December 22, 2020: Final Days

 

December 6, 2020: Big Shit Don

 

“Every morning at nine you could see him arrive 

he stood six-foot-one and weighed three-forty-five

kind of narrow at the brow and broad at the hip

and we could tell from the stench, he was nothin' but shit

big Don

big Don

big shit Don

They say Mar-a-Lago is where Don called home

he just drifted into town and stayed all alone

But he couldn't keep his mouth shut, surely not shy

and if you got a word in, you just said 'hi' to big Don

Somebody said he came from New York's Queens

and the family inheritance became quickly lean

and a crashing blow in his bankrupt hands

sent the New York swine in search of foreign lands

big Don

big Don

big shit Don

Then came that day at the bottom of his mine

when a timber cracked and men started crying

people were praying and hearts beat fast

and everybody feared that they'd breathed their last 'cept Don

Through the dust and smoke of his man-made hell

slinked the ignorant pig that the people knew well

grabbed a list of grievance, let out with a groan

and like a beaten cur, just sat there and moaned 

big Don

big Don

Bunker Boy Don

When suddenly from high up above,

came studderin' Joe with a mighty shove

and twenty men scrambled from a would-be grave

and now there's only one left down there to save

Big Don

With jacks and timbers they started back down

then came that rumble way down in the ground

As raging lies belched out of that mine

everybody knew it was the end of the line for Big Don

Now they never re-opened that worthless pit

they just placed a stone slab on top of it

and on that slab are written these few words:

'At the bottom of this hole lies a big, big turd'

Big Don

Big Don

Big Shit Don

Big Don

____

Many thanks to someone calling himself “mountain man Mike” who published a parody of Jimmy Dean's “Big John” on YouTube. I've changed the lyrics a bit.

November 6, 2020: The Punk With The Stutter, Flushing the Turd, Dancing In The Streets

You declared you would be three inches taller
You only became what we made you.
Thought you were chasing a destiny calling
You only earned what we gave you.
You fell and cried as our people were starving,
Now you know that we blame you.
You tried to walk on the trail we were carving,
Now you know that we framed you.

I'm the guy in the sky
Flying high Flashing eyes
No surprise I told lies
I'm the punk in the gutter
I'm the new president
But I grew and I bent
Don't you know? don't it show?
I'm the punk with the stutter.
My my my my my mmmm my my my.

GGGGG-g-g-g-g generation.

----"The Punk and The Godfather"   The Who

Alas, The Generation of Swine could not complete their vandalism, could not pull the trigger on the last acts of degradation.  Instead, in a rare act decency they turned upon our Caesar Disgustus and the punk with the stutter vanquished the godfather.  It was an altogether too close a shave, but Uncle Sam first reaching for an outsized plunger, then with the help of Joe Biden's Roto-Rooter finally managed, after four long years, to flush this turd. 

" I finally cried

Which started the whole world laughing"..."I Started A Joke" ---The Bee Gees

Americans are dancing in the streets.  The seventh of November, the day America rejected its close brush with fascism, will become, like Guy Fawkes Day, a day of celebration.  

Goodbye Donnie tRUMP, you ignorant fucking moron.  The prison doors await you and your larvae.    

Now go fuck yourself, and the horse you rode in on. 

October 31, 2020:

October 30, 2020:

October 29, 2020:

October 28, 2020:

September 9, 2020: It's Health Care Stupid, Heartless Response, Not Promising Much

Citing work done by longtime Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, Washington Post columnist Helaine Olen reports what Greenberg has found:

“Last month, longtime pollster Stan Greenberg listened to a number of focus groups conducted in working-class and rural areas of Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine and Ohio. They were heavy on people who supported President Trump in 2016, and many were now leaning toward voting for Joe Biden in 2020. But if Democrats want to gain these voters, they’ll need to do better on one key issue.\

'In today’s working class and rural communities, health care is everything,” Greenberg wrote, in recent piece in the American Prospect. “The health care system is failing them, and they want someone to fix it.'

And they will vote for whomever promises to do just that — and abandon those leaders when they don’t deliver, Greenberg warns. It’s why they voted for Trump in 2016, and why they turned on the Republican Party in 2018. (It’s also, I should add, one reason people voted for Barack Obama in 2008 but turned on the Democratic Party in 2010. As I’ve long observed, people seem to conflate the phrase “Affordable Care Act” with their own situation.)

As for now, it’s the covid-19 pandemic, but it’s more than that. It’s the epidemic of opioid deaths — which appear to be rising significantly this year — and the increasing costs of coverage, both of insurance, co-pays and other out-of-pocket expenses. It’s the impossibility of navigating our health-care system and managing to emerge financially intact.

These long-running crises are more pressing than ever. More than 4 in 10 working-age Americans experienced inadequate health-care coverage at some point in the past year — either because they lacked health insurance or were forced to pay such a high percentage of their income in the form of deductibles and co-pays that they might as well have been. The percentage of people with a deductible of $1,000 or more has doubled since 2010 and now stands at 46 percent, according to a recent Commonwealth Fund survey. In particular, 40 percent of Latinos reported lacking insurance either at the time of the survey, or at some point within the past year, something to keep in mind when wondering why, as a group, they are much more likely to die from covid-19 than White Americans.

Over and over again, people sitting in the focus groups Greenberg listened in on talked about medical bills in the tens of thousands of dollars, and how the high deductibles made health insurance plans all but unusable — one person had a $16,000 deductible — and arbitrary denials that made their often hard lives even more precarious. One women discussed not being able to afford an EpiPen for a grandchild suffering from allergies after her insurance company refused to authorize it.

Biden says he plans to improve on the Affordable Care Act, increasing subsidies as well as demanding that Medicare negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over the price of drugs, something currently banned by law. He also says he will offer up a “public option” — a Medicare-like government offering that competes with private insurers — and expand Medicare to cover people 60 and up.

But how serious Biden, who has been a faithful servant of corporate interests for the entirety of his legislative career, is about fixing the monster that is our health-care system is entirely unclear. The medical industrial complex is adamantly against the public option, for starters. Biden says he’s committed, but when the Hill recently asked the Biden campaign whether officials would immediately present legislation on a public option, or start with smaller health-care fixes, the newspaper received no response. And as Libby Watson noted at the New Republic, at the Democratic convention, even Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) didn’t mention the public option during his appearance.\

One of the conundrums of the Democratic primaries — when Medicare-for-all loomed large — was that a large number of people supported substantive health-care reform but often didn’t vote their preference. They’re supporting Biden over Trump, in many cases, because they want to see Trump gone, not because they support his position on health-care reform.

Moreover, Biden’s health-care pitch, much of which rested on the shaky premise that Americans loved their workplace health insurance, increasingly feels like something out of a time warp. Tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs since mid-March, and the pace of weekly layoffs is picking up.

Republicans certainly have no answer. When a constituent with cancer recently called Sen. Thom Tillis’s (R-N.C.) office asking about the high cost of health insurance and her fears she would lose hers, the response was heartless. “Sounds like something you’re going to have to figure it out,” the staffer told her, while comparing the need for health insurance to a “new dress shirt” she shouldn’t buy if she couldn’t afford.

But if the Democrats don’t come up with a solution that actually helps people — if they don’t put a stop to surging premiums and deductibles, not to mention arbitrary denials and surprise medical bills and the entire cornucopia of financial horrors that comes with accessing the most necessary and needed health care in the United States, it seems likely voters will, once again, move on. If Biden is elected president but fails to deliver, don’t be surprised to discover that 2022 turns out to be a repeat of 2010.” (1)

The medical/insurance cartels are holding the country hostage. The awful truth is that not only are these cabals sucking nearly twenty five percent out of the national economy, but will will, when the time comes, hijack a huge percentage of the generational wealth when it changes hands.

Greenberg is right. As pointed out in these columns in 2017, Donald tRUMP ran to the 'left' of virtually the entire Republican field in 2016, promising affordable health care that would cover all, saying that “it isn't popular among Republicans”, and adding that the government would pay for it, because there would be great savings on the other side. A point reaffirmed by a study funded by the Koch Brothers, much to their chagrin.

Disgustus, of course, had already signed on to Paul Ryan's agenda meaning that his assurances were complete bullshit, but he knew they would resonate among the masses struggling under the weight of the burden and fearing for their well-being.

The question lingers? What if the Democrats had nominated Bernie? Sanders, famously, went on Fox News and held a town hall meeting. After presenting his argument in favor of government-run single-payer health care, the moderator asked the audience—a hand-picked FOX audience—how many supported the idea. Both the audience and the moderator were shocked when about 80 percent raised their hands. These were, by and large, tRUMP supporters responding to a populist appeal for an end to the exploitation of the sick and aged.

Biden, riding high in the polls, is an illusion. He is not building a coalition. Most of his support, as stated in the article, comes from an overweening desire by the American public to rid itself of the pestilence of tRUMP. The great 'coalition' of former Republicans, conservatives, Democrats and progressives will fracture on election night and Biden, should he be elected, will find himself with little genuine support backed by even less enthusiasm. Those on the 'right' will return to their errant ways, those on the 'left' will impatiently await the blows of cruel fate.

Biden's only saving grace is that at least he isn't promising much.

An Br'er Putin he jus' laugh and laugh

Flush this turd, November 3rd

___________

1, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/09/oft-forgotten-key-issue-2020/

September 5, 2020: Achieving the Unthinkable, Empty Shirt, The Future Won

Joe Kennedy III has lost. For the first time a Kennedy has lost in a Massachusetts Democratic primary.  He not only lost the election, but was crushed in a landslide, 56-44 per cent.  

The grandson of Robert F. Kennedy went about achieving the unthinkable, losing a contest that, earlier in the year, and leading in the polls by up to 17 points, looked like a cake-walk.  Indeed, many treated the Senator, who had labored over two decades in the House of Representatives, as a mere place-holder--someone to keep the seat warm until the young Kennedy decided to reclaim it.  It wasn't to be.  Not this time; not with this Senator. 

In his 'concession' speech, if one can call it that, the young congressman said that he was surprised that his 'name' dominated the contest. Really? For what other reason could there be for his upstart challenge to a sitting Senator from his own party?

Surely, it wasn't over the issues, for he and Senator Markey differ on very little—except, of course, the Senator is much more bold and progressive than his upstart challenger.

It is a bit ironic to run on the Kennedy name while presenting oneself as a pale imitation of the man you want to replace; for Markey had embraced The Green New Deal, as well as Elizabeth Warren's Wall Street reforms.  Indeed, he proved himself to be a pale imitation of his forebears; his grandfather, referencing Tennyson, once implored us To Seek A Newer World, this Kennedy, on the other hand, spoke of tired, old, solutions. 

 Kennedy, running to the 'right' of Markey, was much more circumscribed, revealing himself to basically be an 'empty shirt' proving, once again, the maxim that succeeding generations revert to the mean.

Of course, the Democratic establishment, principally House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, drawn by the magic of all things Kennedy, endorsed him. But the future, represented by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the up-and-coming New York Congresswoman who had authored, along with Markey, the Green New Deal said otherwise. The future won.

In one of Kennedy's Facebook postings I commented that he needs to drop the Roman numerals after his name, for it reeks of pomposity and privilege. In any case if one is to run on the legacy of youth, energy and all things Kennedy, one would expect an agenda of bold new ideas; one would expect a vision more about the future than the past. In old man Markey, the future won.

August 31, 2020: Robert Reich on tRUMP, Abject Worship, Front Row Seat

Trying to wrap his arms about the enormity of tRUMP and tRUMPism, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich posted this synopsis today on Facebook:

“One week ago, Rusten Sheskey, a seven-year veteran of the Kenosha, Wisconsin, police department, fired at least seven shots at the back of a Black man named Jacob Blake as he opened his car door, leaving the 29-year-old father of five probably paralyzed from the waist down.

After protests erupted, self-appointed armed militia or vigilante-type individuals rushed to Kenosha, including Kyle Rittenhouse, a white 17-year-old who traveled there and then, appearing on the streets with an AR-15 assault rifle, killed two people and wounded a third.

This is pure gold for a president without a plan, a party without a platform, and a cult without a purpose other than the abject worship of Donald Trump.

To be re-elected Trump knows he has to distract the nation from the coronavirus pandemic that he has flagrantly failed to control – leaving more than 180,000 Americans dead, tens of millions jobless and at least 30 million reportedly hungry.

So he’s counting on the reliable Republican dog-whistle. “Your vote,” Trump said in his speech closing the Republican convention Thursday night, “will decide whether we protect law-abiding Americans, or whether we give free rein to violent anarchists, agitators and criminals who threaten our citizens.”

“We will have law and order on the streets of this country,” Vice President Mike Pence declared the previous evening, warning “you won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America.”

Neither Trump nor Pence mentioned the real threats to law and order in America today, such as gun-toting agitators like Rittenhouse, who, perhaps not coincidentally, occupied a front-row seat at a Trump rally in Des Moines in January.

Pence lamented the death of federal officer Dave Patrick Underwood, “shot and killed during the riots in Oakland, California,” earlier this year, implying he was killed by protesters. In fact, Underwood was shot and killed by an adherent of the boogaloo boys, an online extremist movement that’s trying to ignite a race war.

Such groups have found encouragement in a president who sees “very fine people” supporting white supremacy.

The threat also comes from conspiracy theorists like Marjorie Taylor Greene, the recently nominated Republican candidate for Georgia’s 14th congressional district and promoter of QAnon, whose adherents believe Trump is battling a cabal of “deep state” saboteurs who worship Satan and traffic children for sex. Trump has praised Greene as a “future Republican star” and claimed that QAnon followers “love our country.”

And from people like Mary Ann Mendoza, a member of Trump’s campaign advisory board, who was scheduled to speak at the Republican convention until she retweeted an antisemitic rant about a supposed Jewish plan to enslave the world’s peoples and steal their land.

Clearly the threat also comes from hotheaded, often racist police officers who fire bullets into the backs of Black men and women or kneel on their necks so they can’t breathe. Needless to say, there was little mention at the Republican convention of Jacob Blake, and none of George Floyd or Breonna Taylor.

And the threat comes from Trump’s own lackeys who have brazenly broken laws to help him attain and keep power. Since Trump promised he would only hire “the best people,” 14 Trump aides, donors and advisers have been indicted or imprisoned.

Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani – who ranted at the Republican convention about rioting and looting in cities with Democratic mayors – has repeatedly met with the pro-Russia Ukrainian parliamentarian Andriy Derkach, whom American intelligence has determined is “spreading claims about corruption … to undermine former Vice President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party.”\

In addition, federal prosecutors are investigating Giuliani’s business dealings in Ukraine with two men arrested in an alleged campaign finance scheme.

Trump’s new postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, who had been a major Trump campaign donor before taking over the post office, is being sued by six states and the District of Columbia for allegedly seeking to “undermine” the postal service as millions of Americans plan to vote by mail during the pandemic.\

Not to forget the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, who spoke to the Republican convention while on an official trip to the Middle East, in apparent violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits officials of the executive branch other than the president and vice-president from engaging in partisan politics.

You want the real threat to American law and order? It’s found in these Trump enablers and bottom-dwellers. They are the inevitable excrescence of Trump’s above-the-law, race-baiting, me-first presidency. It is from the likes of them that the rest of America is in serious need of protection.

What do you think?”

I think we are in deep shit. We are witnessing the destruction of the republic from a front-row seat.

An br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh

Flush this turd, November 3^rd.

___________

1. https://www.facebook.com/RBReich/posts

August 30, 2020: Vacuous Nonsense, Empty-Handed, No Promises to Break

The proceedings have finally come to a merciful end. Disgustus has had his day. The quadrennial gathering of swine have labored mightily and delivered a rat. For the ReSCUMlickan Party, the Grand Old Prostitute, is babbling vacuous nonsense and has left the country—desperately in need—empty-handed.

Disgustus, famously, promises the best steaks but delivers tripe. No matter, the maggot hats rush to the rotting meat falling from the carcass. It is their usual fetid fare. But now, he promises nothing at all.

For the first time in living memory, perhaps the first time since political conventions came into being early in the 19^th century, a major political party has failed to produce a party platform. In doing so, they tell us more than they suspect, for they have brought forth candidates but no ideas, confessing by their actions, and in-actions, that they have, literally, no idea where to lead the country.

We know, from bitter experience, that they have no idea how to lead the country, now they openly confess that they don't know where to lead it. Finally, the truth is out. The ReSCUMlickan Party is intellectually, as well as morally, bankrupt.

What we are left with is all tRUMP, all the time; a political movement that now exists for no other reason than to make a pig's breakfast of what has been built and to worship the golden swine. Vandalism and The Vandal; at least this time around there will some measure of honesty, for there will be no promises to break.

Our great and powerful Oz takes no responsibility and promises nothing. An empty shirt posturing and preening like unto a living god.

An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh

Flush this turd, November 3^rd.

August 29, 2020: Litany of Lies, Conceal The Culprit, Just Another Screed

Caesar Disgustus, besmirching yet another monument—this time the executive mansion—by emptying the latrine of the body politic, onto the White House lawn. Addressing a sea of maggot hats our erstwhile emperor told the assembled that, among other things: He is doing a great job fighting the tRUMP virus; he is not. That we lead the world in testing: we do not. That he is introducing approved therapies to deal with the tRUMP virus; we are not. That we have built three hundred miles of wall on the Southern border; we have not. That Joe Biden wants to bulldoze the suburbs; he has no such plans. It was a litany of lies.

Disgustus, a pathological liar unable to utter any truth except by accident, must now resort to his only known talent: gross deceit. The record demands it. Like any two-bit criminal he must cover up the evidence in order to conceal the culprit.\

For the facts tell the story: The United States has 4 percent of the world's population but nearly a quarter of the tRUMP Virus cases killing nearly 20 percent of those taken by the tRUMP Virus. Only Brazil, also suffering from jaw-dropping incompetent leadership, comes anywhere close to the United States in the mishandling of the crisis. Under Disgustus, the United States leads the industrialized world in unemployment, business failures, skyrocketing public debt, and a looming housing crisis that threatens to cripple the economy.

One would think that, violating yet another political protocol, this time the use—or misuse—of the executive mansion, that our erstwhile Caesar would have made an effort to rise to the occasion and deliver a serious, deliberative effort. Instead it was the usual tripe, red meat for the attending maggots.

It was all part and parcel to virtually everything else he's done. Disgustus never surprises, he can always be relied upon to scrape the scum from the bottom of the barrel and then smear it all over the rest of us. 

.

His promise that there would be a vaccine by year's end must be taken with the same veracity that, you may recall, he told Chris Wallace at the end of June that he would have a replacement for Obamacare within two weeks. With a straight face he assured the reporter on national television that a bill was in the works and that he would sign it within a fortnight. Another of the over 15,000 bold-faced lies told by this scum in his less than four years stinking up Oval Office.

So the effort, held before over a thousand mask-less denizens, had the fact-checkers working overtime, finally throwing up their hands and declaring the whole mess just another screed delivered with the same, predictable mendacity.

And so, another political norm has been shit-canned, another guard-rail dismantled, as Disgustus defiles yet another national monument. First it was Mt. Rushmore, now the White House itself.

An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh

Flush this turd, November 3^rd.

August 28, 2020: The Real Fraud, Nowhere to Turn, Despise His Ass

“They're trying to rig the election” Disgustus bellows before an adoring crowd of maggot hats. In tRUMPspeak this means that he is trying to rig the election. The Daily Beast is reporting today that the tRUMP campaign, in full panic mode, is doing its utmost to restrict Democratic turnout in the upcoming election.

“On June 29,” writes David Lurie, “the Trump campaign filed a lawsuit demanding the voiding of the efforts of Pennsylvania's state officials to facilitate mail voting during the pandemic. Among other things, Pennsylvania is allowing the use of ballot drop boxes, so voters can avoid returning ballots through the mails. In light of revelations that Trump's recently installed Postmaster General (and fundraiser), Louis DeJoy, deliberately engineered new inefficiencies and delays at the Postal Service (Particularly in Philadelphia), the need for drop boxes is even more clear. But that's only made the Trump campaign more determined to prevent their use.” (1)

Referring to “fraud” no fewer than 51 times, the campaign filed a motion before Judge Nicholas Ranjan, a tRUMP appointee who, recognizing the centrality of possible fraud, demanded evidence. The campaign could provide none, claiming that, well, it just makes common sense. It makes “common sense” only in the minds of those about to be run out of office by angry voters.

Indeed, Lurie sites a study by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative stink tank, revealing that over 9 years there were only 15 cases of voter fraud in the 5 states that provide for mail-in voting, hardly enough to rig an election.

But note that our Caesar Disgustus and his minions are not opposed to all mail-in or absentee ballots (for Disgustus and his larvae regularly vote by mail), but are seeking to restrict this means of voting in heavily populated areas, where people are most likely, given the congestion, to vote by mail. These, of course, are heavily Democratic precincts.

And, like the voter I.D. Law in North Carolina which a federal judge ruled unconstitutional because it discriminated against minority communities “with laser precision”, so the attempt to suppress the vote by legally restricting mail-in ballots only in certain communities and precincts, is yet another attempt by the GOP and our Caesar Disgustus to suppress Democratic turn-out and steal yet another election.

The problem is a serious one, since DeJoy has engineered a near collapse of the Postal Service, removing and destroying 671 sorting machines, mostly from large metropolitan areas, and tearing out postal drop boxes from street corners. These are only the latest in a series of outrages as he has curbed overtime and allowed mail to pile up.

The polls tell the story: Between 68 and 80 percent of Americans tell pollsters that the country is moving in the wrong direction. North of 50 percent of the general population say that they won't vote for the swine under any circumstance. Normally the greater the likelihood that those polled will vote the better the polling numbers for the Republican. That is, as you look over the polling numbers, what one sees is that tRUMP  logs far more unfavorable numbers among the general population than among register voters; and far more unfavorable numbers among registered voters than among likely voters. Those in charge of the campaign know that they cannot expand the electorate; that to do so will mean crushing defeat. 

He knows that he now has nowhere to turn, for registering a new voter will, on balance, only add to his electoral defeat as, far more than the likely jury that will show up election day, the general public despise his ass. There is only one avenue left: suppress the vote. And that, is what he intends to do.

Yes, there are those who are now working hard to rig this election, but it isn't the Democrats. It's tRUMP.

An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh

Flush this turd, November 3^rd.

__________

1. https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-voter-fraud-proof-turned-022443280.html

August 27, 2020: Family Disown Family, Old Testament God, Negotiator Become Mediator

“Family disown family that vote Republican”

        ----from the Quotations of Chairman Joe

I posted this message on Facebook a couple of months ago only to receive a protest from one of my relatives who, undoubtedly and unfortunately, voted Republican.

It has come to this in tRUMP's Amerika. Not since the civil war has our politics pit family against family like it has now. As the great Ass Festival proceeds in North Carolina, Kelleyanne Conway, known in certain circles as Kellyanne Con-job, makes her farewell address to the faithful. For months a public war of sorts has played out between Kelleyanne and her husband George who, recoiling from the horrors of tRUMP and tRUMPism, has left the party and joined the Lincoln Project—a group of Republican refugees who have taken to the airwaves with scathing political messages excoriating tRUMP and everything he represents. Clearly the marriage itself became imperiled.  

Now comes word that their daughter has taken to twitter to bitterly complain that the politics has overtaken everything else in the household. In reaction Kelleyanne has announced that she is leaving the White House and George is leaving the Lincoln project. Perhaps the family may have stepped back from the precipice in time, only time will tell.

Kelleyanne, like Reince Priebus and many before her, began this association with tRUMP with her reputation intact. No more. Along with Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and a host of others, she finds herself soiled by the whinny little tar-baby.

Like some Old Testament god, tRUMP is omnipresent; the great negotiator become mediator in all things, even between husband and wife, parent and child. Like some ancient jealous deity, tRUMP demands, controls and takes everything. Like some old-time religion, the idiotlogical and political dictates overrule common sense and understandings.

This is what life is becoming in tRUMP's Amerika, all tRUMP, all the time. Who else would appear every night at his convention? Clearly, at the Conway's he has worn out his welcome. Let us hope this is also true for the country at large. America has grown weary, sick, disgusted and angry. Yet still there is this rump group who, at the foot of Mt. Washington, are openly worshiping the Golden Swine.

An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh

Flush this turd, November 3^rd.

August 26, 2020: Straight and Narrow, Heresy and Treason, Ass Festivals to Holocaust

“So tenaciously should we cling to the world revealed by the Gospel, that were I to see all the Angels of Heaven coming down to me to tell me something different, not only would I be tempted to doubt a single syllable, but I would shut my eyes and stop my ears, for they would not deserve to either seen nor heard.”

            ----Martin Luther (1)

Amid reports that the Ass Festival held in Sturgis, South Dakota has now spread over 100 cases of Covid-19 to at least 8 states, the current Ass Festival continues unabashed and unabated. The vitriol spewed nightly by a range of the deranged paints a picture of the immanent destruction of the American republic should the country exercise wisdom, not to mention a measure of public hygiene, by flushing these turds from the forum. This, while back in the corridors of power they labor mightily to accomplish precisely these ends.

The Ass Festival known as the ReSCUMlickan National Convention also began as reports surfaced that Jerry Falwell Jr., son of the founder of the so-called 'moral majority' and wrong-wing political hack, is up to his gonads in sex scandal. It seems the president of “Liberty” University, which his father also founded, has joined his wife in a tryst with the pool boy producing a delicious decade-long manage a' trios. It appears that our 'religious' leader has engaged in behavior that the institutions his father founded, as well as the flocks that he sheared, would find repugnant. Accounts vary, but generally report that brother Falwell loves to watch his wife in action complete with photos and videos. It remains unclear whether Falwell joins in the proceedings and, if so, in what capacity.  

It's bad enough when the in-laws find out about it, bad enough when the friends find out, but the Falwell's have achieved national, if not international, notoriety by flogging virtually anyone who didn't stick to the straight and narrow, didn't walk the line, didn't conform, didn't happily don the intellectual and moral straight jacket that they call religious doctrine. Now the piper must be paid. 


Relax Jerry, we understand, we really do. Your only true sin is declaring war upon the Old Adam that is, natural man, teaching your flock to reject humanism; to alienate themselves from themselves through the rejection of reason, and denial of the senses-- foremost pleasure-- however arrived at. But what is mere hypocrisy when confronted with ideological and doctrinal imperative? Falwell will likely survive the tempest as has Jim Bakker and a host of other bible-thumping religious howlers. For the True Believer is nearly impervious to mere fact and will shut the eyes and block the ears when confronted, as a case in point: ask the ReSCUMlickan led senate.   Belief always trumps the senses. Faith always trumps reason. The heart must always trump the mind. 


“The devout are always urged to seek the absolute truth with their hearts and not their minds” wrote Eric Hoffer. (2) Or, as Crash Davis told pitcher Luke LaRuoche in “Bull Durham”, don't think Meat, it will only hurt the team.

And, therein, lies the only path to salvation for either Falwell or tRUMP, indeed the entire ReSCUMlickan Party and American Conservatism: that the faithful will not think; that they will not connect the dots; and that, having fore-sworn reason they will rush to the rescue. How else to explain how tRUMP holds a nearly double digit lead among those polled on questions concerning the handling of the American economy. The Republicans have trashed the economy every time they've laid their hands on it: Eisenhower's recession in the late 50's, the “stagflation” of the Nixon-Ford years, the economic downturns at the beginning and end of the Reagan-Bush experience, the near total economic collapse presided over by Bush the Lesser, and now this. Oh! an let's not forget the colossal catastrophe handed to FDR by Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. Does one notice a pattern here?

Nevertheless, a plurality of the public conditioned on the visuals of television still believe that this common carnival barker is an accomplished businessman and great negotiator. They have been taught from early age to be good sheep, for they will follow. 

For the true believer “to rely on the evidence of the senses and of reason is heresy and treason.” (2) Better still, as Martin Luther admonished his sheep when confronted with inconvenient facts and truths, one must shut one's eyes and stop one's ears.

Hoffer reminds us that, as Rudolph Hess swore in the entire Nazi Party in 1934, “He exhorted his hearers: 'Do not seek Adolph Hitler with your brains; all of you will find him with the strength of your hearts.” (3)

Connect, if you will, the dots: It is but a short journey from Luther's admonition “It is the heart which is the consciousness of God, not the reason,” (4) to the destruction of a republic and the introduction of terror. It begins with Ass Festivals and ends in holocaust.

An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh

Flush this turd, November 3^rd.

_________________

1. As quoted by Erick Hoffer. The True Believer. Thoughts On The Nature of Mass Movements

Copyright 1951 Perennial Library, Harper & Row, New York. Page 75
1. Ibid. Page 77
2. Ibid. Page 77

August 25, 2020: The Gathering Scum, Snorkeling the Cesspool, A Bitter Screed

The time is upon us, that coalescing of scum, that quadrennial gathering of malignant ignorance and mendacious greed known to the world as the ReSCUMlickan National Convention. Aides, including boy blunder Jared Kushner and White House Chief of Staff Meadows, were telling the press, and anyone else who would listen, that our erstwhile Caesar would bring a tone of optimism contrasting mightily last week's Democratic message. But, alas, Disgustus can do no other. CNN reports that our Caesar Disgustus, snorkeling deep in the cesspool, accepted the renomination of his party with bitter screed reminiscent of the Grievanceburg Address given at Gettysburg Pennsylvania four long years ago. Bitching and whining our Disgustus can rise to no occasion. This was no exception.

Reporting on the proceedings, CNN observed that Disgustus “launched his convention week Monday with a bitter tirade against his rivals from four years ago and dark and unfounded warnings that voter fraud could deprive him of a second term. Speaking from Charlotte [scene of the famous crypto-fascist demonstrations three years ago] moments after he was formally renominated as the Republican Party standard-bearer, Trump delivered a screed that predicted a legally contested election in November and complained that Democrats were exploiting the coronavirus pandemic—still raging in the United States—to undermine his re-election.

'what they're doing is using Covid to steal an election. They're using Covid to defraud the American people, all of our people, of a fair and free election,' Trump said, without evidence, to applause from GOP delegates, who were gathering in North Carolina to conduct the formal business of the party convention.

' It was hardly the optimistic message that Trump's advisers have been relentlessly previewing ahead of this week's renomination festivities. Instead, Trump's speech was indistinguishable from the meandering, grievance-filled appearances he has been making in the lead-up to this scaled-down convention.

'He repeated claims that, should rival Joe Biden prevail, the country would be overrun with violence akin to protests seen this summer in Minnesota and Oregon. He warned that Democrats were seeking to take away guns, religion and American energy production. And he raised grave predictions about the November vote, saying there were courts and judges across the country 'who will hopefully give us a fair call' in a contested election.

'The only way they can take this election from us is if it's a rigged election,' he intoned, later warning delegates to 'be careful' amid what he cast as a Democratic plot to steal the election. 'Don't let them take it away from you,' he said. (1)

Let's see if we can unpack this nonsense.

It is rich that Disgustus would warn of violence in the streets should he lose the election, for we have violence in the streets now. And it's not just any streets. These are not the streets of Philadelphia, or New York, Newark or Detroit, scenes of so much carnage in the sixties. The neighborhoods are not Watts or Harlem but Minneapolis and Oregon for Christ's sake. Trump has managed to bring protest not to the inner city but to within the gates of Republican sanctuaries, suburbs and exurbs, middle class not the impoverished and downtrodden.

Disgustus is all about the past. Here he is trying to re-run the 2016 contest using as his guideposts the elections of 1968 and 1988. The great smear 1988 campaign against Michael Dukakis in which such pressing issues as flag burning and pledges of allegiance trumped everything else including the economy as well as war and peace; in which the face of Willie Horten was used to, in Lee Atwater's memorable phase, 'take the bark off that little bastard'--referring to the diminutive governor of Massachusetts. Unfortunately it worked.

Disgustus has now gathered about him one Karl Rove, disciple of Lee Atwater and Roger Stone, skilled in political skullduggery and bereft of character now trying to re-run the 1968 campaign of Richard Shithouse Nixon complete with the southern strategy and appeals to 'law and order'. But Nixon was the challenger with the incumbent represented by Hubert Humphrey. Incumbency hasn't registered in his fetid mind, nor the responsibilities that incumbency brings.

So we have this dissonance in which our Disgustus sounds a clarion call that there will be violence when there already is violence; that there will be hardship when there already is hardship; that an election will be rigged when he and his ReSCUMlickan enablers are the ones once again hell-bent on rigging it. The dystopia described by tRUMP are not what he inherited but what he has, through monumental ignorance, stupidity and incompetence, created. His inaugural address was not a description of what stood before us, it was his vision of America's future; for tRUMP is nothing but a vandal, still the boy who knocks down the other kids blocks and then blames them for poorly constructing their creations. Clearly, our Caesar has no idea who he is, where he is, or what time it is. It is no wonder, given his psychosis, that tests—how ever rudimentary—were administered. The question remains: what were the real results? Inquiring people, as is said, want to know.

An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh

Flush the turd, November 3^rd.

_________

1. http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-uses-dark-message-to-kick-off-mc-despite-aides-claims-of-optimism.
   

August 24, 2020: Mental Acuity, Ridiculous and Pathetic, 'Round The Bend

“Regarding our Caesar Disgustus, the question is whether the fucking moron has finally gone 'round the bend.”

       ----from The Quotations of Chairman Joe


The journal Politico reports that tRUMP “has frequently referred to his 77-year-old opponent as 'Sleepy Joe' in tweets and speeches, has tried to paint Biden as mentally unfit for the presidency during the final stretch of the 2020 campaign. The Trump campaign has even zeroed-in on Biden's age and mental competency with television ads showing the former vice president stumbling over his remarks.” (1)

This is rich coming from Caesar Disgustus who, one may recall, spent the summer bragging about a cognitive ability test administered by White House physician Ron Jackson two years ago. This was the incident where tRUMP was spirited from the White House to the hospital under circumstances that were then never made clear. Apparently there was some medical condition requiring the administration of a cognitive test in order to determine the ability of our erstwhile Caesar to function.

Disgustus, of course, does what he always does: project an overblown facade by engaging in his pet pastime of outrageous bravado and braggadocio. Here the braggart tells the nation that the test was a difficult one and that he “aced” it adding, of course, that the doctors never saw such wonderful results. Upon examination the test involved identifying three animals, drawing a clock to indicate a certain time, and other questions to determine if the patient is aware of his surroundings. Normally a person in position of high responsibility would not bring this up; would not want to draw attention to the need for such examination. But, alas, our Caesar is not normal.

He has, once again, gotten away with it, for the press is now too cowed by the blustering bastard to press the point home. The question is not whether the president* (I) did well on the examination; the question is not simply the nature of the examination and how easy it was; the question is not why tRUMP raised the issue. The question is not why the president*(I) lacked so little cognitive awareness that he was not embarrassed to raise the subject. The question is why the test should have been administered the test in the first place. This question should have been pressed upon tRUMP in his televised interviews and at every press conference as to why the test was administered in the first place; for this is one of a battery of tests given when a patient has suffered a severe medical event. Could tRUMP have been suspected of having suffered a stroke?

Clearly, any examination of tRUMP, and certainly anyone who has been within earshot of the man throughout his adult life has witnessed a man of limited understanding and even less intellectual acumen. Those close enough to witness the man with their own eyes have been known to see broad daylight between the ears. But something must have triggered the response by the White House medical team to go to these lengths.

Disgustus is now so unaware of his surroundings that he doesn't see how ridiculous and pathetic he now appears when he raised the issue and then compounded the folly by protesting its difficulty. This too should be alarming.

This isn't idle observation: for in the aftermath he stood before the nation with a straight face and in all earnestness advocated the injection of bleach and ultraviolet radiation into the body in order to cleanse the Covid-19 virus. What had happened is that his team had told him about the ways in which one can protect oneself from the disease, washing hands, using disinfectants, wearing masks, social distancing. Disgustus, who had early on made the virus a political issue by falsely declaring the whole thing a “Democratic Hoax” and the wearing of masks a bit of Democratic fear-mongering, fell upon the use of disinfectants. This, in the mind of the eternal seven-year-old, got translated into the injection of same, much the the shock and dismay of those around him.

One is left to conclude that the mental acuity test, which he evidently passed, was meant to determine whether additional damage had been done to an already truncated understanding. In a word, whether the “fucking moron”, in Rex Tillerson's telling description had finally gone 'round the bend.

As observed many times in these columns the visceral reaction of our Caesar Disgustus is always one of projection in which his myriad nonredeemable faults are given over to others. In attacking Joe Biden's age, Joe will be older than any president to take office, tRUMP is actually telling the nation the he himself is not up to the job and that he has indeed gone 'round the bend.

An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh

Flush this turd, November 3^rd.

____________

1. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/watch-me-biden-hits-back-at-trump-over-attacks-on-age
   
2. Ibid.

August 23, 2020: Swirling About, Warp Factor II, Foundations Of Fascism.

It's an idea that for several years has been swirling about in conservative stink tanks. That it, to make protest illegal. It has its roots in American jurisprudence when decades ago the courts decided that the mall parking lot was private property and, therefore, off limits to not only protests but union picket lines. The International Association of American Stagehand Employees, which represented America's theater projectionists among others, found that their ability to picket a theater in order to take their message to the community circumscribed for they found themselves forced by the police power of the state to set up such lines not in front of the place of business but out on the street. Stage one in the movement to proscribe protest—in this case the protest of working conditions.

Warp Factor II, Sulu: Now comes the State of Tennessee with stage 2 in the process. You know, Tennessee, sight of the famous Scopes Trial, defender of creationism, citadel of ignorance. News comes that the Republican governor of Tennessee has signed into law a measure passed by an equally Republican legislature that makes it a felony for anyone to protest on state property. A felony conviction strips one of the subsequent right to vote. So one's civil rights are serially violated, first the right of free speech and expression, the right of peaceable assembly, then to compound the mischief, the right to exercise the franchise.

There are those on the idiot wrong who would go even further making it a felony to 'disrupt commerce' by marching down main street, picketing a place of business, occupying a commercial center in order to voice protest, a menacing prospect now given legal sanction as it applies to public buildings. The foundations of a fascist state are being assembled before our very eyes and in broad daylight.

An' Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh

Flush this turd, November 3^rd.

August 22, 2020: Ass Festivals, Shorn of Responsibilities, Wash These Sins

“We want to be free...free to ride...free to ride without being hassled by the man”.

So declared Peter Fonda's character in the motorcycle epic Wild Angels as he struggled to articulate the whole point of his existence. A declaration of independence, in a manner of speaking, but a declaration shorn of responsibilities. And so it was that the Generation of Swine were led to believe that freedom carries no responsibility, that freedom lies, like some motorcycle gang living on the fringe, deep in the woods, in total alienation.

As we speak, the bikers are wrapping up festivities at what has to be one of the great Ass Festivals in America. Over a quarter million of the great unwashed gathered from all over the country and descended, as they do every year at this time, upon the hapless town of Sturgis, South Dakota. The purpose of this demonstration is unclear except perhaps to rumble through the streets, buy souvenirs, and consume mass quantities of alcohol and petroleum; no masks, no social distancing. Pandemic be damned.

This is, in microcosm, where we are today in America. Half the country is not taking necessary precaution, wearing protective gear, nor social distancing. Thirty five percent is reported to have told pollsters if a vaccine were introduced that they won't take it. The mayor of Los Angeles has cut off utilities to homes hosting large parties, gatherings intended to circumvent the public closing of bars and restaurants. That large gatherings have proven lethal, notably former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain died after attending tRUMP's little rally in Tuscon earlier this summer, goes unheeded. As the minister in charge of the national health, Mike Pence, so inarticulately put it, the guidelines established by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) will not determine how or when we reopen the economy or send our children into harms way. We will open our businesses and schools, authority be damned.

Another of the great Ass Festivals is about to convene, this the quadrennial gathering of the rarefied mendacity known as the ResCUMlickan Party. This time to renominate the most ignorant, vile, corrupt and incompetent man ever to disgrace the national political stage. The nation be damned.

The common denominator here is alienation. Here the denizens of society gather to express their willful ignorance, giving the collective society the great middle finger. This is not only deeply troubling, but is outright dangerous. As armed bands storm state capitals to somehow 'liberate' us from some wholly imaginary oppression, one is reminded of the films of the late sixties featuring motorcycle gangs terrorizing small communities for no apparent reason, except that they could be terrorized. Vandalism writ large.

Contrast this with the Democratic National Convention where national leaders ranging from Vermont's independent Bernie Sanders to former Republican Governors John Kashic of Ohio, and New Jersey's Christine Todd Whitman, called for national unity to confront the barbarians at the gates. In a very un-Obama speech, the former president sounded the alarm reminding all of us that responsibilities attend the exercise of freedom, that to stand aside and not participate is to be complicit in the undoing of the republic. It has come to that.

“I met her on the strip three years ago

in this Camero with this dude from L.A

I blew that Camero off my back

and drove that little girl away

Now there's wrinkles 'round my baby's eyes

and she cries herself to sleep at night

when I come home the house is dark

sobbing baby if you make it alright

“She sits on the porch of her daddy's house

all her pretty dreams are torn

she stares off alone into the night

with the eyes of one who hates for just being born

All the shut down strangers and hot rod angels

rumbling through this promised land

my baby and me, we're gonna ride to the sea

and wash these sins off our hands

Tonight, tonight the highway's bright

out of our way, mister, you best keep

for summer's here and the time is right

for racing in the street”

----Bruce Springsteen, Racing in the Street

Fascism, as Hannah Ardrendt tells us, is not an ideology but merely a revolt; not a march to a glorious future but a vandalism of the present in pursuit of some imaginary past. It is a revolt born of alienation, an alienation, Eric Hoffer reminds us, rooted in self-loathing. A movement of manifest hatred. They hate the present because they have not lived up to the moment. They hate us because they hate themselves.

Always there is some small measure of truth supporting every noble lie. One could accept the rational that the great alienation beneath the maggot hats is born of economic hardship and stagnation, of middle class struggle for existence. All that is true, but the revolt began well before the conservatives got their hands about the throat of the republic. People like William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan were haranguing Americans about 'freedom' well before the advent of hard times, indeed their screeds coincided at precisely the last time in which the middle class was invited to the party, the last time the middle class benefited from economic good times. Nothing about the critique computes, for this movement is not based on reason but rather passion, the passion of hatred. What binds Caesar Disgustus to his idolaters is not sound and rational public policy designed to advance their interests, but hatred. He hates the same people they do. That is the common denominator, that is the cement that binds One has only to confront the latest outrage in which the Scum-In-Chief twitted that he has just made the suburbs safe by signing an executive order limiting the spread of low income housing in suburbia. In this way those in our great suburbs will be 'free' to enjoy their middle class existence without threat of having rub shoulders with undesirables; and we all know who are these undesirables. Freedom is defined not as creating opportunity but in limiting it. The very ideal of Freedom is now perverted in a crass attempt to shore up a political base for the upcoming election.

“freedom's just another word

for nothin' left to lose”

----Chris Kristofferson “Me and Bobby Magee”

Freedom divorced from context; freedom alienated from responsibility; freedom as cudgel with which to vandalize the very foundations of freedom; freedom in service of a villain. Let us wash these sins off our hands.

An' Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh

Flush this turd, November 3^rd.