So Many Enemies He Needs Some Executive Time to Relax a Little

So the president repeatedly says the American press is America's enemy - but not one word about Russia threatening a nuclear attack on America ... 

Former FBI director says he fears the president is a Russian asset .... but the press is the enemy (oh, and the entire FBI).

Saudi Arabia murders a journalist, the president's staff has secretly sold nuclear weapon secrets to them ... because the press is the enemy?

The president calls for retribution against media comedies for jokes about his great self, and a coast guard officer is thankfully arrested for planning mass murder based on a hit list spreadsheet of media targets ....because the press is the enemy.

Except the press is not the enemy at our southern border. It's all the non-white people. Such a horrific enemy the president says America has a national emergency. 

Odd ...The press, non-whites, treaties with our allies, our military alliances, our trade with other nations, these are the enemies of America in the eyes and mind and actions of the president and his followers. Oh, and all the ex members of his administration. They are all bad people too. And his lawyers. And former friends. 

So many enemies. Gonna have to grab some Executive Time.

Who Could Possibly Be Surprised at the State of Trump's Presidency?

All of us who intentionally voted otherwise (aka the majority of Americans, thank God) knew.

A lot of those who voted for this deeply unqualified man, they knew too, but they were willing to gamble everything ... everything. Shame, shame.

Many voted to see if he would just gum it all up, turn into a headline fest of outrage. They are likely pleased, but still, not surprised.

What did we know? Trump is way out of his league, and his business practices are ragged secrets on the dark side.

As for me? My post  from Nov. 9, 2016 says it well -

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, puh-leeeze welcome the 45th President of the United States -- you know him as a middling brand name product made from toxic materials, the Kmart of Billionaires, the golden-toned skeezy Gordon Gecko leftover, the C-list TV actor popular in Soviet bloc countries - one Donald Trump -  and here we go on a slippery and rapid descent into political madness.

There has been no mass repudiation of politics-as-usual despite claims to the contrary, since the vast majority of folks already in office were re-elected yesterday. 

Anger, seething for 8 years, directed at all those who dared support a non-white male president, has flowered with poison.

Yes, only the man who was born with solid-gold privileges can save Americans from solid-gold privileged men.

On a personal note, there is not one person in office in the state or nation that I voted for. Whatever is about to happen, it will not be my fault. I'll just be over here complaining and saying I told you so."

And you know what, oh constant readers? I freakin' told you so.

Royals and Dignitaries Warned 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall'

How fascinating to watch the recent Nobel Prize ceremony awarding Bob Dylan. Dylan's designation as recipient of the Nobel for Literature was instantly incongruous.

Singer Patti Smith performed Dylan's apocalyptic warning "A Hard Rains A-Gonna Fall", in the middle of a fantastically plush concert hall for an audience that included a King, his royal family, members of parliament, international dignitaries, all wonderfully arrayed in luxurious tuxedos and designer gowns, as bejeweled and regal as imaginable.

Dylan's words and a spare Philharmonic(!) arrangement filled the room as Patti sang before the very type of audience that the song seeks to challenge. The song from 1962, like much of his work from that decade, seethes with rage at the institutions corrupted and the decency abridged in the modern world. And Hard Rain especially forecasts the dire consequences of allowing corruption to flourish.

And while Patti became overwhelmed briefly at one point, she soulfully delivers Dylan's words with great power.

Dylan's writing galvanized protests around the world, demanding humanity become the best it could be, his love songs throb with desire and longing, his words express hopes, dreams and sorrows felt by all. More than that. the elegant and vivid poetry of his words is imminently distinctive, unique and startling.

Dylan submitted a speech to be read (I truly appreciate the fact that only Dylan's words were heard at the event and that he was not seen), and he said:

"As a performer I’ve played for 50,000 people and I’ve played for 50 people and I can tell you that it is harder to play for 50 people. 50,000 people have a singular persona, not so with 50. Each person has an individual, separate identity, a world unto themselves. They can perceive things more clearly. Your honesty and how it relates to the depth of your talent is tried. The fact that the Nobel committee is so small is not lost on me."

Awarding the prize, the host said "Alfred Nobel wanted to reward those who have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind." The prize committee did just that this year. 

Take the time to visit Dylan's website to read his lyrics. It's a stunning collection.

A HARD RAIN'S A-GONNA FALL

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?

Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?

I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains

I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways

I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests

I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans

I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard

And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard

And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall



Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?

Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?

I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it

I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it

I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’

I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’

I saw a white ladder all covered with water

I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken

I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children

And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard

And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall



And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?

And what did you hear, my darling young one?

I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’

Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world

Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’

Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’

Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’

Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter

Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley

And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard

And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall



Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?

Who did you meet, my darling young one?

I met a young child beside a dead pony

I met a white man who walked a black dog

I met a young woman whose body was burning

I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow

I met one man who was wounded in love

I met another man who was wounded with hatred

And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard

It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall



Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?

Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?

I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’

I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest

Where the people are many and their hands are all empty

Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters

Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison

Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden

Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten

Where black is the color, where none is the number

And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it

And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it

Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’

But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’

And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard

It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall


Copyright © 1963 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991 by Special Rider Music

Even More Nonsense from Donald Tantrump

The stunningly ridiculous presidential race shows no sign of slowing down.

Honestly, the Trump thing takes daily and sometimes hourly leaps deeper and deeper into surreal and stupid and the just plain embarrassing. Those Republicans who helped build a "Tea Party" now have something more like the Mad Hatter's tea party, though the Hatter scene in Alice In Wonderland at least makes sense.

And it's amusing how folks who NEVER balked at speaking out claim the Trump Train is powered by the somehow brand spanking new idea of - you guessed it - speaking out.

Take this tidbit from aging celeb Clint Eastwood - Americans are pussies, apparently raised to be meek losers .... but hey Clint, didn't you help raise the generation you despise? Poor fellow, he's still haranguing empty chairs.

If the GOP campaign gets any more self-absorbed, the could create an implosive blast that could be seen and felt in the Andromeda galaxy.

We may need a new word to describe this 2016 season ... like ... The Full-Blown Tantrump.

'Cause he does love babies ... wait, I mean he hates babies. Or something. 

Attention Knoxville - It's Your Fault

Dear Knoxville voters -

You really, really need to do better in choosing your representatives ... unless maybe you agree with Senator Stacey Campfield that signing up for health care is the same as participating in the Holocaust. The state's Republican Party says his comments are: " ... ignorant and repugnant."

Thank you,
 Ashamed Resident

Tennessee Tops In Storing Radioactive Waste

(image via)

East TN actress Park Overall has been a most vocal promoter demanding complete accountability when it comes to the deeply dangerous radioactive waste which is ending up Hawkins County and other sites in our Tennessee.

At a recent radio interview with WRGS, cited in the Rogersville Review, she continues her efforts to - at the least - inform residents of what is happening in their communities and says standards basically do not exist to protect our communities:

"One night it was decided that low level radioactive waste, secretly and you all don't know about this, will be stored in a kitchen dump. What is a kitchen dump? It is a landfill with no liner," Overall charged. "You have a kitchen dump in Hawkins County."

"Tennessee is the only state accepting nuclear waste at this time. If you want to do anything about it you had better call (U. S. Senators) Lamar Alexander or (Bob) Corker or (Congressman) Phil Roe. You need to let it be known that we don't want to be the nuclear dumping ground of the United States and right now we're it," she said.

Overall suggested the Nuclear Information Resource Service Website, www.nirs.org, as a valuable tool for public information.

"That will tell you that they are chopping up the world's waste and burning up the world's waste and putting it right here in Tennessee," Overall said. "No one asked you if that was okay."

The actress also questioned the standards the NRC uses, including the acronym ALARA, which stands for "as low as reasonably achievable."

She also claimed government agencies and officials were to blame.

"I'm sorry to bad-mouth our government but they're not protecting us," Overall claimed."

Meanwhile documentary filmmakers are working hard to establish the funding needed to detail the steady dumping of radioactive waste into the Nolichucky River from NFS in Erwin. The film is titled "Atomic Appalachia" and you can learn more about that here., and on their Facebook page.

Just this Spring, the Tennessee legislature voted against installing any controls or oversight of the dumping of nuclear waste in Tennessee, despite the reality that:

"The committee discussed the bill for about 50 minutes Wednesday before amending it so that its provisions would not interfere with any current private waste-processing contracts until they are renewed. The committee then killed the entire bill, with only two Democrats' votes for passage and five Republicans' votes against.

"The Environmental Council, citing government reports, says about 40 million pounds of low-level radioactive waste is processed in Tennessee annually. After processing, much of it is shipped out of state, but about 49 million pounds was dumped into the Tennessee landfills from 2004 through 2009."

Worse news - most of the landfills in Tennessee are leaking into the groundwater and beyond.


"TDEC issued civil fines and penalties at Carter Valley Landfill in October 2006 after 2005 groundwater monitoring found contamination in the groundwater.

Additionally, TCWN found that of the 69 landfills across the state known to be leaking, TDEC required corrective action for groundwater contamination at less than 5 of those landfills, including Dickson County, Sevier County, City of McKenzie, and Smelter Services Class 2 landfill in Mt. Pleasant.

Dickson County's landfill received national attention for what is believed to be the community's exposure to trichloroethene from leachate in drinking water supplies causing birth defects. The contamination occurred despite the landfill being built under stringent EPA guidelines and the old landfill's closure in 2003.

Bliss said Hawkins County has the second highest incidence of birth defects in the state. "We should have a concern about Hawkins County."

More background info here.

Limbaugh - You're a Blockhead With Tampons In Your Ears

(images Haitian disaster courtesy of The Big Picture, more here)
please click here for a list of relief donation links

Offering water, food or just helping to claw through mountains of destruction in hopes of rescuing a wife, a husband, a child ... such are the efforts for Haiti from nearly every nation and aid group on the planet. But two mega-wealthy Americans call such efforts demonic and self-serving.

Showmen first and last, the TV star (and diamond mine kingpin) Rev. Pat Robertson and radio shock jock R. Limbaugh, know their first job when reporting on a disaster of untold lives in Haiti is to make sure the talk is about them, not about the horrors of destruction on an island nation.

Rev. Robertson warbled out anti-humanitarian cheers claiming that the loss of life in Haiti was due to some nefarious 'deal with the devil' ---


"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti ... they were under the heel of the French, uh, you know, Napoleon the third and whatever ... and they got together and swore a pact to the devil, they said, we will serve you, if you get us free from the Prince. True story."

This myth is rooted in the days when more than a century again, the anti-colonial movement helped take Haiti out from under the boots of oppression:

"Haitians are Christians. Pat Robertson's language is the reductio ad absurdum of the Christian right. It's so absurd it's almost funny. This notion of a pact with the devil is basically an echo of an old colonial response to the successes of the 1790s Haitian revolution.

What is this pact he's talking about?

• Continue Reading

Part of the revolution mythology is that one of the revolution leaders sacrificed a pig in Bois Caïmin in a voodoo ceremony and made a contract with Petwo [Haitian voodoo spirits]. It may or may not be true, but to call that a pact with the devil is a gross misrepresentation of what voodoo is. It's about anything but the devil. He's imposing an evangelical religious order on a much more sophisticated practice, and he's turning it into a cheap invocation of Satanism.

This is hate speech. It's saying these people are damned. It's a frequent theme among some Christians that Haiti is being punished for this supposed pact with extreme poverty and humanitarian crises.

The reason Haiti is poor is because Europe imposed a blockade on trade after the slave revolt in 1804, and you have an extremely polarized class structure in which a few families stepped into the positions of the former colonial plantation owners. There has been a horrible cycle of plundering and autocracy within Haitian leadership.

Do you think this has been holding Haiti back?

I think other factors are more important in holding Haiti back: the class structure, the dispossession of a largely illiterate populace, the links that the underclass increasingly has with drug gangs, which has generated a lot of violence, and the tradition of sweatshop labor."

As for the daily efforts of R. Limbaugh to distort, damage, and endanger America by calling for the failures of all U.S. policies under the Obama administration, he went a bit further this week, saying that the horrors of Haiti's disaster were just another element in Obama's plan to encourage voters to like him. Oh noes!! The horror that Americans approve of it's president as said president works to help relieve suffering where thousands are dead or dying.

And when a caller grilled RL on such statements, RL replies, naturally, that the comments were not made in error, but that the caller was an idiot:

"What I’m illustrating here is that you’re a blockhead,” Limbaugh shot back. “What I’m illustrating here is that you’re a close-minded bigot who is ill-informed.”

“If you had listened to this program for a modicum of time, you would know it,” he said. “But instead, you’re a blockhead. Your mind is totally closed. You have tampons in your ears."

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31539.html#ixzz0chwwnzsv

Yes, only a tampon-stuffed blockhead would tolerate the idea that America works to help other countries in times of harrowing tragedy and loss of life. After all, we multi-millionaire celebs got ours, so screw you and go get your own. You want compassion? Go join a quilting bee with all the other weepy old ladies.

Stay classy, RL.

Tigger, The ACLU and Ken Starr

With endless accounts that students in America's schools just can't make the cut when it comes to excellence in studies of math or science or reading and writing, the following report indicates our schools are mastering absurdity.

Seems a young student went to school and mocked all authority by wearing a pair of socks that showed the character Tigger from Winnie-The-Pooh. Yes, Tigger. Maybe it's all the bouncing he does or that he likes to have fun, fun, fun. Reports say she was then forced to an in-school suspension program called "Students With Attitude Problems."

Well, to be honest, it wasn't only the socks. She also wore a brown shirt with a pink border and a denim skirt. The school does have a 'dress code' which says the "policy requires students to wear clothes with solid colors in blue, white, green, yellow, khaki, gray, brown and black. Permitted fabrics are cotton twill, corduroy and chino. No denim is allowed."

Thos darn anti-authoritarian colors are ruining Amurica!!

The Florida school is now being sued by the seventh-grader on the basis that the policy is unconstitutionally vague and restrictive. I suppose suing on the grounds that a policy is silly won't hold much weight in court. And yes, a school certainly has the right to create and enforce a dress code. I just can't imagine denim being banned.

Which reveals, of course, that my mind was rotted with filth, degradation and snarky attitude problems as I attended school wearing denim jeans. No cartoon socks, no. But I did have a couple of Mickey Mouse shirts.

I would call this event "Goofy" but that could be misconstrued as a cartoon reference.

Is it any wonder that the United States Supreme Court this week heard a case involving the suspension of a student who carried a silly sign outside school property and was suspended by a principal who saw the sign as a flagrant assault on the "mission of the school"?

Even stranger, groups ranging from Pat Robertson's Law Center and the ACLU are supporting the student's case and the U.S. attorney arguing the case for the government is ... wait for it .. Kenneth Starr.