Respects to Mr. Uecker
As readers know, I had great respect to Bob Uecker, the former St. Louis Cardinal (even a World Series ring!) who announced for the Milwaukee Brewers for more years than many of you have been alive. But what puts me in mind of him today is one of his best lines from “Major League II.” Why?
Now, we all know (and in many cases virulently hate) the end points of Daylight Savings Time. Unless you live in a sorta-sane state like Arizona, every spring you lose an hour of sleep and every fall get an extra hour’s sleep. The excuse is always that “we get more daylight” – sometimes attributed to timing farm kids’ day so they can do more chores during the growing season, to the more modern “we get energy savings by not running lights as long”. Whatever.
The solutions proposed are pretty simple, and they are THREE. (Now did the Lord say, “First thou pullest the Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is right out.” Book of Armaments sorry, flashback)
1) Live with it, bitch if you must.
2) Stay on Standard time year-round
3) Stay on Daylight Savings Time year-round.
Simple, eh? Nope… there is a fourth.
Re. George Steube, R-FL (yeah, had to be Floriduh… sorry Jeff), has proposed The Daylight Act of 2026. in it he proposes a permanent shift… of ONE HALF HOUR.
Introduced to Congress earlier this month, the bill proposes doing away with daylight saving as we know it and splitting the difference. Instead of a twice-yearly change of one hour each time, it would shift U.S. time zones forward 30 minutes from the current standard time and leave them there permanently.
A 2023 YouGov poll found that 62% of respondents agreed that they want to stop changing the clocks twice yearly. A 2025 Gallup poll found that 54% of Americans also wanted to see the demise of DST; however, 48% preferred standard time all year, while 24% wanted permanent daylight saving time.
Let’s try a poll for “Who wants to meet at the middle and throw us off from almost everyone at the half hour?” If I’m selling squares on THAT poll, I’m keeping 0% support for myself. By the way, there are half hour off zones are limited to India, Afghanistan, and parts of Australia (although Nepal is 45 minutes off.) Everywhere else is at the hour – if it’s 6 AM THERE, it’s a round number of hours off HERE. No. Some countries like China may cover multiple time zones but choose to all be in one zone regardless of where you are – fine at least it makes some sense.
Heck, you can hardly get other countries to agree what a half hour IS – half nine in England means an hour different than half nine does in Germany. But at least it’s the same number of hours off. We want to be like India and Afghanistan – really?
Obviously some waterhead told Steube “we should compromise and split the difference”. Uh, no. Keep the freakin’ times synced, keep the world on a commonly accepted standard way of doing things.
But for even proposing it, Mr. Steube gets awarded the Bob Uecker Memorial “Trojan-Enz Boner of the Week Award”.
Category: Society
Just cancel daylight savings time completely. Arizona does just fine without it. My dad always said DST was like cutting a foot off the top of your blanket and sewing it onto the bottom because your feet are cold.
I second that motion.
I am an AZ. native and suffered absolutely zero negative effects from not complying with the DST BS for 5 decades. Now that I live elsewhere, it is silly to screw with everyone’s circadian rhythm for a hour each direction.
Like taking a bucket of water from the shallow end of a swimming pool and dumping it into the deep end!
Nope, my vote is to say pick one and leave it the hell alone. At this point I don’t care which but the semi annual clock dicking has outlived any potential benefit.
The half hour idea makes as much sense as drag queen hour in kindergarten.
I’m with you…I couldn’t care less which one you pick, just pick one and stick with it. Switching back and forth is plain stupid.
That extra hour in the fall gives Phil Monkress an additional hour that weekend to juggle balls.
You have to know that if President Trump abolishes DST, when/if the dems ever get back in power, they’ll bring DST back, because “Orange Man Bad”.
Yea, even hours are much easier to manage when working with international partners. half-hour time differences with most of the rest of the world would be a pain…heck, it’s hard enough now with even hour time differences.
“sometimes attributed to timing farm kids’ day so they can do more chores during the growing season”
Which always was and always has been a falsehood. never had anything to do with farming. I grew up on a farm. Crops and livestock don’t give a crap what time the clock says, they need care when they need care. Our school YEAR revolved around planting and picking seasons…not the time schedule. If that were they case, they’d just shift the start and end times of the school days, not change the freaking clock, which messes everyone up.
The origins of Daylight Savings time has a long and sordid history involving the Romans, Benjamin Franklin, Blackout measures during WWI and WWII, Factory work and union rules, The energy crisis of the ’70’s and just general mayhem, but it never had anything to do with farming.
Blaming it on us country kids is defamation and I won’t have it.
BTW: The farm I grew up on was in Indiana, and back then…Indiana didn’t do daylight savings time.
Seems kind of odd that a big farming state like Indiana would refuse to do it if it was instituted for “farm kid’s” chores.
I’d never even heard of “spring forward, fall back” until I joined the Navy and left Indiana.
I did wonder why the times of my favorite TV shows shifted by an hour twice a year when I was a kid, but never really gave it much thought. Adult things beyond my ken.
Sadly, Indiana folded several years ago and adopted DST, but I was long gone by then.
When I was stationed in Illinois I would go to Terrible Haute for the ISU vs ISU football, basketball, and baseball games. I would call the ticket office before the game to purchase the tickets; and, they would always get the giggles when I asked for the time. I could never figure out when Indiana’s and Illinois’s times were the same.
Where at in Indiana? I grew up on the farm near Medaryville in Pulaski County.
Tipton County, about an hour due North of Indianapolis. Home of the “World Famous” Pork Festival (yes, there’s a story behind that).
We used to camp at Tippecanoe State Park so I’m familiar with your area. And my best friend owns a farm outside of Plymouth which is in the county just to your Northeast if I’m remembering my geography correctly.
Roger. Thanks for answering.
Medaryville also has a “World Famous” Festival every year called the “Potato Fest”/Spud Days” and that’s why the town nickname is “Tater Town”.
Zulu time. It’s that simple. The military runs on Zulu time, why
can’t us stupid civilians? Even my dog has no problem with
Zulu time but change his feeding routine and he will let you
know post haste. And don’t even get me started on the CPAP
machine I use to prevent seizures, tongue biting and sleep
walking. Timing is everything.
The older I get the more difficult it is to deal with the changing
of the clocks. By the time I get used to the change, it is time
to change again.
Saw a meme the other day depicting AOC stating:
“We can land on the Sun, we just have to do it at night”
Works for me. Let it be the same time no matter where you are.
Strangely enough, there are several places in the world where the time zones are on the half-hour.
And the bars never close.
First time I called the former MRS D from Bagram, she asked what the time difference was. I said 5 1/2 hours. She thought I was yanking her chain.
As long as we are discussing getting in sync with the rest of the world, can we do away with the Imperial Measurements and get with the rest of the world by using the metric system? There are many not three countries in the world that do not use the metric system, the United States, Liberia and Myanmar. Are we sure want to keep our wagon hitched to this horse? The military uses the metric system, everything is based on multiple of ten, and if we did convert, Hack Stone would be packing a 25 centimeter weapon downstairs.
How would we march without feet?
Wow Hack! (Checks Google AI converter) That is 19.4 inches! You must scare the bejesus out of the ladies.
25 cm = 9.843 in
Oh, a stubby. Google AI lets us down again.
I believe you’ve misplaced a decimal. Maybe we’re not quite ready to kneel to the Euros yet.
The military uses the metric system because their job is to kill commies. Gotta know how far away the commies are to kill them so it makes sense for them to understand how to measure in commie.
For us all-American types, I don’t need to measure anything in commie for the same reason I don’t need to be able to count in Chinaman or talk in Roosian…I ain’t a commie.
Seriously though…the one thing I can’t seem to wrap my head around in Metric is fuel efficiency.
Liters per 100km?
So in metric fuel efficiency, big numbers are bad and small numbers are good?
Just seems….wrong.