Trump tweeted that "These Thugs and Radical Left Monsters have just indicated" him. I believe he wanted the word "indicted," because he just was for trying to hide the hush money he paid a porn star after having an "affair" with her. It's the least of his four legal challenges. He'll play the victim, projecting that others are the very Thugs and Monsters he's actively trying to inflict on our government and society. He'll use it and the images of the violent insurrection of January…
I don’t want it to. Nor do I believe in some hell in an alleged afterlife. The hell America could go to is an actual one, fires and torment galore! I use this provocative title deliberately in a prophetic way. Prophesies are if/then warnings. If we keep fostering hateful division at home and new enemies to war against abroad, then we could create hell here worse than the Civil War, worse than WWII, worse than we want to think. Besides all the anger and domestic…
See at Avaaz and Zazzle/Bonoville We're in the midst on yet another pre-war round of dehumanizing an "enemy." Iran isn't our enemy. However, murderous hawks in our own government try to set them up as enemies. We're supplying Saudi Arabia with billions of dollars worth of advanced weapons currently being inflicted on the hapless residents of Yemen, who the Saudis fear and attack. This is the same Saudi Arabia that murdered the journalist Kashoggi, hacked apart his pathetic body, and (so far) gotten away with…
At this inaugural moment, Republicans should consider Lao Tzu’s warning: conduct your victory as a funeral. Your gloat of power could turn on you. For the next four years, or forty, or four hundred, you could be making America groan again. After eight years of disloyal, insulting, relentless ridicule and obstruction of our decent president, after blatant racism and bully threats, after gerrymandering of congressional districts and voter suppression, after stoking the worst in us, after flippantly ignoring and excusing blatant Russian and FBI manipulation…
"Oops," said Texas governor Rick Perry during the Republican primary. He couldn't remember which vital branch of our government he would flippantly trash. Now, such silly, sad, slogan-laden stupidity of the Tea Party and Alt Right might attack us and our government with all the finesse of a sledge-hammer. "Oops," says America. What frivolous, furious, folly have we voted into rule? Trump and his supporters will be making America groan again! And again. We will wince for generations. He'll be making America grope again too,…
The debate's out-looking split-screen view divides us all. Both vice-presidential candidates did OK in the debate, despite the occasional jumble of voices, intrusive comments and evasive replies. Each spoke their party's perspective vigorously. Moderator Elaine Quifano prepared concise and probing questions, but Kaine and Pence mostly evaded them. She could have both woven them into the flow and controlled the men better, but all in all, she and they did OK. What wasn't OK was the insidious direction of camera angles, used so as to…
It was an earlier September 11th, back in 1970, when Nixon's vice-president Spiro Agnew let loose his alliterative "nattering nabobs of negativity." It helped launch the so-called Moral Majority, which morphed into the belligerent Tea Party, which shouted Donald Trump into our lives. Thing is, Republicans have long-been their own nattering nabobs of negativity. It's the only thing they do! They deliberately didn't cooperate with anything President Obama politely posed. They stopped our government from working at all, then blamed the malaise on Obama. They're…
When repugnant tactics work, it's time for Repuglicans to celebrate and use them. Republicans are in upheaval. How to bring in rude and annoying Tea Party Conservatives and the similar millions who like Donald Trump? I have an re-branding idea that could capitalize on this underlying attitude, claiming the traits that used to go unspoken. All republicans need to do is change one letter in their name, dropping the "b" in inserting a "g." The naive might think cleaving to the root word "repugnant" would…
Donald Trump excuses and sympathizes with his supporter who attacked a protester from behind, beating him up. Trump said the attacker was "fed up" with such disruption, as if the protester caused the attack. Don't dare protest or we'll beat you up, goes his implied threat. Further, he went on to say there are millions who are similarly fed up. Fed up with what? Perhaps constant irate anger without sensible content is wearing in them. A national brain imbalance of raging mid-brains has millions gone…
Following on my earlier blog on Oregon Silliness, events dragged on, petered out and popped with the sad death of Robert Finicum. He may or may not have been shot reaching for his 45 in a tense stand-off. This was sad, but he's no martyr, and the tragedy should warn and redirect us all on the relevant issues. The impetus for outsiders to occupy the Malheur Wildlife Refuge was largely organized by Ammon Bundy, son of Cliven Bundy who had earlier (2014) mounted a tense…