Trickle Down Failure

The challenge starts today.  My goal is to ride at least 100 miles, albeit inside on my Cyclops trainer, i the next 30 days.  For a while I was getting up early in order to get my rides in before I went to work.  Well, that didn't work.  While I'm a morning person and get a lot accomplished before I head to the store, riding a bike or cardio are 2 things I find myself putting off.  They fit in better later in the afternoon, after the work day is finished.
I find it amazing how China and the US agree to begin trade talks again and the Stock Market goes up.  Your average MAGA head dances around singing Yippee Skippy... while quietly, in the background, prices continue to rise because in America corporations can never make enough money.  Saturday I had customers come up to me, they wanted to buy 3 cases of vinyl planks but wanted to pay the store price, not the online prices.  No problem.  That happens now and then, the Internet price is a bit more.  That wasn't the case.  Our store price was wrong... by 20 cents a square foot.  And these prices increases are National... and the product is manufactured in... China.  Not every price went up, but a number of them did so we had to pull price stickers off our displays.  Even if a deal is struck, those prices are never going to go back down.
And it's not just flooring, and it's not just the retail corporation I work for, it's everywhere.  My dogs are fed both dry and moist dog foods purchased at my local Giant Food Store.  For a dry food, they like Beneful and I buy big bags of it.  The price has always been $29.77.  Four weeks ago I noticed the price had dropped a dollar a bag and I thought, my, isn't that nice...  Until I checked into it.  The price had dropped, but so did the poundage per bag.  $29.77 used to get me 31.1 pounds.  Now, $28.77 gets me 28 pounds.  It used to cost 96 cents a pound, now it costs $1.02 a pound.  Oh, and it appears as though the 31.1 lb bag is out of stock... even at chewy.com , so I'd say this is probably a Purina decision.  And it's not just dog food, it's everything.  For those who are naive enough to believe in Trickle Down Economics, this is how it really works.  And don't forget, these are the same corporations that got a really nice tax break, thanks to the Republican Party.  So on this Fourth of July, while the Idiot Jerk is giving his shitty little rally speech, and all those little MAGA heads are dancing around his feet, remember, this is what he truly given us: higher prices so corporations can make more money.  It's why we have these tariff wars, not so our prices can go down, rather it's so corporations can make more money which is never, ever going to Trickle Down.

Rough Shoulders Ahead for Fox News?

Even though I don't watch Fox News, I get them.  They want to be the conservative mouthpiece of America, which for them means ratings.  Honestly, that is all they are concerned about, nothing else.  News is business.  To be successful your business needs to target a certain type of consumer.  This is why Best Buy doesn't sell clothing and Home Depot doesn't have a dairy section.  Fox wants every conservative in the United States to watch them, and only them.  This is where they run into trouble.  In order for them to maintain their image as the conservative mouthpiece, they need to brand every other media outlet as 'liberal' or 'progressive.'  Unfortunately for them, Independent voters are growing, and you can't count on every one registered as Republican or Democrat to stringently vote the party line.  In other words, if the United States was a two lane highway, in most cases, about 60% of Americans would hang around the yellow line.  True, they may veer a little to the left to pass on some issues and on others a little to the right but over all they go right down the center.  For Fox News to be the conservative mouthpiece. they need to push that yellow line as far to the left as possible in order to call it liberal.  As a result, Fox news seems to be spending a majority of it's time bouncing around on the shoulder and losing clout with those riding down the center line.

Are there rough shoulders ahead for Fox News?

This does not mean they will completely lose their audience, they can always count on that 25% to 27% the blood of the far right flowing through their veins.  Those people will only ever watch Fox so that part of the market is safe.  Others, however started dabbling a while back.  They will not only watch Fox News, but will also watch a little MSNBC and even a couple minutes a week of CNN.  A interesting statistic I ran across was that during the 2012 Presidential Debates more Americans turned into MSNBC.   Hhhmmm.  Were they more liberal, or more centrist.  Could it have been because that news network doesn't preach or pass judgement?  Or that they have both Republicans and Democrats on their staff?  Who knows.  I think we'll just have to tune in and see.  

The hell of holiday retail

As someone who works in retail, I can tell you the holidays bring mostly hell.  First of all there is the merchandising: somebody in corporate always knows the best way to merchandise no matter whether you are a high volume store or a low volume store, or even where the store happens to be located.  After you do you Christmas set you hear from two kinds of customers, those who love it and those who hate it.  A classic example is "every year it gets earlier."  These complainers don't seem to understand that if people didn't come in and shop the merchandise it wouldn't be displayed.  If they don't like this they need to start throwing bricks as those customers busily browsing away.  This year there were some customers who couldn't wait for the display to be set.  If they buy it early, it will be put out early.

If doors are open, they will shop

This year a lot of people pissed and moaned because some retailers were open on Thanksgiving day.  This is America and American Capitalism rules supreme.  Blame the shoppers, not the retailers.  If a Wal-mart or a Target opens their doors and customers show up, those doors are going to be opened.  If the doors are open, they will shop.  All you need to do is look at history.  At one time all of these United States had what were called Blue Laws.  Stores were not legally allowed to be open on Sundays.  Then supermarkets started staying open.  After a while large retailers began to take notice, Sears and Woolworth's and Montgomery Ward's and they thought, hhhmmm, if the supermarkets are making money then so can we and their doors started opening on Sundays.  Nothing is going to change.  This is America and Americans want to make money.  If that means retailers are going to need to be open on Thanksgiving, they are going to be open.  Americans also like to shop.  They like to think they are getting a good deal.  There is no going back to the way it was.

Topping the Chinese

Will I watch the opening ceremonies for the 2012 Olympics in London, yes.  Will I watch the entire ceremony... no.  It's way too long.  Here's my recommendation to all future opening ceremonies, march the Olympians in first and get that out of the way, and then entertain the world.  Everybody with access to either a TV or the Internet will be watching and everybody will turn it off when the athletes begin parading into the stadium.  People walk slowly around that track.  If we were called America our athletes would be one of the first to enter, but we're the United States and "u" is pretty damn near the end of the alphabet.  Sure, some of the teams entering before us will be small in comparison to the American contingent, they will still walk slowly around that track.

Why will I be watching?  To see if the British attempt to top the Chinese opening ceremonies.  That's a pretty daunting task.  My suspicion is they are going to take another tact to celebrate the United Kingdom, like a Shakespeare production number, maybe Macbeth chasing spots away from the track, or possibly a reunion of the two surviving Beatles singing "Love me do."  One thing you can be sure of, there will be fireworks and special effects galore.  You won't see 2000 Chinese drummers pounding  away but you might see the girls from Absolutely Fabulous staggering around.  The Brits seem to like exporting the idea that they are a staid people, perhaps they might let their hair down.  Wouldn't that be entertaining.