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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.