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Showing posts from November, 2017

McCain Does the Inevitable

The same behavior which the Maverick has engaged in for decades, while the press carefully averts its eyes- talk a great game in front of adoring "reporters," collect all the honors for what a noble, free thinking man he is, and then in the end vote with all the other pig Republicans to pass their corrupt, hateful legislation.  And here he is again, on board with the unbelievably monstrous Republican tax theft. But really, why not?  He'll be dead before the depression that this bill is going to cause actually happens, so what does he care?  Well, thanks a lot, John, for going out showing your true character.  Don't bother inviting us to the funeral- we can stop by later to spit on your grave.

Mount Agung At Last

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So, whatever happened to the eruption of Mount Agung, which I reported on a couple of months ago.  It looked like despite predictions, the residents of Bali had dodged a bullet and things had returned to normal.  Then, a few days ago, things changed: This is already a fairly substantial eruption, and we have no idea what will happen next.  I'll keep watching over the next few days.

Melania's Christmas

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Maybe I'm an idiot, but Melania, I love your Christmas decorations.  They're the best thing I've seen you do since you've been in the White House.

Roy Moore- The Other Side of the Story

I have read so much about Roy Moore lately, and there is no question that he is one of the lowest people you will ever come across.  And yet none of his loathsome acts over the years seems to be deterring any significant number of Republicans in Alabama from voting for him.  It's pretty clear what that says about him and his supporters, but I want to take a minute to talk about why Alabama voters might be voting against his opponent, Doug Jones. As we all know, Jones' most famous act, and the one that forms a centerpiece of his campaign, is when he won a conviction against several Ku Klux Klan members who burned down a church, killing four little black girls in the process.  To any sane person, that was the act of a hero, particularly in a place like Alabama.  But I would like to suggest what I have not seen one single person have the temerity to mention:  To the kind of ugly, hate filled people who fill the voting rolls in Alabama, this act may be seen as a supreme betray

Headline Today

"Mugabe resigns under military pressure after 37 years as Zimbabwe’s leader" I just wonder if we will be reading a similar headline about Donald Trump in another 36 years. In the meantime, stories that don't deserve much coverage, I guess: Trump collected $107 million for his inauguration, more than twice the amount ever collected before, even though it was run with a very small number of people.  Where is the rest of the money?  People are asking, but no one will tell. Trump is planning to appoint a lawyer with a long history of working for vote suppression to run the 2020 census. The FCC is set to do away with net neutrality rules as early as next week, allowing internet service providers to decide which sites they want to carry, and which they want to ban. Fox News legal expert Jeannine Piro caught driving 119 miles an hour in a 65 mile zone.  She says that she was going to see her mother and didn't realize that she was driving over the speed limit.  I

Charlie

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So, Charlie Manson finally kicked the bucket. Charlie had sort of loomed over us for most of our lives, an infamous, creepy, horrible and yet somehow attractive figure who etched himself permanently into American culture by acts he incited over two days in the sixties. What has occurred to me in thinking about it is how Charlie, in a strange way, was a symbol of a much more innocent time.  These days, we have people in this country committing atrocities far worse that Charlie did, on a weekly basis, only for them to be virtually forgotten about as the next monster heaves into view.  The Las Vegas shooter, the Texas Church shooting, the Northern California guy spraying fire at a random elementary school- all in the last month or so.  And we just move on, while Charlie managed to frighten us for forty years.  Mass murder isn't what it used to be, and in this Republican age, when the dominant political party deliberately stokes the kind of rage and hatred that produces these a

Wingnut Wrapup

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I know I more or less promised to cool it with the wingnuts, but they have reached such a climax of screeching lies lately, due to the simultaneous unraveling of Trump, Jeff Sessions and their poster boy, Roy Moore, that they are really on a tear these days.  I can't even begin to get to it all.  The following is too much for a sane society, but I am really only scratching the surface here. Angry Patriot:  "Clinton Foundation Taxes Reveal Just How Little They Give To Charity" The Clinton Foundation is a charity, dumbass. "In its IRS filings, the Clinton Foundation paid out over $91 million, but only roughly $5 million of that actually went to charitable grants!" The Clinton Foudation runs its own programs.  It doesn't pay other groups to do its work, except where it cannot provide the services; thus the $5 million paid to others.  Anyone with even the most superficial knowledge of the Clinton foundation knows this, including, I am sure, the anony

An Ignored Warning

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I was reading a discussion at Crooks and Liars, and came across a reference to a comment made by William Tecumseh Sherman in 1860, which I had never seen before.  It was so prescient and to the point that I could not help but share some of it with you: "...where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The Northern people not only greatly outnumber the whites at the South, but they are a mechanical people with manufactures of every kind, while you are only agriculturists--a sparse population covering a large extent of territory, and in all history no nation of mere agriculturists ever made successful war against a nation of mechanics. ... "The North can make a steam-engine, locomotive or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical and determined people on earth--right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you p

Treason Still, And They Avert Their Eyes

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." -H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu Merciful, perhaps, but also very dangerous.  It is of the greatest concern to me that even the most astute observers in our country do not seem to be able to admit to themselves the obvious conclusion about what is happening. My case in point today comes from Daily Kos, although I want to make it clear that I am picking them not because they are worse than others, but because they are better.  Daily Kos is probably the most consistent internet source of correct information about what is going on in the United States today; yet even they cannot admit to themselves the extent of the deluge that is upon us. Here are some excerpts from an article at the Daily Ko s today: "Foreign service officer warns of 'serious, immediate, and tangible' threat to U.S. world leadership... Ambassador Barbara Stephenson, t

Wingnut Wrapup

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I know I have promised to pretty much stop bothering you with this idiocy, but the need of the Republicans to come up with any sort of disgusting lies, now that Donald Trump is rapidly being revealed to be exactly the traitor that we knew he was, is so great, that I fear we need to keep an eye on their plans to divert our gaze from the greatest betrayal of our country in its history.  So, here we go, first with a little coverage of the November 7th election, and then on to the general bullshit: Matt Vespa, Town Hall:  "Oh, Here We Go: Hillary Taking Credit For Democratic Wins Last Night" Town Hall's lead story about the Democratic blowout- if they couldn't use it somehow to smear Hillary, they would have ignored it altogether. Streiff, Red State:  "The Surprising Key To The Democrats’s Win In Virginia" Red State's only coverage of the election.  The surprise?  When more Democrats vote, they win.  Man, it took a genius to figure that one out.  Ho

Gutless Worm

"Pelosi On Impeaching Trump: 'Not Someplace That I Think We Should Go' The son of a bitch is only one step away from Hitler.  What in God's name would he have to do before the terminally brain damaged Nancy Pelosi thinks we need to get rid of him? Her career has gone on too long.  Time to get rid of her next year.

Move On, Folks, Nothing To See Here

Here's something that I never knew:  Donald Trump's Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, was formerly the Vice Chairman of the Bank of Cyprus, the most notorious financial institution in the world for the laundering of Russian mob money, and still retains large holdings in the bank. One more payoff to Vladimir Putin, or just a gigantic coincidence? And a little more:   Oh, and it turns out that Wilbur Ross is a business partner of Vladimir Putin's son in law, a fact which he conveniently forgot to mention at his confirmation hearing. And still the Republican Congress does nothing, even in this grotesque example of corruption and sedition.  I suspect that, when the smoking gun evidence of Trump's treason is really laid out, this is going to be the end of it: Republicans just saying "so what," and moving along to their next scheduled atrocity, with the full backing of their 30% base, which is enough to eject any Republican legislator who doesn't go alo

What If They Just Do Nothing?

What if they just don't care? The possibilities that we thought were facing this country were two:  Either Trump would be proven to have colluded with a foreign dictator to win the White House, and would be rapidly removed from office, or the evidence just wouldn't be there, in which case he would probably go on conspiring with his fellow Republicans to rape the country. There is a third possibility, and it is becoming more and more likely every day; right now I think it is the most likely result of all of this:  Trump will be proven to be a traitor, and his fellow Republicans, the only people who can do what needs to be done, will just refuse.  They will let the traitor stay in power because he can be guaranteed to do the bidding of the few hundred rich sociopaths that are their only real constituency, and because the mob that they have spent four decades creating would crush them to death if they try to do the right thing.  And thus our country will die. "And wha

Bribery? Blackmail?

Just a question:  The phony scandal revolving around the DNC making sure that a Democrat got the Democratic Presidential nomination, as opposed to a self-serving parasite, was resolved and revealed to be just one more gigantic Republican lie, over a year ago.  So, this week, we learned from the first fruits of the Mueller investigation that no credible, even marginally honest person can, at this point, maintain the screaming Republican denials that the Trump campaign and administration has engaged in some very malignant collaboration with the Russian dictator.  Anyway, surprise, surprise, within a couple of days, this long discredited "scandal" re-emerges, front and center, with the mainstream press seemingly far more interested in it than the treason in the White House. This is largely thanks to the actions of two people; Donna Brazile, and Elizabeth Warren, who are doing everything they can to parrot the Republican lies about Hillary and the DNC.  So, I have one questio

the senior White House adviser at the Department of Homeland Security

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Not kidding, guys.  That's him.   Trump's senior White House adviser at the Department of Homeland Security. Now, admittedly, "The gun-slinging man is not a terrorist. His Arab accent is fake. And the person pretending to be him, Frank Wuco, is now in charge of implementing the president’s executive orders at the Department of Homeland Security.   Since January 21, Wuco has served as the White House senior adviser at DHS." Still, this is the top level of our government's response to international threats. Just what kind of a joke do these people think running the country is, and what kind of fools are the large number of Americans that willingly fall for it? Don't bother to answer that question- we all know what the answer is, and it is too painful to think about.

Rigged!

Well, here we go again, with a firestorm of accusations that Hillary and the DNC "rigged" the Democratic Presidential primary against beloved Bernie, this time coming from the terminally stupid Donna Brazile, and of all people, Elizabeth Warren, who should know a lot better than to be drawn into this morass of dishonesty. Well, here is the truth:  One of the main reasons the DNC exists is to see that Democrats are nominated to run for office by the Democratic party, and Bernie Sanders is not, and was never a Democrat, and only dishonestly pretended to be one for a few months while he tried to steal the Democratic nomination for President. I just don't get how stupid the nation's politicians and political commentators are, but I have never heard a single one of them, when discussing this issue, state the phenomenal stakes involved here.  So once again, it is Green Eagle who must speak the truth, however few people he is speaking to. Here is what will happen if th

Tax The Hell Out Of The Rich

As we approach the almost inevitable theft of several trillion dollars from the American people by Congressional Republicans, in order to pay back their sociopathic backers for financing the smear campaigns that keep them in office, we know damned well that no argument against this monstrous crime will sway these corrupt monsters in any way.  Nevertheless, it is important to make our arguments against this this outrage.   Most of these positions rely on some notion of fairness.  I want to discuss here a rationalization not just for preventing tax cuts for the rich, but for imposing massive new taxes on them; an argument that does not rely on any notion of fairness, but on pure survival.  I virtually never hear this argument made, and yet it provides, in my opinion, the most irrefutable grounds for raising taxes on the rich. Since at least the 1600's the Western world has fallen prey to an endless, seemingly inevitable cycle of boom and bust; whether we are talking about tulip man