If Repeating History Is Lucrative To Elites, History Will Repeat

     With pleasure a few days ago I saw a headline from The Los Angeles Times: "Kamala Harris drops out of the presidential race"
     I laughed, I felt mirth, a real sense of relief, with chuckles, that a vicious human rights violator couldn't ultimately summon enough enthusiasm among ordinary people to justify a presidential campaign desired by some Democrat billionaires and millionaires who saw in her a combination of Hillary Clinton's neoliberal policies and a dedication to "the rule of law."
     "Rule of law," when invoked by cable news pundits and politicians refers to procedures and protocols followed properly, with decorum, but never does it suggest condemnation of an authority figure for making aggressive war on other nations, for killing civilians.  Friendly-looking Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Harris's now former rival for the Democratic nomination, has no problem agreeing with President Trump's murderous sanctions against Venezuela.  Like Harris, Warren won't recognize the November 10 coup d'etat against Evo Morales in Bolivia, even as it followed CIA/State Department step by step procedures as seen in Ukraine in 2014.
     To be a normal and acceptable American politician means saying yes to subversion, deceit, and sedition (by assets of the U.S. Intelligence Community) against governments unwelcome to U.S. foreign policymakers.  Donald Trump's sin for which he's being subjected to the impeachment process involves a "rule of law" violation.  For a few weeks last summer he withheld "aid" to Ukraine--though President Zelensky wasn't aware of this until after the fact--contingent, allegedly, on the Ukrainian leader's agreement to investigate Joe Biden, his son Hunter, and the nature of the latter's absurd position serving on the board of that country's natural gas and oil company, Burisma Holdings.
     That Trump briefly held back the military aid (also withheld by President Obama just a few years ago) "needed" for Ukraine's war with Russia constitutes an unforgivable violation of decorum, linked with the accusation of a quid pro quo in which Trump sought to gain advantage over a political rival, the former Vice President.
     Trump, in any event, exported military aid worth 391 million dollars to Ukraine, fueling further a five year long war stoked by U.S. arms manufacturers, hawkish Democratic politicians (including the President's main impeachment process inquisitor and Russiagate propagandist, the odious Adam Schiff).  Since the weapons made it to their hoped for destination, what's the problem?
     Trump, through his alleged "quid pro quo" with Zelensky, sought damaging information against a political rival, Biden.  It's opposition research, but by asking for help along those lines from the leader of another nation, Trump allegedly violated a rule respected only by elites: it's okay and expected to mess up the lives of ordinary people but not the life and reputation of a highly placed political figure like Joe Biden, longtime practitioner of neoliberal policies dominant in the furtherance of American Empire and international capital.
     Harris's withdrawal from the Democratic Primary is blamed by some of her Twitter-using mouthpieces on "racists" and "sexists" who supposedly can't tolerate the idea of a woman of color as President.  Harris herself didn't go that far, thankfully, but emphasized a lack of money for her campaign.  "I'm not a billionaire," she tweeted.  "I can't finance my own campaign."
     Right.  Forty-six billionaires gave money to Kamala Harris.  The more money she received, the less she supported Medicare For All and any other Progressive ideas she earlier on remarked about favorably.  Mayor Pete Buttigieg's relationship with the donor class is identical.  When he withdraws from the Primary (we can hope that happens) his failure will be blamed on "Homophobes" unwilling to give the first gay presidential candidate with a chance at the job a chance.  In both their cases, though, they lose from a lack of compelling ideas.  I've taken to imagining Buttigieg as a robot because every time he offers his canned rehearsed responses he sounds like a huge shiny computer in a 1950s science fiction film speaking English in the form of programmed phrases arranged in various ways according to need.  Buttigieg, like Harris, also relies on rich people.  When he drops drastically in the polls like she did, those donors will abandon him and get behind some other candidate fitting the requirement, Help Us, the Rich, Don't Help the American People.
     Harris's complaint about no longer having the money to run for President reveals a glaring truth about the quality of her ideas: unlike Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, who rely solely on small individually offered donations, four million so far in Sanders' case, Kamala Harris needed tycoons.  Once her poll numbers began to fall last July, after Tulsi Gabbard spoke truth about her record in the second debate and Harris backed away from Medicare For All, the donors began to look elsewhere.
     Harris and Buttigieg don't stand for anything except their own self-glorification in seeking the nation's highest office, seeking, in reality, power for its own sake.  Ordinary people don't sympathize with such an ambition.
     Her campaign was "muddled," "had trouble with messaging," and as far as I could tell, was concerned chiefly with "restoring decency" and dedication to "the rule of law."  Again, voters don't give a fuck about that shit.
     Still, the attempt to knock down Donald Trump in the increasingly ridiculous and hopeless impeachment process (doomed to fail in the Republican-controlled Senate) indicates the weakness of the Democrats' position--as also exemplified by Democratic Primary candidates who believe bashing Trump is the way to the Oval Office, even though several Republican challengers and Hillary Clinton tried that and failed.
     Attention in mainstream news media focuses on anyone but Sanders, Gabbard, and Andrew Yang (a billionaire with unusual ideas, including the institution of Universal Basic Income).  MSNBC and CNN will ignore Sanders--who typically draws to his personality and ideas thousands of people at campaign rallies--while doing stories on struggling candidates like Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, or, new to the race, billionaire media mogul Michael Bloomberg.
     Exposure creates name recognition.  What Joe Biden has going for him is name recognition.  But really, is a well-known name the best qualification for the presidency?  Should Brad Pitt run the country?  Better yet, Beyonce Knowles; she's Black, she's a woman, she performed in concert for the totalitarian leader of Turkmenistan, meaning she apparently understands it's okay to be friendly with that privileged club of human rights-abusing dictators who qualify as acceptable U.S. allies.
     It's now obvious to me that the play of the Democratic Establishment when it comes to the 2020 election is to rely on an old failed strategy.  Find someone acceptable to the elites; that person can supposedly win against Trump, even as the people (some Trump supporters included) need the revolutionary change offered especially by Bernie Sanders and also, with less support, by Tulsi Gabbard.
     Can they, the Democrats, learn from recent history?  No, they can't.  They don't want to.  They like their privileged positions.  Trump's destructive policies aren't their problem.  Trump and Pelosi belong to the same magnetic lump drawing to itself money and power.  Trump's outrageous action prompting the impeachment process consisted of an interference in exporting arms to Ukraine so that ethnic Russians and Ukrainians can be endangered, injured, displaced, and killed in a five year proxy and civil war involving, at the top, Russia and the U.S.  Trump now seeks to send even more military aid to Ukraine, so what the fuck is the problem?
     He went after Biden, that's what, but honestly, Biden should be gone after.  The impeachment process has exposed Biden's "soft" corruption.  "He did nothing illegal," Democratic pundits screech. "His son Hunter did nothing illegal, either!"
     Had the Intelligence Community capped its knowledge of the July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky, most of us would've never known about Vice President Biden's shenanigans in Ukraine, yet Biden is the "frontrunner," the steady hand that will restore "decency" to the United States, will heal the wounds Trump has caused in dealing with NATO.  Decorum is all-important.  A working man might need tests to determine the progress of some possibly fatal condition, costing him many thousands of dollars he doesn't have in his bank account, but he can feel reassured that Democrats are fighting hard to maintain the correct tone of discourse in Washington.  The working man dies, broke, his debts passed on to his family, but at least Trump's been put in his place, decorum along with the rule of law has triumphed over indecency and crassness, and Ukraine's Neo-Nazi soldiers (their extreme political beliefs never mentioned in mainstream news media) have their weapons to fight Russia and the separatists in Donbass, "So that," as one Judiciary Committee impeachment witness, a Constitutional lawyer, said, "we don't have to fight them here."
     The film Red Dawn must've made a deep impression on her, but I guess she forgot that during World War Two the U.S. fought Nazis; that's how most Americans look upon it, and with approval.  After that war the U.S. and the Soviet Union removed and seeded Nazis into the nascent aerospace industry, the governments of East and West Germany, the Stasi and other intelligence agencies.
     Americans to this day live in a country run by people who won't confess to our links with and aid toward Nazis.  Most people don't even know about this horrible subject.  It floats in the same pool of YUCK with arms sent by the Obama administration getting distributed among ISIS fighters.  With U.S. support of al-Qaeda, with making children suffer because of food stamp program cuts.
     You have to have the luxury of not being troubled with real problems to be concerned about what the impeachment process is about.  It's really just a TV show, but not reality TV, because it has nothing to do with the reality of Americans living day by day, struggling to make it, given choices like the phony Buttigieg or the just departed Kamala Harris, both of whom are paid attention to in mainstream news media, unlike Bernie Sanders, who can actually help us.

          Vic Neptune

   














  
   
   

     Trump, Not a Dog Person

     I watched a three minute Fox News clip on YouTube.  Thumbnail shows Donald and Melania Trump, Mike Pence, a man holding onto a leash, and a Belgian Malinois.  I haven't seen President Trump by an animal before, nor have I seen him in a natural setting except in a clip showing him inspecting a burned part of California.
     The military working dog, Conan, a member of Delta Force, was injured October 26 in the blast from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's suicide vest.  Recovered, Conan was taken to the White House to meet two people who, from their body language, obviously don't give a shit about dogs.  As President Trump talked outside to reporters, he praised the dog's courage, while sneaking in a Trumpian putdown, saying, "I said to his handler maybe Conan should be muzzled."
     The dog responded well to Vice President Pence, who petted his head and scratched behind his ears.  It's the only time I've ever seen Mike Pence behave like a human being.  He demonstrated a liking for dogs, an ease in their company.
     Melania Trump kept her distance, standing apart from the dog and the three men.  Her presence in this display had something to do with a First Lady's duties celebrating human interest situations, I guess, although the hero dog took part in an illegal operation in Syria's Idlib Province.  Anything done by U.S. ground troops in Syria, where they haven't been invited to operate (unlike Russian military forces), constitutes a violation of international law, but who cares?  The U.S. is a major international state criminal with a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.
     Trump's mention of a muzzle suggests his immediate below the surface fear of an attack dog clamping teeth into a billionaire's small hands.  If the handler gave the command, would Conan rip out the Trumps' throats?  Probably so.  Conan, like most soldiers, follows orders.
     The ISIS leader's suicide in this time of impeachment obsession didn't earn Trump kudos from pundits and other mainstream news personalities.  An often shown photograph of Obama and his people watching "in real time" the alleged "raid" on Osama bin Laden's "compound" in Pakistan was displayed on cable news next to a picture of Trump at the head of a long table along with brass and advisers, watching "in real time" the hunting of al-Baghdadi.  Trump remarked to the press, "It was like watching a movie."  I guess so, in that they were looking at a screen with images moving on it.
     Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty, an orthodox account of the Seal Team 6 "raid" on bin Laden's "compound" in Abbottabad depicts the official version debunked thoroughly by Seymour Hersh, who found that al-Qaeda's leader was captured just a few years after 9/11 by Pakistani forces, held prisoner in the "compound," and used as a bargaining chip with the U.S.  A show raid, Pakistani authorities had removed soldiers guarding the place.  When Seal Team 6 arrived, rappelling from helicopters they of course met no resistance, otherwise they would've been shot and shot at while vulnerable in mid-air.  Nor did bin Laden put up a fight, as first reported.  The Seal who executed him "canoed" his head on purpose.  It's a fun killing technique requiring good aim whereby the shooter sends a bullet along the skull's top, making a blood- and brains-filled trench.
     In Dick Cheney's "Long War," some Seals, deployed numerous times in war theaters, have gotten very good at their psychopathic hobbies.  Trump, whose naked love for cruelty can't be realistically disputed (he's defunding the food stamp program but isn't getting impeached for that) has spoken in defense of a Seal who murdered a captured young ISIS fighter and then posed for a picture with the corpse.  This representative of America's finest also enjoyed shooting people at random.  Navy authorities wanting to prosecute this Seal have struggled with the case; they're running up against the will of a president who praises supposedly tough motherfuckers who actually engage in casually committed murder, funded by U.S. taxpayers, but then, that's the nature of the war Americans are sleeping through.  
     Whether or not the raid in Idlib Province is a pile of shit truth-wise, bear in mind our only sources for its sequence of events are the Trump administration and the U.S. military, both entities engaged in making illegal war in Syria, a war favored by Republicans and Democrats.
     "In war, truth is the first casualty," a line attributed to Greek playwright and military veteran Aeschylus.
     Spending a few minutes in the presence of a dog gave Trump a chance to further advertise his vanquishment of an ISIS leader, now replaced by another who may be destined to die in a fake raid.  U.S. policy now and before, during Obama's eight years, favors ISIS and al-Qaeda at times, but in my way of looking at it, if you supply weapons to a terror group, it means you're on their side.  Like al-Qaeda, ISIS is sometimes useful in the thinking of Pentagon and CIA geniuses who really don't give a shit about Congresswoman and Iraq War veteran Tulsi Gabbard's alarm that the United States funds terrorists.
     Trump's report about his "anti-terror" "raid"--"like watching a movie"--hints perhaps at the fakery stage-managed by political leaders and mainstream news media propagandists, all of whom try to convince us, often successfully, that bad guys go down and our patriotic American will is ever strong.  Even Obama engaged in this kind of deception when he "attacked" a feeble man held prisoner for years, someone offered by Pakistani authorities to be killed and dumped into the sea, just as al-Baghdadi's remains were swiftly disposed of.
     If Conan the Belgian Malinois could tell us what really happened, would his account differ from the official version?

           Vic Neptune   

         
   














  

   

     Snow Globe

     Reading some of my posts the other night, I noticed a frequent use of the word just.  "I had just washed that dish," made-up example.  Just, as in very recently, in immediate past, an adverb when used like that.  As adjective, "just cause."  Latin, justus, "law, right."
     The present experience of just is seen in the expression, "Right now."  Later, describing this right now I say, "That just happened."
     Just seems an all right word to use, but it looks too like a crutch, a linking word overused because I can't think of alternatives.  Writers giving good advice have said simplification for the sake of clarity in writing is a good rule to follow.  Having done that writing style for many years, I find it more necessary now to introduce quirks.  A.E. Van Vogt, good example.  The Canadian science fiction writer had a habit of interrupting narratives to let the reader know about the positioning of some kitchen appliance on a counter, its angle in relation to a doorframe.  There's a passage like this in his novel, Children of Tomorrow.  It made no sense to me but I found it pleasurable reading.  It's an objective presentation of an interior location, of a real (in the sense of the realness of the novel's telling) kitchen in a real house in a real neighborhood, in a real city.  He shows a moment of high strength third person narrative: objective narrative, writer getting into every little thing, the toaster but also the person operating it.  Van Vogt's quirk identifies his writing style.
     Mack Reynolds, another science fiction author, has a quirk consisting of his frequent use of the word, Obviously, as in "Obviously, Mackendrick had no intention of following through with the insane proposal."  Reynolds' quirk, his obviouslys on every other page of his numerous novels, sparks the reader's inner ears, becomes funny, like the story is being narrated by a wiseass.
     Reynolds, let it be known, was a writer of sociological science fiction.  He dealt with secret agencies, spies, self-sufficient communes, future police, utopia sort-of achieved, the year 2000, a date in the titles of about a dozen of his novels, writing in much of his work of a near and different future, with strange political undercurrents and a population made apathetic by lack of want through the "negative income tax," something similar to Andrew Yang's proposal to give Americans a thousand bucks a month.  I'd prefer ten-thousand per month, Andrew, but okay.
     Do I agree with Mack Reynolds' conclusions?  Obviously.
     Yet, not.
     My thoughts on writing a science fiction novel have been affected by my having written one, Cryptopraxis (2002-2009).  I'm not careful about getting the technological aspects of a future society right, except in general terms.  I make up gadgets, branches of science, according to need.  A novel needs a backdrop, so fill in the backdrop and make it an interesting and intriguing to contemplate backdrop.  The world enfolding the characters.  Where a lot of the budget goes.
     I wrote that book four times.  For an entire year, most of 2004 and some of 2005, a period when my father was dying, I didn't write in the novel.  I wrote instead a journal of my thoughts on the War on Terror, Iraq, the Bush administration.  Begun March 6, 2003, I express my condemnation of the upcoming Iraq War.  I made the last entry in The War File on March 6, 2005.  The book is dated, but fun and informative to read, an historical book since it covers news events from that period, writing about them in that period.  How does it stand up to present day world situations?  America in 2003 was a scary mofo capable of great long-lasting damage towards other countries in a region messed with by the State Department and CIA for five decades.  America, even scarier today, with an ascendant liberal class voicing their eager support for espionage and mass murder as they applaud American exceptionalism's goals.
     Obviously, the same malefactor inhabits both timeframes.  A power complex insidiously woven through high tech, low tech, military, security industries, with American communities in every state dependent on the jobs provided and revenue generated by these corporate interests that deal in sucking up wealth and killing people.
     Obviously, this behemoth isn't moral in the ordinary sense, not looking out for "Mom and Pop" capitalists or the middle class, poor, or illegal immigrants.  Foreign brown-skinned people don't merit lives free of armed conflict, bombs, missiles, drones flying overhead day after day, waiting for targets that might be misidentified, waiting to rip apart the innocent.
     Obviously, Donald Trump doesn't rate as a decent person, but is it just to boot from office the legitimately elected president of the United States?  The Intelligence Community, with their hairsprayed tools in politics and in entertainment news media, seek to replace Trump with a politician more in line with the belief set of that subset of the Ruling Class in charge of running (badly) things on this planet.
     Obviously, the impeachment of Donald Trump saps the energy of the executive branch, absorbs Baby Boomers in a new TV show with Trump as a contestant in a game managed by scumbag politician Adam Schiff.  Shifty Schiff! Trump calls him, not one of his stronger plays with words, but Schiff is a devious climber.
     Before Russiagate, nobody outside Southern California knew of Schiff.  He now sits in the middle of the Intelligence Committee, head inquisitor of the Impeachment Process, 2019.  Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's Vice President, hasn't got this much attention on TV since 1998!  Is it possible to build a career on a lie?  Yes.
     Obviously, I don't know how to end this one because the subjects written about here don't yet have endings.

Vic Neptune  

   
   

   

     Partly Cloudy With a Chance of Tulsi

     I drifted in faith from Tulsi Gabbard's presidential run for a few weeks.  When she offered a "Medicare For Choice" plan I winced.  The "Choice" part would enable those who like the plan they have already in place to retain it, while Medicare For All would, I assume, apply to everyone else.  It seems batty to me to make such an offer.  Medicare For All would mostly be much better for people than any plan derived from a job, so why, Tulsi Gabbard, would people "choose" a shittier plan?  Unless brainwashing is part of the decision-making process.
     The health insurance industry and its lobbyists have bought politicians in this country.  The politicians (lawmakers) make laws favoring the insurance industry profiteers as they indulge their greed, American Capitalist-style.  Tulsi's position on this subject makes no sense to me--I haven't yet heard her explain it in an interview.  Most interviews with her consist of "You met with Assad..." and "You called Hillary Clinton 'Queen of the warmongers,' what's your evidence for that?"
     Gabbard, smeared by Queen Hillary herself, an American royal in exile, stands tall against her many enemies.  Youtuber Kim Iversen illuminates the Hillary-Tulsi contention in a recent video, mentioning how Senator Kamala Harris was/is Hillary's anointed successor for the 2020 election.  Past Hillary supporters (the kind with big bucks) wrote checks for Harris's campaign, hosted her in the Hamptons.  The tough-talking no nonsense former DA and Attorney General from California must've impressed the money people (among whom used to be such admirable Democratic donors as Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein).  Harris seems competent--she most definitely possesses a key Hillary Clinton trait: cruelty.
     Extending prison terms of inmates to make them fight California wildfires for a buck a day, as AG Harris did, doesn't strike me as the act of someone with normally functioning emotions.
     July 31, 2019, the second Democratic debate in Detroit.  I don't know why Tulsi Gabbard decided to "take down" Kamala Harris.  It could be due to Harris being a strong-seeming woman of color, someone close to the front end of Gabbard's race car, in the way, not in the lead, but still important to move to the side and pass.  How to fight Harris?  Tell America the truth about the Senator's past official actions.  Keeping a man unnecessarily on Death Row.  The wildfires hell she put inmates through as they deserved legally and morally, to be released from servitude, having served their time.
     Tulsi's take down left Kamala, in split screen, looking down at her podium, shaking her head, but shaking her nicely coiffed head at what?  No, Congresswoman Gabbard, that thing you just said that's true isn't true.  Those watching the debate could easily check Gabbard's "accusations" of the truth of Harris's horrid record as a "public servant" in real time, using the Internet in their phones.
     Harris afterwards, interviewed by Chris Matthews of MSNBC, provided a lame excuse, saying she wasn't concerned about what candidates not in the "first tier" (like herself) had to say about the record she's proud of, her accomplishments stand for themselves (must be a drag to be famous and uncomfortable at the same time).  But anyone bothering to look up what Tulsi said could see that Kamala Harris is, essentially, a brutally minded cop.
     Within a month, the magic began to work.  Tulsi has been ahead of Kamala in the polls, making Harris no longer "first tier."
     If Harris is Hillary Clinton's preferred candidate, the latter has picked a loser.  It's funny to look back at stories from early this year, when Harris was preparing to announce her run.  Like Jeb Bush, Harris is put forth in these stories, as in one I'll discuss from CNN, as virtually anointed as the Democratic nominee.  Hillary 2.0.  After Gabbard's revealing statements on live television about her opponent Harris in Detroit last July, the Clinton machine has been aiming to destroy Tulsi, who really isn't a threat in terms of winning the nomination.  It must be revenge on Hillary Clinton's part.  She operates on the intellectual level of a warlord character on Xena: Warrior Princess.
     Delusion plays a part, too, in the pushing forth of Harris by Clinton and her surrogates in mainstream news media.  A video story from CNN dated last January covers the power of the sorority sisters of Alpha Kappa Alpha.  Thousands of these women are, we're told, likely to vote Harris, one of their own.  I didn't know sorority sisters are robots, but I guess that when it comes to presidential electoral political thinking they're uniformly behind the one candidate who got hazed in their house decorated with Greek letters.
     The CNN interviewer, a young Asian woman, speaks to four or five "AKA" sisters who attended school and lived in the same sorority with Kamala Harris.  We're assured, without any evidence offered, that Alpha Kappa Alpha is for Harris.  An image of sisters holding up copies of Harris's book seems to reveal a strong voting bloc of about fourteen affluent Black women.  We are to assume that among the thousands of Alpha Kappa Alpha sisters none of them are Republicans, in spite of the likelihood of some being rich.
     Even in January 2019, six months before Tulsi Gabbard humiliated an Alpha Kappa Alpha alumna who wants to rule the world, CNN and other mainstream outlets had an unrealistic view of the Senator's chances, producing slick video segments amounting to commercials for a woman with a heart of iron, just like Hillary Clinton.  For it to be convincing, the notion that Harris is electable to high office beyond her current job as Senator should not be dependent on the devotion of her sorority sisters.  Most people have no contact with sororities and fraternities.  Most people have never been served food, or given money, in the Hamptons.  Kamala Harris will not win the nomination, much less the presidency, because the American people don't like her.  Still, she makes it to the debates.  Tulsi will be in the fifth one.  It would be gratifying to hear her take another well-placed shot at Harris, who, like in the second debate, will stand like George Custer--an earlier American with presidential ambitions--before someone with a greater cause sweeps her feet out from underneath by telling the truth.
     Politicians who get hurt by the truth should be shit out of the body politic like the tapeworms they are.  Their lack of personal character is deadly to the world.

Vic Neptune

   





















   

   
       

     Hillary McCarthy

     The intelligence community is trying to take over the government by taking down Trump, another way of saying the intelligence community is trying to take over the world.  Aided in this doomed to fail endeavor by the Democratic Party establishment, war hawks all, by mainstream news media, too, this long-game effort received a boost when the Soviet Union ended in 1991, the year before Bill Clinton's win established neoliberalism as standard empire-building practice in a new "unipolar" world.
     Clinton's wife, Hillary, had served on the Walmart board of directors, a position she did not receive for championing unions and a federal minimum wage increase.  In 1964, Hillary Rodham was a "Goldwater Girl," i.e., a Republican.  Her political loyalties, like Donald Trump's, have fluctuated according to her need to seem likable, enlightened, and, these days, relevant.
     Her true nature to be unpleasant reveals itself whenever she resurfaces, as she has done recently, making talk show appearances with Rachel Maddow and on The View.  She co-authored a book with her daughter, Chelsea, but that's overshadowed now by the slander she's leveled against two of her enemies.
     On October 17, 2019, Clinton was interviewed by former Obama strategist David Plouffe on his podcast.  She said, "I'm not making any predictions, but I think they've got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third party candidate.  She's the favorite of the Russians."  Clinton added, incredibly, that Jill Stein is a "Russian asset."
     Hillary Clinton gave no evidence for these accusations.  She must feel her august presence in the American political establishment is enough to convince us of the truth of these batshit crazy statements.  Her spokesman, Nick Merrill, backed up the accusation against Gabbard, saying, "If the nesting doll fits."
     Nick Merrill, according to Ronan Farrow in his new book about famous men in the entertainment and news industries who rape women and get away with it, blocked Farrow from an interview with Hillary Clinton--for an unrelated article on a foreign policy subject.  Farrow's research for his book had identified sexual predator Harvey Weinstein as a major donor to Hillary Clinton in the past.  Nick Merrill, thus, isn't a Russian asset, but he is an enabler of a serial rapist on behalf of Hillary Clinton.
     After Clinton's remarks were condemned by some Democrats and Republicans, with even an establishment journalist like Erin Burnett of CNN shaking her head in disbelief, Merrill demonstrated his cravenness further by tweeting, "She doesn't say the Russians are grooming anyone.  It was a question about Republicans."
     No, Nick, she was referring to Russians--were you in a coma during Russiagate?
     Gabbard in 2016 resigned her position as vice chair of the DNC and endorsed Bernie Sanders, a slight that Hillary Clinton, it's clear now, has never forgiven.  Jill Stein's one and a half million votes in 2016 (mine among them) boil inside Hillary Clinton, too, as she and her stalwart supporters continue to believe the Green party candidate miraculously cost her the election.  Clinton received nearly 2.9 million votes more than Trump.  Had Stein voters picked Clinton instead, the disgruntled loser of two presidential races would still have been nearly 1.4 million votes ahead of Trump.  More telling, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson received nearly 4.5 million votes, yet, he's never incurred the wrath of Hillary and her most fervent supporters.  Sexism?
     A thwarted politician filled with cold rage should never be anywhere near a position of authority, but MSNBC, CNN, and The New York Times have given Clinton a pass.  Karen Finney, a longtime Clintonite, argued lamely, "She [Tulsi Gabbard] hasn't denied being a Russian asset."
     As with Russiagate, a lack of logic underlies the arguments of Gabbard's most vicious critics.  Congresswoman Gabbard has a top security clearance because she serves on the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committees, receiving weekly unclassified and classified briefings dealing with national security and foreign policy matters, just the kind of Russian asset you'd expect to be entrusted with U.S. government secrets.  Wow!  It's like The Manchurian Candidate!
     She is, furthermore, Major Gabbard of the Hawaii Army National Guard, a decorated Iraq War veteran.  Hillary Clinton's former friend Donald Trump insulted a veteran "for getting captured," John McCain, as well as Gold Star parents whose son sacrificed his life to save his fellow soldiers.  For these jabs, Trump was rightly condemned.  By contrast, no one defending Hillary Clinton's latest outrageous statements feels shame about smearing the veteran Tulsi Gabbard.
     It's as if Team Hillary has no principles or integrity.
     Their inability to explain how a politician so highly placed in government could be a Russian asset, i.e. a traitor, reflects their failure, ultimately, to establish with Russiagate how a U.S. President, Donald Trump, could be the same species of sinister tool of a foreign adversarial power.
     With her elevated place in American politics--former First Lady, former Senator, former Secretary of State--Hillary Clinton has the influential voice to call for a thorough investigation of Russia's plot to make Gabbard quit the Democratic Party and steal votes from the Democratic nominee, like with Jill Stein, although not with Gary Johnson--never mind that bit of illogic.
     Doesn't Hillary Clinton have a duty to do more than simply make an evidence-free accusation on a podcast?  Could this Russian conspiracy extend to the U.S. military?  Should Congress investigate the Hawaii Army National Guard?  Are Clinton and her surrogates prepared to take it to the next level?
     They're not.
     Tulsi Gabbard tweeted a reply, calling Clinton "Queen of warmongers," accusing her of being at the heart of the rot of the Democratic Party.  This reaction received condemnation from Hillary supporters.  Joy Behar of The View, as stupid about politics as her co-hostess Meghan McCain, except from the Democratic Party side, said the "warmongers" line didn't sit well with her.  Right, the Secretary of State who, in 2011, embarked on a successful effort to destroy Libya and helped foment the Syrian Civil War isn't a warmonger.  A woman who has called former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak a friend doesn't "coddle dictators," as Trump is so often accused of doing.
     I must employ some sarcasm in this piece to help me get through an account dealing with a woman I genuinely hate.
     Jimmy Dore on his YouTube show displayed side by side two pictures from 2005.  Tulsi Gabbard, Hawaii Army National Guard, stationed in the Sunni Triangle, next to a photo of Bill and Hillary Clinton at Donald and Melania Trump's wedding, laughing it up.  One of the four in the wedding picture believed Bush and Cheney about imaginary weapons of mass destruction, then voted to send soldiers like Tulsi Gabbard to Iraq.  Hillary Clinton now slanders, without offering evidence, someone she sent to fight a war founded on a lie.  Lying, though, is first nature with the woman who used the promotion of a book written with her daughter to further glorify her ego, a restless mass inside her brain that may yet convince her to run for president one last time.
     It's weird that Hillary never bitches about the electoral college giving 304 votes to Trump while she received 227--the real reason she lost, not because of Jill Stein voters like me, although had I been responsible for her failure I'd be pleased with the thought.

        Vic Neptune   

     The Elevators Are Not Yet Operational, Check Back Later

     Punta del Este, Uruguayan resort city, year round population 9,280; a component of its skyline an  incomplete cylinder, in construction since 2012, TRUMP affixed (proudly?) to this collection of future condominiums.  The resort attracts thousands of Argentines, Mark Zuckerberg, and Naomi Campbell (the former supermodel's name came up in relation to Epstein/G. Maxwell, if you'll recall).
     The Independent UK describes Punta del Este as "Miami in 1970."
     Oh, a city of expatriates?  Organized crime imported and supported by intelligence agencies?
     Miami in the 1960s and 1970s sheltered a concentration of anti-Castro Cuban exiles plotting and trying to overthrow Fidel Castro with CIA and Mafia assistance.
     The Punta del Este Trump cylinder was to have been finished in 2016.  Ivanka Trump attended the groundbreaking ceremony in 2012, no doubt smiling and saying optimistic things about South American real estate.  No work, currently, is happening at the building site.  Those who reserved condos years ago are fucked by the situation but probably have enough money to live elsewhere, comfortably.
     The president's second son, Eric Trump, sitting in a chair before an audience somewhere just this month, claimed that in November 2016, right after his father's victory, The Trump Organization halted every deal they were then involved in.  Is that why Uruguay's Trump edifice is empty, the wiring not even completed?  Is the quandary over this building's annoying existence, taking up space pointlessly, a result of incompetence?  Is it rather an indication of Donald Trump's true net worth?
     Forbes released their "400" ranking of the richest four-hundred people, putting Trump at 275.  A weak showing for someone so convinced of his importance when it comes to money.  He's worth 3.6 billion dollars, with around 350 million in cash on hand.  Write to him and ask for a handout, he can afford it.
     Surprising everyone, reportedly--not even the Defense Department was notified, reportedly-- Trump withdrew U.S. troops from the northeastern third of Syria, locations of that nation's oil and wheat-growing regions.  U.S. policy under Obama and Trump directed the U.S. military to withhold from Syrian citizens wheat and oil, part of sanctions against the Assad government.  Is that evil, or what?
     In mainstream news media-speak, Trump has "betrayed the Kurds," something they should by now be used to, since the U.S. has, according to a recent Intercept article, betrayed the Kurds eight times.  Two examples: for Bill Clinton, good Kurds were in Iraq, but it was okay with him if Kurds in Turkey were slaughtered according to the same kind of Ankara-based policies in evidence now.  George H.W. Bush encouraged Kurds and Shia Muslims to rise up against Saddam Hussein, implying strong American military backing, but fucked them as surely as Donald Trump fucked his Kurds.
     Mainstream news media brains suddenly care about Kurds after not mentioning them for years.  Meanwhile, an estimated 11,000 captured ISIS fighters from "fifty different countries" may escape due to Turkey's invasion of Syria, its military and mercenaries given the green light by Trump during a phone call with Erdogan.  Trump, in his typical glib and generalizing way, claims that ISIS "has been defeated."  Not if 11,000 of them are cut loose in a new war zone trafficked with Turkish tanks, artillery, and Kurd-killing soldiers who no longer have time to guard fighter-prisoners working for a terror organization sponsored by Saudi Arabia and Qatar...and the United States.
     Release of ISIS prisoners, a wanted side effect of Turkey's invasion?  Turkey, along with the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Qatar, has supported ISIS, transporting equipment, arms, and transporting the terror group's recruits to fight Syrian government forces and their allies.
     The Kurdish group threatened by Turkey has made an alliance with Assad.  I saw a Kurd in a CNN video holding up a photo of the Syrian president.  I would say, Don't place your faith in politicians, but who do they trust at this time?  The U.S.?  Is it not obvious the Kurds have been a game piece for U.S. foreign policymakers for a century and more?
     Turkey has been a NATO member since 1952, meaning that NATO is attacking Kurds in Syria and releasing thousands of ISIS fighters back into the Endless War.  Washington-based pundits, journalists, and politicians speaking out for many yeas against Assad "the dictator," still smearing Tulsi Gabbard for even meeting with him, now express dismay about ISIS fighters escaping from Kurdish captivity.  They don't say that Assad, Iranian and Russian forces have been fighting ISIS, while the U.S. tends to give them a pass, arming them at times.  Which side does more good regarding ISIS?
     When Saddam Hussein was accused of plotting with al-Qaeda to attack the United States on 9/11, a lie put forth in December 2001 by Vice President Cheney himself on Meet the Press, the falsehood was used in part to promote the upcoming Iraq War.  
     What you believe influences how you act.  If you believe you inhabit a country incapable of doing wrong, a maker of occasional mistakes (like arming Contras); a country you believe is based on fairness, racial equality ("Blue Lives Matter!"), righteous warfare when war is made--which is all the fucking time--and collateral damage isn't a moral subject for you because you've heard authority figures say, "We don't target civilians," then the real events concerning the world, punished daily by the American Empire, lack force, watered down as they are by news hosts and government spokespersons speaking of America like it's a spoiled diplomat's child, sometimes murdering and vandalizing, but not maliciously.
     Real malice, present in ruling class attitudes towards the poor, the needy, and millions trapped in war zones created by the U.S., reveals itself as an ellipsis in mainstream news media when made-up beautifully attired women and men focus their words and unoriginal thoughts on the impeachment inquiry and Russiagate--now on an aspect (the Kurdish angle) of the eight year old Syria war started by the Obama administration, tweaked by Trump into a "betrayal" of people fucked over by the same U.S. policies accepted and promoted by the mainstream news media for decades.
     The failed Trump tower in Uruguay seems to me to indicate the President' divided attentions.  Can one be a big businessman and the so-called leader of the free world?  Eric Trump still wants us to believe his father doesn't try to profit from his businesses.  According to Forbes that's true, or
Eric and his brother Donald are doing a lousy job running the Organization, since their father is down 400 million dollars since taking office in January 2017.
     As the Democrats seeking his impeachment "walk and chew gum at the same time," none of them seem interested in advertising their own foreign policy ideas toward Syria which have contributed to that nation's miseries.  They applauded Trump's two cruise missile strikes launched because of non-existent chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian government, more likely coming from or manufactured as false flag events by "rebels," i.e. terrorists funded by the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.
     How many Democratic politicians know that the War on Terror, Russiagate and now Ukrainegate are scams to keep Endless War a reality, and a profitable one?  I would guess the answer is, all of them, whether they're opposed to the carnage or not.  They're most definitely fine with the lies when it comes to Syria, although Tulsi Gabbard stands out as the sole truth teller on the subject.
   

Vic Neptune

     The Dumbest Motherfuckers in Washington, D.C.

     Donald Trump had a phone conversation on July 25, 2019, with the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.  Zelensky flatters Trump quite a bit.  Zelensky wants more "Javelins," a "man-portable" anti-tank missile resembling a barbell, manufactured by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, costing $174,000 apiece.  It fires an eighteen and a half pound warhead to a distance of nearly three miles, using an infrared homing guidance system.  If this information gives you a hard-on or makes you wet, a job in cable news punditry might be the best career goal for you.
     Trump, before this phone call, ordered a hold on weapons deliveries to Ukraine, a nation wrapped up since 2014 in war with Russia.  Scolded on MSNBC by Joe Scarborough and other concerned pundits and opinion makers, Trump is supposedly playing his usual games, probably due to his "bromance" with Vladimir Putin, with Ukraine's ability to fight a predatory nation invading its sovereign territory.
     He's holding back weapons from a democracy fighting the evil Russia which interfered in our 2016 election!!!
     The proliferation of Neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine since the U.S.-backed overthrow of that nation's government five years ago is not mentioned by Scarborough and his friends, including, this morning,
human reptile Bill Kristol.  After two years and eight months of impeachment talk by Trump's ineffectual political enemies, the July 25 phone call, transcript released yesterday, serves House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi with the smoking cap gun she's been waiting for.
     The Washington Post yesterday published a story titled, "Pelosi, top Democrats favor quick, narrow Trump impeachment probe focused on Ukraine"
     While some may cry, "Yes!  Finally!" my response is "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!" a scream of anguish as I react to the utter stupidity of this harebrained move.  Its only logical purpose would be to distract American voters further from what their concerns really are: Medicare for All, clean water, environmental protections, a nationwide jobs program, ending foreign wars, abolishing student and medical debt, addressing climate catastrophe with real solutions acted upon within the next ten years, an end to spying on innocent people, the shining of light on the depredations of the intelligence community as they lie and lie and lie in the service of destructive and hidden agendas, to name just a few needs actual Americans have, rather than a useful interest in political theater played out by cretins who aren't doing shit for their constituents.
     Bill Clinton's impeachment proceedings in 1998 and 1999 led to his highest approval rating: 73%.
I just looked up this tidbit, it took me ten seconds--Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues could do the same and do the math.  It's likely that impeaching Trump will boost his popularity, and not just with his base.  Giving a showman like Trump a chance to play the victim is a huge mistake, like how the Russiagate fiasco, a two and a half year imbroglio based on lies concocted by intelligence professionals like John Brennan, also boosted the president's ratings.
     The idiocy displayed by these out of touch, selfish and greedy, inward-looking morons, the Democratic leadership, reaches an apex I failed to imagine until yesterday when I read the Post article written by Mike DeBonis and Rachel Bade, both of whom, using the typical neutral tone of journalese, neglect to mention that the Democratic politician subjects of their piece are essentially brain-dead circus freaks.
     Trump allegedly "pressed" Zelensky to work with Attorney General William Barr and Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani "to investigate Joe Biden."
     This, in relation to Biden's son Hunter, who from 2014 to April 2019 received $50,000 per month (a total of about three million dollars in salary despite having no experience in the energy field) serving on the board of Ukrainian oil and natural gas company Burisma Holdings.  Vice President Biden and some Western European leaders got on the Ukrainian government's case to fire Viktor Shokin, that nation's chief prosecutor.  Shokin claims he was fired because of his investigation of Burisma Holdings.  Did Vice President Biden help gang up on Shokin because of his son Hunter's involvement with Ukraine's largest energy company?  Apparently, that's Trump's view, or theory.  Members of Obama's administration reportedly worried about Hunter Biden's employment by Burisma, fearing conflict of interest.
     Last July, Trump froze $391 million in military aid to Ukraine.  There followed the Zelensky phone call and an alleged quid pro quo ("You investigate the Bidens, I'll unfreeze your people-killers").
     A curious Hunter Biden connection: he was a member of the Chairman's Advisory Council for the National Democratic Institute, or NDI.  The Chairman of this Neoliberal outfit is Madeleine Albright, the former Secretary of State who said the mass murder of half a million Iraqi children by the Clinton administration (which she was a part of) "was worth it," it being the weakening of Saddam Hussein's authority through punishing sanctions.  Funded by such democracy-destroying entities as the National Endowment for Democracy, the Agency for International Development, and the State Department, NDI is just one more example of how Satan probably appears to be a handsome man.
     Pelosi called a meeting after the Zelensky-Trump phone call transcript was released, not redacted, by the White House.  Some Democrats attending the meeting spoke anonymously afterward, getting the word out about their new batshit crazy tactic on how Trump is finally going to be put in his place.      For committing mass murder on a daily basis in our numerous war theaters, seventy Afghan pine nut farmers drone-bombed just recently?  No.  For locking up Latin American children and denying them proper health care and hygiene maintenance?  Absolutely not.  For gutting environmental regulations, including clean water standards which will damage and kill Americans over time?
     No, it's that phone call!  Trump seemed to be getting Zelensky to do him a favor by digging up info on the Burisma thing with Hunter Biden and his dad for the sake of gaining leverage against a possible opponent in the 2020 presidential election.
     Quoting the Post article: "Democrats said the evidence was incriminating enough--and easy enough for voters to understand--to proceed with their impeachment inquiry, and soon.  'Strike while the iron's hot,' said one individual [a blacksmith in his spare time? sarcastic comment mine], summarizing the sentiment.  Democrats said they could move quickly on impeachment and act by the end of the year."
     Pelosi, according to these gossips, wants to move quickly, keep it out of the courts.  Other Trump-related investigations currently occupy those courts, moving with the sludgy slowness typical of inquiries into the criminal behavior patterns of the psychopaths running the world.
     The politicians in Pelosi's meeting decided that "narrowing the investigation...in terms of political messaging, made sense."
     Hey America!  Get excited about political messaging!
     House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (who, like Pelosi, is against Medicare for All, thus, the enemy of 99 percent of Americans) spoke to reporters, "held up the rough transcript of the Trump-Zelensky phone call and said that the House would focus on its contents in the coming days and weeks."
     Good thing they're not wasting taxpayers' money!
     He also said that "urging a foreign leader to intervene to influence an upcoming election...was simple for the public to understand."
     A simple subject for a simple people, who I guess don't care about their leaders screwing around with something that sounds like Russiagate 2.0.  There's enough in this to put many more millions of dollars in Rachel Maddow's bank account.  Once again, Trump, an obviously crooked man, will battle opponents in cable news and in the intelligence community (a "whistleblower" from that community of proven deceivers with their own agendas broke this story).  This story will, like the impeachment process, go on for a long time.  Even if it just lasts for a few months that's too long.  We don't need politicians of either party wasting their time on something not likely to pass in the Republican-controlled Senate.  We don't need President Pence!
     This is a gift to the intelligence community, the same crafty media-savvy dealers in mendacity trying to run the entire show.  It's a gift to mainstream news media and independent media not seeing it for what it is.  Russiagate was attempt number one to unseat Trump.  Ukrainegate is number two, done on behalf, it appears, of Joe Biden.  If Biden becomes president, the intelligence and militaristic forces running things will have a mentally foggy puppet to serve as the appearance of a world leader, brought out now and then to make announcements or pardon turkeys for Thanksgiving.
     Nancy Pelosi, when she made her announcement to the nation about the commencement of the impeachment process, looked like she's filled with embalming fluid.  Biden is losing his mind.  Mitch McConnell, old and evil as ever, is nevertheless sharp.  He won't allow anyone in his caucus to vote for impeachment without making them suffer grave political consequences.  The Democratic establishment, as in 2016, seeks actively, daily, to erase Bernie Sanders from American awareness, a hard thing to do, but CNN and MSNBC are clearly attempting this, manipulating poll numbers to make it seem the Vermont senator doesn't have the popularity of Biden or Elizabeth Warren.
     Congressman Adam Schiff, one of Russiagate's main propagandists--thus, a man who's boosted his career and public profile from that lie--says at the article's conclusion, "'This is how a mafia boss talks...the president didn't need to say, "That's a nice country you have.  It would be a shame if something happened to it."  'Because this was clear from the conversation.  There is no quid pro quo necessary to betray your country or your oath of office.'"
     It's not clear from the conversation, Schiff.  He calls Trump a traitor.  If he really is that, Schiff should be looking for a safe place to hide, but he isn't, since he knows he can speak that way, just as he did for the two years he helped inflict Russiagate on his fellow citizens.  Russiagate, and Schiff, along with Maddow and so many contemptible others in politics and the news media, wasted not only millions of dollars in taxpayers' money, but more importantly, they wasted our time.  The Democrats are about to do it again, likely producing another zero, benefitting conspiracy theorizers like Rachel Maddow and Adam Schiff, while feeding the president's bruised ego, fueling his 2020 campaign with numerous subjects to blast out of his mouth as he finds sympathy with his base, and with those fed up with the Democratic Party as represented by a Pelosi-guided leadership with the worst political instincts I've ever witnessed.
     Trump's enemies on the so-called Left have no problem with his sanctions against Venezuela and Iran, policies killing thousands of innocent people denied medicine.  As Scarborough complained, it's outrageous that Ukraine had a hold put on their weapons deliveries.  The MSNBC morning host and former Trump friend doesn't seem to care, or know, that Neo-Nazis will receive some of those weapons, as they comprise a significant part of the Ukrainian Army.  Thus, does Lockheed Martin fund the philosophical descendants of Hitler.
     The only Democratic politician running for president who has so far suggested the Zelensky-Trump phone call isn't worth an impeachment process, due partly to the divisiveness it will bring to the nation, is Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard.
     Tulsi 2020.

                                                                             Vic Neptune
   








  

     Rachel Maddow, Poisoner of Minds

     Last night on MSNBC, Russia hysteria peddler Rachel Maddow did a story about Ukraine, a country in focus now among anti-Trump news media overpaid professionals.  To any observant news consumer, the graphic behind Maddow's head, a stylized illustration of the White House backgrounded by the yellow and blue Ukrainian flag, should seem familiar as a propaganda method employed by one of the most deceitful sellout American journalists.
     From the shock of Trump's election in November 2016 until Special Counsel Mueller's July 2019 Congressional testimony not confirming Russiagate, Maddow and her on-camera MSNBC colleagues labored daily and nightly to convince their viewers of the president's supposed connections to Russian authorities meddling in the U.S. election process, a criminal activity done extensively, in actuality, by Republican and Democratic players behind the scenes for many decades.
     Congress in 2015 allowed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address that body with the goal of convincing American lawmakers to knock down President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran.  When it comes to allowing foreign leaders to directly influence U.S. policies in such a naked way, members of Congress have demonstrated they have no principles.  Obama got his way on Iran, fortunately, but Netanyahu had only to wait for Trump, the president who will soon send thousands of U.S. troops to "defend" Saudi Arabia after its oil infrastructure was attacked, allegedly, by Iran.
     Who has more influence on U.S. elections and foreign policy?  Vladimir Putin?  Or Netanyahu and the Likud Party?  A forbidden topic, as was easily seen when Congresswoman Omar (Democrat, Minnesota) tweeted that "It's the Benjamins, baby!" meaning the influence AIPAC buys, causing, among other things, apparently free-minded lawmakers to say the sentence, "Israel has the right to defend herself," over and over again, neglecting to mention that every country has that right, including Yemen, from where the attack on Saudi Arabia's oil production probably originated, using Iranian weaponry, just as Saudi warplanes come from the United States.
     Rachel Maddow, MSNBC's highest-rated propagandist (although with a significant dip in those numbers after Mueller failed to confirm her nutcase theories) seems to have switched her keen lying mind to UKRAINE.  President Trump in a phone call with that nation's leader asked about Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who received thousands of dollars from a natural gas company while his father was vice president.  Joe Biden pressured the Ukrainian government to not look into his son's dealings with the company, threatening to withhold a U.S. aid package.
     Okay, Joe Biden is crooked.  That doesn't surprise me.  Mainstream news media ignores Biden's controversial policy positions and decisions, but focuses on Trump's attempt at casual opposition research, causing some on cable news to demand impeachment.  Trump's sending thousands of troops to Saudi Arabia (a prelude to war with Iran, possibly) doesn't bother these same out of touch idiots any more than when Obama drone-struck the innocent sixteen year old son of an AQAP propagandist, defending his homicidal act by blaming the son for his father's actions.  Murder is fine when you're a world leader, but trying to dig up dirt on a political opponent who may run against you next year is a violation of decorum, even though Hillary Clinton did opposition research about Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort's dealings with Ukraine.
     These shenanigans, so typical of high-level leaders on this planet, have nothing to do with the concerns of ordinary people.  The world is on a downward spiral regarding the rapidly changing climate.  Not even the Democrats and anti-Trump Neoconservatives, the pathetic so-called #Resistance, demonstrate any real concern about the world's likely fate, if something productive isn't done very soon.  Instead, "He shouldn't be discussing Joe Biden with a foreign leader on the phone," is supposed to make me mad.
     If, like Rachel Maddow, I made thirty thousand a day, would I get so used to swallowing my principles it becomes fun to put on a performance five nights a week, babbling conspiracy theories about Putin's skill as a puppet master, his dastardliness in meddling in Ukraine, never talking about how the Obama administration (including Biden) overthrew that nation's legitimately elected government in 2014, an act causing Russia's moves in Eastern Ukraine?
     "Earning" her thirty thousand per episode, Maddow now makes up shit about Ukraine and Trump, an image of the White House against a background of the yellow and blue Ukrainian flag, while ignoring that it would be more relevant to have a Saudi flag in its place, or an Israeli one.  Those two countries, though, are recipients of massive U.S. military aid.  Comcast, MSNBC's parent company, receives significant support from the military industrial complex.
     Trump's alleged threat to Ukraine to withhold a military aid package, supposedly because he's so friendly with Putin, strikes Democratic politicians and "liberal" pundits on MSNBC and CNN as yet another outrageous impeachable offense.
     Why?  Putin!  Putin!  But really, the money!  The money frothing from the arms industry benefitting the corporation paying Maddow's ridiculously huge salary.  Imagine getting paid 11 million dollars a year to lie to the American people five nights a week, as she did with Russiagate.
     Like those in the wretched journalistic class of contemporary mainstream news, Rachel Maddow will someday, in histories written about these times, be regarded with the same disgust as Senator Joseph McCarthy.

                                                                               Vic Neptune

     Donald Trump's Greatest Act As President

     Someone outside the White House shot video of a just fired national security advisor, John Bolton.      On the phone, he calls his wife to let her know he'll be home early; or maybe he's informing Benjamin Netanyahu it's time to take a definitive step towards war with Iran.  Sure enough, yesterday a big oil refinery in Saudi Arabia was struck by ordnance fired by drones reportedly from Yemen.  The Kingdom's oil production is down, gas prices may rise, Iran gets blamed by the State Department and its chief, Mike Pompeo.  No evidence for Iran's involvement has been presented, a sure sign U.S. authorities are telling the truth.  The Trump administration insists on Saudi Arabia's "right to defend herself," a nonsensical statement attributed in the past only to Israel.
     Every country has that right, though, including Yemen.
     When Trump spoke publicly of withdrawing U.S. troops and other personnel from Syria, false flag Sarin attacks attributed to the Assad government occurred miraculously, deepening American involvement in that nation's civil war.  Trump's rash words and actions regarding U.S. foreign policy tend to produce strange results.  Fire John Bolton, a man salivating over the prospect of war with Iran for many years, and a few days later Saudi Arabia gets hit hard where it hurts them the most.  Never mind that the types of drones used in the attack don't cost more than $20,000 apiece, are small and hard to stop--or even to detect--once entering enemy airspace, or that the Houthis have been using drones in their war, including as assassination weapons, long enough to have become skilled operators.  I'm reminded of the typically racist idea that the "less sophisticated" and poorer enemy is incapable of using effective means of fighting back.  Tell that to every brain-damaged U.S. military survivor of attacks in Iraq utilizing improvised explosive devices.
     Blaming the refinery attack on Iran--supporter of the Houthis--follows on a series of lame accusations this year by U.S. officials attempting to convince the public of what would amount to truly idiotic steps taken by the Iranian government, such as shooting a missile at a Japanese oil tanker in the Persian Gulf while Shinzō Abe, Japan's prime minister, was meeting with Iran's leaders.  That provocation, not by Iran, had to have been the work of another state actor desiring war with Iran, i.e. the United States and/or Israel.
     The Houthis have taken credit for the drone attack.  If they did it, as seems most likely to me, their strategy fits with a practice of asymmetric warfare.  Attack Saudi Arabia's economic juice machine using unmanned aerial vehicles capable of reaching their targets deep inside enemy territory.  Iranian officials, supporting the Houthis, may approve of this drone attack's success, but after sixty-six years of being fucked with by the U.S., they know too about the ricochet effects of such actions against American "interests."
     The Saudi war against Yemen, it should be obvious by now, is a failure for the former country.  Four years and five months of bombing, killing, looting, torturing, blockading, and causing widespread disease and malnutrition have yielded, for America's firm oil ally nothing but an opportunity to practice sadism with U.S. corporate-made weapons.  That we Americans have linked ourselves for so many decades to this shitshow called Saudi Arabia speaks loudly of our willingness to allow mass murder and plunder for the sake of maintaining a planet-killing addiction to fossil fuels.  If the pumps in Saudi Arabia were to yield no oil starting tomorrow, Trump and Pompeo wouldn't give half a fuck about the Kingdom.  Trump would participate in no more sword dances, would rather consider bombing Mecca to satisfy his Evangelical base.
     Hyperbole, I know, but the lack of actual concern and compassion by American leaders for the people of all classes in the Middle East is real.  The same goes for how they really regard Israel, a country just caught spying on the White House.  This shouldn't surprise anyone, though it's in the news these days.  When you see world leaders assembled just realize that all those motherfuckers are using each other.
     John Bolton will land on his feet.  He insists he resigned, that Trump did not fire him.  It doesn't matter, actually, but it's important to know that the general view among Democrats and MSNBC is Bolton-sympathetic.  A man who helped cause the Iraq War.  A man who said, before 9/11, that he'd like to see a plane fly into the U.N. building.  A man who actively, just this year, tried to overthrow the government of Venezuela.
     Bolton, from the standpoint of establishment Democrats, is the norm of American political thought.  This makes these Democrats, including their current leaders Pelosi and Schumer, right wing ideologues and apologists for aggressive warfare against countries, like Iran, that are no threat to the United States, even as Israel, an ally, spies on us.  I'm not being naive--I know that spy agencies of the world, generally, do their shenanigans like horny men at an orgy.  Still, how about some honesty on these subjects?  Democrats and the mainstream news media spent two and a half years hyping a threat from Russia, supposedly in league with Donald Trump to steal the 2016 election.  Last July, Robert Mueller finally debunked his own multi-million dollar investigation, finding no links between Trump's campaign and Russian operatives seeking to influence that election, turning Hillary Clinton into a martyr most people don't give a fuck about.
     Meanwhile, Israeli operatives spy on what goes on in the White House.  Even in the official version of what happened on 9/11, fifteen of the nineteen hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, and in any case, that nation's prominent Wahhabi sect has a lot of influence over supposed U.S. enemies like ISIS, a group fought against by Iranian forces and Assad's government in Syria.  Who the fuck is the enemy?
     According to Pelosi, Schumer, and "liberal" or "left" voices in the mainstream media, the enemy is not John Bolton, whose decisions and influence have helped cause the deaths, injuries, and displacements of hundreds of thousands of people.  Bolton's departure from Trump's side has, according to these concerned standard bearers of liberty, "caused chaos," for the president's lack of self-control prevents him from maintaining an all-important continuity in his cabinet.  Having even a vicious maniac like Bolton as national security advisor, a man who can't even perceive how stupid-looking his mustache looks, is regarded by MSNBC pundits as a sign of a steady hand, someone to counter Trump's childlike jumpiness.  I guess it was a show of wisdom that Hitler kept Heinrich Himmler around for so long.
     Finally, the typically bad news media coverage of the Saudi oil refinery attack covered the aggressive use of relatively cheap drones, but failed to mention the United States as it uses drone warfare on a far vaster and deadlier scale, with the construction even now of a huge base in Niger to cover Africa's spaces, a continent not even discussed by the same news people as a battleground.
     John Bolton will continue to make appearances, no doubt, on Fox News Channel, but I expect him to also appear on MSNBC with greater frequency than in the past.  He's part of the #Resistance now.  He's serious.  He was one of the "adults" in the White House.  An adult, like General Westmoreland in Vietnam, I guess--a goddamned fool in charge of a murder machine.

                                                                              Vic Neptune
   
     
     
   
















   
           

     For the Plus 70 Crowd

     Joseph "Joe" Biden, a semi-retired politician, wants a go at the presidency.  Once he got back into the news media spotlight this year by announcing his candidacy, he was aided by those in mainstream journalism who apparently breathed in relief at the prospect of a regular, familiar, all-American, trustworthy, up front smiling fellow who says cute words like "malarkey."
     I heard one Biden supporter, a man of about thirty, say that Biden's use of the word "malarkey" was a selling point for him.  I guess this voter wants a politician who will say that word and really mean it!
     Malarkey, of unknown origin but dating from the 1920s (the decade some of Biden's supporters were born in), means "nonsense," and "meaningless talk."  Malarkey can mean what comes from the mouths of politicians when they're campaigning, the policies they promise to enact but don't follow up on.
     Donald Trump, for instance, with all of his campaign talk about working on America's deteriorating and dangerous infrastructure--roads and bridges especially--used malarkey when boasting of his prowess in addressing this vital issue dealt with competently by Franklin Roosevelt's WPA program.  Infrastructure work requires government spending, Donald.  Government spending is made possible through taxes, Donald.  If the wealthy and mega-corporations aren't taxed sensibly, and much of the rest of available funds go to a military enormous enough to at least attempt to conquer the planet, where does infrastructure spending come from?
     "How are you gonna pay for that?" big government skeptics ask, whether it's about Medicare For All, free college, or infrastructure revitalization.
     The answer is, these programs would be paid for just as ordinary Americans have to pay to grow Jeff Bezos's treasure pile, as he, and his Amazon corporation, are chronically undertaxed or not taxed at all.  This insane arrangement is encouraged and supported by Republicans and establishment Democrats, all of them rich, all of them benefitting from Trump's tax cuts for billionaires and millionaires.  Curiously, among this group is Joe Biden, warrior of the status quo.
     Mainstream news media do not address these important issues; rather, they spend too much time practicing malarkey, including the malarkey that Biden could win the presidency in spite of his "gaffes," which are looking more like a rapidly advancing case of "senioritis."
     If you want to vote for someone because he reminds you of the old man who lives down the hallway in your nursing home, that's your business, but these times call for an alert, intelligent, and compassionate leader, not someone vainly checking a box on his bucket list.
     Biden, addressing a group somewhere, holding a microphone, hesitated when referring to Barack Obama, saying, "President...my boss."  Is it wrong of me to suggest he's suffering from age-related cognitive difficulties because of this, and other instances of verbal stumbling?  Do you have a boss?  If I ask you what your boss's name is, do you just tell me his or her name without thinking about it?  In this instance with Biden, the boss in question is also one of the most famous people on the planet over the last twelve or so years.  One shouldn't even have to work for Obama to know who the fuck he is.
     Sellout talk show host Stephen Colbert (who used to "stick it to the man" until CBS offered him a fuck-ton of money to stop being controversial) hosted Biden on his late night program.  The former vice president and pal of the late warmonger John McCain and racist Strom Thurmond, the man who just last year awarded the Liberty Medal to war criminal George W. Bush, told Colbert and his easy to please audience that "this is a great country."  He made reference to Donald Trump's unfitness for office, the president's trashing of NATO allies, lack of decorum, all the shit people with no actual problems obsess over when they contemplate the current Oval Office occupant.  Biden rides on the idea, supported by Democratic establishment-approved news media, that once Trump is beaten in next year's election, everything will go back to normal.  A restoration of decency, kindness, diplomacy, but the same coercion of less powerful nations, the same war (approaching its eighteenth birthday next week), and the same economy built to destroy the middle class and the poor so the rich can further prosper.
     Trump is a terrible president.  Biden would also be terrible in that job.  And senile.  That's just what we need, right?  Considering how much MSNBC pushes Biden as the best candidate to defeat Trump, one would think that network would have more to offer as proof if that truly is the case, rather than pushing the much more popular and sane Bernie Sanders, who gets bashed and misrepresented on their programs regularly.  Sanders shows no signs of suffering cognitive difficulties and, unlike Biden, he cares about ordinary people and their very real economic problems.
     Still, MSNBC host and millionaire Joe Scarborough, whose friendliness with Trump could be heard practically every weekday morning in 2015 and early 2016 when that billionaire candidate called Scarborough's show, filling segments with self-congratulatory bluster, now defends Biden's verbal fuck-ups even as he gripes about Trump's.
     For Scarborough and his network it's all about ratings.  They really don't give a shit about the American people.  How else to explain MSNBC's promotion these past several weeks of an out of touch career politician with the sucking chest wound appeal of Hillary Clinton?  Biden, the kind of candidate no one under the age of seventy will vote for, but rather will be used to vote against the incumbent, would bring about the loss of the White House to someone the Democratic establishment can then use to fundraise against and gripe about some more in a political-entertainment-news industry built on maintaining the stardom of cash cows like Donald Trump.
     I wish this post consisted of malarkey, but it doesn't.

                                                                               Vic Neptune
   
   
   
   
     
   

     Thinker Poser

     If you'd like to hear trippy music, check out the 1976 album, The Roaring Silence by Manfred Mann's Earth Band.  "Blinded by the Light" opens the album.  Track three is the vital part of the trip from an imaginary cop or private eye movie of the mid-1970s standpoint.  An instrumental, "Waiter, There's a Yawn in My Ear," the piece builds on a theme.  The song seems longer than it is, a byproduct of tightly made art.
     From Earth, Kristol, as in Bill, as in warmonger and war profiteer and war criminal, William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, a failing newspaper, circulation down significantly, not even trusted by its overlord publisher to maintain the swing of things "conservative," so it hires another set of opinion makers to do the same thing The Weekly Standard is supposed to do.  How's that for Sorry Bill, you're not cutting the mustard of late.  We're not going to fire you, but we'll be seeing you edge yourself out of our building in the next six months.  You'll do fine.  Your kind always does.
     Kristol since 2016 has been operating an outfit called Defending Democracy Together.  That comes to DDT, the controversial killer--of humans also--insecticide touted in the 1940s as "so good you can eat it!"  Too dangerous to use, with residual effects on humans consuming the plants poisoned, duh!
     Not that Kristol and his ilk notice such a fine point, that their organization dedicated to overthrowing Donald Trump in 2020, first in 2016, shares a designation with poison from which some people profited handsomely.  And isn't that what Kristol's up to with his DDT?  Make money, pretend to be against Donald Trump while profiting from the president's policies.  But why is Kristol against Trump?  Because he tweets shit?  Because he behaves indecorously?  The prim, snide, cavalier life-taking demon that is Bill Kristol, frequent guest on MSNBC, as he was on Fox News, shows the establishment is still in charge of mainstream news media, else, how could such an inhuman creep get so much airtime?
     It's due to big money broadcasting "truth" to America, lying about the true horror of politics right now: those making money from our suffering and the grievous societal harms caused by the U.S. military at the behest of the U.S. foreign policy establishment struggling stupidly to maintain an empire fated to go in about ten years, are intimately connected to news media broadcasters in front of and behind the camera who themselves profit from high ratings generated by strife and chaos.
     Watch Bill Kristol.  He's often shown in still photos with his hand to his head, Thinker Pose, or I'm About To Fall Asleep Listening to This Intellectual Termite.  Index finger extended towards the Kristol cerebrum, where the neo-con stewpot bubbles, the occasional Iraqi baby arm floating up in oily brown liquids.  These shots, as for instance his pic on the DDT website, make him seem serious. This guy's intellect never got past reading Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche.  When Nietzsche wrote in Twilight of the Idols or maybe The Antichrist, that it's important to learn to not react, Kristol never learned that one, as many haven't, as I struggle with it still.
     Not reacting is precisely the opposite of a reactionary.  The Kristol sneer puts me in mind of Montgomery Burns on The Simpsons.  If Bill Kristol had Burns's money he'd shrink into an armadillo-like ball and suck his own cock.
     Forget it, I've had it trying to run the world!  I'll change my ideology for fifty billion dollars, who wouldn't?  Gandhi maybe?  Not too many of him!  American Exceptionalism?  I'll say it's phony!  Like a Big Mac!  Sure, it's a big hamburger but it's really just a hamburger!  Assyria thought it was hot shit, too!  Wait until 612 BC, Assyria!  Nations you've fought in the past will gang up on you and destroy your ass!  Forgotten!  A mirage!  Overshadowed by Babylon!
     Kristol used to work for Dan Quayle.  He worked for George W. Bush.  You shall know him by the company he keeps.
     Opinion makers of the cable news circuit influence the mental judgment processes of Americans above the age of fifty.  I'm of that group, though on the young side of it.  When the Internet started I was twenty-seven.  I first used the Internet when I was thirty-one, began using e-mail at thirty-two, bought my first computer in 2000.  I'm on my fourth.  I suspect my fifth computer will be a mass of jelly I put my fingers in while my head interfaces with ads and sports results.
     Kristol is sixty-six.  He could potentially be tormenting Americans, propagandizing his sick fuck cause of dominating the world, something automatically a set-up for failure, for the next twenty years.  When is George Will going to retire or die?  He's seventy-eight.  He could go another five years, easily.  He's got another baseball anecdote in him, surely?  His sensible math teacher from 1960 ambiance, "Yes, Mr. Will," always comes across as so right-thinking, so reasonable, even viewers who vomit at what are actually Will's political views--stomp on the poor, strong military, traditional patriotic sludge, never cut taxes--like him because of his polite young man about the town manner, something in a lost draft of To Kill a Mockingbird, perhaps.
     That reminds me: I read Harper Lee's other novel about a year ago.  I read To Kill a Mockingbird in high school English class, but as her other novel, Go Set a Watchman, wasn't published until 2015, it wasn't until 2018 I read it.  Buzz about the book centered somewhat on Lee's use of the word "nigger."  The book takes place in the 1930s, I think.  That word was commonly used.  It's literary realism to have that word in characters' mouths in a novel taking place in Mississippi in the thirties.
     I thought the novel was okay, as a first draft, which it is.  Given Lee's extensively studied literary output, two novels total and I think a lot of letters, too, it impresses me and makes me feel sarcastic when I contemplate so much attention paid to, in terms of her output, a minor American author who wrote one excellent novel and one so-so first draft of another lesser novel.  She never sought to get that other novel published, but money ka-chinged in the eyes of those around her.  The long lost (except it was never lost) novel by the great Harper Lee!  I saw some of a C-Span talk given in a bookshop by a Harper Lee biographer.  She went on at length about Harper Lee's literary project involving the case Truman Capote ended up writing about, In Cold Blood.
     Harper Lee gave up on her project.  Two novels, total, one of them not even really finished.  Think of the novelists who've written not just one great book, but many, overpowering the achievement of Harper Lee.
     I'm feeling feisty.  In my movie blog, Screen Screed, I gave Watchmen, a very popular film, a harsh review.  Here, I'm questioning something not to be questioned: Harper Lee's work is more significant than Philip K. Dick's?  Than Samuel R. Delany's?
     It is the deeply felt interface between the gripping story in To Kill a Mockingbird and the girl, Scout.  It is a great novel.  I had the utmost good time reading it back in 1981, when I didn't even know who Philip K. Dick was, although he was living in Santa Ana, California then, a year before he died.  He had just finished or was still working on his last novel, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, a mainstream novel with spooky sci fi/religious underpinnings deriving from Gnosticism.  Also, a great book with a female protagonist, Angel Archer.  Scout and Angel, both worth reading.
     Infected at times by Orwell, I read about a thousand pages of a 1,400 page collection of his essays.   Around the time of World War Two, he wrote these pieces called As I Please, followed by a number.
Orwell would write about three or four things in one piece, segments unconnected thematically.  I thought it would be interesting (for me) to try to write something like that: combine, as in this post, Manfred Mann's Earth Band, Harper Lee, Philip K. Dick, Bill Kristol with fifty billion dollars, curled up, a cock-sucking armadillo.

                                                                             Vic Neptune
   
                                                                                 
   
     

     Down the Rabbit Hole to the Reagan Era

     I'm thinking of 1988, we are its afterbirth.  Reagan's final year in the room shaped like a circle seen from a sideward angle, a room with a jar of jelly beans offered by the movie star vanity ranch president to every visitor.  How charming when Diane Sawyer was offered a jelly bean by the smiling old man, his attentive slavishly devoted wife, protector of the legacy, the lie that is Ronald Reagan, seated erectly beside the president, keeping careful eye out for Alzheimer's symptoms.  Must cover with a charming humorous statement if hubby forgets where he is, that he's doing an interview, or doesn't remember meeting Diane Sawyer twenty minutes ago.
     On the soundtrack now, courtesy of YouTube randomness nevertheless directed by algorithms, Chubb Rock, "The One"  Hip Hop, I suppose, a genre I haven't explored, but maybe I now am.  The opening of this post was composed to two 1988 songs by Slick Rick.  A Slick Rick video has the
rapper with the eyepatch standing before a huge sculpture (plastic maybe, but well done) of three Alice in Wonderland characters, including Alice, the Rabbit, and the Mad Hatter.  He tells a story to an older Black man in a four poster bed in the middle of what looks like a park at night.  The old man has on either side of him two delicious young women in nighties.  In other words, the Life.
     This music of 1988 to 1991 is quite fine, I'm discovering.  Beats are crisp, clever, interesting, throbbingly good.  "O.P.P." by Naughty By Nature is worth checking out.  Has a sample of a woman moaning sexually.  If you like that sound.
     When I inhabited the age range eight to twelve, I saw all but one of the Marx Brothers films of 1929 to 1950.  There are thirteen in all, but one eluded me for three decades, Room Service (1938), starring a young Ann Miller, Lucille Ball looking hot and statuesque, and the Brothers themselves, though not Zeppo, who'd retired from acting after the political satire Duck Soup (1933) to become a top Hollywood agent.  Another brother, Harpo, was my favorite.  My mother bought a Goodwill beige trenchcoat for me to wear on Halloween.  We couldn't get a top hat in time, so I went to Plan B: cold cream on the face, coffee grounds making me a bum.  A straw Huckleberry Finn hat completed the look.  Huck Finn grown up and poor, grubby, smart, but still dealing with shitty situations--feet wet most of the time.
     Huck Finn goes to the Phillippines, witnesses waterboarding practiced by U.S. troops.  American Empire born in the war pushed by the Hearst Syndicate.  Patty Hearst kidnapped, maybe, because she represented the irresponsible profit-driven journalism that helped bring about the American Empire during the Spanish American War of 1898, a war, remember, begun with an incorrect conclusion.  The U.S.S. Maine wasn't hit by Spanish forces in Havana harbor.  U.S. Navy and National Geographic investigations many decades later found that the ship's forward magazines exploded, no known reason why.  Something happened internal to the vessel.  That a U.S. battleship was even in a Cuban harbor smells of the same intrusiveness and meddling of American Empire still practiced, on a vaster scale, today.
     In 1988 the "existential threat" was proliferation by the Soviet Union and United States of nuclear weapons, a problem created by Ronald Reagan's strategy of exorbitant spending on nukes to make the Soviets do the same, thus eventually weakening their economy, drained as well by their fruitless eight year war in Afghanistan.  Is Afghanistan a jelly bean Reagan would've chewed on for seventeen years and longer?  How would he have reacted to 9/11?  Would he ever have invaded Iraq, thus betraying his ally Saddam Hussein?  Did he know the Marx Brothers?

                                                                                Vic Neptune
     

     Whiteout

     Peter Fonda is dead.  I don't know the details, I just know that I'll never be able to thank him for his performances in Easy Rider and Dirty Mary Crazy Larry.  Peter Fonda carried on his father Henry's quiet screen presence.  Henry Fonda, even when he played a sadistic villain like Frank in Once Upon a Time in the West, had about him an air of detachment, passively observing most of the time.  His son had this ability, too.  In Ulee's Gold, made much later than the classic psychedelic era of many of his movies, Fonda played a beekeeper struggling against some, if I recall rightly, big business forces that wanted his land, or something.  I saw the film in the theater, accompanied by my then girlfriend.  An edifying movie, like with any episode of The Waltons where feeling good after the credits is the goal.  There's a shot of Fonda holding up a golden sticky liquid marvel inside a jar, lit dazzlingly in the kind of glowing cinematography used in The Natural to make Glenn Close look desirable.
     My girlfriend and I enjoyed Ulee's Gold, but later I realized the real find in the movie is Patricia Richardson who played Tim Allen's wife in Home Improvement.  A serious dramatic actress on a par with the best, it turns out, Patricia Richardson spent 1991 to 1999 acting the part of mother to three precocious boys, the eldest one a dunce, the middle kid a smartass, the youngest an adorable appendage to the scripts.  I watched this show when it was on in its first run.  I missed probably at least a hundred of the 202 (!) episodes.  Tim Allen, a comedian who's made me laugh occasionally, was stuck to a character for eight years, a role portraying a dumbass-on-purpose.  He huffs like a gorilla when he thinks of manly things to do.  He chats with his genial neighbor over the fence.  For some reason we never see all of Wilson's face.  This actor, Earl Hindman, whose big and small screen career goes back to 1967, starred as "Bruno" in The Ultimate Degenerate (1969).  The film's IMDB synopsis wraps it up for us:
   
     "With the help of an assistant, a psycho drugs, tortures, and photographs women he meets through personal ads to find the ultimate degenerate.  His latest target is a thrill-seeking lesbian."
 
     Yeah, that old story.
     Six Degrees of Separation, the movie-think game applied usually to Kevin Bacon, operates in the above lines that began with Peter Fonda and ended up, connection-wise, chained to The Ultimate Degenerate, starring an actor who became famous for never showing all of his face on a hit 1990's TV show starring an actress who later worked with Peter Fonda in a family-friendly melodrama similar in theme to Mr. Majestyk, minus the violence.
     Eminent domain?  I think that's what Ulee's Gold uses as the McGuffin to get us interested in Peter Fonda's beekeeper character.  Ulee, short for Ulysses.  A practice of a lot of fiction writers (literary and for the screen) is to give a character a weird name.  Dom Toretto, Vin Diesel's role in the Fast and Furious movies, for example.  Michelle Rodriguez plays his girlfriend, Letty.  Letty, not Maria, not Julia, but a shortening of Leticia, a very special name, at least north of Baja California.
     Even Shakespeare got in on this: Hamlet, Macduff, Pistol, Tybalt, Rosencrantz.  If there's someone named Hamlet, there should also be someone named Village.
     I've gone off of Ulee's property since the post's opening.  Fonda was a good, irreplaceable actor.  I miss him already.  He will always be Captain America.

                                                                             Vic Neptune