Get Off My Lawn! - The Mad Ramblings of a Gen X-er

Spending Bill STOPPED! When will the Liberal Madness and the Ghost of Christmas Gift Past!

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Can government spending get any more outrageous? Join us as we tackle the perplexing world of political maneuvering and fiscal irresponsibility, featuring a spending bill that could bring the government to a grinding halt. Highlighting the absurd $3 million allocation to monitor molasses, we'll question the efficiency—or lack thereof—of how our tax dollars are spent. As we reflect on the political landscape, we explore the ongoing leadership vacuum and the ripples of Donald Trump's influence even before taking office, comparing today’s shutdown threats with Newt Gingrich’s strategic brinkmanship in the 90s.

Shift gears with us as we reminisce about the evolution of holiday gifts, from the era of pre-digital ingenuity to the tech-driven present. Remember the chaos of Black Friday shopping before the internet streamlined our wish lists? We'll journey through the toy icons of the 70s and 80s—from the brain-teasing Rubik's Cube to the groundbreaking Atari console—that defined childhoods before cheat codes and digital shortcuts were even a thing. It's a nostalgic look back at a time when creativity and problem-solving were at the forefront of gift-giving traditions.

Finally, we tackle the hot-button issue of labor unrest with a look at the Teamsters Union's strike against Amazon. With Amazon's recent wage increase to $22 per hour, complete with competitive benefits, what more do today's workers demand, and how does this reflect the broader expectations of Gen Z entering the workforce? We'll dissect Amazon's business practices and the union's push for better working conditions, considering the impact on holiday deliveries and the broader economic landscape. Let these insights simmer as you savor the festive season, pondering the balance between corporate responsibility and labor rights.

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Speaker 1:

What you just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it, is now dumber for having listened to it. You don't know what that ought is, mr Trash. I'd show you, but I'm too old, I'm too tired, I'm too fucking blind. If I were the man I was five years ago, I'd take a flamethrower to this place.

Speaker 2:

Do you understand the words that are coming out of?

Speaker 1:

my mouth. You want answers. I think I'm entitled. You want answers, I want the truth.

Speaker 2:

You can't handle the truth During this holiday season. The truth shall always set you free. This is Tim. It's got to find law in the mind Ramblings of a Gen Xer. Have to talk about this new spending bill. Have to talk about a few other things going on in Washington right now. The craziness in Daddy's home. Oh, donald Trump is already controlling and pulling the strings and he's not even president yet. Why? Because there's a large void in leadership right now in Washington. Because Lord knows and maybe Lord is the only one that knows what the hell Joe Biden's doing or what the hell Joe Biden's even up to. It's a craziness. We're also going to talk about the Amazon strike at the warehouses going on across right now the US during this busiest season, and why the teamsters have got it wrong this time. Oh, so as as the government shut down. Oh, we also want to talk about some of the greatest christmas presents. Uh, that gen xers probably know and love, some things that you probably remember getting and seeing in christmas. Oh, it's, it's, it's, it's just, it's just one of the. It's just one of those things.

Speaker 2:

So the Republicans finally stepped up a little bit, like a little bit before. Some of the house. Republicans are now working with president elect Trump on a package, but the government shutdown right now is is is on the horizon and it's not a bad thing If you go back to the days of Newt Gingrich as, as you know, leading the house, he actually shut down the government a couple times under Bill Clinton and then helped balance the budget. But we don't want to talk. We don't want to talk about this and, of course, like I said, former Speaker of the House, newt Gingrich, he knew what to do. So we have to get a bill together by 1201 on Saturday or everything's going to be shutting down. Nothing, nothing really shuts down. But you know, we we like to have that, that dramatic effect that Democrats like to use. The world is ending everything. With the Democrats, the world is ending. So right now, democrats are kind of balking a little bit because Doge, with the Vic and the Elon, came up and basically saw this 1500 page bill and said, ok, we have. You know where in this world would you sign a contract that's 1500 pages long and not have the opportunity to read and only have 16 hours to read it? Dumbfounding. One of the things I loved was the $3 million that was going to go to someone to monitor the person that's monitoring molasses. Yes, that is correct. They had a provision in the bill that they were going to spend $3 million on a monitor to monitor the person monitoring molasses. Yeah, we kind of need that. We need that a little bit.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I don't know why, and all these subsidies and all this pork that's in there, that it's just literally dumbfounding that we see all this and it's like, okay, you, you want us. Why can't we just pass a straight spending bill, make it, make it, make it real easy, make it simple, make a bill that runs until, you know, until trump is president, and kind of go and kind of go from there. Why do we have to have you know, all all this pork thrown in for, for, and it's all, not all. I'm sure I'm not going to cast a wide stroke, but the majority of it seems to be for democratic pet projects. Why? I mean cause someone, I mean I, I. I am having this dramatic pause to say soar, but I'm thinking to myself. There's no one there to answer you. Tim, just pass a short-term spending deal that funds the government through an extended period of time, maybe till after Trump takes presidency. Let's not have this bill full of all this normal government pork and normal government spending. And, like I said, elon Musk and Doge is doing their job and they're not even in there yet Because of the fact that it's an unmitigated disaster.

Speaker 2:

And I love it, because people will say, like, well, there's provisions in the bill that have $100 billion for disaster relief, another $10 billion in farm aid. Do you remember when we had the $10 billion? Remember when we had all the aid to the farmers and then it turned out that all the aid to the farmers only kind of went to the African American farmers. Did we forget about that? Yes, of course there are good things in the bill. Of course, there are also a lot of bad things in the bill and also a lot of things that are basically just sending the government on a spending spree. And that's what the American people voted against. They voted against having all this pork, they voted against all these pet projects and all these shadow projects and all these other things that are going on, because we know we're underspending, we know we're massively in debt.

Speaker 2:

Elon Musk, at one point in time they asked Elon Musk, you know there's also subsidies in here for electric vehicles and Elon's like we didn't. You know, the subsidies for electric vehicles were pushed by General Motors, not Tesla. Elon was very succinct about it. He even said that, at the end of the day, we don't subsidize gas stations. So why are we subsidizing charging stations? And the fact that we spent $5 billion on what? Three charging stations? I mean, that's that's. I'm not a mathematician, but that's, that's pretty bad to me. That's that's. I think that's horrible.

Speaker 2:

And one of the things I find hilarious about this is the lawmakers decided to give themselves a $66,000, $66,000, $6600 raise excuse me, whose current salaries are $174,000, because they need a 3.8% raise because of the cost of living increases. Uh, okay, okay, I mean it's. It's crazy. It's literally crazy. Some of the shit that's in this bill and, like I said, you're going to have people like the wall street I assume he's the New York times are going to be like well, you know, there's healthcare in here for children. There's disaster rate. Oh, and the other thing that I loved it, that was also when the bill is, congress can opt out of Obamacare. They don't have to have it. They don't have to have it whatsoever. I mean that's a crazy. And there's even a provision for a new stadium site for the Washington commanders. I mean, donald Trump even posted this is a Democratic giveaway.

Speaker 2:

But you're going to have certain segments of the liberal media that is just going to, their heads are going to explode. You're like, look at all these good things that are in the bell, we're also not looking at that debt number, are we? We're not looking at that debt number that just keeps rolling along, that just keeps going. And I just you know, we need to get the debt under control. You need to stop. You need to stop the spending.

Speaker 2:

Like I said, this is a 1,547 page bill which was dropped on Tuesday evening and basically said you have 16,. You have 16 hours to go through this and and and and basically say yes or no. And I laugh at it because of the fact that it's like you're never I mean you're never going to get this passed. What they need to do, republicans need to do, is just all come together and pass a stopgap bill that is just Republican-authored and will never do it because we have such a razor-thin majority and Johnson, to me, is incompetent at times but literally what you just need to do is look at it and say you know what? Let's just pass a stopgap bill that is face value, just a literal stopgap bill to fund that is what is currently on the agenda, that is currently needs to be paid for, and go from there.

Speaker 2:

Why can't we just do that? And I love it because Dem leaders are complaining that the GOP is breaking their bipartisan agreement. And I love Akeem Jeffries and that's being extremely facetious, because I think he's a moron and he's just. He's everything that we have wanted to get away from from the last four years. Everything it's just crazy we have wanted to get away from from the last four years. Everything. It's just crazy, it's just insane. It's insanity at its finest. There's healthcare provisions in here. There, there's funds to reconstruct the Francis Scott key, virgin Baltimore. Shouldn't Baltimore be paying for their own bridge? Shouldn't states be paying for their own bridge? Why't states be paying for their own bridge? Why do we always have to have? Why does the federal government always have to hand out money? Oh, because the states, mainly that.

Speaker 1:

Oh, baltimore, that's that's one of those liberal cities.

Speaker 2:

I hear Baltimore is very nice in the summertime. Just look out for the gunshots. Oh, it's Christmas time, there's no need to be afraid. I want to talk about some of the. I was thinking about it as a kid growing up in in the seventies and the eighties and you know there there were. There were just these. There was gifts that you got that were just fantastic, that you, that you loved, and it was one of those things that you know. You go back into the days of yore and you looked at some of the things that parents had to do, especially in the 70s and 80s.

Speaker 2:

There was no internet. Well, there was internet, but it was more used for government practical purposes, also known as frame relay We'll go into that one day if you wanted to which was founded actually in World War II. Most people don't know that. I'm going to break the news to Al Gore. I always loved Al Gore, the inventor of the internet. He didn't invent the internet. The internet was invented in the 40s as a frame relay system to use to drive communications. But we're not going to get on that during World War II. I'm not going to get into that.

Speaker 2:

But you didn't have the internet. You didn't have Amazon, which is going on strike We'll talk about that too but you didn't have all that. You had to go to the stores. You literally had those big sales on Black Friday where you saw the mobs, you saw the people that were clamoring to get in there to get that next great big toy that everyone had to have. There was the fights, there was the brawls, there was the tackling, there was everything that was going on. You had to push forward and sally forth to get that Teddy Rock spin.

Speaker 2:

I was thinking what. You know when I was a kid, you know when, when I was a kid, you know what was like the big, the first couple of big things. In what year did it? Did it come around? And the first thing I can think of that every, everything that everyone wanted, and that was back in 1978. Yeah, that was a long time ago and that's how long this has been around.

Speaker 2:

It was hungry, hungry hippoppo. Everybody wanted Hungry, hungry Hippo and of course, all it is Is four plastic multicolored hippos that you eat marbles as fast as you possibly can and whoever gets the most marbles wins. But it was that fun game you could play with friends. It was a game you maybe played for like 15-20 minutes Next thing. You know you're chucking marbles at each other, but it was the must-have commercial. I was a must-have gift. You saw that commercial. You're like, damn, I need that fucking Hungry, hungry Hippo. I really, mom, I need Hungry, hungry Hippo. And parents are like you put it on your list. And I was like, yeah, I don't know what the hell you're talking about, but you look at it and it's a staple now in the family game room since it was basically launched, like I said, 1978.

Speaker 2:

Then, finally, then I was thinking that things started getting technical and they got technical early, those technical gifts. And the first thing that comes to mind to me is 1979, the Atari it was. You know you think about it now that Atari sales in 1979 were $415 million. Think about that $415 million. If you calculate that in today's value, you're talking $1.8 billion. That's how popular that Atari system was.

Speaker 2:

And if you were lucky to get that Atari because the Gen Xers will remember this back in the day you could only play video games or basically pinball and some simple other games in the arcades. You know, with Space Invaders and Asteroids and all those things that came out, you can only play on the arcades. This was something that was put out, sold by I believe it was, I believe it was Warner Communications at the time that they literally had to. You could literally play those games that you saw, and not to the point that you look at them nowadays and go, wow, look, how awesome they are, but you literally could play this shit at home. Pac-man was the big one that comes to mind for me, as always, you always had to play Pac-Man, and then you had Donkey Kong and then everythingMan, and then you had Donkey Kong and then everything else and you had the ColecoVision dropping in. So it was one of those moments in time that if you were the kid that got the Atari, damn, you were literally something special. You were something that you and your friends were like damn, I got the freaking Atari. And then I found it funny and what I think was kind of weird that you went from this high-tech item, this high price tag item like I said, that it had $415 million in sales just at the end of the year at 79. You roll into 80. And this was the craze at the time and, like I said Gen Xers remember this you went from this high tech item to the next big holiday gift being in 1980. It was a Rubik's Cube. And now the Rubik's Cube was invented in Budapest in 1974.

Speaker 2:

A lot of people don't know that With the sole purpose of helping students understand three dimensional problems, but in 1980, it became the must have Christmas item. Over 100 million Rubik's Cubes were sold. I don't even remember. I don't even remember how much a Rubik's Cubes cost. To be perfectly honest, I have no freaking clue, but it's just nuts to think that that was the.

Speaker 2:

You went from an Atari to a Rubik's cube. Now listen, I'm not going to lie to you. I never could figure that fucker out. That thing befuddled me for years and you, literally how many times did you sit there and try to figure it out? Can't figure it out? Left I go right.

Speaker 2:

And then you got smart, and so certain people tried to literally remove the little stickers and put them together. Then you found out that if you took a butter knife, you could take the pieces off and move them and put them in different areas. You could literally take apart your Rubik's Cube and then rebuild it. But this was the ingenuity of kids. We weren't burdened by the thought process of well, if we can't do it in the game, we get a cheat code and then we're fine. No, no, no, we had to figure shit out, and sometimes, when you couldn't figure it out, you had to figure out shit the hard way. And sitting there and literally trying to put stuff together, I mean that was crazy to me, that was insane. And, like I said, you literally went from this bastion of technology that we didn't really see this big technology thing.

Speaker 2:

But you know, it's funny, I was thinking about this also in 1980, because I was thinking about one of the other games or something that I got, and the gentleman will remember this. The Mattel Handhold football game came out on the Christmas of 1980. Not the green one, but the little white one, and that was the closest that you could get to a video game football system until you really hit big with the Intellivision, which the Intellivision came out about 1979 as well. But you really had to be rich to get the Intellivision. But that made me laugh because I still have mine. I still have my original white one. And then the Mattel Pro Football 2, the green one no, I wasn't rich at the time. And then the uh, mattel pro football to the green one. No, I was, I was, I wasn't rich at the time.

Speaker 2:

And then you know what you, when you got into the likes of like 81 to 85, you had those I don't want to call them niche gifts, but I want to call them gifts that that, you know, were that just that just kind of not came out of left field. But you know 81, it was. You know you had the Grayskull Castle. Anyone remember the again? If you had the Grayskull Castle, you were living large 83, you had the. I mean I guess you would call it the craze, the frenzy that year over two things and that was Care Bears and the Cabbage Patch Kids. The Cabbage Patch Kids you literally had to fight to get back in 1983. If you were able to get a Cabbage Patch Kid for Christmas, you probably didn't have any hair left in your head because somebody was trying to pull it out while you were grabbing that last one on the shelf, because somebody was trying to pull it out while you were grabbing that last one on the shelf. The same thing with the Care Bears. I mean the Care Bears exploded and you had so much going on that you know parents were. I mean, thank God the internet wasn't around then, because you probably would have been paying like thousands of dollars or more for a Cabbage Patch Kid. And then the following year you had the Transformers, which dropped big. You know, they had the Optimus Prime, the Transformers and Optimus Prime toys.

Speaker 2:

But it wasn't until 85 where you had the likes of Teddy Ruxpin. Everyone loved Teddy Ruxpin. Teddy Ruxpin was this bear that was almost animatronics. Its eyes moved, its mouth moved, but at the end of the day you basically just put a tape in the back of him and he just mimicked to the tape. Now, what you, of course, you would do as a kid, you would, you would take, you would take some other tape you take, you would take your Van Halen 1984 and you would put it in the back of your Teddy Ruxpin and let's see if he sounds like David Lee Roth. Yeah, and then the one I remember, probably you know, and then I started getting older and this was like in around 1986, you know the.

Speaker 2:

But the big thing I remember in 86, the must have if you were, if you were an old or starting to get older, was the laser tag and you had these cool guns. You had these cool laser tag guns. And then you had the vest, not the vest, but you literally had the strap-on chest piece that had the sensor. Years down the road you could get the hat and other things and you could get the rifle. But the original laser tag system if you've ever seen it before, I mean it literally looks like something right out of Star Wars. It was one of the coolest fucking inventions you could ever have, because you ran around. You had the little tiny scope on the bottom, the back of the gun. You ran around, you could shoot your friends in the dark, you could shoot them in the light, you could shoot them for like what seemed when you were a kid. It seemed like 100 yards away, even though they probably only worked about 25, 30 feet from away each other. But it was just so awesome because you know what. You were literally Luke Skywalker, your Han Solo. You had that laser in your hand. It had the awesome laser sound. There was literally nothing better than that than in 1986.

Speaker 2:

Now, if you were a younger kid in 86, you had the my Buddy and the kid sister, and also you had the my pet monster. The my pet monster was not as much of as crazed as it was back in 83 with the care bears, but it was. It was pretty. It was it was pretty. It was a pretty interesting thing, Cause basically it was just a monster that was chained up in a box. Oh yeah, some of yeah, some of the things in the 80s probably wouldn't fly right now, in this 2024 atmosphere. 2025 is going to be a lot different, but these were gifts that just made you excited.

Speaker 2:

One of the best gifts I keep forgetting about and I still have, and it's something that I cherish to this day and I was really young when I got. It was in 1973. It was the Evel Knievel stunt cycle. Evel Knievel, of course, was an icon at that point in time, for you know doing his jumps and basically crashing you take the one where he jumped over Caesar's Palace and almost destroyed his entire body but he had become a cultural icon and any time he had a watch on Wide World of Sports, he had to do something like that. You stopped what you were doing to watch it, and it was always on a Saturday afternoon at 4 o'clock, even going back to when he tried to jump the Snake River Canyon A lot of people think he tried to jump the Grand Canyon. It was the Snake River Canyon, but that thing was just beyond awesome, and I still have mine.

Speaker 2:

You put him in the launcher, you crank him up, you crank him up as much as you can, and then you shoot him off on his way. He did stunts, he did flips, he went flying over with the greatest of ease, and then, a few years later, you were able to get his van so you could pull it. You know you get the stunt cycle van so you could pull it. You know you get the stunt cycle van so you could pull everything, and then you were able to use the van as a ramp to complete your greatest jumps ever. That was probably one of the best gifts, if not the best gifts as a kid, that I've gotten during that holiday season, and, like I said it, it was something that you, you, you just wanted to have, you, just, you just wanted to have in your possession, because it was a cool. You would spend hours outside creating these, these, the, these, the, these processes or jumps in your brain, and you were just like you know what when you were a kid back in the seventies and eighties. Your imagination is what you had Imagine, though there was a real Scrooge, and it's called the Teamsters Union as it launches a historic nationwide strike against Amazon and make.

Speaker 2:

They're making Amazon pay in the price. The Teamsters have been trying to Amazon been trying to unionize Amazon facilities for trying to uh unionize Amazon facilities for years. They represent now about 10,000, uh workers at Amazon across the country and basically what they've done. Now they are shutting down seven facilities in Illinois, new York, atlanta, san Francisco, south Carolina uh, excuse me Southern California, uh, and, and they're basically all these plants are participating in the largest strike against a trillion dollar company. And of course, the Teamsters, who don't understand the thought process of bad press, are doing this directly before Christmas, like six days before Christmas, and they're you know and listen.

Speaker 2:

Unions, I believe, have their purpose, have their purpose. I believe unions serve their purpose, especially during the labor issues back in the 20s and 30s and 40s, even going into the 50s. I understand that, but I think companies now have an understanding that you need to pay your employees more. Now maybe I'm biased because I know people that work at Amazon and I understand that. Now I think one of the biggest issues that Teamsters have is that Amazon is basically trying to use third-party drivers and they've been trying to do that for a while now, which basically the Teamsters are saying are illegal and subject to multiple unfair labor practices. Why? Because the fact that you're going to go, you're going to outsource some things. People have been outsourcing things for years and that's the issue. If you've worked at Amazon, listen, the work is hard, it's demanding, but Amazon has always been known for paying a fair wage. They have these programs where you literally can go up through the Amazon system and move from different departments and literally better yourself. They have a very good program in reference to higher education, going back to school. They are very competitive with price. But of course, the union wants to negotiate a new contract for higher wages, better benefits and a safer work condition.

Speaker 2:

Amazon is not known for being incredibly unsafe. I mean, that's what I don't get, and I love it because the Teamsters president, sean O'Brien, said if your package is delayed during the holiday season, you can blame Amazon. Insatiable greed. We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do the right thing by our members. They ignored it. Maybe they ignored it because they don't recognize you as a governing power of these employees, because of the fact that you only have a portion of their workforce. I love it. Amazon fulfillment centers across the countries will have primary picket lines set up by local union members.

Speaker 2:

Basically, this is what the Teamsters are saying. Amazon is one of the biggest, richer corporations in the world. They talk a big game about taking care of their workers, but when it comes down to it, amazon does not respect us and our rights to negotiate for better working conditions and wages. We can't even afford to pay our bills. That's what we refer to as. Watch this inflation which was caused by wait for this, the Democrats. I love it.

Speaker 2:

Right now, amazon has mentioned that team members are already afforded competitive pay, immediate health care, 401k, match growth opportunities, adding to the company's average base salary was increased in September to $22 an hour. That's insanity to me that you just increased. They just on their own, increased the wages to 22 bucks an hour. Now, not that that's like you know, there's great shakes, but that still was almost 40, that's actually over $45,000 a year for working at Amazon, I mean, and a lot of these jobs are entry-level positions, so it's not like so you, that's what I love. People who want entry-level positions want to make like $100,000 a year. I thought it was funny that they were talking about the hiring managers did. They did a survey and like six out of seven said they wouldn't hire Gen Z employees because of the fact of their, of their demands for people that do not have any work experience.

Speaker 2:

And, of course, the union is complaining that we are fighting against a vicious union busting campaign. Yeah, this is. This is just like back in the day when you had the union busters coming in there with their billy cubs breaking heads, trying to get people back to work. Oh my god, people do not know their history.

Speaker 2:

And if you want to strike and your and your minimum wage was basically put back up to 22 an hour, and done that by itself for the company and you get immediate health care, 401k matching and higher education assistance immediately, maybe you need to look forward and a lot of people did at the current government in the situation and find out why you can't afford things. And the thought process shouldn't be companies should just pay more. The thought process should be maybe government should be paying less. Oh, I want to wish everyone a holiday season happy. We're going to say it again and we're going to freak some people out Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. This is Tim. This is Get Off my Lawn the Matt Ramleys of a Gen Xer and I'm out of here.