Comments by docsavage (page 22)

Currently there are a lot of young men leaving Russia after the announcement of a mobilization, but the Ukraine has a similar problem. Their government had to make it illegal for any males under 60 to leave the country. Russia has three times the population of the Ukraine so it is likely the Ukraine will run out of soldiers first. It won't do the U.S. any good to send the Ukraine weapons if there is no one to use them. Polling shows Americans are strongly against sending American soldiers to fight and die there. It may take several years but it will finally be accepted that the absorption of the Russian speaking eastern part of the Ukraine into Russia is permanent. We won't start World War III over this. With the Boomers retiring, Social Security and Medicare will eat up most of the government budget with increased interest payments on the expanding debt eating up a lot of the rest. The U.S. will have to slash military spending and adopt a noninterventionist foreign policy out of necessity.

I'm 66 and I look back and think how fast it all went. I've started to realize late in life we are all only here a short time on this planet and we should try to be nice to each other while we are here. In the Beatle song "We Can Work It Out" John and Paul sing the following: "Life is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting, my friend".

Energy costs are dropping because Biden is taking petroleum out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and putting it on the market. All that oil will be gone by 2023 and prices will shoot back up when it is. The CPI put out by the government is rigged. It shows a 6% increase in the cost of housing, but median house prices are up 30%. Rent prices are up more than 6% too. My rent went up 11% this year. They are just gaslighting the public here. Biden and the Democrats are trying to improve their chances in the upcoming election using gimmicks like these.

I'm like Muddy above in that I'm pickier about who I do lap dances with now. Cutting back is not a problem because I went weekly for ten years and I'm getting a little tired of strip clubs. I wanted to go a lot before I reached 65 because my father and both grandfathers passed away before then and I thought I might too. I made it, though. I'm still buying some lap dances, but I think there are more guys just sitting and watching the girls on stage. This would probably be frustrating for the strippers. I went to a strip club Thursday night where few of the customers buy lap dances. At ten at night there were zero strippers there. If the customers spend no money at all on them, these girls will just stop showing up.

If someone attempts humor in a post that's fine as long as they don't expect effusive praise for it. Someone named Daddilac did that about a month ago. Me and some other commenters on the post didn't congratulate him on how funny he was, and he got angry and accused us of being too stupid to understand his joke. He was so angry about it he hasn't been here since.

Inflation isn't likely to end until interest rates exceed the inflation rate. That's what it took for Volcker in the early eighties. With the inflation rate over 8% and the 75 basis point increases this is going to take a while. I have a shrinking paycheck. My apartment rent increased more than 10% this year. I was already paying a lot just to live in a safe neighborhood. All my other bills are going up too. Local strip club prices have been going up. If a lap dance price goes from $25 to $30 that doesn't seem like a lot, but every other price is going up also. I've been cutting back and, from the dwindling crowds I've seen at local strip clubs, others are too. On the plus side, when I do go in my regulars are happier to see me because they are starting to financially struggle and need my business.

If you don't like the rules at a strip club, you can find another one with different rules or find another hobby. There is a bit of a problem in many cities, though. In recent years it has become increasingly difficult for a new strip club to get the licenses to open. Here in Indianapolis the last one opened more than 25 years ago. There have been a couple attempts to open ones without licenses, but they were shut down by the police. This gives current strip club owners something of a government enforced monopoly. I'm not accusing them of handing government officials money under the table to eliminate potential competitors but they certainly are receiving an unfair benefit here. There are many poorly run strip clubs and under more free market conditions those would be driven out of business and replaced by better ones. This would benefit the customers and also the strippers, who would have more and better options of where to work.

Whatever you may think of the founding fathers, without them you wouldn't be free to say what you think. You are free to say anything because of them, including insulting them if you want to.

My all-time fav looked like the character Fiona on the tv series "Burn Notice". She acted like her too. She quit and came back three times and each time I was happy to see her back. If I had a chance to see her one more time in a strip club, I would do one of those private VIP type rooms. I have heard she works for a lawyer now and would ask her about that.

You should always listen to other viewpoints but the ability of people to openly express their views is becoming increasingly unpopular in this cancel culture era. Something can be labeled misinformation, disinformation or hate speech and suppressed. Freedom of speech and press were considered so important by the Founders that they listed that first in the Bill of Rights. You have to allow all viewpoints, even unpopular ones. You can't have the government decide which viewpoints are acceptable or unacceptable because whoever is in power will use that to silence their political opponents.

One month. I'm in the unusual situation of being a ten-minute drive away from three strip clubs. If I had a longer drive, I might take longer breaks.

"It does raise a business question. What other services might be offered at a strip club." I once told a regular I needed to go get a new coat because a button came off my old one and she told me if I would bring the coat into the strip club she would sew the button back on. I had never had a stripper offer to do sewing for me before.

I've had a number of regulars. I don't know why but I like long term relationships. I've lived in the same city 66 years, worked at the same place for 40 years, and still have friends from high school and college. I never travel. You can probably divide people into the categories of those who like the familiar and those who like new experiences and I'm in the first. I get to know my regulars very well and know all sorts of information about them like the name of their pet dog when they were a child. If you talk to someone over a period of a few years all sorts of subjects will eventually come up. I'm always unhappy when my strip club regulars leave. I accept, though, this isn't a lifetime career.

She doesn't look a day over 91.

Energy costs have recently gone down because Biden has been taking oil out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. At the current rate of withdrawal, it will all be gone by 2023. Then prices will shoot back up and we will be paying more than five dollars for a gallon of gas. He doesn't care about that. He doesn't look any more into the future than the next election in November. We need to stop this short-term thinking and kicking the can down the road. We also need to stop playing games. Calling a government spending bill an "Inflation Reduction Act" won't mean it will reduce inflation. We have to reduce spending since we have been printing up money to pay for it. We printed up five trillion dollars between 2020 and 2022, a 40% increase in the money supply, to help pay for three giant stimulus bills totaling six trillion dollars. Powell said that wouldn't cause inflation. Then he said the inflation it was causing was "transitory". Now he finally admits he was wrong.

By the year 2032 Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, government and military pensions added together will equal 100% of tax revenues. There will be nothing left for anything else. We are still going to have to pay interest on the national debt, which by then will be over forty trillion dollars. We can make some cuts in programs like Social Security but with the large Boomer generation all retired these cuts will have a limit. We will have to cut all nonessential programs. An argument is often made that a specific program doesn't cost much but if you add up all these programs it comes up to a lot of money. We won't have that money. Also, we definitely won't continue to spend $800 billion dollars a year on the military and will adopt a much less interventionist foreign policy.

I'm a conservative but also an atheist. My father was a high school science teacher, and I was raised non-religious. The Republican party is commonly identified with religion, though. I dated a research scientist at a drug company once and she was an atheist and wouldn't vote Republican. Except for some social issues identified with the religious such as banning drugs, abortion and prostitution I pretty much agree with the Republicans on everything else.

Strippers R Us

Everyone needs to be aware this media coverage isn't just about the Ukraine. If Putin can be portrayed as a dangerous menace, then that helps to justify continuing spending 800 billion dollars a year on the U.S. military. The military-industrial complex makes a lot of money out of that and doesn't want the gravy train to end. The media is supposed to be the watchdog of the government but in reality is often the lapdog of the government.

"How very gracious of you Doc, to have SOME sympathy" The reason I say "some" is that some segments of the military and civilian populations are active supporters of the war. I don't have sympathy for them.

"Emojis are for teenage girls." Yes, that's a teenage girl thing. I was in a grocery store tonight and saw a teenage girl sniffing some scented soap. When she saw me looking at her sniffing the soap, she gave me an embarrassed smile and quickly put the soap back on the shelf. Sniffing scented soap in the grocery store is a teenage girl thing. I don't ever see any guys doing that.

The two Indianapolis strip clubs with the highest average prices, Dancers and PT'S, have had the biggest recent drops in customers. Guys are having more trouble making ends meet with high inflation levels and there are fewer of them willing and able to spend $40 for a three-minute lap dance. The previous review for this club had two comments about the high prices and this review has one before mine. The typical young stripper thinks if she charges higher prices she will make more money. In business terms, they think demand for lap dances is inelastic. Demand is only inelastic, though, in the case of necessities. For many guys, lap dances are a luxury and demand drops as prices rise. You don't make more money raising prices on lap dances if you are then selling fewer lap dances. You need professional management setting prices, not inexperienced young girls.

I think Americans will eventually tire of this war, just as they tired of Afghanistan and Vietnam. Like those wars, it really isn't very important. The Communists didn't go on to take over the world after Vietnam fell to them and Putin isn't going to go on and take over the world if he wins in Ukraine. I do have some sympathy for the civilians and soldiers being killed. The ruling classes always start the wars but are not the ones to die in them.

I second the recommendation above for "Candy Girl". It's pretty entertaining. There are not a lot of stripper non-fiction books but there are a lot of movies with strippers. I read private eye detective fiction and the plotline where a stripper is murdered or kidnapped sometimes is used. There is even one set in Indianapolis where I live called "Circle City Shakedown".

They seem friendlier in the club recently. I go to a health food store and then after it closes to a nearby strip club and sit for an hour and a half until my regular shows up about ten. Last Friday she offered to give me her phone number and said if I got there early to call her and she would come into the club early. In 12 years, I've never had a stripper offer to come into the club early when I showed up early. Another regular at another club ran across the room and started hugging me when I walked in the door. There are definitely more desperate girls having trouble making ends meet with the high inflation. The local customers are spending less too. Lots of guys are just sitting around drinking.