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?

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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