Tired of the Vicious Right-Wing Sniping

“I just really believe that the Republican Party has been conned here, and this guy is not a reliable conservative Republican.”  - Lindsey Graham

"Donald Trump is a bully who has a single play in his playbook -- offensive lies thrown at anyone who calls him out." - Elizabeth Warren


After The Donald was dissed by Paul Ryan, which made it cool for a few other squeamish Republican senators, he turned his ire towards Hillary Clinton. Mostly, all of the Republican candidates, pundits, and Fox News personalities have been following along with the GOP playbook that tells them what to say about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, using emotionally charged phrases designed to create a negative impression. The bullshit runs so deep that it is frustrating listening to a conservative spokesperson. I keep hoping that they would stop talking about emails and Benghazi because it's been proven over and over that there is no there there... But they keep on saying the same crap in the theory that if you repeat it long enough people might actually begin to believe it. And it does work, just go to any mall and start asking folks what they believe and to justify those beliefs in some logical manner... Myself, I just start talking to my Libertarian neighbors for some delightful crazy talk. (Which brings up watching an interview with Jesse Ventura, who said that he, too, might run for President on the Libertarian ticket. But only if they allowed him to run without joining the Libertarian Party, so he could claim to be truly an outsider. I mentioned this to my nephew, and his reaction was Yeah Jesse!)

But The Donald went batshit crazy, trying to bait and bring Bill Clinton into the fray, by talking about how Hillary hurt women by not going postal and staying with Bill after he had his affairs. Which is weird coming from someone who is on his third Eastern European wife. If he keeps up the cheap trash talking instead of debating policy and economic ideas, he will alienate every woman in America besides his wife and daughters... But if he does that, he will piss off the right-wingers because he has some liberal ideas floating in that mucky mess. Now that he is the front runner, he doesn't have to spout the National Inquirer type headlines, and can kick back and plan out an effective way to debate Hillary after the Summer.

And if he wins, instead of building a wall along the border with Mexico, he should annex it as part of the US. Suddenly, we will no longer have illegals living here, as they will now be citizens, and we can use our military to deal with the cartels...

A Fracking Good Time

Here in Colorado, fracking is popular, or so the commercials lead us to believe. We are treated to images of happy female farmers using fracking to supplement their incomes, and they don't have to worry about polluting the water table because it's so safe... Unless you live in Canada or Oklahoma.

Canada currently has over 50 wildfires blazing in 620 square miles, with no way to put them all out. It's estimated that it will take months before the fires will be contained. The area is in Alberta's oil sands region, one of the largest reserves in the world, and all fracking has been halted. I guess we should be glad that no wells were directly set on fire, it would make those old Kuwaiti well fires look like a campfire roast; but the region looks like it will take years to rebuild, and it could easily all go up in smoke again next year or the year after next...

I don't really want to pick on Oklahoma, today they are having some gnarly tornadoes, but ya gotta wonder at the sanity of the state's government. Thanks to their aggressive fracking program, there have been over 107 earthquakes last year, before fracking there might have been 3 small tremors per year. If that weren't bad enough, I think that Oklahoma also has that huge sinkhole that is swallowing up a whole town and surrounding area. The town was built over an old salt mine that soon became depleted. The caverns filled up with water, which dissolved the remaining salt, and voila, a giant sucking sinkhole, with videos to be found on youtube...

The problem is a simple one: if you take an enormous amount of stuff out of the ground and have nothing to replace it with something bad will happen. Mines collapse. Major underground rivers have dried up, leaving many once fertile regions in China, Africa, and California, with arid, dusty ground that are no longer able to grow crops.

With all of the recent earthquakes happening in places that haven't had a history with them, I wonder if our Mother Earth isn't trying to shake us humans off the planet, like a dog getting rid of fleas (to paraphrase the great George Carlin)...

Ryan Snubs Trump, Culture Among the Ruins

The game of thrones continues... The GOP chairman Reince Priebus issued a proclamation for all Republicans to fall in behind The Donald, no matter how crass his pandering with taco bowls becomes. Unfortunately, the head of the Republican Convention, a certain Paul Ryan, had other thoughts...

In an interview with CNN, Mr. Ryan said that he wasn't ready to support Donald Trump for President. " I think conservatives want to know: Does he share our values and our principles on limited government the proper role of the executive, adherence to the Constitution?.. There's a lot of questions that conservatives, I think, are going to want answers to." 

To Mr. Trump's credit, he immediately replied: " Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people..." Who knows, maybe The Donald can drag the GOP into a more modern way of thinking, walls and all...

The problem with Paul Ryan's idea of conservatism, is that it's based on a few books of fiction that he read when he was a teenager, and he hasn't grown and evolved since, just standing around with a stick up his ass, telling us how good it feels...  His brand of economics has proven to be ineffective, even the past chairman of the Federal Reserve publically admitted it, and still Paul Ryan is held up as an intellectual giant among conservatives who have tiny minds as well as tiny hands...



Symphony for the Devils

This was an incredible act of propaganda, a stroke of genius by the Russian who thought it up. I don't know who because Vladimir Putin took all of the credit... Russia sent a symphony orchestra to Palmyra, Syria, to play a concert of classical music by the composers Johan Bach, Sergei Prokofiev, and Valery, to play at the same stone amphitheater where ISIS had filmed the beheading of 25 people. The concert was televised live in Russia and in Syria, only two months after the area had been seceded from the Caliphate.

The Russians are hoping to bolster their role in Syria, holding mock ceremonies of reconciliation in 92 villages, bringing everyone under the gentle, kind leadership of President Assad... I guess the villagers then won't mind when they see the SU-24 fighter bombers flying towards them... Maybe the US should send over the hippie organization Food Not Bombs to help feed the homeless in Aleppo...

All Hail Mein Fuhrer Donald Trump

Oh boy, Donald Trump has emerged triumphant as the presumptive GOP candidate after Ted Cruz and John Kasich dropped out. Now all of the liberal pundits are trying to justify how they got this whole scenario wrong, moderate conservatives are debating if they are going to vote for Hillary Clinton, and super-duper right wingers are disappointed that Raoul's son isn't really the anointed candidate after all...

I have run the gamut of emotions over the Donald, enjoying the media spectacle and name calling, appalled at how thin his skin is, and curious to see the train-wreck that will happen if he actually gets elected. How fast will his fan base turn on him when it turns out that his promises are empty air?

Two things that I would insist he do is to get off of Twitter, and to have him put in some time working as a janitor at his resort in Florida, so he does some honest work for once in his life... Perhaps we could assign him a therapist to work on his impulse control.

Is Hair Hitler the second coming of Herr Hitler?
What the world is afraid of is Donald turning into a Hitler type dictator, unable to practice basic statesmanship. I see this happening in Russia, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, China, and Turkey, to name a few of the larger countries. If you criticize the leadership you have a good chance of being jailed. What king of progress will happen with all of these mini-Hitlers running around, or will it truly become the Apocalypse? God knows the state of the earth is deteriorating rapidly and it may all be a moot point, as fresh water becomes unavailable and earthquakes shakes our cities apart.

So far the only Politian that takes his time to deliberate before deciding is Barack Obama. Maybe we should piss them all off and make him President for life... At least we'd still have great comedy routines at every future Correspondence Dinner...

The Dementia Meditation Twelve Bar Blues

Getting old is not for sissies, the loss of physical strength and mental sharpness can become quite devastating. Then, there's all kinds of illnesses, from Alzheimer's to cancer. I've had physical back pain for almost 20 years, and there are times I wish I had died during the night. But I really don't want to whine when I can bitch and moan...

One of the things I've found in myself is I no longer can sleep 8 hours at a time, and I tend to take short cat-naps throughout the day. I used to think that it was from low blood sugar, but it's not. What happens is after retiring we develop slower body rhythms, no longer seeking out the fast stimulations and adrenaline rushes when we were young. Unfortunately, it's too easy to go too much in the other direction and go too far inward, dwelling on our memories, staying at home all of the time, and not bothering to communicate with other people.

I like to read, but cannot spend more than a couple of hours before I fatigue. A cat-nap refreshes my mental acuity, letting me continue. The bad part is it now takes me all day to read the newspaper, longer to read a book. Talking to many other old farts like myself, I see that they often do the same. In fact, we would have a more productive work force if we scheduled naps in during the day; for example, work 3 hours, then take a 1 hour nap, then work 3 more hours. It's too easy to blame and condemn an older person, make them retire early or let them withdraw from the world until they no longer can take care of themselves. I'm sure you have seen this happen to those you love, and why Yeats raged against the dying light. No easy answer... One tool that I've found is on YouTube, listening to relaxing music designed to allow you a deeper sleep, it's listed in several categories as meditation music, and ranges from flute and water sounds, to full blown aural arrangements.

I know, this sure ain't no politics, just searching for some quality late in life...

Welcoming Myself Back After Poverty and Depression

It's been two years and two dead laptop computers since I posted last. I did want to comment on the election season, but for some reason everything I wanted to say was quickly said in the NY Times or Washington Post; so fuck it...

And it has been a royal mess. I wonder what will happen to the Republican Party after this election season, if it will disband or become more psychotic under the influence of right-wingers. If we want to shove them over the cliff, we should re-elect Barack Obama as President again, perhaps for life, or until we resolve race relations in this country.

The effect of the Donald Trump show and the machinations of Ted Cruz and his ilk, has made me depressed with our political system. If you want to be elected to any political office, from federal level down to the local, you should be limited to two terms, including judges. You also have to take a literacy test, and disclose all prescription drugs you are taking.

We have too many laws, it makes our justice system unwieldy. All laws need an expiration date, say thirty years. This way, if a law works, it can be renewed. If not, it will expire and allow us to come up with something more useful. All laws should be written in plain English and should not exceed five pages in length, and be devoted to a single subject. This way reforms will follow the mood or progress of the country.

As for Donald Trump, it's obvious that most of the things he says at rallies are designed to elicit an emotional response, because that's what he did on television for many years. In private, he's less maniacal, and is moderate in many areas. Most of his children are Democrats, and cannot vote in the primaries for their old man. What scares so many people is how thin skinned Donald is, and how little self-control he exhibits over any barb or criticism. Guys are supposed to grow out of that behavior after childhood, and we hope that a good education will give you tools to do just that.



I have yet to learn how to use Microsoft Edge. My hard drive has limited space, so I will have to buy some thumb drives to store images, get back into using the software. much less trying to remember passwords to my accounts. I had to pay off some debts before I could buy a new computer, which took about a year. It's amazing what you can get for about $300 bucks these days, the graphics are so much better, just the audio quality put out through the headphone port is lacking, though the speakers are pretty decent. Plus, I may have to begin using the built-in webcam and camera, which I have avoided, the same as using apps that most kids take for granted on their phones. I barely have enough focus to read the newspaper each day, much less get caught up with Moore's Law...

The Scottish Vote, ISIS Ties Knot in Obama's Tail

"The official ballot is one line: 'Should Scotland be an independent country?' And that's it. Why is it that I have to go through 18 pages of terms and conditions to download iOS 8 while a whole country can secede from the United Kingdom by checking a box that says 'Yes'?" – Jimmy Kimmel

"British Prime Minister David Cameron went to Scotland this week to persuade citizens of the country to vote 'no' on leaving the U.K. He said, 'It's never worked out for anyone-well except America, and Canada, Australia, India, and . . . I'll stop talking now.'" – Jimmy Fallon

Today is the day that the Scots vote to become independent from England - or not. I don't really care much about the outcome, since I'm not Scottish, but I do admire how civilized the whole process is, perhaps an object lesson the Irish might learn... I'm of  German ancestry on my mother's side, and Welsh and English extraction on my father's side. If I were to vote I'd have to vote to stay with England, even though my heart goes out for all tribes to be free. My last name says that we are sons of William the Conqueror, given land to settle as reward for being in his army, and we settled around the Welsh border, pretending that we were native to that plot of land...

If letting Scotland become independent will lower the price of my favorite single malt whiskies, then set those Orkney Islanders free, dammit. And while we're at it, let's annex Cuba like we did to Puerto Rico and bring back the five cent Cuban cigar. It would cost five dollars these days, but well worth it. Funny how some luxuries in life often take precedent over abstract ideas like human rights...

Among other popular abstract ideas is the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate, declared by both Boko Haram and ISIS. Both groups take delight in invading and taking land by force, and killing everyone who gets in their way. Beheading is becoming so popular that it is getting its own Youtube channel...

For some guilty reason, the US believes that it is responsible for taking out ISIS, setting president Obama in a quandary. He had vowed never to send US troops back into Iraq, despite the CIA having never left and continuing to "train" Iraqi troops, who have a bad tendency to strip off their uniforms and run away when the going gets tough, and real bullets are being fired. Which tells us a lot about the quality of CIA training these days...

Even worse, is the perplexing attitude of all the other Arab countries, who don't plan on lifting a finger to help, content to let the Great Satan and his Western allies run amok in the desert again. Perhaps we should just let them all alone, let the two Caliphates end up at war with each other, letting the Iranians pick up the pieces. Then the Islamic Caliphate of ISIS would be reduced to a small part of Iraq, quarantined off much like we do with our Native Indians. Heck, we could even sell them firewater and film the results, print up bumper-stickers that read:

The only Good Caliphate is a Dead Caliphate, y'all

We could sell these to the Shias, and the Kurds, and to the US rednecks. I'd even send one to Lindsey Graham and John McCain, even to ol' Clint if it would make his day... what we should have done was to have drafted George W Bush to go over and become our permanent envoy to Iraq. It would have been his personal responsibility to guide the Iraqi government towards democracy and away from extinction of all Iraqi Sunnis, a task he'd need the help of his best friend Dick Cheney...

The only problem that I could come up with is that they would have staked him out in the desert long ago, or that all of our hawkish Neo-Conservatives would migrate over to become one with their BFF, heck of a good job, Georgie. Of course, then we'd be contemplating bombing Iraq because the neo-cons would have set up a Neo-Conservative Caliphate,ready to administer freedom to all Middle Eastern liberty lovin' folk...