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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

The Leviathan

Baton Rouge. A few days ago, a word association test would have had me responding with Janis, but now it's more likely to be murder, cops, revenge and war: that Bellum omnium contra omnes Thomas Hobbes warned us about: that war of all against all.  It's a small and lopsided war. It's a big war about big principles. It's a crazy war with revenge killings and reprisals on one side and an apparently trigger-happy paranoia on the other side, but I'm trying to be careful of tendentious oversimplifications. Both sides real have grievances and there are a lot more guns than innocence in America. It's complicated and reality always is.

But it's Hobbes' observation about the "state of nature," so reminiscent of the kind of Libertarian paradise half our country seems to be longing for, that gets my attention: that repugnance for government, for authority -- that insistence that any law limits our freedom. Without that authority we have no civilization, no culture, no industry but a climate of fear and a war of all against all, said Hobbes in The Leviathan.

As it is in Baton Rouge, so is it in America. Everyone in everyone's face and at each others' throats. Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. You've heard those words many times.  Against our ruin we create the buttresses of a social contract, a moral, a civil authority and give up a part of our natural liberty that we can enjoy enough security to avoid chaos and enjoy our freedom without undue fear.. We cede some power and make it legitimate and authorize it for our own good. We create laws and we authorize the enforcement of those laws. That's an oversimplification of course but although it informs our American founding documents, that social contract is being portrayed as the cause of our ills rather than the failure of implementing that contract or defining the laws to benefit all rather than some. Some of us believe that racism will always make justice impossible and therefore authority is always to be resisted and with violence.

Is Libertarianism the gateway to Liberty?  I think Hobbes says otherwise and although we, in theory, have the power to change and improve that contract and to reform the way it's enforced, we seem for the moment at least to prefer to shoot it out in the streets and to remember when we shot it out on the battlefield 150 years ago with longing. On the TV,  today's real world, the war drums beat all day and all night, the bullets fly and the blood runs red in Baton Rouge. Police are the enemy, government is the enemy, guns are the enemy, gun control is the enemy. We're all the enemy.

Lying like a Fox

Lyin' Bill O'Reilly may have to share his liar's title with Lyin' Wayne, the former Fox News "Terrorism expert"  may have been a perfect fit for the Fox Crew of liars and frauds, failed Republican candidates and propagandists for hire, but he got caught. He fraudulently claimed to have been a Special Operations Officer for the CIA when at the time he actually was working as was a nightclub doorman, mortgage broker, manager of a rent-by-the-hour hot tub business, bookie, and defensive back for the National Football League’s New Orleans Saints.  He'll have 33 months to think about it.

“Wayne Simmons is a fraud. Simmons has no military or intelligence background, or any skills relevant to the positions he attained through his fraud,” said Dana Boente, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III also tacked on three years of supervised release following his sentence. Judge Ellis also required that he surrender two firearms, pay $176,000 in criminal proceeds, and pay restitution. He joins a lost of Fox Friends who couldn't get a job as a school janitor.  But even though Neill Cavuto apologized for allowing Lyin' Wayne on his show,  Fox Folk, like Trumpsters won't notice or care as long as they continue to supply them with the outrage they need to make their miserable and nasty lives seem justified.