

Which brings me to The New American. They are the print and electronic publication of the John Birch Society. They are an ant in the world of mega-conservative sites like FOX News and Breitbart. Yet they attract the devoted attention of spammers. The steadfast and never-ending slavish devotion of spammers. Why is that? They have a comment screener service called Disqus that most of them have. Disqus has their filters set to immediately clamp down if you try to say anything remotely obscene or dirty. Poop, pee, GD, MF, SOB, and of the male/female specific body parts, or any other rudimentary foul language.

I had noted in the comment section Disqus’s inability to stop these spammers, “I make $12,000 a month working from home!” and how the picture accompanying these spam posts were always of a woman with giant knockers (like the one pictured above). Disqus deleted my comment about the spammers as spam, and I believe it was because of the use of knockers not in relation to a door. I got to wondering, Disqus is paid by these host sites to run a good comment section, why are they allowing these spammers to foul up the site of the people paying them?

Then it occurred to me, maybe Disqus owns the spammers? Maybe that’s how they bring in extra cash. Then I went 3rd level devious, maybe The New American is being paid by these spammers to allow them on their site? Because for God’s sake it would be child’s play to set up a word filter to stop these spammers. Its the same spiel every time! Follow the money. Somebody is getting paid to allow them on the sites. And what’s particularly insidious about these techno terrorists, they don’t make a stand alone comment you could ignore, they reply to your comment!

It all reminded me of the harassment advertising I got on my recently cancelled landline phone. The only people that called me was a call center in India. Once in awhile it was scammers in Cancun, Mexico, and a few from south Florida, but mainly it was that Indian call center. American telemarketers you can generally get rid of them (I think) because in a ‘worst case’ scenario, they know you could always come visit them. I tried being nice to them, just like they were actual people. I tried being mean to them. I begged them, I threatened them, but they would not stop calling!

Depending on what cycle their computer program was, it was either 10:30 am, 2:41 pm or 4:40 in the afternoon. They called, every damn day. They weren’t really interested in selling, mostly just harassing. I never did figure out what they wanted. Were they going for my social security number? Or just a credit card number? I never did figure it out. They would pretend they were Mariott Hotels, Hilton Hotels, Healthcare insurance, auto warranty. I have to assume not everybody in India is a scammer, it just seems that way.

Then you’re let down by the FCC and their precious “do not call list”, which turns out to be largely worthless against furrin call centers. It might work with American telemarketers who still have some remnant of honor, decency and morals, but certainly not with the dirty scum sucking furriners. Then you have Century Link who until recently charged .99 cents for “last call return” feature, now they charge a $1.50. But that’s not the worst part. The bad part is these Indian call centers computer is able to hide their area code from Century Link. So when you go to file a “harassing call complaint” with the FCC, you don’t have the area code required in order to file a complaint. You get charged the full amount, but you don’t get the full number. A 7 digit phone number is worthless.

In the old days you could have an “unlisted number” from Ma Bell for free. Now they charge you $5 dollars a month to be ‘unlisted’. So basically you end up paying $40 bucks a month (local calls only) to be harassed by an Indian call center. The phone company doesn’t help you. The FCC doesn’t help you. You’re just on your own. The reverse imperialism is ironic. We may have exploited these people in the past, but they’re bringing us down by the way they exploit our welfare system and harass us.

Just like 11 years ago when Iowa went from a ‘may issue’ to a ‘shall issue’ gun permit state, the death and destruction predicted by the commie libs just never quite took place. Except for 1 drunk up in Mt. Vernon everybody behaved pretty well. Cops shoot more innocent people than citizens do. The right to carry revolution the past 30 years all across America is pretty incredible. Now we just need a 5 year trial in a big city like New York or LA to cement this thing forever. Iowa became a “permitless” carry or constitutional carry State today. All the liberal “journalists” are writing stories about “Iowa’s surging gun deaths“, failing to note suicides spiked across the country the past 12 months due to the effects of the COVID. Suicides have always been the majority of gun deaths. To blame the past 12 months on a law that takes effect today is stupid even for liberals! Liberals just make you puke don’t they? “Huuh!” Oh man you got it on my shoes!