Monday, December 26, 2016

He's the King of the World!

"Merry Christmas to all!"
Blurts the RNC official Christmas message. and the expanding ripples of unanswered questions expand outward. Is this the kind of message that an inclusive political party about to take over the reigns of the USA should be sending or is this a somehow mislabeled missive from the Vatican?

"Over two millennia ago, a new hope was born into the world, a Savior who would offer the promise of salvation to all mankind. Just as the three wise men did on that night, this Christmas heralds a time to celebrate the good news of a new King. We hope Americans celebrating Christmas today will enjoy a day of festivities and a renewed closeness with family and friends."

Questions and more questions: Are we talking about a king of the United States? Why do we have a political party making historically unfounded statements of faith, supporting sectarian mythology as truth and a mythology that does not represent American citizens as a whole? 

I'm sorry, you've been calling an unfulfilled ancient myth "good news" for longer than CNN hangs on to "breaking news" and there has been no new king of a united Hebrew Nation since Solomon and there is and never has been a king of the world. Sorry Leo and sorry for the rest of us: those who don't celebrate a holiday Christians have often banned and which has it's roots in pagan mythologies and department store lobbies are Americans and voters too and our rights protected under a Constitution that forbids kings as well as State religions.

And sorry RNC, a party worthy of the name would wish good tidings to all Americans not just those who celebrate a dressed up pagan holiday. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and not claiming you're comparing Trump to Jesus although a clarification and assurance is in order. Isn't it funny though, how often the things you say and do have to be explained away like the contradictions in the Bible? Contradictions such as the fact there is no mention of Three wise men?

As a literate person, should I be further insulted by a Sunday School, Bible Stories for Children version of the story?  No matter, the horror of watching the first secular democratic republic become the first to fall to barbarians overwhelms all else.






Wednesday, December 21, 2016

FAKE NEWS


Jeff BlindWe're just starting to see some lip service paid to the cornucopia of fake news, libel and fraud that we call social media. The first I encountered this morning was a picture of a table in the shape of a swastika in a article that made it look like it came from The Daily Mail. It tells us it's something new from Ikea. Of course it's not and it apparently has appeared in other countries made to look like other legitimate newspapers printed it.  The picture is of a work of art done by a Berlin artist in 2011 and intended to be a cynical look at the false promises of Fascism, but someone doesn't like Ikea and goodness knows, in our lawless cyber world, anything goes.

There's a real observation called Gresham's law which says the good currency is driven off the market by bad currency.  Likewise, real news is driven off the market by fake news. There are no longer constraints on or impediments to the libel and slander of fake information. 


There is no bottom and even the notorious National Enquirer seems encouraged by the anarchy as you can see in the current issue smearing Malia Obama:

I'm sure Ikea is outraged and hot to punish whomever
did this and the Obama family should also be, but they really have no recourse because the legacy of the Web is chaos, lawlessness and loss of civilization.  Efforts to control it, as Facebook has claimed will be made are likely to be useless given the volume and the viciousness and the appetite for hate now warming up faster than the Arctic latitudes.

As you probably know, I'm an atheist. gods, spirits and a universe that has purpose and sentience are completely absurd to me, but that doesn't mean I don't wish there were an Enlil to drown mankind once again. If only he could do it and leave the innocent animals alone.

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

l'etat c'est Donald

Memory is a funny thing when it applies to the world of politics. I wonder how many remember Dick Cheney's statement that the actions of a president are ipso facto legal.  That would sound very strange coming from the Republican machine that has been trumpeting the opposite for 8 years: that everything Obama does is illegal, scandalous and unconstitutional.

Truth, legality and morality apparently are time dependent, are time specific and situational. but don't look for anyone to confirm the obvious, because the core value is, that it's not illegal (fascist, racist, unconstitutional or deplorable) when we do it.

Donald Trump told us, his soon to be subjects, in an interview in the New York Times yesterday that profiting in business using your presidency is legal because there is no such thing as a conflict of interest when one is president, or should we say El Presidente.

“The law's totally on my side, meaning, the president can't have a conflict of interest.”
Is that true?  I'm not a lawyer, but Title 18 Section 208 of the U.S. code seems to exempt presidents from the requirement to, for instance, not steer the country for his own profit.  Maybe it's a new era coming. Maybe all that shall be changed, or maybe not. Congress has yet to challenge Trump's declaration that l'etat c'est moi as Louis IV the Sun King once told the world.  We shall see. We shall see how congruent the rule of law and the will of Trump shall be in our boisterous, sheet wearing, cross burning, minority deporting, religiously conformist, all white and all great America.  We shall see what we have done.


Wednesday, November 09, 2016

I'm the Captain Now.

Remember the scene where the scrawny Somalian kid says to Captain Phillips: "I'm the Captain now?" I think you will. I think you will remember it well. We're all hostages now and as for all those snarky, snotty, superior Hillary haters, I blame you for selling out my country. You're dead to me and when I see you bagging groceries at the Winn-Dixie in a year or two, don't expect a tip and besides, I'll probably be jealous of anyone with such a good job when America is Great again.

No, she's "crooked" she lies and then there are the thrice examined emails of no discernible importance. There's the thrice examined Benghazi debacle which didn't rise to the level of the 12 previous embassy attacks we little note or care to remember. You're hypocrites, you're snark addicts, trying to give import to your insignificant opinions with your zingers and snarky epithets. You're willingly gullible, having too much fun piling on to stop and think. You're my enemy and the enemy of my country and I shall never forgive you.

Go ahead and wait for the crook and liar to make it great. The demise of American prestige and respect leaves a hole that will soon be filled by those who have no intention of making America anything but a third world economic colony.  You wrote the death warrant.  You and no other and when it comes time to regret it, and all your piety and wit won't  wash out a line of it, nor all your tears a line, don't look for me.

Been here and gone.

Glenn

Sunday, November 06, 2016

Another Republican collapse?

Huffington Post has never seemed an extremist publication, except perhaps to extremists, but today's article about the historic drop in the markets coincident with the recent rise of Trump's prospects is full of flashing lights, klaxon horns and a voice from Das Boot shouting "Dive, Dive!"

We have, if you've been watching markets as closely as I do, the most prolonged sell-off since the financial crisis even though the odds are he will lose. Is that ironic with so many of his lower education level supporters extolling his talents as a business man who will end our "debt problem?" You betcha! as another lowbrow Republican pundit said. It seems like yesterday.

Financial experts and leaders around the world are expecting little short of total world collapse under a Trump administration. "Inconceivable" is the nearly universal reaction to the prospect of President Trump.   Moody’s says Trump’s policies would throw the U.S. economy into the longest recession since the Great Depression. Citigroup thinks a Trump win could cause a global depression.British research firm Oxford Economics thinks Trump in the White House would cause the American economy to shrink by $1 trillion over five years. Is the Nixon Gambit going to work to dismiss the fears of  the most informed conservatives in the Capitalist world by reciting the "Liberal Media" formula?  It will for some; for many in the Denialist/Conspiracy community. But it won't matter. For them it will still be all about emails and Benghazi and Crooked Hillary and if  (please) she manages to win she'll be straightjacketed by investigations and inquiries and impeachment hearings and filibusters and budget crises and shutdowns and the inability to appoint anyone to anything.

Are we damned either way?  Who knows, The best I can hope for is survival. Greatness may have to wait. An out of office Trump is not a dead trump and like Dead Cthulhu in his home beneath the sea, he'll be dreaming of revenge.

Friday, November 04, 2016

Nothing worth saving here

Fuck it all.  I'm done. And no it's not just because the Republicans have instigated an idiot revolution, a Biblical flood of lies, libels and treason, it's because there is no other side with any interest other than promoting something by insulting, slandering and lying about someone else. A million eager buffoons on a million soapboxes, shouting.  Fuck it all.

Some self righteous turd from Black Lives Matter just told me in a TV ad that I'm an "educated racist," without knowing who or what I am or what I think or can argue for or demonstrate or defend. "My dogma, my words, or you're the Devil.

This gives me license to say all kinds of invented things about him, and so here goes. He's an uneducated, smug, self righteous, lying son of bitch slandering good people with a farrago of fallacies a smart fifth grader could eviscerate.  It's an insult to my intelligence and if you doubt it, I doubt your honesty and cognitive powers.

All Buddhists, all Humanists are educated racists,by his estimation  but this cesspool of decomposing egotism and hate and lust for justifying retribution isn't?  How many millions of self appointed authorities are going to demand that I think their way or I'm a racist, communist, fascist, blasphemer or whatever.  Fuck it all, fuck America, Fuck Trump, I'm done.

Let it all fall down. I'll be here to piss on the ashes.

Wednesday, November 02, 2016

No Exit

Hell is other people, said Jean-Paul Sartre. in No Exit, (Huis closand so is Democracy as I was reminded today in the New Yorker.  A third of Americans can't name one branch of government and examples of  the massive failure of education to integrate the population into the process are more than abundant.

Perhaps it's my prejudice speaking but I would guess, in the absence of further data, that this proportion is even higher among supporters of Donald Trump, many of whom seem to think that a president can do almost anything he wants, from "fixing the schools" to changing the ties in the affairs of men and rebuilding the world of the 1950's within our walled borders. All of course without help or hindrance from  the legislature or the Judicial Branch.

The requirements of Democracy include an informed, intelligent, rational electorate and I know I didn't have to tell you that, and I didn't have to tell the Founding Fathers that; seeing that they attempted to follow a sort of hierarchy of decision making that we call a Republic to protect us from the passions, the rages and the foolishness of the people.

I don't think it's working and not only because fewer and fewer potential voters are informed enough to rise above the level required to get on the carnival ride we call our electoral process, and more and more are intentionally and effectively misinformed, propagandized and enraged beyond the point of caring.  The days of hand set and hand printed newspapers ended over a century ago along with the disappearance of a population with the time and inclination to read them. Ten thousand, ten million flowers have bloomed as the tyrant Mao would have said and there is much confusion about who is or isn't likely to be telling the truth.  Every truth, every lie, every observation is buried in an accretion of commentary and although so much information is available, few bother to do more than seek out confirmation of what feels good to believe and scream it loudly in the street. 

Perhaps there truly is no exit and perhaps there are no limits. A candidate we associate with "those" people is soon divorced from his own history and ours and becomes indistinguishable from the Satan who was long ago invented to enable the demonizing process -- while the devil himself can become a hero. There is no damping factor as an engineer might term it and the system flies apart as we see today - right now. 

Is the secret to stall the rush to authoritarianism and a government of men to introduce some authority of information: some referee of last resort?  We can't know because even though it's so easy to check facts, checkers who we don't trust because they tell us we're wrong, become the demons themselves and we trust no one but the anonymous voices of agreeable rage on the web, in our emails, in our minds and on the 24 hour news. We sink into paranoia and into faith at the same time: into separate hermetic universes. Nothing in one can be proved to be true or false in any other frame of reference. Whether or not Hassan really said it, in our world and in his, nothing is true and anything can happen.

Is there really no exit?  How do you say "No Chance" in French?

Behind the screen

I was a Cub Scout.  I was a Boy Scout, I've considered myself to be an outdoorsman and I have a lot of pocket knives, many sheath knives and a few machetes/ I have knives I use for gardening, cooking and once upon a time whittling. I got my first pocket knife - an official BSA model at age 8 and my dad taught me how to take care of it and use it. I may have nicked myself a couple of times over the years, but never thought of it as anything but a tool to allow the Boy Scout to "Be Prepared."

I never go out without one, usually small - the sort of thing they used to call a "gentleman's knife" or pen knife because it so often comes in handy. I once used a Swiss Army knife to repair a carburetor linkage well enough to get the car home.  I'm as likely to turn around and go home for having forgotten a pocket knife as I am for forgetting my phone or even my wallet. You never know.

A 13 year old kid here faces a felony charge for having a pocket knife. His life may well be ruined. This is no longer my country, my civilization, my culture.

We look around at tools and see weapons. We look at cars and we see death. We look at falling crime and tremble in fear. Nothing is safe enough. We're afraid of our food, our water, our government. Teach your kid to build a fire, make a shelter?  DANGER! Let him walk to school? You're going to jail.

Drive a car on the interstate, the safest roads we have -- hell no. It's too dangerous. Remember kitchen "Strike anywhere" matches?  Some states ban them.  I mean you could burn your finger.

Paranoia strikes deep. Starts when you're always afraid, as the song goes. We're terrified of our phones, our electric meters. We're afraid of freedom and so we let them sell us subjugation wrapped up in a flag and complete with air bags and radar brakes and we build walls to hide behind and the fat men in wigs smile, the lawyers get richer while we watch people have adventures in the only world we aren't afraid to participate in: teh one behind the screen.

Saturday, October 22, 2016

Abandon all Faith.

I can hardly condemn people for getting much if not most of their news from the Internet. It's efficient, you can read many sources quickly and you don't have to sit through all those TV commercials or deal with all that newsprint. That's why you're here, right?  The problem is, obviously, that for every legitimate news report there are uncountable sources of propaganda, slanted news and totally fabricated lies. Unless you're just looking for laughs you tend to believe them because you want to. We all want our prejudices, or as we like to call them, our principles, to be confirmed. Indeed far too many of us log on first thing in the morning desperately seeking outrage, scandal and condemnation. It's like a strong cup of coffee to get us going, and as with all things, where there is a demand, there arises a supply. It's called the Internet.
There are web pages that closely mimic the major outlets and unless you look closely you may think you've logged in to CNN.com or a legitimate newspaper. There are all sorts of web sources attached as supporting links on the things you get on Facebook or in email demonstrating that whatever it is you don't like is a fraud, fake or a harbinger of doom. Many are just more propaganda, many don't even exist.
But there are all sorts, put up by all sorts of organizations or individuals or political parties. My opening delight this morning was labeled as World News Politics.com and in the wildest of hysterical terms proves that Hillary Clinton hates and wants to persecute Christians:

Hillary Clinton: CHRISTIANS IN AMERICA Must ABANDON FAITH IN CHRIST, Adhere To NEW LIBERAL LAWS

Screeches the headline. a misquoted menu of quotes mrom Mrs. Clinton proving this premise follows. Why this found its way to me, I don't know, being a cynical and fairly well informed atheist, but the claimed 277,000 "shares" means others welcomed the chance to feed the addiction, to feed the Hillaryhate, that newest branch of the Clintonhate religion that dates to Bill's first campaign. Of course none of those predictions or maledictions came true and Bill may have been the most successful president in our history, but faith never dies, nor do lies  and they're still predicting all sorts of horrors that never happened then and won't happen now. One of those things is the persecution of Christians.
The writers of News World Politics may or may not believe this idiocy, but they know you desperately need it as a vampire needs blood and the people who pay them make their living from your fear and hate and other psychological problems you like to call Christianity. What you may depend on for your identity and self respect along with your Confederate pretense, your sense of biological superiority and your guns.
It's not going to die, it's not going to go away and it will continue like a cancer in America no matter that it's fake and like the "tax and spend" meme, the Gun Grabber meme, the "spread the wealth" calumny, it's designed to make you abandon your faith in America. Can you imagine what kind of people with what kind of motivation are behind this? That's not too hard, is it?

Thursday, October 13, 2016

America and Its Fears

What are we so afraid of, we Americans?  Everything it seems. Everything is too dangerous, nothing is nearly safe enough now that life is safer in America than it ever has been. We live longer than Americans ever have. We're less likely do be murdered, to die in a car accident or shot in a robbery. Sure, the progress isn't smooth and it affects us erratically, but the things certain to kill us are heart disease, Cancer, organ failure and complications of Diabetes. We're making progress on those things, but yet we have Americans terrified of  the very remote chance of  a pressure cooker bomb but who smoke, text while driving and are 150 pounds overweight.  We are now and always have been irrational creatures, reluctant and even afraid to base our actions and opinions on objectivity. On that fact are our political passions based.

A survey by Chapman University results in a list of what Americans fear most and by far, the largest concern is corrupt government officials. Nearly 61% tagged this as their biggest fear.  Is government so much more trustworthy than it was in my childhood when nearly everyone trusted the government?  Does it correlate to any actual increase in corruption over the days of Nixon and Agnew?  It's easy to dredge up lists of the worst presidents using Google, but basically any premise can be supported with Google searches and any president shown to be corrupt, but so much of it is motivated by political objectives.  Near the top of the list of the search I just did is titled Obama: The Most Corrupt and America-Hating President in US History  That's seriously untrue and there also seems to be an odd correlation between popularity and the reality of a president's term in office. What you blame them for or credit them with says more about your prejudices than their principles.

But next on the fear list is "terrorist attack," fear of which seems loosely linked to risk statistics. more than 40% of are afraid of swarthy invaders with bombs. Should I suspect that people a hundred years ago were just as afraid of Bolsheviks  and Wobblies and Anarchists with just as little reason? But of course nearly as many are afraid or very afraid of Obamacare. 38 1/2% are afraid of gun control. 37 1/2 % are very afraid of economic collapse.

Not all fears are unwarranted at all, more than a third of us are afraid of losing a loved one, of not having enough money in the future. These are real possibilities, but fear of irrecoverable economic collapse seems less so and our record of predicting such things seems laughable. We've had 8 years of panic about the imminent collapse and before that 8 years of denial of the probability and at present, we can't agree whether we're in a bull or bear market even if the Dow has gone from 7000 to over 18000 in 92 months of increase.

To fear is human and animal too, for that matter, and evolution has predisposed us to worry too much than too little, but so much of what we fear and the degree to which we fear it is the result of deliberate action and the actions of opinion makers and fear mongers; scam artists and profiteers. On the internet we find as much support for a flat earth, a 7 day creation and the fraud behind the Pythagorean Theorem as we do for   Obama: The Most Corrupt and America-Hating President in US History or for Hillary Clinton as liar, thief and murderer and like the cowards we are and are trained to be, we select the scariest, not the most plausible or the most supported by facts. We do the same with the promises of politicians.  Ask yourself whether you really believe your candidate can hope to do more than give lip service to the Utopian visions he describes or whether in fact anyone could given the complexities of government. Do you really?  Do you think your 4 door Nissan sedan is a race car like the commercial says it is or whether women will swoon over your "crossover?"  And if we elect politicians on such a basis and we look at or overlook their performance with the same selective eye, whose fault is it?

Monday, October 10, 2016

Locker Room Talk, misogyny and cover ups.

It's evidently difficult for Americans to tell an unsupported assertion from a hypothesis based on evidence. That's more true than it ever has been because we have the Internet to support anything no matter how insupportable.  All it takes to launch a cult is a plausible assertion and an anecdote, neither of which has to have any basis in reality at all as long as it satisfies that old human passion for conspiracy, bigotry and the hunting of witches.

Normally I avoid dressing conjecture up as a campaign, but the gloves have been off for quite a while and it's hard to take too much more of Hillary-Killary-Shillary who flies around on a broom and has been making all major policy decisions for the Federal government for 30 years. The search for things to attack her with is so desperate that when the supply wanes, the demand for fiction will bring creative results. No exoneration no matter how rigorous or lengthy or hostile can overcome the certainty of her universal guilt of something and everything.

So here it is: Donald J. Trump has gender issues and he's afraid you'll find out.. What he calls his love of beauty and what he calls "Locker Room" talk are ego defenses covering up the inner Donald who is afraid of and perhaps even disgusted by women.  He seems horrified by the fact that women need toilet facilities, that they menstruate. If he is indeed attracted to women, or if he just uses them as props, they must be young and beautiful in the extreme so as not to allow any question as to his machismo and of course to flatter his fragile narcissistic ego. I've never heard such exaggerated raunchiness in a locker room unless it's by 14 year old boys full of fear and lust and sexual frustration but eager to seem like men. Real men don't talk that way. Real men don't call their daughters "pieces of ass." Donald is not a real man.

Trump needs to think you see him as an icon of manhood and to him that means demonstrating dominance and control over women while asserting that women can't resist him and not just for his money. If they do, it's because they're fat and ugly and crooked and disgusting and have no judgement.  How could they if they're not fawning all over them as he gropes and grabs.  Feeling like the man for Donald means bragging and the right to feel contemptuous. It means arrogance and I suspect the roots of arrogance lie in a hidden sense of humiliation. How can I not suspect that like Hitler, a fulfilling relationship with a woman was impossible.


And speaking of Hitler- that's right, I said the gloves were off, didn't I?


Saturday, October 08, 2016

The Greater Groper

Back when America was great, or at least when Humpty Trumpty suggests it was, America was about free trade and open borders, the business of America was business and laissez faire Capitalism was King. That's sort of the message I get from Clinton's "secret" speeches, you know the ones that show she's in league with the minions of free market Capitalism. How the hell did it come about that a truly rapacious freebooter who wants to destroy banks and financial institutions like a Bolshevic's wet dream, who thinks he has the right to grope your wife for sport, who doesn't believe in paying his bills and has cheated his way to the top is the champion not only of the GOP but of the people he routinely screws? So she suggests that bankers and brokers and the like know best how "Wall Street" should be regulated, that's not saying they should be given the power to self-regulate. It's saying that they know what's going on better than congress or you for that matter. The Trumpshevics hope you think so, but then they just assume you're dumb and uneducated, mad as hell and half drunk. Go ahead, scream about Killary, you idiots, you'll be first on the bread line.

Sunday, October 02, 2016

I've Fallen into a Madhouse and I Can't Get Out

There's no denying that this election has brought out the worst in all of us. Listening to man-on-the-street interviews with Trump supporters makes me want to run for the border: to some place not populated by armed and enraged thugs far more dangerous than the Zombies in any of the popular movies and TV series. But the Hillary, Killary, Shillary Billary idiots who are helping with their irrational perceptions and their cultivated ignorance are only making it more possible for the neo-nazis and atavistic ape-men (and women) shit-face drunk on slogans and murderous memes and animal rage to destroy our country as fast and as thoroughly as any nuclear exchange, although it would be foolish to rule that out too.

How do you argue with people who would choke to death rather than relinquish the false comparisons, false equivalences like comparing the not-even-legal Trump foundation to the Clinton Foundation and dismissing both candidates as "Proven liars."  No one can truly that stupid and I can only explain it as being pathological.

That's not to say Americans aren't living in their hermetic little worlds, giving equal weight to matters of student loans and modes of address as against Nuclear brinksmanship and the likely failure of  Western civilization. We sound like 300 million birds on a very long wire, tweeting memememememememe.  Selfishness, narrow mindedness and the blindness of rage: Ignorance is strength.

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Which Trump Do You Love?

Viruses like HIV that have an extremely high mutation rate, like moving targets in general,  are hard to fight.  The same thing seems to be true of Donald Trump.  Not only a moving target, he's one that jumps from quantum state to quantum state and can be at two places at one time.

Many people seem to have trouble understanding how he can make a fool of himself over and over again and suffer no adverse consequences. Trump himself has commented, with no small degree of smugness, that he can get away with anything, and indeed discussing one day's outrageous statement or act is difficult because it's so soon swamped by today's outrageous and sometimes contradictory statement. One day he's going to put millions in boxcars and send them to camps, the next day he's going to be compassionate. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, fade away like smoke.

My estimation of Charles Krauthammer has never included objectivity, so it's still surprising to read this morning's column saying essentially the same thing: that there is a constant stream of new Trumps emerging and evolving from the original strain. Never the Same Trump Twice.  All those expensive Clinton ads showing people being grossly insulted by Donald's angry ravings make his opponents glad at heart, but do they work on those so desperately clinging to the delusion that he's not a thug and a bully and an ignoramus and a liar pandering to the worst of the worst?  He can tell us that Hillary Clinton quite literally founded ISIS and the next day deny it and the following day repeat it and America with it's heads spinning simply forgets the details and only remembers to associate any Clinton supporter with apocalyptic disaster and the darkest of evil. He knows better than the Generals?  He's going to "carpet bomb" ISIS? He's going to change the prime rate, take direct control of the troops, invoade the Middle East and take the oil home ina bucket? He's going to fix the schools?  He's going to make the US look like some walled Sumerian city-state from 3000 BC? Is there time to mention that he can't, that no president would have the power or the funds or the time or the support from Congress or the Court?  Before you can drum that into the many-headed beast of America, he's elsewhere telling us about his heroic sacrifice for our country which consists of sleazy and illegal business deals.

Can anyone get Americans to consider the enormity of refusing to divest himself from hundreds of offshore business relationships, some in strategic countries like Turkey? Refusing to show us his sources of income, his debts and to whom he owes millions.  Can anyone get Trumpers to care that he steals from a charity with his name on it to pay his lawyers to shield him from punishment? Hell no, they're too busy braying like asses about Crooked Hillary.

The Democratic ads and essays might as well be written on water. The Trump of ten minutes ago is no more, yet the Trump goes marching on.

Thursday, September 15, 2016

These are Those Interesting Times

I think it's OK for me to call these interesting times. It may be that hackers with no intent to do so may allow historians to write a more accurate history of the 8 years of George Bush, that period that seems to have changed  the world for the worse is so many ways, taking the US from a thriving economy of surplus to nearly bankrupt, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands at least, destroying countries, societies, cities and thousands of years of history. Reading the emails from Powel's private server is like opening doors and windows and file cabinets that have been locked for decades. How would we know that Rudy Guiliani actually admits that Obama is a decent man or that Powell thinks the Benghazi thing is a stupid "witch hunt" and she's not to blame? Of course deplorable Trumpsters won't read that, but we will and historians will.

Amongst the national noisemakers, the editors, disguisers, redactors and inventors of history, there may be consternation in reading the letters of Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice that excoriate Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and Paul  Wolfowitz -- names we're not hearing much about any more. In fact we're not hearing much about W any more either, now that the zombiemakers in the media and the GOP have hidden them behind a wall of denial that Donald can only feel jealous of.  It's all about pathological Hillaryhate as it once was all about pathological Clintonhate. All the bad things of the GWB administration have become Hillary things, Obama things.

Anyway, it's nice to hear those in the know - and Rice and Powell certainly in the know call HRC qualified, with a long "track record" and a respected friend, even if the General is a bit miffed at the attempt to compare his private email server to her email server and Rice's private email server.

I don't imagine he will come out and endorse her, but if there are historians left after the Trumpocalypse, to write about what happened after the GOP destroyed America, becaus perhaps two thousand years from now people will have some idea that the howling, smoking, radioactive remains of America once was and who destroyed it.

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Party First

More e-mail hacks!  It makes me wonder whether we should allow government officials to use e-mail at all.  Nothing seems beyond the reach of hackers, government backed or independent. Colin Powell's furious trashing of Donald Trump, the medical records of sports figures and all the other "scandals" we are forced to listen to. Perhaps we should look at our communications as a form of publishing.

Of course it's amusing to read former General, Joint Chief of Staff and Secretary of State rant about Trump as an international pariah, national embarrassment and damned racist, but when Mr. National Embarrassment calls on foreign governments led by a former KGB director to hack into the communications of a former secretary of state: someone with the ability to do just that, I think we have a crisis at hand. Electronic communications are not secure. This latest hack may have been Russian in origin.
“There is nothing [Trump] can say that will sway black VOTERS…He takes us for idiots. He can never overcome what he tried to do to Obama with his search for the birth certificate…the whole birther movement was racist…And for him to say yesterday that within four years he would have 95% of blacks voting for him is schizo fantasy.”
But wouldn't it be nice if courageous people like Powell, people with a great deal of bi-partisan prestige would simply come out and tell us what they felt?  It's not easy to understand his reticence after Republican leaders have used him, embarrassed him and tarnished his reputation by having him read false stories to the UN about Mobile Chemical Weapons Labs the president knew were British Weather stations?
“Yup, the whole birther movement was racist. That’s what the 99% believe. When Trump couldn’t keep that up he said he also wanted to see if the certificate noted that he was a Muslim.”
He's right, Trumps Birther campaign was racist and Trump know all along he had no "insider' in Hawaii with the world shaking information he swore he had and Trump even attempted to tell us that non-existent document proved he was a Muslim as though people are born with a religion.

Powell tells us Hillary could have bypassed the whole e-mail fiasco if she had told us what she had done earlier. Perhaps, although I don't think Powell tod us he had done the same thing, but I have to ask why he hasn't told us about the horrors of what the GOP has done and is doing. Is this another case of  Party über alles?  GOP first, American last?

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Disaster

A disaster.  Obama's policies have been a dis-ASTER! says one millionaire to the other like some kind of a club password or secret society handshake. How so? I ask and just what policies do you mean?  Things get quiet really quick and I can almost hear the unspoken malediction: "y'ain't from aroun' here, arya?"

No I'm not, I'm from a place called reality and it can be a lonesome place for sure. Fact is, the only disaster  since Cheney and the Chimp left Washington has been the inability to perform even one duty of office without all-time filibuster records and total obfuscation. The guy couldn't order a hamberger from a drive-in window without the Jack-in-the Box Republicans trying to stop him, but the "Obama Disaster" is still one of the tent poles that holds up the GOP circus tent. No, he would be a tyrant and would be "trashing the constitution" by appointing cabinet members, but the constitutional mandate for the Senate to discuss his SCOTUS appointment?  Don't ask because you'll have to hold your nose for the answer.

Seems not too long ago that the Dow Jones was at 6,400. after an 8 year stretch of Bush's policies of borrow, spend, and cut revenue. Today was a bit of a disaster for my portfolio but it's still over 18,000, just off some all-time market highs. Disaster.

Today's Census Bureau figures show US household incomes up 5.2%  -- the fastest increase since the end of the Bush Recession, Strange because wage stagnation is another one of the tent poles and yes unemployment is near record lows too, but you know it's magic tent. It really doesn't need poles, it's held up by faith: faith that "Hillary's agenda" and her "policies" will be just as bad as her husbands and Obama's.  We can only hope they are.

Saturday, September 10, 2016

Charles Krauthammer -- Still an Asshole

Some have been tempted to cut Charles Krauthammer some slack of late, since he's decided to recognize the dangers of a Trump presidency, but he's still an asshole.

The world disdains Barack Obama and he's earned it, he says. There are no actual statistics to prove it, only a handful of anecdotes that support the idea that our enemies don't like him.  Countries engaged in military aggression and expansion have publicly snubbed him: China by making him wait and Russia by making him wait and Iran dislikes him too. Of course Putin kept the pope waiting too, but you wouldn't expect an Atheist dictator and imperialist to do otherwise. In fact you might say raising the enmity of  enemies of freedom would be a good thing for a powerful Western leader who has stood up to them. But is China or Russia "the world" or the enemy? If you're dumb or a Republican you just won't think to ask. Maybe you'll raise your right arm in salute, but you won't ask why Putin would prefer someone who is against NATO and doesn't care if he takes back Poland and Hungary and East Germany,. . .

But Not Charles Krauthammer. Not the Charles Krauthammer who is smart enough and educated enough to raise inapposite parallels and make false conclusions. Those who pander to the angry rabble and supply them with food for further anger like to portray the ideal leader as someone the world should fear.

His attempt to impress us with a comparison of Obama with Secretary of State Henry Stimson who in 1929 declared we wouldn't be indulging in code breaking may be indicative of the isolationism of the Republican Hoover administration in the 1920's but the implication that the US is not indulging and successfully in espionage is without any factual support, which is my way of saying it's a damn lie on top of being a baseless smear against Obama.  Somehow that Putin admires Trump makes such statements stink even worse.

Yes, he's right about Russian and Chinese expansionism but that Obama has stopped short of Nuking them isn't a bad thing. That he simply carries on knowing we are militarily unassailable and on the high ground in support of the free world isn't the same thing as the humiliation Krauthammer sees. I'm tempted to add my suspicion that those who feel humiliation from every angle are the ones with the weakness problem, the lack of self esteem, the fear, but I'll leave that to the shrinks.  Meanwhile the enemy of our enemy is not really our friend and Charles Krauthammer is still an asshole.

Thursday, September 08, 2016

The last days of America

You watch them sitting there, some in VFW hats looking like aged Boy Scouts trying to sit through a lecture on Balbus-Hawley Instability without falling asleep or revealing total incomprehension. Some of them like lobotomy patients nodding together from their rocking chairs on some asylum veranda.  They have mostly little questions about how the presidential hopeful would solve things a president has nothing to do with: how would you end discrimination, how would you end poverty and change human nature.

The moderator tries hard to control his anger as the candidate evades every question and every unsuccessful attempt to put the question back on the podium. The men in funny hats nod.

In living rooms all over the nation there are those so outraged they will spend a sleepless night pretending they can respond to suggestions that the centuries old strife in the Middle East began with Hillary Clinton and her invention of the Islamic State, her autocratic and premature withdrawal of American troops from a decade old occupation.  Indeed Hillary of the emails is the devil in all details and particularly the fictional ones. But of course, since she's been the de-facto president of the United States for nearly 30 years, the very principle of evil itself and the sole cause of the current disaster. And believe me it's a disaster, in fact it's huge.

You'd think some of the Admirals and Generals Trump claims to have as supporters would remember that the troops in Iraq were withdrawn under a schedule set by George Bush and the Iraqi government -- that the cover story under which the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld junta operated was that we were liberating Iraq from a tyrant and allowing them to set up the Liberal Western Democracy they claimed was the default state of the human species. We wanted to reassure the suspicious world that this was not a conquest, an attempt to claim Iraqi resources and to exploit them for our benefit and at their expense.

Trump of course is good at appealing to our collective atavisms. We should have made it a conquest and "taken their oil" as though we could put it in a bucket and taken it home like a trophy.  The mechanics of  making Iraq a colony under our iron clad control?  Only the deeply deficient would fail to ask. Only the morally vacant would fail to protest - yet the audience stares into the cameras and nods.

They stare with empty faces like those in the early stages of Alzheimer's dementia as Trump brags about the success of his triumphant trip to Mexico, about how the world is mocking us, testing us, threatening us, even raping us. He brags about how he would have walked away from the G-20 conference in all his greatness and taken his ball and bat with him. They nod, dreaming about a simple world and simple solutions even they can understand. Some manage to smile,

Hillary of the eternal emails. Hillary who took us to war on false pretenses, who condemned at least a generation to paying for it with lives, with money and with a world gone mad. Hillary the crook, Hillary the war monger, Hillary the Satan worshipper, Hillary who ran up the debt more than any president, who tried to pay for the most expensive war in our history by giving tax breaks to Donald Trump. Crooked Hillary who runs fraudulent businesses and bribes officials to avoid prosecution, who has avoided paying taxes in his supreme sacrifice for America's greatness.

88 Generals -- really? After telling them he knows ISIS better than they do? Who tells them his qualification to be commander in chief was  "making deals?"  I'm sure they're impressed and looking forward to a truly massive war and decades of bloody occupation. I'm sure they're impressed by his suggestions of a nuclear interchange, of making deals with dangerous tyrants, with hints of giving back the Soviet territories at long last liberated. Surely all the while he was making deals all these years he was really only thinking of making America Great and formulating deals and plans and invasions to make it happen.  After all this is the man who says he's sacrificed for his country as much as those who lost life and limb in Hillary Clinton's wars!

Nod along America. These are our last years. This is the failure of all our dreams, the final snub to those who truly thought we could be the light of the world and tried to make it happen.

Monday, September 05, 2016

The tin Drum

I have no idea why Americans continue to look to athletes and entertainers for sanctification of their opinions, but it is amusing to watch the media try to make a big issue out of  Colin Kaepernick and his little personal demonstration. The first thing I heard on the TV this morning was that some other athlete had done the same thing in support. I'd hate to have been the news reader trying to keep a straight face while declaring this a "growing trend."  That's two out of three hundred twenty million! Why if this trend continues. . .

Yes, I know it's an election year and this requires an "all outrage, all the time" policy, but to put up with the endless tramp of Trump, Trump, Trump, like boots marching in the street is enough, thank you very much, or should I say Danke Schöen. We don't need anything more.

I'm not about to tolerate a government that can or will demand oaths or spoken rituals or demonstrations or any other form of star spangled blather. Freedom of expression, freedom of thought, of conscience and belief. These are not something granted by a government, but are the very cornerstone of a government whose foundation is that freedom.

Or as we used to say in Brooklyn: I gotcha anthem right heah!

Saturday, September 03, 2016

Donald does Detroit

Or at least he tried to and I mean do in the sense of screw. Who thinks that today's speech wasn't written by some staff member to mimic the rhetoric and cadence of a black preacher as the non-black public envisions one?  Who thinks the shot of Donald gyrating with the gospel choir was pandering and that he hasn't been in a whole lot of churches of any kind in a very long time? Pretty much everyone that watched.

Oh Donny, you're a man for all places and all seasons, but only if those seasons are named Lie, Cheat, Steal and Misrepresent. The odds that you knew that or any other Gospel Quote before yesterday are about the same as the odds that you pay any Federal Income Tax.

I have a feeling that you've made more enemies than you had before because it sure seems that you expected the intended audience to be unsophisticated enough and too anxious to please a rich white man not to feel the condescension. The day of minstrel shows is long over Donny. Wipe off the blackface and go home to your penthouse.


Je ne suis pas Charlie

Remember when we were falling all over ourselves to post a "Je Suis Charlie" picture somewhere?  Of course we wanted to stand up for freedom, but since none of us had really heard of that French language magazine or were familiar with the kind of thing they print, it was all so easy to flatter ourselves that we're noble defenders and not lemmings.

So what do you think of their cartoon showing a multi layer collapsed building with the arms and legs of squashed Italian corpses oozing out and calling it lasagna?  Gratuitously tasteless, heartless and disgusting come to mind rather rapidly.

Nothing of the sort that justifies slaughter of course, just enough to raise questions about whether they learned anything about humanity and decency and compassion from it.  Suddenly I'm not so Charlie any more.

Friday, September 02, 2016

Taco Terrorism!

A chicken in every pot, 40 acres and a mule -- political promises are the fabric of election year rhetoric. One might think "a taco truck on every corner" would be such a promise, but this is racist and xenophobic America and it's a promise meant to terrify us like the "yellow peril" and the "red menace" once did. Sure, most Americans aren't old enough to remember and are too proudly ignorant to care, but I remember when pizza and even spaghetti were "foreign" food in a land of white bread, roast beef and potatoes. There was a time when Hamburgers and Frankfurters were foreign as well.

Now that the forward into the past movement seems to have taken over our dreams (or for some, our nightmares) the concept of more widely available Mexican or Tex-Mex food can be frightening, even for some of us of Mexican origin. Frightening even though the long history of our country's dietary improvement has been a history of expanded choices and better food. Most frightening is that Latinos for Trump founder Marco Gutierrez has commented that without more xenophobic immigration policies as proposed by that tin-horn Hitler Donald Trump, that's just what we would have.

Now the county I live in is, along with some contiguous areas, still heavily agricultural. At one time the sugar cane was cut by Jamaicans and the oranges and other fruit picked by Hispanics, but today only the latter remain in quantity. I don't know of any Jamaican restaurants, more's the pity, but there certainly are Mexican and Guatemalan establishments although I'd like to see more and yes, a few more taco trucks.  Great places to get great food when you don't want to go into a sit-down restaurant.  Is this more of a threat than a Jewish Deli on the Lower East side, a German beer garden in Milwaukee, a Cuban restaurant in Hialeah or a Pizzeria on Mott Street? A taco truck on every corner indeed. Unless you own a McDogfood or you're a racist piece of shit, why wouldn't you be happy about it?  Maybe you could just call them freedom rolls.

I guess it's no stranger than the existence of Latinos for Trump itself,  or Gays for Phelps or Christians for Krishna.  People are crazy -- as though we aren't reminded every time we watch or read or try to run away from the news!

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

The Clorox Conspiracy


It's probably true that the liar Trump could shoot someone in cold blood at high noon and No one -- no Republican, that is, would drop their support for him.  So It's silly to think that another demonstration of how he shoots from the hip, without bothering to check a fact or read a news item isn't going to matter to anyone but those already all too aware of the mortal danger the US is in from this lying bastard.

Liar Trump, in the haste to pin another lie of Hillary tells us once again how she erased e-mails but horror of horrors, she used chemicals -- expensive chemicals to do it. Obviously Liar Trump has little idea about how computers store data or how it's erased. Her Lawyers used BleachBit software as many businesses do to make sure security is not breached. Psycho Trey Goudy made much of this without making the connection that doing that also makes it impossible for a third party, like Liar Trump's friend Putin, to recover data by hacking.  It's a security measure, dummy.

But no, Liar Trump, it's not bleach. Although you hardly needed to prove it to us, your frantic rush to defame makes it obvious how just make things up for your stupid fans to repeat while ignoring your dishonesty.

Friday, August 26, 2016

Happy Days.

Everybody knows America used to be great -- greater than it is now, that is, but I wonder when that was and whether everyone would pick the same time of maximum greatness if asked. Nobody seems to be asking.  I suspect we'd get a bunch of different answers though and I suspect many would refuse to answer, again for a variety of reasons.

For me, of course it would be the years that were greatest for me and that means when I had few worries and everything was new and exciting and simple. That would be around 1955 when I got a new Bike for Christmas and never watched that boring evening news with boring people like Walter Kronkite. All was right with that best of all possible worlds.

Yes, of course my dad had been bitching about the Army-McCarthy hearings he watched on our 10" big screen Admiral TV in Black and White. But really, who cared if Communists had taken over the government and all the movies and half the TV was secretly infused with Communist propaganda when the new Mickey Mouse Club was on the air, Annette's All American bosoms and all. If she was trying to induce us all to unite and cast off our chains, I didn't notice.  Things were great.

It has to have been one of Donald's favorite times too, since he's only a year younger than I am,  My dad didn't complain about the 90 something percent top tax bracket, at least not then. Did old man Trump?  Somehow both dads prospered anyway as did the nation as a whole. In fact GDP has been almost independent of that number since the end of WWII when America was pretty much great by anyone's standards except for the Japanese and Germans. The war was pretty much successful and we pulled it off without the help of a massive, recession building  tax cut for the wealthy like W did.  Long about the time I turned 18 or so, the greatness was a lot harder to see, and outside of the moon missions, I think we were rather mediocre in fact. Face it, most of the world thought we were assholes.

I do remember that the fathers of many of my friends as a kid thought the peak of greatness was a lot earlier at about 1900 or so and I used to agree until I learned about the Panic of October 1907 and of course WWI and the world flu pandemic and the huge race riots and lynchings and the horrible conditions of immigrants bringing disease and crime and those women who insisted on voting.  It certainly wasn't great during Prohibition when just like today, you got shot when you went out on the street as Donald says.  I'm tempted to think it's pretty much a personal thing - greatness.

No matter what you're time of greatness was, it's in the past, isn't it and that means we have to look backwards to find it again, particularly if we don't have more mansions than Henry VIII or a series of inappropriately young trophy wives and jet planes  like someone I won't mention.  The future is always scary and the past has a known outcome, so as soon as I have that time machine perfected, I'm going to go back and buy me a knucklehead Harley and maybe a 56 Chevy Chevy Bel-Aire sport Coupe or what the hell, a 57 Vette and wouldn't worry about the Bomb because I would know it wouldn't happen. Nobody even had to worry about making a living back then did they?

Chasing Doomsday

Mornings like this I sit with a cup of coffee watching the crawl on Bloomberg TV as my finances improve - or not. This morning I checked their website to see what Secretary Yellin had to say about the likelihood of raising rates this year and in the corner was one of those ubiquitous ads about some "expert"  "Breaking his silence" and how I'll never believe what he has to say about just how bad the US economy is.  They're right, I won't believe it any more than I have believed any of the nonsense about impending doom since the bull market began after W went back to Texas and Obummer took office. I know many who missed out on it because of "experts."  Are they now out campaigning for Trump or are they simply out. 

"We are now facing serious economic problems in the United States.
And it's about to get much, much worse.
The evidence is piling up all around us...
In recent months, we've seen nearly $8 trillion disappear from world stock markets... and a whopping 70% of investors lose money in 2015."

Last time I checked this is the second half of 2016 and the markets have been setting highs.  Growth in GDP is very modest compared with India and China but unemployment is under 5%, but hey, some people avidly watch Fox News and buy books from "experts" who are selling investment strategies based on impending doom. Same guys who were telling us to to buy gold at $2000 as a hedge against the coming disaster and right before that market collapsed -- but hurry!  Do it soon!


Remember that guy on TV in 2006 who was telling you to borrow 125% of the value of you home to "jump on a hot stock?"   But do it now before it's too late and the Liberals shut us down. Come to think of it one Mr. Trump thought that would be a good year to start peddling mortgages. What a genius!

“In light of the continued solid performance of the labor market and our outlook for economic activity and inflation, I believe the case for an increase in the federal funds rate has strengthened in recent months,”

Said Chairwoman Yellin this morning, but what does she know? She's not even selling advice and advice is worth what you pay for it, right?  No you can't trust the government in this modern age when NOAA and NASA fake all their climate data and every university fakes their research just to harm the coal industry and kill jobs. Besides the Experts are breaking their silence. There is no drought in California -- and buy now before "they" take the site down! Follow the experts. The end is upon us.

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Home on the Range With Rush

I hate to sound like one of those people who see patterns where there aren't any, but I've noticed that a battle of bullshit seems to be developing between Rush and Donald J.  Donny is raving away at the Crooked Clinton Foundation this morning, but Rush is just dying to get some attention by telling us that
'' The US Department of Agriculture is holding summits to promote the role of lesbian farmers as a part of its 'Rural Pride' campaign."
After they put all the conservative farmers in those FEMA camps, those vast areas of "real" America will be taken over by Lesbians and the second amendment will die.  I'm not making this up. Millions of Americans listen to this and believe it, just as millions of Americans listen to Donald tinyfingers scream about the Clinton Foundation and don't bother to ask why there's no Trump foundation. Mr. Gigabucks apparently gives less to charity than I do, is prone to keep the money he raises for others, like veterans and when pressed by the Governor of Louisiana to contribute something for storm relief, he gives money to a gay-bashing pesudochurch.

Is there any coming back from this level of insanity, or should we just give up and embrace the horror?  Any country that tolerates these men has no future.

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Back in the USSA

Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out
They leave the West behind
And Moscow girls make me sing and shout
That Georgia's always on my mind


-The Beatles-

OK, let me get this right: Russia is in league with Iran against ISIS and Iran is letting Russia use their air bases.  Trump wants to abandon NATO and assist Russia in the Middle East. Russia is in favor of supporting Al Assad against the Rebels we've been trying to support. That would make us not only an ally of Russia, but of Iran and of Bashar Hafez al-Assad, the bloody tyrant.  Yep, the man sure can make deals!

That would make us an enemy of NATO, whom Trump wants to abandon and put us in violation of our long standing treaties, which are, as I should remind the Trumptsters, the law. Yep, break the law, abandon Europe to the Russians, and get in bed with Iran and Syria.  Should we mention that Trump wants more nukes in the hands of Middle Eastern countries?  And why not? Anything to make America great again and defeat Crooked Hillary.

So we have a "conservative" candidate that wan't to be allies with Russia and has asked for (and received) help from Russia in trashing his opponents.  A man whose campaign manager is under investigation by the Ukrainian anti-corruption commission for accepting money from Russia and who has been a registered agent for Russia in the US as confirmed by a former US Ambassador to Russia ---- and Americans want to vote for him!

I guess the Red scare is over and America would be great if only we became part of a new recrudescence of the Soviet Union, an empirial Plutocracy run by a dictator and a mob of multi-bilionaire mobsters who ship their Rubles abroad to be laundered by Donald J. Trump. This can't be the planet I was born on

Here Comes Rudy!

You used to have to try to portray our current political civil war as the comic opera it is.  You used to need some comedic talent, but like one of those Tesla or Google cars, it's all on autopilot now. All those political cynicism shows on late night TV can go on hiatus.

I don't need to talk about Donald, wind him up and he spews twisted comedy without any help from writers and in fact he winds himself up, But listen to Rudy Giuliani, who seems to have completely lost touch with reality, screeching like he's had a Meth overdose:

 "Under those eight years, before Obama came along, we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the United States. They all started when Clinton and Obama got into office,"

 Of course not and if you like I'll forget the career you've made out of having been in town when the World Trade Center was blown up.  If we can't blame your memory loss on some neurodegenerative disease perhaps we can ask you to tattoo LIAR on your forehead like the mark of Caine or to hang a sign around your neck so we can see you coming and cover our ears.

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Which Of These Things Is Not Like The Other?

A large problem with activist groups is the resistance to information that's not part of the group's canon, coming from outside the group or that which casts doubt on its inerrancy. Maintenance of the group and its authority requires it and the integrity of the group often replaces the mission around which it formed. In the wider universe of people who would like to reform gun control laws in the interest of public safety there are sub-groups who push one reform over others, or one perceived kind of firearm over others and who often will brook no questions or challenges and will dismiss information or statistics or definitions by responding with hyperbolic accusations, maledictions and excommunications.

Suggest that a semi-automatic pistol can have the same firepower as a civilian version of a military assault rifle and you will be perceived and dismissed as a heretic, and no discussion of concealability will be permitted.  I say this from personal experience. Indeed one can carry two pistols with 30 round magazines and exceed the firepower of one bulky rifle.  Of course if you intend to shoot up a room, either weapon will do the same job, but you're either a handgun opponent of an "assault rifle" hater and so you can't cooperate and you won't learn and you can't discuss it. How many causes fail for lack of cooperation between similar or even identical interests?

I've worn myself out offering irrefutable evidence that that military looking thing you can buy at Walmart is not military and doesn't work like the military version, but if your group says it's a machine gun, they will go on arguing -- insisting that it is one no matter what. The important metric is not veracity, but the propagation of rage and fear, the success of the group and its leaders.

Gas or recoil operated machine guns for all practical intents are illegal for the general public.  Gatling guns are not.  Coming from the Civil War era, the Gatling gun, with its rotating barrels is a design still very much used by the military in airborne applications.  Unlike an autoloader or a double action revolver which goes bang for every trigger pull and unlike a true machine gun that keeps firing as long as you keep the trigger pulled, the rotary barrel Gatling gun fires thousands of rounds per minute.  It literally screams.  They are legal and yet the noise of people lying about "assault rifles" and their extra deadly "bullets" drowns out the muttering about motorized rotary barrel Megadeath machines.

There already is a two barreled, crank operated weapon available although I'veXM556 motorized, handheld Gatling gun is a nightmare. It can be chain fed, giving it almost limitless firepower and versions can put out something like 2000, to 4000 rounds per minute.  30 or more rounds IN ONE SECOND!  You're not going to be hearing about it and why? because the more fervent the anti-gun activist the less informed and the more resistant to learning anything. "We already know it all so go away"
yet to see one, but the

Yes, the XM556 needs an outside source of power, but hate finds a way. How soon before it finds a way to a venue near you?

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Fresh off the Boat

First thing again this morning I listen to Rebecca Negron telling us she's going to "punish" Washington for keeping the police from arresting "criminal aliens," something she is essentially making up.  You'll remember  my saying she's the one appearing in pictures of her holding a shotgun and pledging to murder anyone getting off a boat - except for Cubans, of course. I have to wonder at the way she pronounces her Spanish name: NEG-ron. Was it once Negrón?  Did her family came from Cuba, getting green cards and asylum seeker benefits?  She's not talking.

But hey, this is America, land of second chances for me and no first chance for you.

It's also the America of fake issues and rabble-rousing and explaining away our sins while inventing them for others. Most of our campaigns center on fake issues and outright lies because sticking to the truth can be an insurmountable challenge.  It's the America of thinly veiled assassination threats, threats of insurrection and threats of  lynch mobs stringing up immigrants. It's the America that needs to be made great again through barbarism and greed and special privileges and secret deals and maybe even an armed uprising and assassination.

And there's no one to blame but you.

Sunday, August 07, 2016

Hate Finds a Way

looking at the latest crop of Hillaryhate TV commercials seems like a reprise of all those 15th and 16th century paintings I saw in Europe as a kid, the Jews with their twisted faces, mocking Jesus. Hard not to remember those Nazi propaganda pictures too, hook-nosed rats spreading disease across Europe. Descendants of African slaves in the US have  their own gallery full of obscene stereotypes, but Chinese, Japanese, Hispanics and American Indians have seen their unfair share as well.  Of course "political correctness:" that Republican dysphemism for common decency, has made the ugly cartoons hard to sell but it's a new day now that the GOP beast has taken life and is stomping all over America on the way to Washington. Do we remember the virtually identical predictions and pronouncements and prognostications and prophecies we got with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama?  Hell no, we're not aware of where the economy is and where it came from and why it failed disastrously. We Don't know what's happenend - we don't want to - we're Republicans.

There is nothing like respect or responsibility or reasonableness visible in the political advertising of 2016. It's nothing new, Obama was the anti-Christ, Mrs. Clinton is a worshiper of Satan and no epithet is too absurd, too extreme or too disgusting to be written on billboards or explained as part of some process of "making America Great." Since Nixon the Crook slithered out of the White House, hate and lies and unscrupulous slander have become the heart and soul and substance of Republican politics and the Republicans have perfected the art of stage victimhood.  Note the way Trump is offended at the "over the top" questions of the Khan family and how easily the vermin who follow him emulate their concern for poor Donald.

"Hillary Clinton belongs in Prison," sneers the shiny made-up face of Rick Kozell, Republican candidate for the 18th congressional district in Florida. "She sold her power to the highest bidder" is the unsubstantiated explanation for that.  The word "Benghazi" creeps subliminally across the bottom of the screen and you can be sure that the delight of the Hillaryhate disciples is so great they won't be aware of it just the way they're not aware of the exoneration that followed endless hearings and investigations. Hate always finds a way to clear the fog of reality.

 Only 90 days now for the encyclopedia of fake Obama prognostications joins the last batch down the tubes and no indications yet of that "double dip" recession or the red flag over the Capitol or any of the other little piles of shit that pass for reality in the Republican mind.  How long can you always be wrong and not start to doubt? Forever, it seems, as the crew crosses out Clinton and writes in Obama and then crosses out Obama and adds Clinton again.  Make America Hate Again! and again, and again. . .

Jesus, hanging on his cross, looks down at the victims of his worshipers and weeps.

Tuesday, August 02, 2016

Pissing on our grave.

I wish I were a cartoonist.  I have this cartoon in my head and can't get rid of it:  look here at a huge Donald Trump in Arlington National Cemetery, pissing on a soldier's grave.  Maybe one of those graves with a star of David on it or a crescent and star or the
American Atheist Atom or the Buddhist flower. There are some there I don't even recognize, nearly 50 marks of various beliefs.  Lots of people have fought and died for this country, a country whose people are now flirting with sneering, cynical hatred and calling it "greatness." A country that flirts with electing a president who mocks grieving mothers and insults grieving fathers who accuse him of being heartless for wanting to ban his dead son's religion from our nation.

Over the line, his defenders say. Suggesting Trump believes what he says is over the line and besides there's crooked Hillary who after
surviving decades of relentless and fruitless investigation still gets accused of everything up to and including murder. Is there anything to be proud of, anything to value about America that Trump hasn't wiped his ass with?

A man who keeps Hitler's speeches next to his bed, whose ideas about crime and immigration are 30 years behind the facts and who gloats that we're too damned stupid to know?  Collapsible corporations that scam people out of their fortunes, bankruptcies that leave creditors begging, Trump products all made offshore. Suppliers who go unpaid simply because he can get away with it?  No, it doesn't matter than no fact checking organization substantiates Trump's statements, or that the FBI can glibly be dismissed as a Hillary Stooge, or that investigation after investigation fails -- foil-hat Americans don't care about such things and they'll crucify anyone who tries
to tell the truth.

International "humiliation after humiliation" Trump claims without being able to cite one. Border crossings are increasing he says, but they're not. Crime is up but it's not and Obama invaded and annexed the Crimea. International treaties have the force of law, but Trump says he'll ignore them.   A man dies for his country? so fuck him.  he's just a damned Muslim and damn his mother too.

So you're going to vote for him, you think he'll make America great again? Donald Trump is our shame, Let's not make him our crime.  Can't vote for Hillary because you can't see through the lies?  Fine, vote for Gary Johnson, Vote for Bozo the clown, but don't vote for the end of  our greatness. Don't piss on the flag, while you're making kids pledge allegiance to it.

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Slavery is OK with Lyin' Bill.

Sometimes I just don't know what to say.  Lyin' Bill O'Reilly manages to lie even while telling the truth when he attempts to counter Michelle Obama's poignant statement that the White House was built with slave labor. Isn't it a sign of hope that the black family of a black president now lives there?

Perhaps Lyin' Bill acts the way he does as a reflex rather than as any attempt at reasoned commentary, but can anyone think the fact that slave labor was used on a Federal project is mitigated by the allegedly adequate food and lodgings provided?  Hey Lyin' Bill, what if Fox withheld your pay and says it's OK because they give you a comfortable chair to sit in ( and obviously lots to eat) while you tell lies about just about everything.  What about we throw you into prison for sedition, Lyin' Bill -- I hear the foods not too bad.


Friday, July 22, 2016

Shots fired!

Another shooting incident at a Munich shopping center. 5 people stabbed on a train in Bavaria a few days ago. Terrorist attacks are almost a daily thing in Europe and far, far worse in the Middle East.

But it's because they have stronger leaders, right? Russia has had some big ones but that's because Putin is lawnorder tough and Army Strong, right?   It's because Obama is weak and probably a sympathizer and Hillary would be even weaker as the "facts" about Benghazi show. That's right the Republicans are lawnorder tough and always protect us -- right?

Oops, I mentioned facts - mea culpa. I should have known better. But I can't help myself. I can't control it -- 6% of US terrorist attacks are carried out by Muslims according to the FBI. 7% were from Jewish extremists.  No really I'm trying to stop. . .

There, I've got it under control, but someone just sent me something from some green beret or red underwear or lace panty he-men who say there were in Benghazi and they know - just Know - Hillary was to blame. Funny none of the investigators gave them much credit, but we "just know" they're right because they hate Crooked Hillary. Oh really I'm trying not to remember how the GOP refused to allow increased security funding and to this date have stonewalled it just so they could sing "crooked Hillary" like the little yellow birds they are.

Crooked indeed, not like whatsisname with the child molestation and rape and orgies with underage girls and real estate swindles and fake schools with plagiarized textbooks  and the serial infidelity -- but he's one of us!  He even tells dirty jokes. Sometimes about his own daughter.

Really Hillary is in with wall street, but I'm not sure what that means except somebody paid her a lot of money to talk once. But not Like the Donald the man of the people with his 3 billion.  I've given more to charity then he has but that just proves he cares about the working people he stiffs on their paychecks and the small business he bankrupts by not paying his bills. He's gonna make us great and by great I mean great big losers.

Oh god, it's hopeless  Oh, I feel it coming . . . Obama the Weak has deported more illegals than any Republican -- aaagh our murder rate is lower than during Lawnorder Reagan's reign of glory.  Somebody stop me!

Thursday, July 21, 2016

Meanwhile back in the real world.

One of the problems with American discourse having moved to the Internet and the cable news networks is that we rush to the circus ring making the most noise,  and somehow there aren't enough rings to cover all the acts, even the most important.  Donald Trump  sits on the news like some fat, clucking chicken. The rest of the world has become a sideshow.

It's struck many people that of late the the guy in boots and top hat is getting all the attention, filling his ring with clown acts and crude insult comedy. A quashed rebellion in Turkey in which tens of thousands have been arrested in government and in the military was soon drowned out, and although many publications of late are quietly inquiring as to the security of US forces at Incirlik Air Base , we're arguing over a poorly written and partially plagiarized speech by someone who isn't running for president,

That airbase, with it's stockpile of hydrogen bombs is only protected by the shaky, unstable Turkish military which has now cut off power.  Incirlik is now running on backup generators. Top Turkish officers at the base have been arrested.
Why are such things designed for Armageddon still there? Why are we not asking? How do we trust Turkey to protect a world-destroying arsenal, NATO's largest nuclear weapons cache? How do we deal with Syria and ISIL without that base? Why aren't we talking about it? Why don't we get more than bravado and braggadocio and "tough guy"  posturing about Mexican walls and guns and what kind of life matters most?

It's because all our attention is directed elsewhere by the ringmasters and the clowns. For half a year it's been all about Trump, all about Benghazi, all about Bernie, all about bozos hurling insults and accusations at each other.

"When the whistle blows, everybody goes" Jonathan Winters used to say. Would we even hear it with all the background noise?

Miami Justice

Maybe the "hands up - Don't shoot" touring company should have waited to use that chant a bit longer, because the city of North Miami, Florida has acted out the scenario without needing to force anything to fit.

In what seems a perfect example of  "shoot first and refuse to answer questions later"  two officers with rifles shot an unarmed, co-operative behavioral therapist from an assisted living facility who was trying to protect and retrieve an autistic resident who had run out into the street. His concern, as evidenced in the cell phone video was to protect the severely impaired autistic man in his care from the police who showed up armed for combat because a report of a "man with a gun."

While lying on the ground, hands in the air and trying to explain to the cops what was going on and that his patient was holding a toy truck, one of them let off a three round salvo, hitting Charles Kinsey, a black man.  Asking the officer why he had just shot him (in the leg) the answer was "I don't know."

I don't know either.  I don't know why an unarmed man with his hands in view and lying on the ground defenseless would be shot by any competent police officer. Is it that he was never trained to keep his finger off the damned trigger or that he's a cringing paranoid coward? It doesn't matter, to those that frame matters in our country for us, he must only have done this because he was a racist.  Watch the video and you'll be as puzzled as I am and the man filming it was. "Why they shoot the black boy?" is heard on the recording?

Damned if I know, but we haven't heard the last of this, nor should we.

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

My Little Phony

It's so easy to poke fun at the Republicans for trying to make Melaniagate evaporate without a trace, whether it's quoting My Little Pony or just insisting it's a meaningless coincidence and means nothing. Nixon proved that denial works and even though iron-clad proof of his lies and misdeeds has been established, to the Republican Zombies, it's still all the doing of "the liberal press."

Still, to be fair, essays are appearing making lazy Mrs. Trump's last minute bit of homework a race issue and an illustration of "white privilege." Does this make the whole thing as much of an illustration of universal bias and dishonesty as this: another of the endless Republican demonstrations of moronic mendacity?   Yes, yes, yes, we've all heard it. You don't see the world as it is, but as we are.

Yes, yes, yes, Trump supporters and many other republicans are delusional, demented, deranged and dishonest, but please, lets not persuade ourselves that it makes us unimpeachable or infallible or even honest.

Her speech was a cheap amateurish fraud, not an illustration of privilege, white or money-green. It doesn't mean white people are generically anything or that we need sensible, but inchoate gun control or that we need a world without banks or police or any of the other axes we rush to grind on every turning wheel.  Cheap and amateurish and typical of the student in over her head, grasping at platitudes and convinced that no one else knows much more than she does.

She's not running for president. Let's not be distracted, let's not gloat. We have a long way to go and stupid never sleeps.

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

My Life As A Dog.

Species dysphoria is a bitter, hopeless condition. No matter how much I know that my inner species doesn't match my outer appearance, I just can't live life as a dog. Not with two legs and no one is going to let me use any toilet or walk into a bar without a species specific birth certificate.  How then can I separate myself from that most hateful of species, the most dishonest, the most destructive, the least rational? Surgery is out of the question.

The condition is usually at it's most burdensome in election seasons like this one where the hated faces appear before us on the TV and although you can change channels or cut the audio or record and speed through them some of it gets through.

Take the ad I just now saw, telling you to help Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton and her lies. It's financed by a PAC with a lot of money behind it and it accuses Mrs. Clinton of taking money from Billionaires. What species of animal or vegetable will fail to see the irony of denouncing taking money from the rich and advising you to give it to the already  rich?  That's right, Humans.  So eager will you be, you bipedal fool, to jump on the rage wagon, the marching band of bullshit, that you won't ask or even accept evidence as to the alleged lying and murdering and perhaps necromancy and you won't entertain the endless proofs of Crooked Donald's lying, cheating, fraud, plagiarism, misogyny or crooked business dealings much less the strong evidence of child abuse and rape.

The guy with the 3 billion will sympathize with your concern, Mr. Laid off worker, Mr. lost it all at Atlantic city. He knows your problems, Mr. High School Dropout. Even my dog won't stay in the room when that pumpkin face appears on the screen, but you reach for your wallet.  Yes, your farm may have failed because you can't get credit, but Donald, who wants to buy it for nothing to put up a condo that is planned to go bust after he gets your deposit -- but Donald, he's your man and your man needs your money because he's just got so much of it he doesn't need it. That makes sense to you, you two-legged imbecile?

I've watched those TV  Christ - O - Crooks tell the poorest Americans to send them money because God will make them rich just like Reverend Barnum. Just like Donald Trump. You probably believe it too, you hopeless idiot, but the Democratic opponent? She made money so she must be a crook. She got paid to give a speech to rich money managers so she must know nothing about money.

Trump? People paid him to teach them how and he screwed them using plagiarized text books and fraudulent advertising. The opponent went to the best schools, Trump stole from the poor and kept every dime. And you just love it, you spawn of monkeys. Well I'm not one of you. I renounce you, I condemn you. I execrate you with all the malediction a barking dog like me can muster.  Four legs good, two legs bad and don't you dare call me human, or I'll bite you.