The Secret Service and a Presbyterian Walk Into a Hotel...
The many times repeated images of Donald Trump escorted into a hotel in California to give his latest boring speech reminded me again of how ridiculous American news coverage can be.
Protestors had arrived at the Hyatt Regency in Burlingame, California, one of them carrying a briefly glimpsed (on MSNBC) sign saying, "Get out of my state, you fucking Nazi!" When Trump, the Secret Service, and his others surrounding the great man arrived, they had to go around to a rear entrance, using the reliable ancient hominid method of shanks' mare to get into the hotel, walking across a grass median, down a narrow concrete path, requiring the candidate to jump a foot or two to the ground, all the while guided by handlers. One of these shaven-headed men moved Trump's red tie around to the front of his body after it had gone back over his shoulder. Helicopters flew overhead, wasting fuel as they showed us the action. Meanwhile, protestors knocked down barricades, trying to enter the building and "stop Trump from speaking," as sort of happened in Chicago on March 11.
Trump remarked on his unusual entrance into the building during his speech, saying that he had to "cross a border." Ha ha.
"I got in," he reassured his automaton audience, "I got in."
The long helicopter shot of Trump's walk from armored black fear limo to the inelegant rear end of the Hyatt Regency showed a yellow-haired man surrounded by bald stocky men treating him delicately, taking his arm now and then like he was a prom date. Reporters on the ground, by the protestors, were asked by the New York-based anchor to ask them why they had showed up, even though the reason is simply this: they all hate Donald Trump's guts, and a completely inappropriate and unqualified piece of shit like him should not be president.
Think about his value as entertainment, a real commodity for image-based, low thought content television news programming. This entertainer has entered, successfully, a corrupt bed where politics, the news industry, and Hollywood intersect with big corporate money interests. A reality TV country has demanded a reality TV presidential candidate.
Trump's qualifications in politics all exist in the realm of image control. In this, he's a good propagandist, but a lousy bet to make if you care at all about good governance, sensible domestic and foreign policies, and reality-based strategies for actually making America great in a way that doesn't involve Napoleon Bonaparte's idea of greatness.
The Republican Party, reportedly, is coming around to accepting Trump as their nominee. They tried to fight him with a failed Stop Trump campaign, but they have no serious adversaries to fight the billionaire. Ted Cruz is looking more and more like a dazed boxer in the fourteenth round; still hopeful now that he has failed candidate Carly Fiorina on his side (indicating Cruz's delusions about his chances). Cruz, however, just doesn't cut it with the Republicans, who mostly hate him. John Boehner, former Speaker of the House, called Cruz "Lucifer in the flesh," and "a miserable son of a bitch." The first comment seems florid to me and ridiculous, but the second, "miserable son of a bitch," has a good ring to it. It's the kind of thing you hear a grandparent say when you're young and decades later you still haven't forgotten it. That Boehner has said this about the number two GOP candidate shows yet again that the Republicans have developed a chronic problem when it comes to trying to regain the Executive Branch. McCain-Palin, Romney-Ryan, and now Cruz-Fiorina?
Trump hasn't yet made a VP selection, but Chris Christie is often by his side, Hermann Göring to Trump's Hitler. Marco Rubio has been suggested as a likely VP pick for Trump, but the very idea of Rubio, or "Little Marco" as Trump called him, submitting to partnership with the creep who so relentlessly insulted him a short time ago, is astonishing, unless one considers the degree of
debasement politicians are willing to put themselves through. Lyndon Johnson hated the Kennedy brothers, but he debased himself for the sake of the position. The move paid off on November 22, 1963. (Yes, I am suggesting Johnson may have had something to do with the Kennedy assassination).
The political games of the world are peopled with ruthless pieces of shit. Focusing on how Donald Trump had to walk an eighth of a mile to get to the site of his speech ignores a wealth of circumstances affecting the lives of billions, in sad tragedies, in triggers squeezed, in deaths ignored. Trump or Hillary Clinton will win a job that neither of them deserve. Either of them will order massacres. We'll hear news stories about their favorite snacks and what they do to wind down.
Vic Neptune
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Overcooked Steak
In Cologne and Augsburg, Germany, traffic lights have been installed in the ground at some locations, as in the Augsburg train station. They warn distracted walkers on cell phones to look up. Each light costs about 10,000 Euros. According to CNN, a nineteen year old man, or idiot, "was seriously injured...when he walked into the path of an oncoming train [in Augsburg] while wearing headphones."
When I was a child in the 1960s and 1970s, a basic lesson drilled into me, as well as into my contemporaries, was the practice of looking both ways before crossing the street. Are the youth of today not taught this and its variations anymore? Do cities have to spend 10,000 Euros per ground light to prevent acts of utter stupidity? Should a railing be constructed along the entire length of the Grand Canyon to prevent unaware fools from taking the biggest and last step of their lives?
I've sometimes wondered if putting in all these ridiculous safeguards simply enables bad survival habits. Challenge leads to personal evolution. If you've gotten to the point where you need expensive lights at your feet telling you not to accidentally kill yourself, you may as well be a walking sack of brainless meat.
Switching subjects, Donald Trump won five states yesterday, Hillary Clinton won four. He's convinced he's got it wrapped up, that he'll secure the necessary 1,237 delegates for the nomination. Speaking of Hillary Clinton, he said her most effective weapon is "the woman's card." In other, less tacky, words, she'll try to win the presidency by appealing to women and the issues they most care about: health care, equal pay for equal work, dignity, respect, reasonable across the board rules on maternity leave, reproductive rights.
Trump's card is one of toughness, saying shit about Iran while licking Putin's asshole and jacking off for Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump's bluster, as always, is pure bullshit, as phony as his steaks. When he wins, though, his confidence, incredibly, increases beyond its already bloated level, and he becomes even more insufferable. A Trump win of the presidency in November will demonstrate this characteristic (or personality flaw) in its full vainglory. News anchors and reporters who don't notice this tendency of his (and none of them to my knowledge have yet pointed it out) will no doubt shrug their shoulders at the man's horrible pride, not noting that it is, indeed, the worst of the Seven Deadly Sins, the one that got Lucifer demoted.
Ted Cruz, meanwhile, who lost five states yesterday, has hinted he's about to make an announcement.
"Like Donald, I am also evil..."
Well, probably not that, but it pertains, apparently, to the identity of his vice presidential pick. I think he's jumping the gun on that, if that's what his announcement will be about. The only reason for telling, three months before the Convention, the identity of the next-in-line to the nomination's VP pick, is to impress voters with the seriousness of the main guy's candidacy. On CNN, I heard Carly Fiorina's name mentioned as a possibility. Wow, Cruz-Fiorina, a combination destined to be a trivia question.
Trump himself often has Chris Christie standing nearby, looking like a hopeful future VP. He wouldn't be the first corrupt vice president. Spiro Agnew, after all, almost managed to stick by Richard Nixon until that president helicoptered away from the White House lawn. Like Agnew, Christie is obviously a menace, a godawful politician with no redeeming value to mankind, yet he's taken seriously to the point where journalists don't laugh at him, but they should jeer a governor who by his own admission was too unaware (too incompetent) to notice the illegal shenanigans going on in his own administrative offices, pertaining to the illegal choking of the traffic on that bridge.
It isn't government itself that gets to me; it's some of the sons of bitches who operate within it and get away with execrable offenses they never serve time for. Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, a Republican who, when he was a wrestling coach, raped boys, will get a fifteen month sentence. I saw him being wheeled in a chair into a courthouse. Like with Bill Cosby, I guess, maybe it helps him to seem like a physically incapable person, generating pity in viewers, instead of the more normal reaction of "Shoot the bastard."
The statute of limitations for Hastert's rape victims ran out a while back. He was paying millions of dollars in hush money to them, all this while he sat in Congress, the Speaker of the House who presided when 9/11 happened, third in line to the presidency--in other words, a helluva good guy.
If I seem bitter in this post, it might be because I didn't even see or hear Trump for a few days, and then a short time ago I watched an excerpt of his hyper-inflated victory speech from last night. He is the scum who desires to replace the scum running America. That which appears to be a certain way, as on television, is merely a layer covering an array of qualities bad and good. Give power to certain people with dubious backgrounds (I include Hillary Clinton) and expect an array of bad and good results, but don't expect dewy flowers and sunshine. The people of Yemen, Afghanistan, and Gaza City will suffer as much under Hillary Clinton's policies as they have suffered under Obama's.
Vic Neptune
In Cologne and Augsburg, Germany, traffic lights have been installed in the ground at some locations, as in the Augsburg train station. They warn distracted walkers on cell phones to look up. Each light costs about 10,000 Euros. According to CNN, a nineteen year old man, or idiot, "was seriously injured...when he walked into the path of an oncoming train [in Augsburg] while wearing headphones."
When I was a child in the 1960s and 1970s, a basic lesson drilled into me, as well as into my contemporaries, was the practice of looking both ways before crossing the street. Are the youth of today not taught this and its variations anymore? Do cities have to spend 10,000 Euros per ground light to prevent acts of utter stupidity? Should a railing be constructed along the entire length of the Grand Canyon to prevent unaware fools from taking the biggest and last step of their lives?
I've sometimes wondered if putting in all these ridiculous safeguards simply enables bad survival habits. Challenge leads to personal evolution. If you've gotten to the point where you need expensive lights at your feet telling you not to accidentally kill yourself, you may as well be a walking sack of brainless meat.
Switching subjects, Donald Trump won five states yesterday, Hillary Clinton won four. He's convinced he's got it wrapped up, that he'll secure the necessary 1,237 delegates for the nomination. Speaking of Hillary Clinton, he said her most effective weapon is "the woman's card." In other, less tacky, words, she'll try to win the presidency by appealing to women and the issues they most care about: health care, equal pay for equal work, dignity, respect, reasonable across the board rules on maternity leave, reproductive rights.
Trump's card is one of toughness, saying shit about Iran while licking Putin's asshole and jacking off for Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump's bluster, as always, is pure bullshit, as phony as his steaks. When he wins, though, his confidence, incredibly, increases beyond its already bloated level, and he becomes even more insufferable. A Trump win of the presidency in November will demonstrate this characteristic (or personality flaw) in its full vainglory. News anchors and reporters who don't notice this tendency of his (and none of them to my knowledge have yet pointed it out) will no doubt shrug their shoulders at the man's horrible pride, not noting that it is, indeed, the worst of the Seven Deadly Sins, the one that got Lucifer demoted.
Ted Cruz, meanwhile, who lost five states yesterday, has hinted he's about to make an announcement.
"Like Donald, I am also evil..."
Well, probably not that, but it pertains, apparently, to the identity of his vice presidential pick. I think he's jumping the gun on that, if that's what his announcement will be about. The only reason for telling, three months before the Convention, the identity of the next-in-line to the nomination's VP pick, is to impress voters with the seriousness of the main guy's candidacy. On CNN, I heard Carly Fiorina's name mentioned as a possibility. Wow, Cruz-Fiorina, a combination destined to be a trivia question.
Trump himself often has Chris Christie standing nearby, looking like a hopeful future VP. He wouldn't be the first corrupt vice president. Spiro Agnew, after all, almost managed to stick by Richard Nixon until that president helicoptered away from the White House lawn. Like Agnew, Christie is obviously a menace, a godawful politician with no redeeming value to mankind, yet he's taken seriously to the point where journalists don't laugh at him, but they should jeer a governor who by his own admission was too unaware (too incompetent) to notice the illegal shenanigans going on in his own administrative offices, pertaining to the illegal choking of the traffic on that bridge.
It isn't government itself that gets to me; it's some of the sons of bitches who operate within it and get away with execrable offenses they never serve time for. Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, a Republican who, when he was a wrestling coach, raped boys, will get a fifteen month sentence. I saw him being wheeled in a chair into a courthouse. Like with Bill Cosby, I guess, maybe it helps him to seem like a physically incapable person, generating pity in viewers, instead of the more normal reaction of "Shoot the bastard."
The statute of limitations for Hastert's rape victims ran out a while back. He was paying millions of dollars in hush money to them, all this while he sat in Congress, the Speaker of the House who presided when 9/11 happened, third in line to the presidency--in other words, a helluva good guy.
If I seem bitter in this post, it might be because I didn't even see or hear Trump for a few days, and then a short time ago I watched an excerpt of his hyper-inflated victory speech from last night. He is the scum who desires to replace the scum running America. That which appears to be a certain way, as on television, is merely a layer covering an array of qualities bad and good. Give power to certain people with dubious backgrounds (I include Hillary Clinton) and expect an array of bad and good results, but don't expect dewy flowers and sunshine. The people of Yemen, Afghanistan, and Gaza City will suffer as much under Hillary Clinton's policies as they have suffered under Obama's.
Vic Neptune
Sunday, April 24, 2016
Every once in a while, U.S. officialdom, often cooperating with corporate-run news media, has to deal with a controversial and painful event in the American past. The John F. Kennedy assassination in 1963 was one of these events warped by official presentations of the "truth" of what happened in Dallas, Texas, when the president got his head blown off in a Lincoln Continental convertible, before the eyes of hundreds of witnesses, more than half of whom believed the fatal shot didn't come from the building where Lee Harvey Oswald worked.
Years and decades passed, and every once in a while U.S. officials and their helpers in the news media had to assure us that the official version of Kennedy's death was what really happened, and those suggesting differently were "conspiracy theorists," or, even more dismissively put down, "buffs."
The events of September 11, 2001, are another such event characterized by an official version, with its own 9/11 Report, created by a bi-partisan but well-connected group of secrets-keepers during the Bush administration. Their theory posits a conspiracy; that Osama bin Laden, head of al-Qaeda, was behind the hijackings of four passenger jetliners that collided with the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, while one impacted the Pentagon in Alexandria, Virginia. The fourth ran into difficulties when the passengers tried to retake the plane, or at least attempted to prevent the hijackers from fulfilling their goal of hitting some official building, like the White House. That plane went down in Pennsylvania. Approximately 3,000 people died overall, nearly everybody in America freaked out, and World War Three started, an ongoing mess with numerous offshoots, like the rise of ISIS.
Twenty-eight pages of the 9/11 Report were withheld from publication, but now there's a call from some politicians and 9/11 victims' families to release the forbidden pages. This is under consideration by the Obama administration, but the Saudi Arabian government doesn't want the release, and has threatened to sell up to 750 billion dollars worth of U.S. treasury securities. The 9/11 families want to sue Saudi Arabia for having some responsibility for the attacks. Congress wants to pass a bill enabling this, but Obama would probably veto it. He went to Riyadh just recently and met with King Salman in a frostier atmosphere than Obama's last get-together with Vladimir Putin. Saudi Arabia, in connection with a coalition of Arab nations, has been abusing Yemen, slaughtering civilians indiscriminately and, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse-wise, destabilizing that nation so much that famine waits to kill those not murdered by bombs deployed from airplanes provided by the United States.
The U.S. also has been killing people in Yemen. I suggest that more people have been wounded and killed in Yemen by the United States and Saudi Arabia than were killed in America on 9/11. That's the problem with vengeance. It gets out of hand. There's an apt line in the Bible:
"Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord."
In other words, vengeance belongs solely to God. When humans practice it, other wrongs get committed in what often turns into a spiral of violence and retaliation. That's the consequence of 9/11. We're living, and dying, with the fact that the United States leadership, backed by its aggrieved citizenry, couldn't take a breath and figure out what sensible course to take. Instead of treating 9/11 as a crime, which it was, the U.S. treated it as an act of war, which it wasn't. To be an act of war, it would've had to have been perpetrated by a nation. Al-Qaeda was, and is, a rogue organization, not a state.
If, however, 9/11 was perpetrated at a high level by Saudi government members, that might make it an act of war, in which case the U.S. should've attacked Saudi Arabia instead of Afghanistan, and later Iraq. The United States, however, would never attack Saudi Arabia. I, and many others, have to wonder if Bush, Cheney, and others in that damnable administration, knew that the Saudi Arabian leadership had a role in 9/11 and there was nothing they could do about it, short of going against a lucrative oil-based relationship that makes our economy's hinges work.
So, too bad for the victims of 9/11, and all the hundreds of thousands who have died because it happened. The bottom line is always protection of the business interest, and the war that followed 9/11, the indigestible conflict still with us, has become its own reason for existence, with many of its most diabolical players (the famous ones and the unknowns) profiting from it. Obama's in a position to come clean about 9/11 and the Saudi connection, but he twists and turns, angling for the best way to handle the latest awkward appearance of truth.
When 9/11 is invoked in my country, it's always as if the politician, candidate, or pundit, is struggling to make a halo appear over their heads. Those in the know, in light of this Saudi Arabian connection, are well aware of their concealment of why thousands of people died and were maimed on that day, but their main concern is keeping the lid on tight, because real facts, whether about the Kennedy assassination or 9/11, threaten the enterprise of power coupled with dollars in their war to fuck over the human race while pretending they give a shit about 9/11 families whose relatives were trapped underneath fallen steel. The difference between those victims and those in Yemen is the lack of a monument in Yemen bearing the names of those annihilated by the governments of the United States and Saudi Arabia.
Vic Neptune
Years and decades passed, and every once in a while U.S. officials and their helpers in the news media had to assure us that the official version of Kennedy's death was what really happened, and those suggesting differently were "conspiracy theorists," or, even more dismissively put down, "buffs."
The events of September 11, 2001, are another such event characterized by an official version, with its own 9/11 Report, created by a bi-partisan but well-connected group of secrets-keepers during the Bush administration. Their theory posits a conspiracy; that Osama bin Laden, head of al-Qaeda, was behind the hijackings of four passenger jetliners that collided with the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, while one impacted the Pentagon in Alexandria, Virginia. The fourth ran into difficulties when the passengers tried to retake the plane, or at least attempted to prevent the hijackers from fulfilling their goal of hitting some official building, like the White House. That plane went down in Pennsylvania. Approximately 3,000 people died overall, nearly everybody in America freaked out, and World War Three started, an ongoing mess with numerous offshoots, like the rise of ISIS.
Twenty-eight pages of the 9/11 Report were withheld from publication, but now there's a call from some politicians and 9/11 victims' families to release the forbidden pages. This is under consideration by the Obama administration, but the Saudi Arabian government doesn't want the release, and has threatened to sell up to 750 billion dollars worth of U.S. treasury securities. The 9/11 families want to sue Saudi Arabia for having some responsibility for the attacks. Congress wants to pass a bill enabling this, but Obama would probably veto it. He went to Riyadh just recently and met with King Salman in a frostier atmosphere than Obama's last get-together with Vladimir Putin. Saudi Arabia, in connection with a coalition of Arab nations, has been abusing Yemen, slaughtering civilians indiscriminately and, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse-wise, destabilizing that nation so much that famine waits to kill those not murdered by bombs deployed from airplanes provided by the United States.
The U.S. also has been killing people in Yemen. I suggest that more people have been wounded and killed in Yemen by the United States and Saudi Arabia than were killed in America on 9/11. That's the problem with vengeance. It gets out of hand. There's an apt line in the Bible:
"Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord."
In other words, vengeance belongs solely to God. When humans practice it, other wrongs get committed in what often turns into a spiral of violence and retaliation. That's the consequence of 9/11. We're living, and dying, with the fact that the United States leadership, backed by its aggrieved citizenry, couldn't take a breath and figure out what sensible course to take. Instead of treating 9/11 as a crime, which it was, the U.S. treated it as an act of war, which it wasn't. To be an act of war, it would've had to have been perpetrated by a nation. Al-Qaeda was, and is, a rogue organization, not a state.
If, however, 9/11 was perpetrated at a high level by Saudi government members, that might make it an act of war, in which case the U.S. should've attacked Saudi Arabia instead of Afghanistan, and later Iraq. The United States, however, would never attack Saudi Arabia. I, and many others, have to wonder if Bush, Cheney, and others in that damnable administration, knew that the Saudi Arabian leadership had a role in 9/11 and there was nothing they could do about it, short of going against a lucrative oil-based relationship that makes our economy's hinges work.
So, too bad for the victims of 9/11, and all the hundreds of thousands who have died because it happened. The bottom line is always protection of the business interest, and the war that followed 9/11, the indigestible conflict still with us, has become its own reason for existence, with many of its most diabolical players (the famous ones and the unknowns) profiting from it. Obama's in a position to come clean about 9/11 and the Saudi connection, but he twists and turns, angling for the best way to handle the latest awkward appearance of truth.
When 9/11 is invoked in my country, it's always as if the politician, candidate, or pundit, is struggling to make a halo appear over their heads. Those in the know, in light of this Saudi Arabian connection, are well aware of their concealment of why thousands of people died and were maimed on that day, but their main concern is keeping the lid on tight, because real facts, whether about the Kennedy assassination or 9/11, threaten the enterprise of power coupled with dollars in their war to fuck over the human race while pretending they give a shit about 9/11 families whose relatives were trapped underneath fallen steel. The difference between those victims and those in Yemen is the lack of a monument in Yemen bearing the names of those annihilated by the governments of the United States and Saudi Arabia.
Vic Neptune
Saturday, April 23, 2016
Xerographer
I worked in a public library in the 1980s. For about a year, nearly every day, a fellow named Mike, about thirty years old, would come in, use the copy machine and come to the circulation desk, handing over a dime (it wasn't a coin-operated machine).
"One big copy," he'd say, and leave.
He said the same three words every time. I got used to it, but now it seems strange, because when I contemplate what seem to me to be mechanical actions performed by humans, I wonder if there's a robotic wish inside people's minds. The life of a machine is predictable until it finds a way to malfunction. A car crapping out on you is usually a surprise, especially in temporal terms.
"Why now?" we ask the inanimate object.
Had Mike ever not said, "One big copy," would I have been twisted suddenly into a groove of speculation?
What's wrong with Mike? He handed me the dime, as usual, but the words, so unnecessary, make me uneasy in their lack of expression.
One thing I never wondered about, although I do now, was what he was copying. Was it work-related? I gathered that he had a job somewhere nearby, and had to make a copy of some memo or other office-related document. If so, he worked in a place that had no copy machine, a peculiar lack for any business in the 1980s. Maybe Mike worked for himself?
A clue came by when he once checked out a book and produced his library card. On the screen I saw and recognized his last name. I knew my first high school girlfriend had married a fellow with the same two names as my one-copy-a-day customer. I knew they had children together. This man, who possessed the quick energy and also the physique of the young Michael J. Fox, knew the same woman I had known several years before. Our tongues had Frenched the same tongue.
How often do we encounter people who know people we knew, and were close to? Is it always a good idea to reveal a connection? In this case, I said nothing about her to Mike. His intimacy, his family connection, his marriage to this woman, who gave me my first kiss, were less interesting to me than his predictable use of the library's copy machine.
I imagine Mike one day leaving behind the page copied under the document cover. I go to it and examine the sheet, because by then, he's done this routine hundreds of times. I'm unable to quell my curiosity. I lift the sheet, turn it over, turn it over again, and find that it's blank. If this were a movie, that's how I'd end it.
Vic Neptune
I worked in a public library in the 1980s. For about a year, nearly every day, a fellow named Mike, about thirty years old, would come in, use the copy machine and come to the circulation desk, handing over a dime (it wasn't a coin-operated machine).
"One big copy," he'd say, and leave.
He said the same three words every time. I got used to it, but now it seems strange, because when I contemplate what seem to me to be mechanical actions performed by humans, I wonder if there's a robotic wish inside people's minds. The life of a machine is predictable until it finds a way to malfunction. A car crapping out on you is usually a surprise, especially in temporal terms.
"Why now?" we ask the inanimate object.
Had Mike ever not said, "One big copy," would I have been twisted suddenly into a groove of speculation?
What's wrong with Mike? He handed me the dime, as usual, but the words, so unnecessary, make me uneasy in their lack of expression.
One thing I never wondered about, although I do now, was what he was copying. Was it work-related? I gathered that he had a job somewhere nearby, and had to make a copy of some memo or other office-related document. If so, he worked in a place that had no copy machine, a peculiar lack for any business in the 1980s. Maybe Mike worked for himself?
A clue came by when he once checked out a book and produced his library card. On the screen I saw and recognized his last name. I knew my first high school girlfriend had married a fellow with the same two names as my one-copy-a-day customer. I knew they had children together. This man, who possessed the quick energy and also the physique of the young Michael J. Fox, knew the same woman I had known several years before. Our tongues had Frenched the same tongue.
How often do we encounter people who know people we knew, and were close to? Is it always a good idea to reveal a connection? In this case, I said nothing about her to Mike. His intimacy, his family connection, his marriage to this woman, who gave me my first kiss, were less interesting to me than his predictable use of the library's copy machine.
I imagine Mike one day leaving behind the page copied under the document cover. I go to it and examine the sheet, because by then, he's done this routine hundreds of times. I'm unable to quell my curiosity. I lift the sheet, turn it over, turn it over again, and find that it's blank. If this were a movie, that's how I'd end it.
Vic Neptune
Friday, April 22, 2016
Disgusted yet, Vic?
This morning I saw the most hateful political ad of the 2016 Republican race thus far: a twenty-eight second black and white anti-transgender scare piece aimed at Donald Trump's recent remark that North Carolina shouldn't have passed its intolerant public restroom law which ignores transgender identification with one sex or the other.
North Carolina has lost business opportunities due to this disgusting and bigoted legislative action. Trump, being a businessman, remarked on this consequence in connection with his statement highlighted by Cruz for President, which paid for the ad: "People go, they use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate--"
I cut Trump's words off after "appropriate" because the ad snips his overall idea. It's been wondered about in the news media if Trump's view on transgender use of public restrooms, one of his few expressed humane beliefs, will harm him among Republican voters. I doubt it, but hardcore shits who get in a tither about where people go to the bathroom, may find themselves in sympathy with Ted Cruz's intolerance, such as this person, Patriot, G. Cole, who tweeted, "first man I see go in a girls bathroom, that man will be using the bathroom through a straw in a hospital for a month."
I assume Patriot, G. Cole is a doctor who can determine for how long patients will stay in the hospital after suffering serious groin injuries, including those he inflicts. Apparently, Patriot, G. Cole, a Cruz supporter, also spends some of his time keeping an eye on the doors of "girls" bathrooms, and also doesn't realize that women use them, too.
From the diaper-changing table, some of the ad was photographed in a women's restroom. Presumably, a woman took the pictures. The image with the diaper-changing table (implying "baby") is accompanied by the caption, "SHOULD A GROWN MAN" (capital letters are used throughout), and followed by "PRETENDING TO BE A WOMAN". This second image shows three stalls, the middle occupied, flanked by two empties. The person in the middle is probably a woman due to the way the calves taper to the ankles. She wears sandals and is sitting down. The stall to her right has nothing going on, but the one to her left (get it?) has a strip of toilet paper on the floor, as if the person who used it, supposedly a transgender or, in Cruz's worldview, "pretend woman," is not only an abomination but also a slob.
"BE ALLOWED TO USE THE WOMEN'S RESTROOM?" the question concludes, on an image of what looks like a rest area or park building where the women and girls go to relieve themselves. The word "women" appears on the restroom door and also on the the little fence partially blocking our view of the building. By this point, anyone with a half a brain (I mean that literally) should be thinking, "Hell no, Ted!"
This is only six seconds into the ad.
"THE SAME RESTROOM USED BY YOUR DAUGHTER? YOUR WIFE?" This image shows the back of a woman holding a plastic bag in her left hand and her little blonde daughter's hand in her right. They would be in danger from a transgender violent sex criminal who lurks in women's restrooms, but how many of those are there?
We then see and hear Trump saying the above-mentioned sound bite, accompanied by a still portrait of Trump with the caption, "DONALD TRUMP THINKS SO." Following this, is the caption, "IT'S NOT APPROPRIATE, IT'S NOT SAFE". Here, we look down a line of nine white bathroom stalls (contrasting with the three dark-painted stalls in the earlier image) and a black and white pattern of wall tile at the far end of the room, indicating this is a black and white (good versus evil) issue.
Another restroom follows, with darkly painted stalls, a multi-colored tile pattern, and mirrors facing the stalls, indicating, I guess, the vanity and selfishness of those indulging their inner gender.
"IT'S PC NONSENSE THAT'S DESTROYING AMERICA" the caption reads over this horrifying clean-looking bathroom. Yes, "nonsense" is destroying America, not intolerance, racism, economic inequality, abuse of the security apparatus, or militarism; or, for that matter, authority figures like Ted Cruz.
Over a shot of Trump smiling and looking almost bashful, the next caption reads, "DONALD TRUMP WON'T TAKE ON THE PC POLICE." Judging from Trump's nauseatingly frequent attacks against political correctness since last summer, I'd say he's attacked PC far more than Cruz has. The last caption adds, "HE'S ONE OF THEM." Assuming there really is a PC Police force.
Here we see a cute flip. Trump, enemy of political correctness, is actually, according to Cruz, a champion of political correctness. Take your opponent's strength and convert it into a weakness. Accuse the opponent of doing exactly what he isn't doing. Trump, contrary to popular notions on the news during the past day or two, didn't exactly give a ringing endorsement to transgender rights. He pointed out that North Carolina was getting "punished" for passing a law bad for business. Being from New York, Trump, unlike Cruz, has encountered far more of the LGBT community. He also demonstrated, even in the ad's clipped sound bite meant to make him seem PC, his willingness to let people use bathrooms if they need to go. This is not a high bar in an ethics contest. If a transgender needs to use your bathroom are you going to say, "No"? What kind of asshole would do that? Ted Cruz, perhaps? Patriot, G. Cole?
The ad will work with many Cruz supporters and some who are undecided, but I just get the impression that Senator Cruz is obsessed with women's restrooms. This, world, is what the most important political process in my country this year has come to. Expect worse.
An additional comment:
Prince, who collapsed and died in an elevator at his home in Minnesota after a long struggle with the flu, is all over the news today, and also was last night. Every piece I've seen about him has been laudatory, but last night on Fox News, Megyn Kelly shared the screen on her show with silent images of Prince performing, along with Fox "expert analyst" Mark Fuhrman, ex-cop and controversial figure in the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Kelly and Fuhrman talked about Prince's death, Fuhrman offering his experience-based knowledge of cops dealing with dead people. He talked about how Prince may have died, saying, during the brief excerpt I endured before turning the channel in disgust, that "they [the cops] might be looking for a syringe..."
In other words, he was saying a bunch of shit on Fox News while images of the great musician and songwriter played in the screen's lower right corner, Fuhrman in his own box above him, white over black. Fuck you, Mark Fuhrman, and fuck you, Megyn Kelly for trying to turn Prince into someone supposedly worthy of having a slime like Fuhrman speculate about, without even knowing what cops on the scene know.
Vic Neptune
This morning I saw the most hateful political ad of the 2016 Republican race thus far: a twenty-eight second black and white anti-transgender scare piece aimed at Donald Trump's recent remark that North Carolina shouldn't have passed its intolerant public restroom law which ignores transgender identification with one sex or the other.
North Carolina has lost business opportunities due to this disgusting and bigoted legislative action. Trump, being a businessman, remarked on this consequence in connection with his statement highlighted by Cruz for President, which paid for the ad: "People go, they use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate--"
I cut Trump's words off after "appropriate" because the ad snips his overall idea. It's been wondered about in the news media if Trump's view on transgender use of public restrooms, one of his few expressed humane beliefs, will harm him among Republican voters. I doubt it, but hardcore shits who get in a tither about where people go to the bathroom, may find themselves in sympathy with Ted Cruz's intolerance, such as this person, Patriot, G. Cole, who tweeted, "first man I see go in a girls bathroom, that man will be using the bathroom through a straw in a hospital for a month."
I assume Patriot, G. Cole is a doctor who can determine for how long patients will stay in the hospital after suffering serious groin injuries, including those he inflicts. Apparently, Patriot, G. Cole, a Cruz supporter, also spends some of his time keeping an eye on the doors of "girls" bathrooms, and also doesn't realize that women use them, too.
From the diaper-changing table, some of the ad was photographed in a women's restroom. Presumably, a woman took the pictures. The image with the diaper-changing table (implying "baby") is accompanied by the caption, "SHOULD A GROWN MAN" (capital letters are used throughout), and followed by "PRETENDING TO BE A WOMAN". This second image shows three stalls, the middle occupied, flanked by two empties. The person in the middle is probably a woman due to the way the calves taper to the ankles. She wears sandals and is sitting down. The stall to her right has nothing going on, but the one to her left (get it?) has a strip of toilet paper on the floor, as if the person who used it, supposedly a transgender or, in Cruz's worldview, "pretend woman," is not only an abomination but also a slob.
"BE ALLOWED TO USE THE WOMEN'S RESTROOM?" the question concludes, on an image of what looks like a rest area or park building where the women and girls go to relieve themselves. The word "women" appears on the restroom door and also on the the little fence partially blocking our view of the building. By this point, anyone with a half a brain (I mean that literally) should be thinking, "Hell no, Ted!"
This is only six seconds into the ad.
"THE SAME RESTROOM USED BY YOUR DAUGHTER? YOUR WIFE?" This image shows the back of a woman holding a plastic bag in her left hand and her little blonde daughter's hand in her right. They would be in danger from a transgender violent sex criminal who lurks in women's restrooms, but how many of those are there?
We then see and hear Trump saying the above-mentioned sound bite, accompanied by a still portrait of Trump with the caption, "DONALD TRUMP THINKS SO." Following this, is the caption, "IT'S NOT APPROPRIATE, IT'S NOT SAFE". Here, we look down a line of nine white bathroom stalls (contrasting with the three dark-painted stalls in the earlier image) and a black and white pattern of wall tile at the far end of the room, indicating this is a black and white (good versus evil) issue.
Another restroom follows, with darkly painted stalls, a multi-colored tile pattern, and mirrors facing the stalls, indicating, I guess, the vanity and selfishness of those indulging their inner gender.
"IT'S PC NONSENSE THAT'S DESTROYING AMERICA" the caption reads over this horrifying clean-looking bathroom. Yes, "nonsense" is destroying America, not intolerance, racism, economic inequality, abuse of the security apparatus, or militarism; or, for that matter, authority figures like Ted Cruz.
Over a shot of Trump smiling and looking almost bashful, the next caption reads, "DONALD TRUMP WON'T TAKE ON THE PC POLICE." Judging from Trump's nauseatingly frequent attacks against political correctness since last summer, I'd say he's attacked PC far more than Cruz has. The last caption adds, "HE'S ONE OF THEM." Assuming there really is a PC Police force.
Here we see a cute flip. Trump, enemy of political correctness, is actually, according to Cruz, a champion of political correctness. Take your opponent's strength and convert it into a weakness. Accuse the opponent of doing exactly what he isn't doing. Trump, contrary to popular notions on the news during the past day or two, didn't exactly give a ringing endorsement to transgender rights. He pointed out that North Carolina was getting "punished" for passing a law bad for business. Being from New York, Trump, unlike Cruz, has encountered far more of the LGBT community. He also demonstrated, even in the ad's clipped sound bite meant to make him seem PC, his willingness to let people use bathrooms if they need to go. This is not a high bar in an ethics contest. If a transgender needs to use your bathroom are you going to say, "No"? What kind of asshole would do that? Ted Cruz, perhaps? Patriot, G. Cole?
The ad will work with many Cruz supporters and some who are undecided, but I just get the impression that Senator Cruz is obsessed with women's restrooms. This, world, is what the most important political process in my country this year has come to. Expect worse.
An additional comment:
Prince, who collapsed and died in an elevator at his home in Minnesota after a long struggle with the flu, is all over the news today, and also was last night. Every piece I've seen about him has been laudatory, but last night on Fox News, Megyn Kelly shared the screen on her show with silent images of Prince performing, along with Fox "expert analyst" Mark Fuhrman, ex-cop and controversial figure in the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Kelly and Fuhrman talked about Prince's death, Fuhrman offering his experience-based knowledge of cops dealing with dead people. He talked about how Prince may have died, saying, during the brief excerpt I endured before turning the channel in disgust, that "they [the cops] might be looking for a syringe..."
In other words, he was saying a bunch of shit on Fox News while images of the great musician and songwriter played in the screen's lower right corner, Fuhrman in his own box above him, white over black. Fuck you, Mark Fuhrman, and fuck you, Megyn Kelly for trying to turn Prince into someone supposedly worthy of having a slime like Fuhrman speculate about, without even knowing what cops on the scene know.
Vic Neptune
Thursday, April 21, 2016
Bad, Good, Ugly
President Andrew Jackson's portrait on the twenty dollar bill will be replaced, by 2030, a long fucking time from now in my opinion, with a portrait of Harriet Tubman, a former slave who became a Union spy, abolitionist, and part of the Underground Railroad getting slaves out of the South.
Jackson's been on the twenty since 1928, the 100th anniversary of his becoming president. He was a Southerner, regarded too, at the time, as a Westerner, since, as a politician, he came from beyond the Appalachian Mountains when the nation largely consisted of the East Coast.
Donald Trump on this morning's Today Show, said that "Harriet Tubman was a fantastic person."
Why do I suspect that Trump, before yesterday, never heard of Tubman? In any case, he added that Jackson should remain on the twenty, expressing his admiration for that president's accomplishments without naming any of them, such as Jackson's decisive role in the War of 1812, or his founding of the Democratic Party.
Jackson, too, said something Trump and the entire Republican Party, and many of today's Democrats, would disagree with:
"It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes."
A follow-up announcement from the Treasury Department about the next twenty dollar bill suggests that Jackson won't be removed from the denomination after all, but will share it with Harriet Tubman, who will get the front, while Jackson moves to the back. How lame is that?
It'll be a bill with two faces on it, so Jackson's image may as well be regarded as the retainer of the bill's identity. Jackson, of the forced relocation of the Cherokee Nation, sharing space with Tubman, who set people free. I don't know who came up with this stupid compromise, but if the idea initially was to honor not only women, but African Americans, they decided subsequently to take a shit on their own good idea by not giving the bill entirely to Harriet Tubman.
I don't think it really matters who's on our money. When I have a twenty, or three or four of them in my pocket, I feel good. If Jack Ruby were on the twenty dollar bill, it would still be worth twenty dollars.
Putting a Black woman on American money shouldn't be controversial, whether she be Harriet Tubman or Diana Ross, but this is a nation of people who get bent out of shape about minor issues, like when a new Apple product comes out and the company hasn't got all the kinks worked out just yet, so the new product fails in various annoying ways. Problems of first world citizens, in other words; not like being bombed by the Russian Air Force as it supports the Assad dictatorship, or having to deal with famine and war--as in Yemen--or malaria epidemics, or the quashing of free speech. On American TV, ads depict well-dressed clean people holding phones and complaining about poor signals, or upper middle class people in their thirties bitching about their insurance.
If we can't figure out whose portraits to put on our money, isn't that the kind of problem an ordinary Afghan citizen would envy?
Donald Trump, asked by Matt Lauer on Today about the Tubman twenty, gave a measured but vague response. His vagueness didn't surprise me; the man is allergic to details. I am a bit startled by how journalists, since Trump won the New York Primary, have been referring to his behavior of the past few days as "presidential." In other words, he hasn't cussed, he hasn't blared insults in his usual gauche manner, his vocal tone has been a bit quieter; even so, he's called for Ted Cruz and John Kasich to drop out of the race for the nomination. On the surface, he's certain of his eventual success, but nevertheless he's intimidated by what they can still do to him when it comes to the all important delegate aspect of the Republican Convention this summer.
But is it presidential to suddenly not bray insults at opponents, minorities, women, after months and years of doing so?
Hey America! I'm not an asshole anymore!
I don't believe it, and if I could buy it for twenty dollars, I'd take someone to a movie instead, where I could see a made-up story more believable than change flowering in the mind and wicked heart of Donald Trump.
Vic Neptune
President Andrew Jackson's portrait on the twenty dollar bill will be replaced, by 2030, a long fucking time from now in my opinion, with a portrait of Harriet Tubman, a former slave who became a Union spy, abolitionist, and part of the Underground Railroad getting slaves out of the South.
Jackson's been on the twenty since 1928, the 100th anniversary of his becoming president. He was a Southerner, regarded too, at the time, as a Westerner, since, as a politician, he came from beyond the Appalachian Mountains when the nation largely consisted of the East Coast.
Donald Trump on this morning's Today Show, said that "Harriet Tubman was a fantastic person."
Why do I suspect that Trump, before yesterday, never heard of Tubman? In any case, he added that Jackson should remain on the twenty, expressing his admiration for that president's accomplishments without naming any of them, such as Jackson's decisive role in the War of 1812, or his founding of the Democratic Party.
Jackson, too, said something Trump and the entire Republican Party, and many of today's Democrats, would disagree with:
"It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes."
A follow-up announcement from the Treasury Department about the next twenty dollar bill suggests that Jackson won't be removed from the denomination after all, but will share it with Harriet Tubman, who will get the front, while Jackson moves to the back. How lame is that?
It'll be a bill with two faces on it, so Jackson's image may as well be regarded as the retainer of the bill's identity. Jackson, of the forced relocation of the Cherokee Nation, sharing space with Tubman, who set people free. I don't know who came up with this stupid compromise, but if the idea initially was to honor not only women, but African Americans, they decided subsequently to take a shit on their own good idea by not giving the bill entirely to Harriet Tubman.
I don't think it really matters who's on our money. When I have a twenty, or three or four of them in my pocket, I feel good. If Jack Ruby were on the twenty dollar bill, it would still be worth twenty dollars.
Putting a Black woman on American money shouldn't be controversial, whether she be Harriet Tubman or Diana Ross, but this is a nation of people who get bent out of shape about minor issues, like when a new Apple product comes out and the company hasn't got all the kinks worked out just yet, so the new product fails in various annoying ways. Problems of first world citizens, in other words; not like being bombed by the Russian Air Force as it supports the Assad dictatorship, or having to deal with famine and war--as in Yemen--or malaria epidemics, or the quashing of free speech. On American TV, ads depict well-dressed clean people holding phones and complaining about poor signals, or upper middle class people in their thirties bitching about their insurance.
If we can't figure out whose portraits to put on our money, isn't that the kind of problem an ordinary Afghan citizen would envy?
Donald Trump, asked by Matt Lauer on Today about the Tubman twenty, gave a measured but vague response. His vagueness didn't surprise me; the man is allergic to details. I am a bit startled by how journalists, since Trump won the New York Primary, have been referring to his behavior of the past few days as "presidential." In other words, he hasn't cussed, he hasn't blared insults in his usual gauche manner, his vocal tone has been a bit quieter; even so, he's called for Ted Cruz and John Kasich to drop out of the race for the nomination. On the surface, he's certain of his eventual success, but nevertheless he's intimidated by what they can still do to him when it comes to the all important delegate aspect of the Republican Convention this summer.
But is it presidential to suddenly not bray insults at opponents, minorities, women, after months and years of doing so?
Hey America! I'm not an asshole anymore!
I don't believe it, and if I could buy it for twenty dollars, I'd take someone to a movie instead, where I could see a made-up story more believable than change flowering in the mind and wicked heart of Donald Trump.
Vic Neptune
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
I Need Your Help, Vic!
Today, the very day of the New York Primary, I received in the mail a letter from Hillary Rodham Clinton.
"Dear Vic,
This race to win the nomination is closer than ever, and we have a real fight on our hands."
The letter runs to four pages, a long-ass appeal if you ask me. She goes over her qualifications, which I actually don't doubt. She is an accomplished woman. In addition, I don't give a fuck about her role in the Benghazi screw-up. I don't think she had much of a role in that, and there are many far worse events American leaders have gotten involved in that turned out with much higher American body counts. The same Republicans who bitch about Benghazi and Clinton's alleged key responsibility for it, never talk about the corruption of the American regime in Iraq after the invasion in 2003; its cupidity as billions of dollars went missing, and the widespread looting of that country's antiquities under U.S. military authority acting under the non-interference orders of war criminal Donald Rumsfeld.
What Hillary Clinton represents to me is a status quo politician of the Democratic slant. She's an unquestioning supporter of Israel and its policies against Palestinians, which involve lopsided periodic wars against women and children. She cares about women and children in America far more than those in other countries, but that's a typical power response of those believing in the might is right philosophy of empire, even a slowly disintegrating empire like America's.
I look at political choices as symbolic of when they occur. Sarah Palin came into the fore of our awareness in 2008, a culminating year for the Bush administration, when Republicans, demonstrating the human trait of glossing the truth in the face of failure, regarded the previous seven years as a strong time for a resurgent America, even though an economic collapse right before the election "happened on Bush's watch," and was made possible by pure greed exhibited by unrestrained and untouchable capitalists as dangerous to the fortunes of the common man and woman as terrorist bombers.
What did we see in 2008 as a furtherance of Republican responsibilities to the nation and its people? A Vietnam War veteran who seemed to want to beef up the already beefed up military, and his pick, a daffy MILF from Alaska who spoke as if punctuation had never been developed. Obama beat these lousy opponents handily, as he beat Romney and Ryan without much difficulty. Had he run against the kind of politician people in general would actually want for president, Obama may have had a much harder time of it. He said in an interview a few months ago that he could win the presidency in event of trying for a third term. A hypothetical situation, of course, but, given the Republican competition in 2016, he's probably right.
The Republicans cannot come up with decent candidates for president. They produce wretched possibilities, some of them, like Cruz, intelligent, but slimy, and Trump, heavy-handed and forceful, but too stupid. Do you want a warlock (Cruz)? Or a rock-smashing troll (Trump)?
The warlock or the troll will face Clinton or Sanders, and, in spite of my not giving money to Hillary (I never give money to politicians, even those I agree with), her chances of beating either of them are good. Still, she struggles to be liked. I saw a picture of her posing with Britney Spears. Spears has been doing a show in Las Vegas for a while now, and when Clinton was in Nevada campaigning, she visited with the singer long enough to get her picture taken. Did Hillary realize Britney is, or has been, a Republican? Was Hillary trying to come across to young people as hip, smiling in the same photo with smiling Britney Spears, who's thirty-four and a bit past her pop princess stage, but nevertheless is admired by her generation and commands a great deal of popularity? If I could meet Britney or Hillary, I know Hillary would just have to keep writing me unanswered letters.
In her appeal, Clinton mentions the importance of continuing the fight, that the struggle continues to bulk up the Democrats and hold back the Republican medieval flood. She says that when she looks at her nineteen month old granddaughter, she realizes we haven't gone far enough. This calls to the dangers of the future, like climate change. I agree with Clinton on this, although I don't think she had to play the baby card with her own kin, even naming the innocent child in the process of asking strangers for money.
I can't entirely pin down why I dislike Hillary Clinton. It isn't one visceral thing. My disgust for Donald Trump can be explained simply by showing images of him and hearing some of the crap that always ejects from his mouth. He's an obvious villain, but Clinton seems okay until one spends time digesting her words and attitudes, her body language, her patrician manner. Trump and Clinton have this in common: they're both wealthy sacks of bullshit. The very idea that Clinton is a New Yorker is absurd. She established residency there to run for the Senate, which she won, but she's from Oak Park, Illinois, from privilege. She's also a lawyer, and her letter to me reads like the rhetoric of a lawyer, not like a caring human being wrote it.
On the small contribution sheet that's headed, "Vic, are you with me?" there's a check-box next to, "Yes, Hillary!"
Check-boxes for the contribution amounts follow; the typical $25, $50, $100, Other $_____.
There's also one for $20.16. That's the year we're in, but it's a strange amount. There's an asterisk by 25, with the note, "A gift of this amount or more would really help!" If that's the case, why bother with the lower, and peculiar, $20.16? unless it's just a way to be cute while writing a check to the Hillary Victory Fund (yes, that's what it's called).
Below, there's another space--"Send a Personal Message to Hillary!" and "I'd like to volunteer!"
Please write to me, Hillary, and tell me how you got my address!
I'll never give you my money!
I think your wardrobe makes you look like you're trapped inside a concrete bunker!
If you had divorced Bill after the Lewinsky affair I'd have more respect for you!
You agreed with Bush and Cheney that we needed to attack Iraq, meaning you got conned by them about the fictional WMD, so fuck you!
On the donation sheet there's a head and shoulders picture of Clinton. She's Hillary, a mononym like Madonna, or Charlemagne. Her symbol is a blue capital letter H with a right-pointing red arrow, indicating, I guess, going forward, but it also indicates going to the right. Is this a hidden message? The arrow, being red, suggests Republicans and right wing politics, while the two blue "towers" of the H suggest the left and Democrats, with the arrow shaft bridging the two, meaning moderate and progressive wings of the Democratic Party. I don't know if that's what it really means, but I've noticed that no one on the news, that I've seen, has mentioned that the red arrow in the Hillary symbol points right and wondered what that might imply.
She's looking more and more to me like the brick that will hold the wall steady against the Cruz or Trump possibilities, as horrible as they both would be, but Clinton will also not surprise me if she turns out to be an effective maintainer (not ender) of the war we've been stuck in since 2001. It's hard to get anything humane done when the prime motivation is security and killing people. If she's a hardass now, Hillary Clinton will be a stern ruler, even as she fake smiles at us.
Vic Neptune
Today, the very day of the New York Primary, I received in the mail a letter from Hillary Rodham Clinton.
"Dear Vic,
This race to win the nomination is closer than ever, and we have a real fight on our hands."
The letter runs to four pages, a long-ass appeal if you ask me. She goes over her qualifications, which I actually don't doubt. She is an accomplished woman. In addition, I don't give a fuck about her role in the Benghazi screw-up. I don't think she had much of a role in that, and there are many far worse events American leaders have gotten involved in that turned out with much higher American body counts. The same Republicans who bitch about Benghazi and Clinton's alleged key responsibility for it, never talk about the corruption of the American regime in Iraq after the invasion in 2003; its cupidity as billions of dollars went missing, and the widespread looting of that country's antiquities under U.S. military authority acting under the non-interference orders of war criminal Donald Rumsfeld.
What Hillary Clinton represents to me is a status quo politician of the Democratic slant. She's an unquestioning supporter of Israel and its policies against Palestinians, which involve lopsided periodic wars against women and children. She cares about women and children in America far more than those in other countries, but that's a typical power response of those believing in the might is right philosophy of empire, even a slowly disintegrating empire like America's.
I look at political choices as symbolic of when they occur. Sarah Palin came into the fore of our awareness in 2008, a culminating year for the Bush administration, when Republicans, demonstrating the human trait of glossing the truth in the face of failure, regarded the previous seven years as a strong time for a resurgent America, even though an economic collapse right before the election "happened on Bush's watch," and was made possible by pure greed exhibited by unrestrained and untouchable capitalists as dangerous to the fortunes of the common man and woman as terrorist bombers.
What did we see in 2008 as a furtherance of Republican responsibilities to the nation and its people? A Vietnam War veteran who seemed to want to beef up the already beefed up military, and his pick, a daffy MILF from Alaska who spoke as if punctuation had never been developed. Obama beat these lousy opponents handily, as he beat Romney and Ryan without much difficulty. Had he run against the kind of politician people in general would actually want for president, Obama may have had a much harder time of it. He said in an interview a few months ago that he could win the presidency in event of trying for a third term. A hypothetical situation, of course, but, given the Republican competition in 2016, he's probably right.
The Republicans cannot come up with decent candidates for president. They produce wretched possibilities, some of them, like Cruz, intelligent, but slimy, and Trump, heavy-handed and forceful, but too stupid. Do you want a warlock (Cruz)? Or a rock-smashing troll (Trump)?
The warlock or the troll will face Clinton or Sanders, and, in spite of my not giving money to Hillary (I never give money to politicians, even those I agree with), her chances of beating either of them are good. Still, she struggles to be liked. I saw a picture of her posing with Britney Spears. Spears has been doing a show in Las Vegas for a while now, and when Clinton was in Nevada campaigning, she visited with the singer long enough to get her picture taken. Did Hillary realize Britney is, or has been, a Republican? Was Hillary trying to come across to young people as hip, smiling in the same photo with smiling Britney Spears, who's thirty-four and a bit past her pop princess stage, but nevertheless is admired by her generation and commands a great deal of popularity? If I could meet Britney or Hillary, I know Hillary would just have to keep writing me unanswered letters.
In her appeal, Clinton mentions the importance of continuing the fight, that the struggle continues to bulk up the Democrats and hold back the Republican medieval flood. She says that when she looks at her nineteen month old granddaughter, she realizes we haven't gone far enough. This calls to the dangers of the future, like climate change. I agree with Clinton on this, although I don't think she had to play the baby card with her own kin, even naming the innocent child in the process of asking strangers for money.
I can't entirely pin down why I dislike Hillary Clinton. It isn't one visceral thing. My disgust for Donald Trump can be explained simply by showing images of him and hearing some of the crap that always ejects from his mouth. He's an obvious villain, but Clinton seems okay until one spends time digesting her words and attitudes, her body language, her patrician manner. Trump and Clinton have this in common: they're both wealthy sacks of bullshit. The very idea that Clinton is a New Yorker is absurd. She established residency there to run for the Senate, which she won, but she's from Oak Park, Illinois, from privilege. She's also a lawyer, and her letter to me reads like the rhetoric of a lawyer, not like a caring human being wrote it.
On the small contribution sheet that's headed, "Vic, are you with me?" there's a check-box next to, "Yes, Hillary!"
Check-boxes for the contribution amounts follow; the typical $25, $50, $100, Other $_____.
There's also one for $20.16. That's the year we're in, but it's a strange amount. There's an asterisk by 25, with the note, "A gift of this amount or more would really help!" If that's the case, why bother with the lower, and peculiar, $20.16? unless it's just a way to be cute while writing a check to the Hillary Victory Fund (yes, that's what it's called).
Below, there's another space--"Send a Personal Message to Hillary!" and "I'd like to volunteer!"
Please write to me, Hillary, and tell me how you got my address!
I'll never give you my money!
I think your wardrobe makes you look like you're trapped inside a concrete bunker!
If you had divorced Bill after the Lewinsky affair I'd have more respect for you!
You agreed with Bush and Cheney that we needed to attack Iraq, meaning you got conned by them about the fictional WMD, so fuck you!
On the donation sheet there's a head and shoulders picture of Clinton. She's Hillary, a mononym like Madonna, or Charlemagne. Her symbol is a blue capital letter H with a right-pointing red arrow, indicating, I guess, going forward, but it also indicates going to the right. Is this a hidden message? The arrow, being red, suggests Republicans and right wing politics, while the two blue "towers" of the H suggest the left and Democrats, with the arrow shaft bridging the two, meaning moderate and progressive wings of the Democratic Party. I don't know if that's what it really means, but I've noticed that no one on the news, that I've seen, has mentioned that the red arrow in the Hillary symbol points right and wondered what that might imply.
She's looking more and more to me like the brick that will hold the wall steady against the Cruz or Trump possibilities, as horrible as they both would be, but Clinton will also not surprise me if she turns out to be an effective maintainer (not ender) of the war we've been stuck in since 2001. It's hard to get anything humane done when the prime motivation is security and killing people. If she's a hardass now, Hillary Clinton will be a stern ruler, even as she fake smiles at us.
Vic Neptune
Monday, April 18, 2016
The Bumper Gap
The pundits go into their appearances on cable news knowing what they want to say, ready to interrupt someone making their own point. You can see it on their faces. Mouths want to move, words must be expressed, and no one listens. Yet, as in the following fictional dialogue, one can think differently from someone else, but still listen, hearing and processing other viewpoints.
A: I'm in favor of running over squirrels when they run into the street. I don't slow down, I speed up.
B: I don't run over squirrels or anything else. I try to avoid that. Getting into your car to go do errands or pick someone up, or why you're driving at that particular time, shouldn't involve a blasé willingness to kill animals. Think of all the things we do sitting down. Eating dinner, receiving a blowjob, talking with someone, drinking alone, watching TV, driving, flying in a plane, going into space, planning an assassination of a terror dignitary, signing books for fans.
A: What's your point?
B: The act of sitting down implies a variety of possible outcomes, including committing murder, or something mundane like pouring syrup on pancakes and filling the stomach before going to work, where you'll probably also sit down, at least for some of it.
A: Sitting down, you're suggesting, is a simple act, but also fraught with possibilities running the gamut from committing violence to getting sexual pleasure, from satisfying hunger to falling asleep in front of a TV cop show.
B: Yes. Sitting down also means mercy given to squirrels, dogs, children, when they enter the road. Michel de Montaigne wrote, "Even on the highest throne in the world, we are still sitting on our ass."
A: I understand that the person writing this piece, Vic Neptune, is sitting on his ass right now.
B: Yes, and he avoided hitting a squirrel on Sawyer Street this morning by braking suddenly, even though a blue sedan was, and had been for several blocks, riding his tail. Vic was driving at 34 miles per hour in a 25 zone. A Tailgater tends to not get the impulse to ease off when the car in front of them speeds up to create distance between the two cars. No matter how fast Vic drove, the idiot was on his ass. When the squirrel started across the street and hesitated halfway, Vic braked, knowing the idiot would have to brake too in order to avoid a collision.
A: I would've run that squirrel down.
B: Yes, but I chose to not be an asshole. The squirrel made it to where he wanted to go, the tailgater had to slow down, but within seconds he was near my rear bumper again. He finally peeled away and was probably tailgating someone else within a minute of my last view of his blue car.
A: You trusted the tailgater to brake when you braked for the squirrel. Wasn't that a dangerous assumption?
B: Maybe. But it was quick. My body did while my mind watched.
A: And you were sitting down.
B: An avoidance of recklessness in the pointless killing of a squirrel sometimes comes from a sitting position, yes.
A: The tailgater was also sitting.
B: Tailgaters and their potential victims are all sitting down, a position between standing and the proneness of being dead, a terminal state tailgaters make possible with their horrible driving habit.
Vic Neptune
The pundits go into their appearances on cable news knowing what they want to say, ready to interrupt someone making their own point. You can see it on their faces. Mouths want to move, words must be expressed, and no one listens. Yet, as in the following fictional dialogue, one can think differently from someone else, but still listen, hearing and processing other viewpoints.
A: I'm in favor of running over squirrels when they run into the street. I don't slow down, I speed up.
B: I don't run over squirrels or anything else. I try to avoid that. Getting into your car to go do errands or pick someone up, or why you're driving at that particular time, shouldn't involve a blasé willingness to kill animals. Think of all the things we do sitting down. Eating dinner, receiving a blowjob, talking with someone, drinking alone, watching TV, driving, flying in a plane, going into space, planning an assassination of a terror dignitary, signing books for fans.
A: What's your point?
B: The act of sitting down implies a variety of possible outcomes, including committing murder, or something mundane like pouring syrup on pancakes and filling the stomach before going to work, where you'll probably also sit down, at least for some of it.
A: Sitting down, you're suggesting, is a simple act, but also fraught with possibilities running the gamut from committing violence to getting sexual pleasure, from satisfying hunger to falling asleep in front of a TV cop show.
B: Yes. Sitting down also means mercy given to squirrels, dogs, children, when they enter the road. Michel de Montaigne wrote, "Even on the highest throne in the world, we are still sitting on our ass."
A: I understand that the person writing this piece, Vic Neptune, is sitting on his ass right now.
B: Yes, and he avoided hitting a squirrel on Sawyer Street this morning by braking suddenly, even though a blue sedan was, and had been for several blocks, riding his tail. Vic was driving at 34 miles per hour in a 25 zone. A Tailgater tends to not get the impulse to ease off when the car in front of them speeds up to create distance between the two cars. No matter how fast Vic drove, the idiot was on his ass. When the squirrel started across the street and hesitated halfway, Vic braked, knowing the idiot would have to brake too in order to avoid a collision.
A: I would've run that squirrel down.
B: Yes, but I chose to not be an asshole. The squirrel made it to where he wanted to go, the tailgater had to slow down, but within seconds he was near my rear bumper again. He finally peeled away and was probably tailgating someone else within a minute of my last view of his blue car.
A: You trusted the tailgater to brake when you braked for the squirrel. Wasn't that a dangerous assumption?
B: Maybe. But it was quick. My body did while my mind watched.
A: And you were sitting down.
B: An avoidance of recklessness in the pointless killing of a squirrel sometimes comes from a sitting position, yes.
A: The tailgater was also sitting.
B: Tailgaters and their potential victims are all sitting down, a position between standing and the proneness of being dead, a terminal state tailgaters make possible with their horrible driving habit.
Vic Neptune
Saturday, April 16, 2016
Are Politicians Real?
When I started writing this blog in November 2014, I didn't know what to write about. I was concerned about being restricted to one type of subject matter, like tales from my life, or politics, or commentary on society, television, or any number of possible windows in a large house.
I settled on the practice of writing about whatever I felt like writing about. It's my blog, so what the fuck. I see people on cable news, sometimes, described as writing "a political blog." I assume these people stick to political matters, a multivalent subject I've played with myself, as is evident from reading One Damned Thing After Another, but just writing about politics or any one subject would sour my desire to maintain this.
My overall technique in this blog evolved from a writing style I've developed over decades. I started writing fiction when I was eight years old. My first attempt at a novel, written in 1972, takes place during World War Two; my second attempt, a lost manuscript, had something to do with a man who could literally turn himself inside out, making him a red nasty mess who couldn't help terrifying people, even though he wasn't malicious. As with a werewolf, my character, Regurgo (as in regurgitate), couldn't help transforming at certain times. I wrote a werewolf story around this time, too, after seeing the Lon Chaney, Jr. film, The Wolf Man, which scared the shit out of me and gave me nightmares.
My mind plays with fictions, seeing how human beings use their beliefs to interpret reality. I regard belief systems as fictitious worlds people inhabit, filling in the spaces they can't see with productions of their own imaginations, often influenced by traditional thought patterns inherited from parents and society's agreed upon sets of viewpoints. Does God exist? I have no idea. I don't feel put out, or damned, by that lack of knowing. Do werewolves exist? Zombies? As metaphorical constructs, they do exist. People and numerous animals are, and have been, affected by lunar phases. Coming back from the dead? Jesus is alleged to have done that, right?
Have you encountered people who leach energy from you? Are they vampires? I was on a radio show in 2000 with a woman who claimed to be a vampire; not the blood-drinking kind, but an energy-user. She said some vampires take energy from people and give nothing back. She wasn't like that. She used someone's energy, but gave some back in return. I didn't really believe her (note the word believe) until she accidentally (?) passed her middle finger across my jeans-covered thigh. I felt a strange surge of energy through my leg that lasted several seconds. She accompanied this with a glance, making eye contact with me long enough to cement my sense of something freaky going on.
Believing alters reality perception, although what's real usually yields just so much to our imaginations. Vatican City, with all its magnificent stone and statues, has solidified the Roman Catholic belief system established at the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325. We don't know everything, but once the revelations need to be set in stone for preservation's sake, structures are built to preserve the ideas. Those receiving revelation, whether the rare prophet or the fairly common creative artist, may still break through with wild ideas not glued shut by established belief systems.
Applying these ideas on our beliefs and how important they are to us, can teach us a lot about contemporary and historical events, as well as politics (the office kind as well as the macro-type played out on the news every day).
Vic Neptune
Friday, April 15, 2016
A Non-political Meat Essay
Earlier today, I was at the grocery store I usually go to. At the deli I asked for a pound of sliced Virginia ham. I used to work in a deli, so I knew what the woman behind the counter was likely to do. She put meat on the scale, got it to .86 pounds, added more slices and put it up to 1.05. She added the sticker to the plastic package and handed it to me with a "Have a great day."
Sounds like a fine transaction, right? What could possibly be wrong with it?
When I worked in a grocery store deli (different store) in the last century, I learned after many tries how to give the customer exactly the amount of meat and/or cheese they asked for. Ask me for a pound of sliced roast beef--I gave them exactly that. In doing this, I disobeyed the deli manager's directive: if someone, for instance, asks for a pound of meat, and what I put on the scale comes to, let's say, 1.1 pounds, give them the 1.1 and pretend like that's what they want. Most people won't correct the worker in such a case. This increases profits. It also, I decided, deceives people and doesn't serve their expressed wishes.
Since, I rationalized to myself, we're in the customer satisfaction business, why are we fucking with their minds?
Today at the store, I didn't ask the deli worker to take a few slices off of the scale, but I've done so before. One time, a worker, asked by me to bag a pound of their best (most expensive) sliced beef (quite good stuff), had 1.25 pounds on the scale, which would've cost me an extra two bucks or so, and anyway, that was more sandwich meat than I wanted. I told her to reduce the pile, get it to a pound like I asked. After three tries, she had it where her customer wanted it. It takes practice, but getting accurate meat measurements on those scales can become a skill any deli worker should be able to acquire, except they're not encouraged by their superiors to be accurate.
"The customer is always right," goes the saying, but only as long as they're sometimes willing to submit to being ripped off.
Vic Neptune
Earlier today, I was at the grocery store I usually go to. At the deli I asked for a pound of sliced Virginia ham. I used to work in a deli, so I knew what the woman behind the counter was likely to do. She put meat on the scale, got it to .86 pounds, added more slices and put it up to 1.05. She added the sticker to the plastic package and handed it to me with a "Have a great day."
Sounds like a fine transaction, right? What could possibly be wrong with it?
When I worked in a grocery store deli (different store) in the last century, I learned after many tries how to give the customer exactly the amount of meat and/or cheese they asked for. Ask me for a pound of sliced roast beef--I gave them exactly that. In doing this, I disobeyed the deli manager's directive: if someone, for instance, asks for a pound of meat, and what I put on the scale comes to, let's say, 1.1 pounds, give them the 1.1 and pretend like that's what they want. Most people won't correct the worker in such a case. This increases profits. It also, I decided, deceives people and doesn't serve their expressed wishes.
Since, I rationalized to myself, we're in the customer satisfaction business, why are we fucking with their minds?
Today at the store, I didn't ask the deli worker to take a few slices off of the scale, but I've done so before. One time, a worker, asked by me to bag a pound of their best (most expensive) sliced beef (quite good stuff), had 1.25 pounds on the scale, which would've cost me an extra two bucks or so, and anyway, that was more sandwich meat than I wanted. I told her to reduce the pile, get it to a pound like I asked. After three tries, she had it where her customer wanted it. It takes practice, but getting accurate meat measurements on those scales can become a skill any deli worker should be able to acquire, except they're not encouraged by their superiors to be accurate.
"The customer is always right," goes the saying, but only as long as they're sometimes willing to submit to being ripped off.
Vic Neptune
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
The Fault Lies in Us
A week or two ago I heard the gaseous plutocrat bitching about Ted Cruz's pandering to voters. The shock Trump thinks we should feel that a man of some of the people like Cruz should resort to an unseemly practice all politicians at a high level do isn't affecting me, somehow.
About the same time, the news organizations let it be known that Trump, accompanied by his wife, both having for the first time visited the 9/11 Memorial, donated 100,000 dollars to that institution. What with the New York Primary soon approaching, could Trump's donation be regarded as pandering? Like former Mayor Giuliani, Donald Trump enjoys mentioning 9/11 as much as he pretends to actually care about the troops. His charity event raising money for wounded veterans (on the evening of the first Fox News debate he skipped) brought in approximately six million dollars from lots of well-intentioned people. Three million dollars of that still remains invisible inside the Trump Foundation, which, judging from this instance, could be a money laundering operation. Don't sue me, Donald. I wrote, "could be."
Soon after notice of Trump's 9/11 Memorial contribution, the Washington Post revealed that the majority of Trump's charitable donations take the form of golf outings and other such gifts in lieu of cash. Journalists and cable news personalities have a hard time saying it, but I'll put it right here: the man is a fraud. For example, there is no such thing, anymore, as Trump Steaks, yet he presented meat at a press conference as if it were his product, even though the label stated otherwise. His deception was researched and seen through within twenty-four hours, but somehow his chronic, provable on a daily basis, lying, doesn't deter his supporters from thinking he's the cleverest primate running for president. An orangutan with his own airplane is truly remarkable, but not a reason to put his shit in the Oval Office.
His meat deception, though minor compared to most of his offenses against honesty, compassion, truth, decency, and common sense, revealed the pettiness of the man, along with a sense in this writer that America's expectations of its public figures has dropped drastically low, even from it lows in the last thirty years. In 1986, Ronald Reagan lied, on television, to the American people, about U.S. involvement with the Contras seeking to topple the Nicaraguan government, a link that had been made illegal by Congress to maintain, but was actually functioning due to clandestine (approved by Reagan) activities of Oliver North, Richard Secord, John Poindexter and others. A few months later, Reagan admitted his lie, also on television. His lying face looked exactly like his truth-telling face.
Trump lies as easily as he tells himself he's a handsome man. Profoundly familiar with lying, Trump has taken to calling Ted Cruz "Lyin' Ted." Smoother with language than Trump, Cruz also distorts the truth to suit himself (a human trait, actually), and is quite willing and able, like Trump, Hillary and Bill Clinton, and a host of politicians worldwide, to bullshit people to get what he wants. Cruz, when he occupied the Senate floor for hour upon hour to fight the passing of Obamacare, read Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham to fill some time at about three in the morning to an empty Senate.
To those in other countries who read this, realize that yes, America has some fucking ridiculous sons of bitches in its government.
Ted Cruz, though, possesses something Donald Trump lacks, and may need more and more as summer, with its Republican Convention, approaches: competent organization.
Trump's chaotic manner doesn't mesh well with the Republican Party's sense of rules and decorum. This could be seen, starkly, in Trump's horrible performance in Colorado recently, when Cruz and his machine managed to bring all of that state's delegates to his side, leaving Donald and his mouthpieces whining about the anti-democratic process supposedly going on in Colorado, where, actually, the delegates there had decided last August to carry out their way of doing things, with rules written down and available for any candidate and candidate's staff to read, understand, and follow.
Having lost Wisconsin, and now Colorado, Trump may have difficulty achieving the 1,237 delegate count needed to win the nomination. This could make for a contested convention, a circumstance Trump has (in his typical irresponsible way) warned could generate "riots." Given the violence at many of his rallies (a fellow at one just two days ago got assaulted by a Trump supporter), Trump's warning of riots could come true, and the brain powering his mouth would be the most responsible for that.
For the last few days, every Trump-related story has him or his surrogates complaining about the delegate process, how it's rigged, which it isn't. Cruz, to his credit, did the necessary work to secure Colorado's delegates for his cause, while Trump's people in that state submitted sloppy paperwork, misspelled a delegate's name, and then their billionaire spent days griping about the system's unfairness, but only because it didn't work for him alone.
To Trump, as with Louis the Fourteenth, L'etat c'est moi.
Vic Neptune
A week or two ago I heard the gaseous plutocrat bitching about Ted Cruz's pandering to voters. The shock Trump thinks we should feel that a man of some of the people like Cruz should resort to an unseemly practice all politicians at a high level do isn't affecting me, somehow.
About the same time, the news organizations let it be known that Trump, accompanied by his wife, both having for the first time visited the 9/11 Memorial, donated 100,000 dollars to that institution. What with the New York Primary soon approaching, could Trump's donation be regarded as pandering? Like former Mayor Giuliani, Donald Trump enjoys mentioning 9/11 as much as he pretends to actually care about the troops. His charity event raising money for wounded veterans (on the evening of the first Fox News debate he skipped) brought in approximately six million dollars from lots of well-intentioned people. Three million dollars of that still remains invisible inside the Trump Foundation, which, judging from this instance, could be a money laundering operation. Don't sue me, Donald. I wrote, "could be."
Soon after notice of Trump's 9/11 Memorial contribution, the Washington Post revealed that the majority of Trump's charitable donations take the form of golf outings and other such gifts in lieu of cash. Journalists and cable news personalities have a hard time saying it, but I'll put it right here: the man is a fraud. For example, there is no such thing, anymore, as Trump Steaks, yet he presented meat at a press conference as if it were his product, even though the label stated otherwise. His deception was researched and seen through within twenty-four hours, but somehow his chronic, provable on a daily basis, lying, doesn't deter his supporters from thinking he's the cleverest primate running for president. An orangutan with his own airplane is truly remarkable, but not a reason to put his shit in the Oval Office.
His meat deception, though minor compared to most of his offenses against honesty, compassion, truth, decency, and common sense, revealed the pettiness of the man, along with a sense in this writer that America's expectations of its public figures has dropped drastically low, even from it lows in the last thirty years. In 1986, Ronald Reagan lied, on television, to the American people, about U.S. involvement with the Contras seeking to topple the Nicaraguan government, a link that had been made illegal by Congress to maintain, but was actually functioning due to clandestine (approved by Reagan) activities of Oliver North, Richard Secord, John Poindexter and others. A few months later, Reagan admitted his lie, also on television. His lying face looked exactly like his truth-telling face.
Trump lies as easily as he tells himself he's a handsome man. Profoundly familiar with lying, Trump has taken to calling Ted Cruz "Lyin' Ted." Smoother with language than Trump, Cruz also distorts the truth to suit himself (a human trait, actually), and is quite willing and able, like Trump, Hillary and Bill Clinton, and a host of politicians worldwide, to bullshit people to get what he wants. Cruz, when he occupied the Senate floor for hour upon hour to fight the passing of Obamacare, read Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham to fill some time at about three in the morning to an empty Senate.
To those in other countries who read this, realize that yes, America has some fucking ridiculous sons of bitches in its government.
Ted Cruz, though, possesses something Donald Trump lacks, and may need more and more as summer, with its Republican Convention, approaches: competent organization.
Trump's chaotic manner doesn't mesh well with the Republican Party's sense of rules and decorum. This could be seen, starkly, in Trump's horrible performance in Colorado recently, when Cruz and his machine managed to bring all of that state's delegates to his side, leaving Donald and his mouthpieces whining about the anti-democratic process supposedly going on in Colorado, where, actually, the delegates there had decided last August to carry out their way of doing things, with rules written down and available for any candidate and candidate's staff to read, understand, and follow.
Having lost Wisconsin, and now Colorado, Trump may have difficulty achieving the 1,237 delegate count needed to win the nomination. This could make for a contested convention, a circumstance Trump has (in his typical irresponsible way) warned could generate "riots." Given the violence at many of his rallies (a fellow at one just two days ago got assaulted by a Trump supporter), Trump's warning of riots could come true, and the brain powering his mouth would be the most responsible for that.
For the last few days, every Trump-related story has him or his surrogates complaining about the delegate process, how it's rigged, which it isn't. Cruz, to his credit, did the necessary work to secure Colorado's delegates for his cause, while Trump's people in that state submitted sloppy paperwork, misspelled a delegate's name, and then their billionaire spent days griping about the system's unfairness, but only because it didn't work for him alone.
To Trump, as with Louis the Fourteenth, L'etat c'est moi.
Vic Neptune
Friday, April 8, 2016
Avalanche
When you watch footage of large objects or masses in movement, such as collapsing buildings or huge waves, these phenomena appear to be moving in slow motion. Look at footage of an avalanche. There's a majestic slowness about the snow, appearing to be a white waterfall but retarded in speed. It's actually moving very quickly, can achieve speeds around eighty miles per hour in about five seconds. From a distance, though, it doesn't look like that. The World Trade Center towers, too, seemed to fall in slow motion, and too bad for the people on the pavement too close by that they didn't.
On May 17, 2012, Mitt Romney spoke in Boca Raton, Florida, to an exclusive set of rich supporters. One of his remarks focused on "forty-seven percent" of all voters who would support President Obama in the November election. Romney said he couldn't be concerned about them, that he'd never get their votes. He said they are those "who are dependent on government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that the government has a responsibility to take care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it...These are people who pay no income tax."
Imagine the kind of lowlife loser who believes he's entitled to eat. God, how sickening that such humans exist. People, children even, who want to eat!
Romney said these ruthless words to a roomful of rich motherfuckers enjoying a nice dinner and rounds of drinks prepared by a bartender who secretly recorded the presidential candidate's words on his phone. The term, "forty-seven percent," became Romney's doom. It was obvious now what he actually thought of nearly half the electorate: they're a bunch of fucking losers who want the state to do everything for them. Romney himself, with his corporate background, didn't mention the very low tax rates American corporations pay, or his own fourteen percent tax rate. Like many presidential candidates, he was a great avoider of the truth in 2012. As the Governor of Massachusetts in 2006, he had signed into law a state-run healthcare system that Obama essentially used as a model for what came to be known, derisively, as Obamacare. Since he was running for president against Obama, Romney felt he had to distance himself from his one humane accomplishment: providing healthcare to those in need of it in Massachusetts.
Because he couldn't let himself take credit for doing that particular good deed, there wasn't much to recommend him. Obama won fifty-one percent of the popular vote, while Romney seduced his own 47 percent of voters, while he was hoping for the fifty-three percent implied in his heartless remarks captured by a concerned bartender and broadcast to the world.
Nearly four years after Romney's Boca Raton speech, Donald Trump (who endorsed Romney in 2012), finds himself pathologically confident as always, but, according to the latest AP GfK poll, faced with an unfavorable rating, among Americans, of sixty-nine percent. Hillary Clinton, in the same poll, has a fifty-five percent unfavorable rating. In 2012, "forty-seven percent" strongly for Obama, in Romney's estimation, was a huge number of people, and it was. Sixty-nine percent of the U.S. population comes to approximately 220 million people. Trump, whether he admits it or not, finds himself facing an electorate that mostly disapproves of him. "Unfavorable," "disapprove" are polite ways of saying, "dislike," "hate," "loathe," "makes me sick."
Hillary Clinton, too, with her fifty-five percent rating, is faced with about 175 million Americans looking at her without enthusiasm, to be polite about it. Granted, many of these people are too young to vote, or just don't vote. Even so, both Trump and Clinton are the frontrunners, and logically (in the world of B follows A), they will win their parties' nominations and compete until November, before commencing a new era of God-knows-what on Inauguration Day in January, but with these lousy poll numbers, I wonder if either one of them will face Chief Justice Roberts and say the Oath.
It indicates the times we live in, perhaps, that Americans find the frontrunners so objectionable; both of them of the same generation, born a year apart, early Baby Boomers, the generation so badly running the world these confused years. Young American voters don't buy into Trump and Hillary Clinton--suspicious characters, not forthright. Trump, too, is a racist and bigot, and denies climate change, belief strategies that don't appeal at all to America's youth.
Going from Romney's 2012 controversial and fatal remarks, forty-seven percent of Americans didn't like him, but now even Hillary Clinton can't boast of numbers that good, and Trump is now looking like the most unpopular kid in school, except among his asshole friends. It's taken four years for these numbers, as applied to presidential candidates, to grow into something devastating for the political establishment itself, as it demonstrates its lack of competence in promoting qualified and palatable candidates for the highest office, a job that should cry out for serious consideration, but has lost out, at least this time, to an avalanche of popular dissatisfaction, and has collapsed from forty-seven percent to Trump's abysmal sixty-nine.
Vic Neptune
When you watch footage of large objects or masses in movement, such as collapsing buildings or huge waves, these phenomena appear to be moving in slow motion. Look at footage of an avalanche. There's a majestic slowness about the snow, appearing to be a white waterfall but retarded in speed. It's actually moving very quickly, can achieve speeds around eighty miles per hour in about five seconds. From a distance, though, it doesn't look like that. The World Trade Center towers, too, seemed to fall in slow motion, and too bad for the people on the pavement too close by that they didn't.
On May 17, 2012, Mitt Romney spoke in Boca Raton, Florida, to an exclusive set of rich supporters. One of his remarks focused on "forty-seven percent" of all voters who would support President Obama in the November election. Romney said he couldn't be concerned about them, that he'd never get their votes. He said they are those "who are dependent on government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that the government has a responsibility to take care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it...These are people who pay no income tax."
Imagine the kind of lowlife loser who believes he's entitled to eat. God, how sickening that such humans exist. People, children even, who want to eat!
Romney said these ruthless words to a roomful of rich motherfuckers enjoying a nice dinner and rounds of drinks prepared by a bartender who secretly recorded the presidential candidate's words on his phone. The term, "forty-seven percent," became Romney's doom. It was obvious now what he actually thought of nearly half the electorate: they're a bunch of fucking losers who want the state to do everything for them. Romney himself, with his corporate background, didn't mention the very low tax rates American corporations pay, or his own fourteen percent tax rate. Like many presidential candidates, he was a great avoider of the truth in 2012. As the Governor of Massachusetts in 2006, he had signed into law a state-run healthcare system that Obama essentially used as a model for what came to be known, derisively, as Obamacare. Since he was running for president against Obama, Romney felt he had to distance himself from his one humane accomplishment: providing healthcare to those in need of it in Massachusetts.
Because he couldn't let himself take credit for doing that particular good deed, there wasn't much to recommend him. Obama won fifty-one percent of the popular vote, while Romney seduced his own 47 percent of voters, while he was hoping for the fifty-three percent implied in his heartless remarks captured by a concerned bartender and broadcast to the world.
Nearly four years after Romney's Boca Raton speech, Donald Trump (who endorsed Romney in 2012), finds himself pathologically confident as always, but, according to the latest AP GfK poll, faced with an unfavorable rating, among Americans, of sixty-nine percent. Hillary Clinton, in the same poll, has a fifty-five percent unfavorable rating. In 2012, "forty-seven percent" strongly for Obama, in Romney's estimation, was a huge number of people, and it was. Sixty-nine percent of the U.S. population comes to approximately 220 million people. Trump, whether he admits it or not, finds himself facing an electorate that mostly disapproves of him. "Unfavorable," "disapprove" are polite ways of saying, "dislike," "hate," "loathe," "makes me sick."
Hillary Clinton, too, with her fifty-five percent rating, is faced with about 175 million Americans looking at her without enthusiasm, to be polite about it. Granted, many of these people are too young to vote, or just don't vote. Even so, both Trump and Clinton are the frontrunners, and logically (in the world of B follows A), they will win their parties' nominations and compete until November, before commencing a new era of God-knows-what on Inauguration Day in January, but with these lousy poll numbers, I wonder if either one of them will face Chief Justice Roberts and say the Oath.
It indicates the times we live in, perhaps, that Americans find the frontrunners so objectionable; both of them of the same generation, born a year apart, early Baby Boomers, the generation so badly running the world these confused years. Young American voters don't buy into Trump and Hillary Clinton--suspicious characters, not forthright. Trump, too, is a racist and bigot, and denies climate change, belief strategies that don't appeal at all to America's youth.
Going from Romney's 2012 controversial and fatal remarks, forty-seven percent of Americans didn't like him, but now even Hillary Clinton can't boast of numbers that good, and Trump is now looking like the most unpopular kid in school, except among his asshole friends. It's taken four years for these numbers, as applied to presidential candidates, to grow into something devastating for the political establishment itself, as it demonstrates its lack of competence in promoting qualified and palatable candidates for the highest office, a job that should cry out for serious consideration, but has lost out, at least this time, to an avalanche of popular dissatisfaction, and has collapsed from forty-seven percent to Trump's abysmal sixty-nine.
Vic Neptune
Wednesday, April 6, 2016
The Wheaties Box
Eleven months ago, the British actress, Alice Eve, who played James T. Kirk's girlfriend in Star Trek Into Darkness, the same character played by an older Bibi Besch in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, wrote something on Instagram that pissed off some people. Her subject was that exemplar of Kardashian-connected humanity, Bruce Jenner, who had become a woman named Caitlyn Jenner.
Eve wrote, a bit snottily, "If you were a woman no one would have heard of you because women can't compete in the decathlon [referring to Jenner's 1976 Summer Olympics Gold Medal win].
"Until women are paid the same as men," Eve continued, "then playing at being a 'woman' while retaining the benefits of being a man is unfair. Do you have a vagina? Are you paid less than men? Then, my friend, you are a woman..."
An Instagram user remarked, "This is transphobia at its finest."
Jan T. Kirk (Captain Kirk's ancestor?) tweeted: "man alice eve posted something transphobic n stupid to support her 'white feminism' on insta and i had to unfollow ugh."
The actress, apparently believing one should move further into a shitstorm rather than away from it, wrote more before deleting her anti-Jenner posts.
"I do agree that the struggle for transgenders is unique and horrific. However, I do want to also support a cause I strongly believe in, the right for women to have equal rights to men. The transgender equality struggle is the next one, as we all know. And very real it is, too."
Josh Dahlman (don't ask me who the fuck he is) then tweeted: "Alice Eve's 'clarification' about her transphobic comment is more transphobic than her initial one."
Alice Eve couldn't stop herself: "I'm not saying by identifying they are negatively impacting feminism, I am saying that we have to refine the language so all men, women and transgenders are accurately represented in their process of self-identification. Maybe this needs a little thought. Thank you for engaging with me on this subject, because I felt confused and now I feel enlightened and like I know what education I need to move forward."
So genteel. She wants the language refined--does she lack awareness of the general quality of dialogue in social media? A specimen of Jan T. Kirk's writing, quoted above, shows how far removed we are from Alice Eve's wish for refinement in discussing important subjects.
I imagine that Alice Eve heard about Bruce Jenner's desire to become a woman, that he was going through the process, and something inside the actress rebelled at the notion of a famous man with shitloads of money gaining sympathy for becoming a woman at a time when women are still, in first world countries, lacking equality with men. She linked Jenner's goal with long-term man-woman inequalities, but overlooked the simple fact that Bruce Jenner was a rich man who could afford the procedures to make him into Caitlyn Jenner, and had the televised forum of his Kardashian link to make it into a big deal, getting his own show in the process.
For me, I can't get thrilled about Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner's journey to selfhood because I can't stand the fucking Kardashians, although I recognize the Kardashians as a symptom of our culture these last ten years. The obsession with broadcasting the insipidities of self, symbolized by the selfie, for instance, and also tweets and internet comments, and blog posts (I'm guilty), amounts to a culture whose representatives have obtained technological miracle devices, but use them to leak their careless and pointless thoughts to the world. Jan T. Kirk's tweet, ending with two words that should never, aesthetically, go together, "unfollow ugh," is as ridiculous as Alice Eve's snappy looking-down-nose albeit better written comments which nevertheless revealed her, at least eleven months ago, as an intolerant ignoramus.
My own prejudice against the Kardashians and what they represent (rich assholes celebrated for doing nothing), I admit, makes me an intolerant ignoramus, too. I don't, however, add to the garbage pile of tweets and other non-stop comments grappling with our short attention spans every day and night.
Yesterday on Inside Edition, I found out that Miley Cyrus's cat clawed her arm and forehead. I've experienced that intense pain, the sharp little curved nails raking skin and drawing blood. I know that Miss Cyrus had several intensely uncomfortable minutes to deal with. I found out about her cat attack because she posted photos of the wounds. That's the story: Miley Cyrus's cat, for some reason, clawed her. The singer felt the need to share this common domestic human-animal exchange with the world.
Look at the red lines on my face and arms. Isn't that just too much? Not laughing out loud. Ugh.
Vic Neptune
Eleven months ago, the British actress, Alice Eve, who played James T. Kirk's girlfriend in Star Trek Into Darkness, the same character played by an older Bibi Besch in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, wrote something on Instagram that pissed off some people. Her subject was that exemplar of Kardashian-connected humanity, Bruce Jenner, who had become a woman named Caitlyn Jenner.
Eve wrote, a bit snottily, "If you were a woman no one would have heard of you because women can't compete in the decathlon [referring to Jenner's 1976 Summer Olympics Gold Medal win].
"Until women are paid the same as men," Eve continued, "then playing at being a 'woman' while retaining the benefits of being a man is unfair. Do you have a vagina? Are you paid less than men? Then, my friend, you are a woman..."
An Instagram user remarked, "This is transphobia at its finest."
Jan T. Kirk (Captain Kirk's ancestor?) tweeted: "man alice eve posted something transphobic n stupid to support her 'white feminism' on insta and i had to unfollow ugh."
The actress, apparently believing one should move further into a shitstorm rather than away from it, wrote more before deleting her anti-Jenner posts.
"I do agree that the struggle for transgenders is unique and horrific. However, I do want to also support a cause I strongly believe in, the right for women to have equal rights to men. The transgender equality struggle is the next one, as we all know. And very real it is, too."
Josh Dahlman (don't ask me who the fuck he is) then tweeted: "Alice Eve's 'clarification' about her transphobic comment is more transphobic than her initial one."
Alice Eve couldn't stop herself: "I'm not saying by identifying they are negatively impacting feminism, I am saying that we have to refine the language so all men, women and transgenders are accurately represented in their process of self-identification. Maybe this needs a little thought. Thank you for engaging with me on this subject, because I felt confused and now I feel enlightened and like I know what education I need to move forward."
So genteel. She wants the language refined--does she lack awareness of the general quality of dialogue in social media? A specimen of Jan T. Kirk's writing, quoted above, shows how far removed we are from Alice Eve's wish for refinement in discussing important subjects.
I imagine that Alice Eve heard about Bruce Jenner's desire to become a woman, that he was going through the process, and something inside the actress rebelled at the notion of a famous man with shitloads of money gaining sympathy for becoming a woman at a time when women are still, in first world countries, lacking equality with men. She linked Jenner's goal with long-term man-woman inequalities, but overlooked the simple fact that Bruce Jenner was a rich man who could afford the procedures to make him into Caitlyn Jenner, and had the televised forum of his Kardashian link to make it into a big deal, getting his own show in the process.
For me, I can't get thrilled about Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner's journey to selfhood because I can't stand the fucking Kardashians, although I recognize the Kardashians as a symptom of our culture these last ten years. The obsession with broadcasting the insipidities of self, symbolized by the selfie, for instance, and also tweets and internet comments, and blog posts (I'm guilty), amounts to a culture whose representatives have obtained technological miracle devices, but use them to leak their careless and pointless thoughts to the world. Jan T. Kirk's tweet, ending with two words that should never, aesthetically, go together, "unfollow ugh," is as ridiculous as Alice Eve's snappy looking-down-nose albeit better written comments which nevertheless revealed her, at least eleven months ago, as an intolerant ignoramus.
My own prejudice against the Kardashians and what they represent (rich assholes celebrated for doing nothing), I admit, makes me an intolerant ignoramus, too. I don't, however, add to the garbage pile of tweets and other non-stop comments grappling with our short attention spans every day and night.
Yesterday on Inside Edition, I found out that Miley Cyrus's cat clawed her arm and forehead. I've experienced that intense pain, the sharp little curved nails raking skin and drawing blood. I know that Miss Cyrus had several intensely uncomfortable minutes to deal with. I found out about her cat attack because she posted photos of the wounds. That's the story: Miley Cyrus's cat, for some reason, clawed her. The singer felt the need to share this common domestic human-animal exchange with the world.
Look at the red lines on my face and arms. Isn't that just too much? Not laughing out loud. Ugh.
Vic Neptune
Sunday, April 3, 2016
The Relevance of Sarah Palin
The Celebrity Apprentice never featured a contestant named Palin, although La Toya Jackson and Trace Adkins made it on the show. Joan Rivers, too, and Meat Loaf, Lisa Rinna, Gary Busey, Dionne Warwick, Cyndi Lauper, Andrew Dice Clay, Dennis Rodman, and Cheryl Tiegs, were also contestants. The show still exists. Donald Trump, who squeezed the program out of his ass in 2008, will not host the eighth season due to electioneering obligations. Instead, Arnold Schwarzenegger (former bodybuilder, actor, former governor, former Kennedy in-law, and son of a Nazi), will play host to a cast including Boy George, Vince Neil, and Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi.
Has-been celebrities have to go somewhere; I'm not giving them a hard time for being on Trump's show. To be a has-been, one is also a once-was, a state of accomplishment most people never achieve. I've seen actors and actresses in specific TV shows, performing brilliantly, working with strong scripts and excellent colleagues, and then their other work isn't nearly as remarkable. The actress Alyson Hannigan, for example, was extraordinary in Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Buffy's best friend, Willow Rosenberg. Hannigan then spent nine seasons on a comedy, How I Met Your Mother, a show I've tried to appreciate, since Alyson is on it, but it does nothing for me. Her great talent, so evident in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, got smothered on the other show. I don't, and never will, regard her as a has-been, but her case illustrates Hollywood's fickleness.
Dionne Warwick, back in the day, was a majestic presence with a soaring beautiful voice. Picturing her on The Celebrity Apprentice, face to face with Trump's troll under the bridge personality, seems an insult to the concept of aesthetics.
Has-beens, or once-wases, subordinating themselves to a human shitsack with a malevolent brain, coated from head to toe in compacted Cheeto dust, seems insulting to human dignity itself. Actress Tia Carrere, who appeared in Celebrity Apprentice Season 5, is not a masterful thespian, but she was fun in Wayne's World, and in the underrated sword and sorcery film, Kull the Conqueror, she burned up the screen as a long-dead evil sorceress resurrected with bad results for all. I say Tia Carrere has dignity and deserves respect, even when appearing on such a crappy show as Trump's multi-year reality TV lead-up to his presidential run, a show that served the purpose of making him well-known, at least his surface "tough and smart" personality, to a very wide audience that would then think in terms of either voting for him or not.
Sarah Palin would be a perfect Celebrity Apprentice contestant. She's a has-been, and also a true believer in the Trump line of philosophical politics and sticking it to the masses. As his surrogate, she spoke to the Milwaukee County Republican Party in a state four days before its crucial primary, one that may make the Convention in Cleveland a contested one, if Trump loses Wisconsin to Cruz.
Palin, in my view, is a poor propagandist to send out. One expects a spokesperson to be able to speak well. Her penchant for cute phrases and her tendency to lapse into gobbledygook, her overall sentence structure non-existent, as if punctuation was never a subject taught to her, will leave any intelligent listener, Republican or Democrat, shaking their heads, as I saw some members of the audience do during her twenty minute speech. The audience was polite and quiet, although they gave her a standing ovation at the end--not as forceful and sudden as the ones Hitler received in the Reichstag, but most everyone stood. The helium, though, has escaped the Palin balloon.
I understand she was trying to be humorous when she said that Mexicans entering our country illegally are given "gift baskets with soccer balls" by our government, but her lack of ability with intentionally delivered comedy just made me think, "The government isn't doing that, though. You just scolded the government for doing something it doesn't do."
Palin, and Trump, are examples of how a major political party goes from strength (the Reagan years) to an uneasy but nevertheless adequate stability reinforced by across the political spectrum security concerns (the George W. Bush years) to a fracturing and crumbling, something akin to unmedicated multiple personality disorder (the present). Sarah Palin's relevance as a supposed "conservative" is a fiction, yet she's plugging away, brought from Alaska by Trump to lend additional credence to his campaign. By choosing her, he shows us how bad he is at selecting people to do things for him. Sarah Palin's authoritarian-loving brain serves Trump's ego, but even actual Republicans, like those in Wisconsin who won't vote for Trump on Tuesday, are not interested in handing power to a man who doesn't respect his own limitations when it comes to using that power.
Vic Neptune
The Celebrity Apprentice never featured a contestant named Palin, although La Toya Jackson and Trace Adkins made it on the show. Joan Rivers, too, and Meat Loaf, Lisa Rinna, Gary Busey, Dionne Warwick, Cyndi Lauper, Andrew Dice Clay, Dennis Rodman, and Cheryl Tiegs, were also contestants. The show still exists. Donald Trump, who squeezed the program out of his ass in 2008, will not host the eighth season due to electioneering obligations. Instead, Arnold Schwarzenegger (former bodybuilder, actor, former governor, former Kennedy in-law, and son of a Nazi), will play host to a cast including Boy George, Vince Neil, and Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi.
Has-been celebrities have to go somewhere; I'm not giving them a hard time for being on Trump's show. To be a has-been, one is also a once-was, a state of accomplishment most people never achieve. I've seen actors and actresses in specific TV shows, performing brilliantly, working with strong scripts and excellent colleagues, and then their other work isn't nearly as remarkable. The actress Alyson Hannigan, for example, was extraordinary in Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Buffy's best friend, Willow Rosenberg. Hannigan then spent nine seasons on a comedy, How I Met Your Mother, a show I've tried to appreciate, since Alyson is on it, but it does nothing for me. Her great talent, so evident in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, got smothered on the other show. I don't, and never will, regard her as a has-been, but her case illustrates Hollywood's fickleness.
Dionne Warwick, back in the day, was a majestic presence with a soaring beautiful voice. Picturing her on The Celebrity Apprentice, face to face with Trump's troll under the bridge personality, seems an insult to the concept of aesthetics.
Has-beens, or once-wases, subordinating themselves to a human shitsack with a malevolent brain, coated from head to toe in compacted Cheeto dust, seems insulting to human dignity itself. Actress Tia Carrere, who appeared in Celebrity Apprentice Season 5, is not a masterful thespian, but she was fun in Wayne's World, and in the underrated sword and sorcery film, Kull the Conqueror, she burned up the screen as a long-dead evil sorceress resurrected with bad results for all. I say Tia Carrere has dignity and deserves respect, even when appearing on such a crappy show as Trump's multi-year reality TV lead-up to his presidential run, a show that served the purpose of making him well-known, at least his surface "tough and smart" personality, to a very wide audience that would then think in terms of either voting for him or not.
Sarah Palin would be a perfect Celebrity Apprentice contestant. She's a has-been, and also a true believer in the Trump line of philosophical politics and sticking it to the masses. As his surrogate, she spoke to the Milwaukee County Republican Party in a state four days before its crucial primary, one that may make the Convention in Cleveland a contested one, if Trump loses Wisconsin to Cruz.
Palin, in my view, is a poor propagandist to send out. One expects a spokesperson to be able to speak well. Her penchant for cute phrases and her tendency to lapse into gobbledygook, her overall sentence structure non-existent, as if punctuation was never a subject taught to her, will leave any intelligent listener, Republican or Democrat, shaking their heads, as I saw some members of the audience do during her twenty minute speech. The audience was polite and quiet, although they gave her a standing ovation at the end--not as forceful and sudden as the ones Hitler received in the Reichstag, but most everyone stood. The helium, though, has escaped the Palin balloon.
I understand she was trying to be humorous when she said that Mexicans entering our country illegally are given "gift baskets with soccer balls" by our government, but her lack of ability with intentionally delivered comedy just made me think, "The government isn't doing that, though. You just scolded the government for doing something it doesn't do."
Palin, and Trump, are examples of how a major political party goes from strength (the Reagan years) to an uneasy but nevertheless adequate stability reinforced by across the political spectrum security concerns (the George W. Bush years) to a fracturing and crumbling, something akin to unmedicated multiple personality disorder (the present). Sarah Palin's relevance as a supposed "conservative" is a fiction, yet she's plugging away, brought from Alaska by Trump to lend additional credence to his campaign. By choosing her, he shows us how bad he is at selecting people to do things for him. Sarah Palin's authoritarian-loving brain serves Trump's ego, but even actual Republicans, like those in Wisconsin who won't vote for Trump on Tuesday, are not interested in handing power to a man who doesn't respect his own limitations when it comes to using that power.
Vic Neptune
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