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“If God intended fatuous people to have money, he would not have made me a greedy hornswoggler”.
–P.T. Barnum, 1880.
Republicans have always been despicable to me. But they did seem to stick to their insistence that the rule of law, at least the laws that they have always cherished, was critical to an ordered society. So why exactly did this happen? Redefining the word “fool” in Oklahoma. Apparently, one law they greatly cherish is NOT an executive action by a mayor elected to, among other things, ensure public safety. A number of lamebrain knuckledraggers actually threatened store employees who attempted to enforce the ordinance. It astounds me that the average person is not appalled about this.
It is a law, clearly intended for the sake of public safety. There is not constitutional right that has been violated here. Nobody is keeping you from speaking, assembling (in a safe manner), complaining to the government, or publishing what you want. Nobody is preventing you from purchasing firearms. No soldiers are being housed in your home. Nobody is searching your home without a warrant, or seizing your belongings. And etc. You’re trying to create an ACLU case out of a minor inconvenience that will save lives.
There is a world wide health emergency. The virus has killed more Americans in less than six months than Vietnam did in a decade. Do I need to explain further? If you having to smell your own nitwit breath for a few minutes of shopping prevents the death of somebody…I’m favoring that somebody’s life. I don’t care if you’re inconvenienced, Hoss. Act like an adult
Out here.
***Letters to the Editor***
“The Voice of The People can be Summarized as the Reader’s Digest Version of the TV Guide, with a jigger of Supermarket Tabloid, and two shots of Pornography.”
—Vernon Nashe McNair, 1983.
4-28-20
Dear Sir/Madame,
It took decades, but finally a U.S. President said something more stupid than my “trees cause pollution” line. I told Mommy it would happen. I’m on my way to the rumpus room to watch a Pat Boone documentary and sip a long, cool Clorox & Soda. You can’t be too careful.
Best Wishes,
Ronald Reagan
Dear Sir/Madame:
There already IS an app for tracing a pandemic infection. It’s been on every iPhone since the second generation. I just didn’t tell anybody because every soft hearted do-gooder in the world kept bugging me about employing child labor. If the spoiled runts weren’t happy with their pay they could have bought their own company. 70 years of communism sure has softened up these people.
Still looking great in a black turtleneck,
Steve Jobs
Dear Madame/Sir,
We’re so tired of hearing that us carrying around assault weapons around the Michigan capitol is a sign of white privilege. People keep asking if a mob of black people doing the same thing would have been tolerated. The point isn’t that WE are privileged. It’s that THEY are not. The Second Amendment says nothing about black guys having guns.
Won’t somebody, for once, listen to a white guy?
Ben Hedges
President of Pride, Ignorance, and Guns, Ypsilanti, Michigan
Pride Ignorance, and Guns Rally
Dear Sir/Madame,
The truth is, we actually did create Covid-19. But we only did it after the sixth time Trump called me up to ask if his shirts and underwear were clean yet. I’d always say, “No, nobody has been able to make a strong enough detergent to get them clean.” The best part is, we already have a cure for Covid-19. I’ll make sure you get it, just about the same time that Trump gets his laundry back.
No tickee, no cure, hundan (asshole),
Xi Jinping
Dear Sirs: So, the Mayo Clinic thinks that germs cause disease. Next you’re going to tell me that refrigerators keep food from spoiling, deny that homosexuality causes tornadoes and insist that DNA stands for Deoxyribonucleic acid instead of Deity Not Atheism. You Godless fools would believe anything that some guy in a lab coat says.
Mike Pence
Dear Sirs:
We knew Kim Jong Un would show up. We ALL eventually will. Me, Jim Morrison, and that f*cking uppity Amelia Earhart. Not Elvis. That sequined a**hole is dead. But Kim was a worry wart the whole time. “Oh, what will my Dear Servants do if their Leader is gone?” Toughen up, you bitchy little piss-pants! Tupac told me once, “Death is not the greatest loss.” Then he said something else. We were all pretty messed up. Then he said, “Never Surrender.” That guy was right. But I never thought I would meet anybody who swears more than I do. The f*ck is that about?
Jimmy Hoffa
.
Dear Sir, Madame,
Canada is giving up assault rifles. Quick! We can finally accomplish what we couldn’t in the War of 1812. We’ve got enough rifles, ammo, and beer. I hereby announce the NRA’s latest campaign: Canada will be the 51st state! Putin told me last year at a party that once that happens, the only thing he’ll have to to do is give Trump the word, and WHAM! We become Russia’s 47th oblast!
Da, Nyet, Borcht, Whatever!
Wayne LaPierre
Chief Executive
National Rifle Association
Dear Sir/Madame,
Okay, would you please take back your short haired, Birkenstock wearing women who have been bugging me? I got rid of female genital mutilation. I bravely brought Sudan into the 14th century, and I’d like a little credit. Somebody said all these protesters are lesbians. Spare me. I’ve seen lesbian porn.
Amdalla Hamdock
Prime Minister of Sudan
You Read it Here First
“How about a little reefer, Scarecrow?”
–Margaret Hamilton, backstage on the set of Wizard of Oz, 1939
Given President Poison’s recent, absurd speculation about the health benefits of household cleaning products as Covid-19 cures, I don’t want to make a big deal out of this. If you’re curious, he doesn’t think he had anything to do with the increase in calls to poison control centers. President Poison
But my own boss almost certainly had the virus, based on the symptoms he described (I had it too, confirmed by a test from my physician). The interesting part was that he reported the huge amount of lung congestion that has made it such a lethal disease. But, he told me the thing that gave his lungs relief was…… wait for it….marijuana smoke. Wouldn’t that be an utter hoot if it turned out weed is a data supported treatment for Covid-19? If that happens, I might have to become religious, because luck and/or evolution just cannot create such appropriate irony. I’ll just practice for my religious birth and say….LET US PRAY.
“New Beginnings are Joyous. They Remind You So Succinctly of Your Mistakes”
–Natalie Quinn Hemphill, 1903.
What can I say at this point? Prior to the pandemic, I had been working part time. I’ll tell you more about work later. Prior to that, I went back to my novel and finally finished the thing. I’ve only convinced one, out of the ten or so people to whom I’ve given access to actually read the bloody thing. Hence, I’m back here to write some non fiction, so I can be ignored in both forms of literature.
Like everybody who’s alive and aware now, I am experiencing a typhoon of madness, childishness, and incompetence, amid a government devoted exclusively to serving its plutocrat Masters.
The latest in a series of mystifying gaffs by Mr. Trump suggesting the use of household cleaning products to somehow clear the lungs of the blood clots that are associated with Covid-19. This illness has now killed nearly as many Americans in four months as the Vietnam War did in a decade.
This is POTUS, the person with access to more data, scientific expertise, and more power to fix problems than any national leader in in the 10,000 years since the Neolithic Revolution. Yet Dear Leader says in an offhand comment to one of his staff members that “Medical Doctors” can devote some time to investigate this possibility. Fabuloso. Overworked scientists can waste some time investigating if ingesting toxic cleaning solutions would help stem the disease, rather than valid and reliable scientifically supported solutions. It’s just like when they investigated his snake oil, Chloroquine , which was shown to be dangerous enough to kill two dozen people who were taking it daily. Chloroquine Study Halted
Medical Doctors? Any seven year old with at least a C in their reading class could be tapped for this study. As usual, Dear Leader compounded his foolishness by walking the statement back, claiming that he was being sarcastic. Trump Claims Sarcasm Just so I understand, this is a press briefing, supposedly to update the country on the status of the federal government’s response to the pandemic which has killed fifty thousand Americans in four months. FOUR MONTHS. He chooses NOW to reveal his sarcastic wit? On TV? With the world watching? We’re watching him”satirically ” showing his contempt for science by suggesting that his dollar store, unsupported solutions to a catastrophe should be studied? To paraphrase Major Kong in Dr. Strangelove, ‘what in the wide world of sports is he thinking?’ How is this better than showing he just doesn’t know anything at all?
It is clear that he knows nothing that any barely literate , wealthy, white bigot doesn’t already know, despite his practically infinite resources. It also is clear that he prefers simple, financially convenient solutions to evidence based, valid, effective, yet financially inconvenient solutions. Listen, People. He does not care if you live or die. He just wants to remain in power and help his patrons. If you do not understand this, then you’ll continue to be one of the suckers he depends upon. This is our status quo: The United States does what is least effective in this crisis because that is what satisfies our Dear Leader, Server of the Nomenklatura Amerikan . If you’re reading this, you are not in the nomenklatura. YOU DON’T COUNT to him. That is the real news, friends.
I hate that this insinuation has to be written off as a conspiracy theory, but I need answers. He has met with Putin five times during his presidency, four of which had no witness aside from interpreters. I have read that this is unprecedented, for the obvious reason that it enables one negotiating party to make a claim about the other that could not be substantiated. Smart and/or allegiant presidents are sure to have witnesses, for the good of the country. Five Trump-Putin Meetings If, on the other hand, we have a president who has behaved like a greedy seventh grader throughout his presidency, such a person would not want witnesses to a meeting between himself and a former KGB agent.
I also know from endless sources that the Toddler in Chief has never been forced to reveal his tax returns. Ergo, nobody in an accountability role has seen from where he gets his money.
Finally, who exactly is benefiting from his relentlessly inactive, dismissive policy toward the pandemic? The American people do not benefit. I don’t need to reiterate the countless stories about how the U.S. has been ravaged by the virus. Everybody, please pay for a reputable news source and READ. No news source is perfect, but it definitely beats taking President Poison at his word.
China isn’t benefiting from Trump’s inefficacy. The number of Chinese deaths, whether higher or lower than ours is horrendous. Its role as a major link in the world’s supply chain will be hopelessly disrupted, upending its position as the world’s key supplier of starvation level labor. Demand for everything is flying like a falling anvil (this is true not just for crude oil). Their factories are coming online again now, just in time to create oversupply that will sink all prices, so they’ll be in a similar situation to an OPEC country soon. Outlook for the Chinese Economy
No other countries are benefiting from it, as they are all parts of the world’s supply chain. Putin, on the other hand, does indeed benefit. Sure, a few Russians will die, but this country lost 22 million people in the Second World War, compared to the US’s 400,000, give or take. Look at how long they tried to keep the Chernobyl disaster a secret!. To paraphrase a line from Casablanca, ‘in Moscow, human life is cheap.’ The Russian government will shrug it off like it’s a bump in last month’s drunk driving fatalities, regardless of the numbers. But what they get is chaos in America, further American renunciation of its role as a world leader, further evidence to the world that America functions with the success of a swan dive into a wet sponge. If you’re skeptical about Dear Leader’s intimate affair with the Russians, read this, from Foreign Policy (not exactly a left wing publication). Russians Helped Save Trump Businesses
Frankly speaking, Russia is not a major supplier for anything except fossil fuels and industrial diamonds. You let me know if you buy a Russian car, cell phone, laptop, refrigerator, or anything else, and then, please let me know how well it’s working. On the other hand, if you buy a Kalashnikov, a middle priced vodka, or invest in Russian cybercrime, I’m sure it’ll work out just fine. Sorry. This is my heritage, so I’ll insult it without pity.
Vic Dibietto deserves this week’s award for the most truth spoke the most succinctly. I don’t agree with everything he says, but he defines perfectly who the REAL losers are in this nightmare.
Update, 4-26-20: And the sycophants come out of the baseboards. Republican Governor Hogan of Maryland reported the hundreds of phone inquiries his government received about the efficacy of ingesting household cleaning products to cure Covid 19. Instead of joining the chorus of people trying to explain away Trump’s astonishingly irresponsible musing, he acted like a real leader and intoned that during a crisis a leader should put out the facts and be as open and honest and transparent as possible.” I wish that Trump would been informed about prior to the Pentagon giving him access to the nuclear launch codes. I commend Governor Hogan for speaking out against the obvious idiocy that others worked so hard to spin. “‘Cri-squa-Int Front and Center!’ (A reference to The Office).
Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, a physician, explained that what we should be discussing is “how do we use data to guide where we can reopen the economy.” He should be telling that to the President, since I am positive that there is no meaningful data supporting the ingestion of Clorox as a cure. He dismissed Trump’s foolish speculation “on Lysol because really no one is going to inject themselves with Lysol.” In utter seriousness, have you not read the Darwin awards? Natural Selection at Work People do all kinds of stupid acts, with only the nudging of a beer-inundated friend, let alone the POTUS. It’s early data, but there were already numerous reports of inquiries to Poison Control Centers about the utility of household cleaning products to cure the virus. Clorox Cure Inquiries IT DOESN’T MATTER IF NOBODY POISONS THEMSELVES! The point is that the POTUS speculated out loud about an obviously dangerous, asinine quack remedy that he thinks should be investigated, using valuable time and resources, when any well-raised toddler knows that it is a dangerous, asinine, quack remedy. He would prefer to play like he knows something than do the difficult work of protecting a nation in a crisis.
Update: No shocker here, but President Poison argues he had nothing to do with the increase in calls to Poison Control Centers in the wake of his moronic, traitorous speculation about Lysol, sunlight, and/or Clorox. Passing the Buck….like a kidney stone
Update: I can never hope to equal Trevor Noah’s commentary, though he says much the same as I did, just much more cleverly and amusingly. Check out Trevor
Does it feel like to you that you’re the last sane person on this Earth? I think that Rod Serling has somehow written this portion of my life.
Out here.
D
1st, the Revolution. 2nd, the Civil War. 3rd, the Civil Rights Movement. Now, we are in the U.S. 4th civil war.
I already made a reference to this idea in this blog . Suggestion We now have further evidence of the war’s presence: Muslims Buying Guns I cannot say I blame them. I am sure that with a brief search, there is an article out there about Jews increasingly buying guns after Pittsburgh. It’s more intense with the Muslims, though. They have been vilified with impunity not just by right wing representatives, Trump Cultists, and Fox propagandists, but also by supposed Hollywood liberals. An easy example is Back to the Future, which had the baboon-like Libyan terrorists as a plot device. 
What was most offensive was that they were portrayed as such moronic animals. Later films such as Syriana, portrayed them as enemies, sure, but also as human beings. Look, I know that somebody who kills non-combatants is an awful person, and I know that some of them are sociopaths. But practically anybody who has been in combat has killed innocent people. Wars are terrible! Give weapons to the petulant children that are so many adult males, add ammunition, take away accountability, and you have disaster. But denying the humanity of the terrorists in their portrayal distorts why they do what they do and why it keeps happening.
Anyway, the next step after the initial aggression of right wing terrorism is that its victims start arming themselves too. Check. Now what?
I expect the Dylan Roofs and will keep shooting people who have the audacity to be different from them. With some luck, an armed Jew or Muslim might blow away an attacker in a temple or a synagogue. But eventually, some angry Jew or Muslim is going to conclude that white Christians need a few of their own innocents to die. One walks into a Christian church, and boo-yah. The next step in this civil war will have taken place.
The Right in this country justifies just about everything by claiming it’s all about “freedom.” Evidently they value the High Noon freedom of being able to blow each other away, more than the placid, comfortable freedom of having a reasonable expectation of safety in a public place.
I am sure Putin would love this situation, since he likes the idea of tyranny becoming more attractive. The NRA will delight in it also, since more guns = more happiness (for stock holders). Trump cultists sound like they would delight in it also. They would finally have good old guerrilla warfare just down the street. They seem to be OK with the idea of one white, bigoted, half wit, who doesn’t read or know anything, having arbitrary power over us all. I again paraphrase Dietland’s Juliana Margulies character: They would rather burn down the entire world than let anybody but them run it.
Hell, I’m a shut in most of the time and I am fairly well armed. But I do worry like crazy about my Creature’s safety and the world in which she is growing up.
Solution: Be like NZ (and now Canada) and BAN ASSAULT WEAPONS, for starters.
Old Man Hermit
Just when I’m about ready to never stick my head out of the door I see something like this, which is a pure hootenanny.
Halt the Joking, you Yutz.
Putin Outlaws ‘Disrespect of Russia’
Seriously……seriously……SERIOUSLY!?
With all due respect, Mr. Putin, but you and Mother Russia can shampoo my crotch….
A Little Lynching is Nothing to be Shy about
Small Alabama Editor Advocates for the Klan to Lynch Democrats
We have here further evidence that the forth Civil War has begun. In this case it was tapped out by editor Goodloe Sutton. Writing such as this makes the rational, open minded, decent socialist in me glad that I have a .357 magnum. Still, though, the context of this is important. The paper serves the town of Linden, Alabama, which is about one hundred miles southwest of Birmingham. This paper’s circulation has shrunk from 7000 at one time to less than half of that. The time period for this decline was not given.
Editor Goodloe Sutton
I cannot say that that Sutton’s 2019 message advocating murder and white supremacy surprises me much. We have what is clearly a white supremacist in the White House, one who is not shy about hiring people who sympathize with the 16th Street Church bombing, the murder of Medgar Evers, the 1980s activities of WAR, and anything associated with Steve Bannon or Roger Stone. Although Trump’s base seems to be ever diminishing, it obviously still has a large group of lemmings, all longing to ignore him shooting someone on 5th Avenue.
I would be gratified to know if there were any letters protesting Sutton’s suggestion. He doesn’t sound like the sort of editor worried about presenting opposing views to his racist, knuckle-dragging, if there are any publicly-held opposing opinions. Anybody who publicly takes such a murderously hateful position is most likely in a town where Klan activity is common, if not obligatory. Decent people are discouraged from speaking up where cross burnings are as common as pizza delivery.
What angers me is the shameless way that this terrorist is so sure that his rhetoric will be accepted. Sure, there was indignant outrage:
Probably the best report I have seen, from the LA Times.
These articles quote other journalists and politicians who have demanded Sutton’s resignation, and a very reasonable interpretation of his suggestion as a direct threat. Believe it or not, Sutton was up for a Pulitzer some years ago for investigative journalism, suggesting that the LA Times reporter was thorough in describing not just Sutton’s slobbering hate but his journalistic integrity and skill. Herein lies yet another complication to this country’s race problem; racist trogs can simultaneously have decent qualities. We’ll get to that another time.
Imagine, though, what would happen if similar threats were made by dissenters from the still mostly white men who run this country? I checked out several quotation websites, looking for quotations from the Black Panther Party, Malcolm X, and Reverend Jeremiah Wright, just as examples.
Reverend Jeremiah Wright Quotes
Not once did I see suggestions from these dissenters that ‘white men should be hanged from trees,’ or that ‘Republicans should be burned alive,’ or whatever. This is true despite the fact that during the lifetimes of all of these people, random black people as well as dissenters were killed, beaten, and harassed by white Klansmen and/or police. Black Panther leader Fred Hampton himself was killed by police authorities as he lay sleeping. Wiki for Fred Hampton
Sure, there were predictions that violence directed at them will result in violence against whites. But the kind of across-the-board, arbitrary mass murder that Sutton prescribes was never advocated by these outraged men.
What we are left with is the final refuge of the bigots trying to get back to the world of Burma Shave signs, Father Knows Best TV shows, Lawrence Welk on the radio, and White Hegemony. Their refuge is violence towards all of those who are different in any way. These bigots believe violence will bring back those familiar days before Civil Rights.
Images of the Good Old Inoffensive Days.
What set Sutton off against the so called “socialist-communists?” Who knows? Maybe it was the prominence of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her “Green New Deal.” Maybe it was Andrew McCabe’s tenacity at saying what Trump supporters don’t want to hear? Maybe it’s that no decent person can defend locking up 15,000 refugee kids away from their parents, and Democratic lynchings are a way to avoid this issue? I can guess all day and still not run out of options
These holdouts for White Hegemony remind me of the Hiroo Onda and Teruo Nokamura, the last members of the Imperial Japanese Army who continued to hold out against the allies on remote Pacific islands, until 1974, even though the war had been over since 1945. Like them, white hegers “either adamantly (doubt) the veracity of the formal surrender due to dogmatic militaristic principles, or simply (are) not aware of it…”
White hegers will continue to hold out, working to solidify the U.S. apartheid system, so that it is even more like that of former South Africa. At all costs, they will try to maintain their privilege.
Correction to Mr. Sutton. The Klan has already ridden. Decent people need to ride.
One last question: Mr. Sutton, have you ever heard of Nat Turner?
Update: Sutton Steps Down He mentions that after stepping down, he’ll have the freedom to “drink beer and chase women,” reiterating that he has the class of a full roach motel.
Paraphrase: Idiocy Can Get Halfway Around the World, Before Good Sense can Tie its Shoes
(Chicago) This is really what he wants. It’s the barrier that Israel has erected around the West Bank, a monument to its reservation system that should look real familiar to American Natives. I’ll get to Israel’s Genocide System soon. Suffice now to say that it is so similar to the American System that I feel like they’re violating a copyright somewhere.
Anyway, the Toddler wants a huge, inconvenient barrier that, as others have pointed out, strokes his ego and makes his base nuzzle their guns affectionately. It satisfies bigots who can’t seem to get used to a bunch of residents and citizens speaking Spanish openly.
To be honest, the wall itself seems irrelevant. It will have no impact on crime, one way or the other. It is hardly worth a budget debate. If we’re going to argue about the budget I’d rather go after the $600+ billion we put into the Pentagon’s affairs every year. $5 billion? That is hardly worth a squabble.
The issue is his use, for about the 10,000th time, of the fraudulent narrative in place of facts. We are the most dangerous nation in history, capable of a nearly world wide genocide that would take only about one NFL game to complete. The internet, cable, and the smart phone have put an unprecedented amount of immediate information into everybody’s palm. But, instead of making America the most learned and intellectually sharp country in the world, much of its population is easily manipulated, lazily falling back on tropes of bigotry, ignorance, and willful idiocy masquerading as intellectual skepticism.
First of all, violent crime in this country has been declining since at least 1993. Back when the world was listening to Salt ‘N Peppa’s “Shoop,” violent crime nationwide began to drop, and has been doing so ever since. I already know that some places have terrible crime. I’ve been teaching on the South and West sides of Chicago for twenty-five years, so it’s not news to me. I have a former 8th grader who was murdered last year, and another former 8th grader in prison for a different murder. I can go on for paragraphs, but why belabor the point? Anybody, though, who generalizes from dramatic news stories in Austin or Englewood to what the average American needs to worry about in an average town at an average time of day is guilty of the kind of thinking that makes members of the MAGA cult the elite winners that they are. Pew Crime article based on FBI data
Recently, the Toddler tried to whip the MAGA cult into a froth in El Paso, claiming that it had been a dangerous city until a wall like he has in mind was installed. The Democratic Sheriff and even the Republican mayor had to clarify that El Paso’s violent crime statistics mirrored the FBI’s nation wide numbers, regardless of its wall. El Paso Crime Clarification.
What does The Great Twerp have left? His lies, his predictable habit of depending on predictable white ignorance and fear of, in this case, Latinos.
This seems to be a situation in which fire must defeat fire. It is a perfect time for Representative Pelosi, Senator Schumer, or whoever to use his technique and PIVOT. Say to that fool in a letter “hey, what about the $4000 cut in taxes you were supposed to get the middle class? Middle Class Tax Cut? I don’t think So.The real Cult 45 members will continue to believe in him, even as he squats for his body cavity search on his way into Danbury. Nobody is more difficult to convince that he or she is wrong then the sucker who has been duped.
Bittersweet Abattoir 