July 4, 2024 - aka The Twilight Zone

I did spend several days of a long 4th of July  weekend watching a marathon of original Twilight Zone episodes. It seemed the most honest and appropriate way to mark what is likely the end of the run for the US of A. Since the former president/coup leader/traitor has been deemed immune from criminal prosecution we now abandon Independence and Freedom to return to being merely subjects of a King. So yeah, Twilight Zone. 

It was a very powerful series of stand-alone episodes which have had a global appeal. Often very political, rejecting authoritarianism in every aspect of society and the Kurrent Konservative Karenism would be protesting every episode if the show were being made today.

The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street - where neighbors violently turn on each other for minor or meaningless occurrences - but it turns out they are all being manipulated by alien observers, who sow confusion to show how easily they can turn to enemies, part of their strategy of world domination.

The closing narration of that episode captures the current American dilemma ... 

"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices ... to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill ... and suspicion can destroy ... and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own—for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is ... that these things cannot be confined to ... The Twilight Zone!"

Mmmm, A Fresh Hot Cup of Joe

 I really dislike most social media platforms, so I'm refreshing your Cup of Joe. 

Even the letters are bigger now.

America has, however, gotten smaller and meaner in many ways. We both know it. Like we both know that the really hard, hard facts and choices are here in front of us.

So let me, as always, be plain about the state o' the nation.

The con-man loser, disgraced former president Trump, is facing indictments on a wide number of crimes and felonies from two different states (so far), from the Department of Justice, the FBI, and on-going Congressional hearings into the insurrection on Jan. 6. 

And while hundreds of those violent attackers and their leaders are being sentenced, and many others face likely prosecution - the real question remains: What do we do with Trump?

 Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3:​

"No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."

Facts and Truth - the Vaccine for Our Nation

Yes, yes, despite all my efforts, this post is yet another one about the idiot living in the White House, and tangentially the idiots who think he is a genius. 

There's just this verifiable galaxy of chaos engulfing the country and, let's be plain - the chaos has cost lives. 

A particular detail about myself is I am one the elite cadre of Real Journalists - an alchemical creation made in my youth in the melting pot of newsprint and Murrow's television - made only with a relentless application of shoe leather and work and commitment to report two things: Facts and Truth. And by youth I mean, well, at the age of 11 I was the sole writer and publisher of a weekly 4 page news report on local and national issues which I printed 100 copies of and passed out for free to classmates and adults who needed it.

In other words, news and commentary is Foundational for me. And Journalism - news reporting and commentary - is Foundational to America.

Any good reporter can tell you, small petty men and women create little fiefdoms and large ones inside our daily politics and always have, whether on a local state or national level, we even have these fiefdoms pop up where we work, in the ways we interact socially. It's a behavior of the emotionally stunted. 

If Walter Cronkite were alive during this presidency, he would have already, personally, socked him in the nose.

The Press en masse is not the enemy of the people, Lies are the enemy. The news is not fake, its really that fucking bad. Bizarre rumors become National Policy. The one branch of our government, the presidency, has become a battering ram to the basic structure of government. What has been the most unnerving and disturbing aspect of this chaos is the boundless support the Republican Party provides for his lawlessness. 

Sigh.

Out of an enormous legacy of overall respect for whomever holds the office, the Press was reluctant early on, and even now, to call his statements what that are. False. Lies, Imaginary. I tip my hat to them for standing up more and more in the face of death threats and ridicule. I have one very big problem with cable news networks - far too much focus on panel shows of media consultants offering precious little in the way of Facts. Media has, especially with television and now the Internet, been a little too in love with itself.

America is not great right now.

(Though have we not learned very clearly how when things are hardest, the majority of us - we pull together to help each other?)

This president's failures are no hoax.

Accurate, factual, truthful documentation of this horrible era will be plentiful in future years - this post is now part of that record, another verification of our troubled times - As Merlin said in the movie Excalibur "It is the doom of men that they forget. They forget."

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.

The Worst Kidney Stone in Human History

Here at the end of 2018, I am somewhat embarrassed so many of the few posts this year have been about the Fake President currently in office. I didn't want to do that, but the harm being done by the individual is consistently alarming and newsworthy.

I take some minimal comfort in the reality that the majority of voters cast their votes for someone else. Also bringing relief, the fact that the political faction responsible for his term were pretty much thrown out in the elections of the Fall of this year. But restoring the nation will be a great task and one that takes more time. Simply put, this bizzaro episode isn't going to end well. 

So onward to 2019, and again, I'll exert more effort to renew the readability and worth of posts on this humble, but lovable page. As for our current discomfort, it shall pass .... like the worst kidney stone in human history.

Summer 2018 - They Live ... Again

Let's knock the dust of this page.

A reason for the long time between posts - I wanted it to be ignored for a while, forgotten even, so I had fewer concerns about who might read it. Job done!

On to business -

As a lifelong political observer, it has been a most fascinating time, though a sad one for the old U.S. of A. After surviving so many challenges of the most dire sort, it seems the worst folks imaginable are in charge supported by a very vocal minority of citizens who are demented by hatred and racism and self-aggrandizement. I can't say the prognosis is good - I'm afraid the old U.S. of A. is probably going to to get sicker before it gets better. 

An encore rally of the white-supremacist neo-nazis from Charlottesville have booked their next appearance - the national mall in front of the White House in August. Guest speakers to include........

Meanwhile, I've noted some true Weirdness worth noting - such as

 - - The use of foreskins from Korean babies as the base of a high-dollar facial treatment for rich white ladies (aka The Penis Facial). I hear The Idiot in Chief is a big fan.

- - America currently has the largest stockpile of cheese in over a century. Too much milk which is a part of the Idiot in Chief's Trade War stratagems. 

- - Finally! Robosuits are here!! (and remember, Robos can't unionize!!)

-- So for nearly 18 years now, every big-budget Hollywood box office hit feature agonizingly long and detailed scenes of giant skyscrapers collapsing into enormous billowing clouds of dust but no one is talking about the nation's recurring daydream of what happened at the World trade Center. Y'all are creeping me out.

- - Speaking of movies, check out the Daily Itinerary of the Killer in a Slasher Movie.

Gobsmacked in America; or The Tweetering Inferno

Oh blog, poor blog, you have been mightily not been much present for the Dear Readers of the world in 2017.

It's not your fault. Wailing negativity each and every day has dominated the news and the talk and politics and the personalities which a battered modern America has brought forth are fairly depressing. I really do not want to add even more weight to the self-manufactured drowning stones being looped around America's neck. So I've kept my mouth shut, my keyboard untouched.

And the information flowing from the political distortions of reality presented as fact is a likewise river of sewage pretending it's a princess. The emperor may have no clothes, to quote the fable, but in today's world none care but we will video him with their phone as he goes walking past. The screen is running the show.

So I've just been working on real human interactions. Not writing about it, not observing, living. Such tends to severely limit writing.

And the good and the positive which I have encountered this year, I've kept clutched silently to myself, as if such things were tattered remnants of a nation once proud and mostly honest. Festering sores aren't much use to share with one's fellow humans. Though if your fellow human is indeed covered in festering sores, maybe one should speak to it.

In more simple terms. the cheese has fallen right off the American cracker.

It's on the floor, even if you like, clean it off, put it back on the cracker, you'll know.


PS - Fear not dear reader. Your  Cup of Joe is here, even when quiet. There's 12 years worth of archives to read - just click on a month in the sidebar on the right. You can see how many dead links and dead websites and music and video sites that aren't around anymore. But I am still here. I be back.

TrumpBrand - America For Sale

The tweeted idiocies, outright lies, and deceptions gurgling up out of the TrumpBrand Government might appear entertaining, but the real, daily, and constant work to dismantle America is growing by leaps and bounds. Six months into this wrecking ball approach to government and the damage is already immeasurable. What a horrifying mess the TrumpBrand Government is making.

The Big Lie (aka the Blame Them Game)  which many Republicans and most Conservatives cling to, demands all problems or issues are merely the fault of any and every one except themselves - the reason those who hold office can't affect change is you, bucko, you and your crowd are bad hombres. It's the media, it's the previous administration, it's students, it's China, It's Germany (but it's isn't Russia), it's the immigrants, it's refugees, it's lazy poor people who make the problems that won't go away.

Oh and it is also the governed and those who govern. They - they - they - it's a mantra of blame throwing.

Meanwhile the real work to transform and elevate the control of business over government and the governed is on a stampede, noted in this report from Washington Monthly:

"The Trump/GOP effort to shrink the civil service plays on a narrative the American people have been hearing for decades: the federal workforce is bloated. As Mulvaney’s guidance put it, there are “too many Federal employees stuck in a system that is not working for the American people.” Press secretary Sean Spicer, announcing Trump’s executive order in January, explained that the hiring freeze “counters the dramatic expansion of the federal workforce in recent years.”

"The only problem with this narrative is that it is the exact opposite of the truth. As a share of the U.S. workforce, the federal civil service is actually smaller than at any time since before World War II. In absolute terms, it has been about the same size for half a century. In 1966, there were about 2.1 million executive branch civil servants (not including Postal Service employees). Since then, the country’s population has increased from 196 million to 323 million. The annual gross domestic product, along with annual government spending, more than quadrupled. And the workforce? In 2016, there were still only 2.1 million federal employees.

"There’s no rule that says the number of civil servants has to rise in lockstep with the population or the economy. Many federal jobs in the 1960s were clerical positions that computers have made obsolete. But still. In 1966, there was no Environmental Protection Agency, no Department of Homeland Security, no Federal Emergency Management Agency. Medicare and Medicaid had been signed into law just a year earlier. It’s hard to believe that the same number of people we had in 1966 can run such a radically larger government enterprise.

"And, in fact, they don’t.

"While the number of federal employees has basically flatlined for a half century, the government has ballooned if you include another group in your tally: private contractors. As the size and scope of federal programs grew, but the number of civil servants stayed fixed, that labor had to get done by someone. Congress’s answer has increasingly been to contract with the private sector. So when Trump and the Republicans say they’re going to shrink government by cutting federal workers, do a mental autocorrect. What they’re really saying is, we’re going to be shoveling a lot more money out the door to federal contractors."

For the record, anyone who says government should run like a business does not know what government is actually for or what it does. 

" ... there are between 600,000 and 800,000 service contractors; the government spends more on them than it does on the salaries of the entire civil service, which has three times the number of people. Contracting accounted for 40 percent of all discretionary spending in 2015, and service contracts accounted for 60 percent of that (even more at nondefense agencies). And it’s rising. Even the Defense Department spends twice as much on contracts for services as it spends on aircraft, ships, and land vehicles. According to a 2015 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report, spending on contractors nearly doubled from 2000 to 2012, and the subset “that grew the most in dollar terms was contracts for professional, administrative, and management services”—that is, service contracts."

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.

Let Me Tell

It seems clear to me and to many others that the one word and concept which the current president does not understand is -- Intelligence.

Presidential campaign staffers - likely at trump's orders - contact foreign envoys for Russia (and probably other nations) whose phone calls have been routinely tapped by U.S. agencies since the 1950s - and they informed the president a month ago about such critical lapses and potential crime. When the president failed to act, they wisely informed the press, something intelligence agents have always done when national security is in grave danger.

It's even more unusual that a former intelligence director (Mike Flynn) appointed to National Security Adviser would not know about the taping of calls.

Russia meanwhile, acts pretty much like the One Who Defeated Trump - Russian jets buzz over our navy, a spy ship is spotted off the Connecticut coast, they're refusing to even discuss the Crimean issue, they've gotten the Syrian civil war going their way, they've violated missile treaties - who knows what else they can push into Trump's blustery face?

Now let's consider China, where Trump's business interests have been losing a 10-year legal battle over the rights to trademark his name. Dozens if not hundreds of lawsuits are underway. And as with Russia, the American people and Congress have zero idea how much of Trump's businesses rely on income from these countries - and most important - what will he do to preserve his income?

National security? Why that's just entertainment for Trump's country club gang.

The Age of Trump and the Rise of the Fake Generation

The president-elect truly wielded the digital might of Twitter into office. There are some basics about our digital communications which most Americans don't know, however. 

Overseas, nations like Russia, China, the Philippines, India, and more, have thriving digital economies built solely on defrauding digital communications. I'm not talking cyber-spies and plots. This is pure economics. 

Armies of low-paid workers create and use fake social media accounts, often hired by companies developing software or hardware or any product, really and they click away 24-7 around the globe. 

Also worth a read - clickfarming.

The problem so clogged up the giant Instagram platform that in 2014 they had to purge over 18 million suspected fake accounts.

Such digital tactics have been honed into a targeting political tool which found great success in the presidential election.

Cutting across many demographic groups, the rise of believers in Fake coalesced around a TV celebrity, Donald Trump, whose identity is and remains more of an Avatar than a person. He's the perfect spokesman of the Fake generation.

Accuse the spreaders of fakery (and their leader) and they'll respond such accusations are proof of guilt of the accusers. A political writer at Politico chucked mainstream news outlets for a couple of weeks and just followed the Fake generation online for information:

"Indeed, my feed was totally saturated with Pro-Kremlin sentiment. Part of that seemed connected to the likely Russian hack of emails that weakened the Clinton campaign and were published on Wikileaks, an organization that seems to have the trust of the alt-right. Anti-ISIS sentiment was baked in, and many Tweeters were just parroting the nation’s most prominent Russophile, Donald J. Trump. In any event, Russian propaganda intersected with Trumpian propaganda to such an extent that I observed little skepticism of Putin or RT, his English-language mouthpiece. At one point user @neverRINOs retweeted an image of Bashar Al-Assad on RT, saying, “Western media has no credibility, morality.” Above it, he wrote, “FACT CHECK: TRUE.” As Cernovich tweeted, “Putin is a larger than life alpha male who loves his country and will fight to defend it. Why don’t you admire him? Brainwashing.”

It's a swamp that isn't being drained, it's growing.

The Final Truth about the 2016 Presidential Election

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.

As the British have just done, Americans now seek to withdraw from the world with a snarl for everyone else.

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. 

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. 

Gunfight at the We're Not OK Corral

Not to be negative, America, but we are not ok. 

It is not ok to get armed far beyond the teeth or eyebrows or cowlicks, and shoot as many people as possible. 

It is not ok to perceive every person who might be different from you as an immediate threat to Life As We Know It.

Some mistake in the brain's wiring, some horror repressed from an abusive relationship, something becomes not ok in the thinking of the deranged. I recently wondered, given the discovery of knowingly lead-poisoned water in one city's water supply - and the seemingly monthly massacre shootings we are confronting - how many cities across America for how many decades have had tainted water supplies? 

Lead poisoning at low levels - especially in the young - have critical consequences, as noted here by the World Health Organization:

"Blood lead levels that were considered previously to be safe are now understood to compromise health and injure multiple organs, even in the absence of overt symptoms. The most critical consequence of low level lead toxicity in utero and during childhood is damage to the developing brain and nervous system. The immune, reproductive and cardiovascular

systems are also adversely affected by relatively low levels of exposure to

lead ...

The consequences of brain injury from exposure to lead in early life are loss of intelligence, shortening of attention span and disruption of behavior. Because the human brain has little capacity for repair, these effects are untreatable and irreversible. They cause diminution in brain function and reduction in achievement that last throughout life."

Nationally, easily more than 100 cities have aging water supply infrastructure that's likely also supplying lead. And that's just one potential source of toxins that could permanently damage cognition and other vital mental functions.

It is not ok for a society to be consumed with warfare for as long as we have been - and again, perception is filtered through a distorted lens. Military weaponry, tactics and strategies surround us. 

It's not ok to execute a death blow to someone being arrested for traffic violations, even if the person is later learned to be a felon, because the death penalty is only to be exacted after the judicial system has examined the person. And while we're talking judicial system, it is not ok for prisons to be run by corporations for profit. The corporations demand inmates to make money, my god that's barbaric.

It's no ok to be a racist. A racist is not just ignorant, but actually dangerous to those around them, threatening social stability at every level. A racist politician is an even larger threat. It's not ok to be silent when you encounter racism - the ignorant who reveal such a characteristic desperately need education.

On a personal aside here, the recent weeks have been so very strange because the news of the day is so similar to a futuristic science-fiction dystopian society short story I wrote in my early teens. The tale followed events as a sniper, for some un-named protest, began shooting at random, but everyone is armed and some are eager to join in a gunfight because the media of the day celebrates the vigilante. The tale was gruesome (i was writing for shock value, and not that well). The society was constantly under fire, the population medicated with anti-anxiety pills, political views were always punctuated with a bullet. I'm horrified beyond words that the actual world I see today resembles in anyway my childish paranoid view of the future. That isn't ok either, the world deserves so much better than such a poorly written narrative.

Lastly, the jingoistic claim that all it takes to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun is now a proven ridiculous notion. A giant chunk of armed police on the scene in Dallas when one shooter appeared could not prevent the killings.  It is not ok to live every day like vengeful Earps and Clantons warring in the middle of town. Picking a side and joining in battle will never end the violence, it nurtures violence.

The Collapse of European Unity

Britain's decision to leave the EU signals the end of over 50 years of social and political order, a time of historical peace and economic growth, begs the question of what order will replace it? 

For now, a powerful rising return of nationalism is seeking control - not to say wiser and perhaps better policies may arise - but since this anti-unity effort has grown from nationalism, then ....

An excellent essay at Washington Monthly comparing the most narrow of world views with the often demeaned policies of liberalism led by President Obama reveals stark contrasts. As he spoke in his Nobel Speech (quoted in the essay):

"I do not believe that we will have the will, the determination, the staying power, to complete this work without something more — and that’s the continued expansion of our moral imagination; an insistence that there’s something irreducible that we all share.

"We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place…For if we lose that faith — if we dismiss it as silly or naïve; if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war and peace — then we lose what’s best about humanity. We lose our sense of possibility. We lose our moral compass."

The Donald Trump Explained

It is no surprise the the wack-a-doodle candidate has won the day for Republicans, as that's pretty much been the New Standard for the GOP: rude, prone to wild exaggeration and outright deception, devotion to obsolete ideas, anger, anger and some more anger. Wack-a-doodle.

Such has been the norm since, oh, we all know it - since Barack Obama became the Democrat nominee and especially since his inauguration. It might have been labeled a non-stop Whisper-Smear Campaign, except they've never whispered their outrage. Only hyperbole fixes their rhetoric in place - policies are not opposed or debated factually, instead President Obama is Destroying America to the Point It Will Be Lost Forever and Ever Just Because He's Secretly a Something.

Who else could Republicans select from their field of bobble-headed pretenders? Ben Carson? Jeb!? No, not even the righteous indignation of Angry Senator Ted Cruz could capture the fervor of the faithful because he had a little too much piety in his patter. Piety? Screw that, says Trump. Screw everything - screw you, screw Mexicans, women, Muslims, well screw all brown folks, and screw the horse you all rode in on too. Get 'em outta here.

The faithful howl with derisive laughter at the wack-a-doodle peeing in the political punch bowl. And become loyalists.

Wisely, the GOP Machine applied only criticism to the Trump campaign since endorsing him would undercut his efforts - a convention floor fight, a new contender - none of that will appear. Better for the Machine to merely stand aside and watch until Trump's in power and reluctantly work with the fellow and should he fail spectacularly they'll shrug it off since "He's not one of us!"

He is, however, the candidate of our age - he's the Internet Troll who won't go away, who demands power, who claims to be an authority, who can't be argued with because he's just blustering a 160-characters per second per second and he's taken over the American Tumblr page  and just ruined the page which used to be pretty cool. His followers like it though, akin to the way some folks like the way the Three Stooges would bake wallpaper paste into the bread rolls and serve it up the gullible rich establishment folk. 

He's a perfect foil for Hillary Clinton - lifelong politician with a name the GOP despises. Truly, they should love her. She's like Nixon - driven to be in the White House, or in any office, hungry for it on a weird level. But she has her own Trump Outsider card - she's a woman who is wife of a despised man, and that's a powerful card never to be underestimated.

The Troll with a heart (hair? comb-over?) of gold is likely to win the day.

Mega-Insta-Political Analysis

Let's do a little political talking about all the political talking.

And the talking is being done by notably unqualified candidates here in the ol' U.S. of A, the sort of talking that cliched tin-pot dictators might spew from tiny podiums and dressed in over-decorated, ill-fitting military uniforms.Such candidates as Trump, Cruz, Carson, Fiorina, Rubio, Bush, and even whole rosters of state GOP candidates are the folks doing such talking today. It's pretty awful to hear and see.

I recently watched the Burns Civil War documentary and the talk is mighty similar to the fairly unhinged generals and officers delirious with battlefield fever. The talk is most notable for it's hostility, whatever issue is laid before them, or indifference. It is anti-everything that reeks of the 21st century.

On the Left, Hilary Clinton, even if elected will instantly be tarred with the 'unconstitutional presidency', as these talkers have labeled President Obama. And that would extend the current Insta-Rage crowd's fervor to even more unacceptable and unsustainable behaviors.

And there's Bernie Sanders, who has, for his career, been neither a Republican or a Democrat ...a pretty good indication he's probably the smartest guy in this particular political room of Potentials.

Sanders is perhaps the reason  why Trump is standing out as the Top Potential - to frame what is the real battle in 2016: wages and wealth. They're easy to cast in opposing views on wages and wealth to hit the gut-punch level most voters require.

Should Federal Election Day Be A Holiday?

Presidential candidate and senator Bernie Sanders says "Yes" and has prepped some legislation for it --

"[That] would indicate a national commitment to create a vibrant democracy."

Would it increase voter turnout?

Should elections be held on weekends?

Jon Stewart - The Importance of Accountability

The clearest and most sane response to the loopy, hypocritical and dangerous trends in politics and media for this century has come from Jon Stewart and The Daily Show (echoed and amplified by The Colbert Report).

I can barely imagine what our world might have become without it. The awesome weight and power of the satire provided via Stewart's company of comedians and writers was inescapable and palpable. In the stormiest of times, the calm of laughter and the presence of wisdom somehow made such storms endurable.

America has a rich history of sharp and straight shooters who called "bullshit" when it needed to be called - Mark Twain, Will Rogers, Kurt Vonnegut. 

While I hate to see Stewart step away, I know that 16 years of televising the ridiculing of the Abyss must be deeply exhausting and trying. I hope he realizes how incredibly valuable and necessary his show has been. It isn't just a job well done, it's been a vital voice on a global scale. And it's a voice that was a collaboration of writers and producers most of us will never even know.

His first Daily Show broadcast tackled the ongoing lunacy of a President Clinton impeachment hearing, and perhaps, as the Obama presidency winds down, the nation may be entering a new cycle, We all hope for less lunacy, but really, a satirist can only point the way in which we should proceed.

I salute you, sir. I thank you. I hope we remember the importance of accountability.

Cartoons of War and Murder

via cartoonist Rob Tornoe

How odd is it that we live in a time when terror threats against a low-brow fart-joke movie ("The Interview") and the massacre of cartoonists with Charlie Hebdo in France make worldwide headlines?

Kudos to Pith In The Wind for reprinting a selection of cover cartoons from Charlie Hebdo.

Here is a link to cartoonists responding to the massacre. 

The murders in France will in fact make sure more people will see the works of Charlie Hebdo so despised by delusional extremists. Perhaps that is a victory of sorts.

(NOTE: I;m aware of the irony of this post after my previous post)