DRONING ON

    Chef José Andrés' World Central Kitchen (WCK) has been lauded over most of the civilized world for feeding the hungry in disaster and war zones. Chef Andrés is fulfilling, whether intentionally or not, one of the essential aspects of human decency, a Beatitude perhaps, voiced by some itinerant preacher in the Middle East a long time ago when he said, "...for I was hungry and you gave me food...and for as much as you have done this unto the least of these, my bretheren, you have done it unto me." 

    I think that guy meant that the simple human decency of sharing food with the hungry transcends all the pettiness of this world and shows some exceptional greatness. But that's just my opinion and what do I know? I'm just an over-educated old man and an atheist too. Maybe that itinerant preacher just meant "Screw the hungry, feed me!" Regardless, Chef Andrés deserves some serious plaudits for the charity he has organized.

    The other day, some of Chef Andrés' employees and their guide and translator were in a convoy amid the war in Gaza. Surrounded by gratuitous death and destruction these 7 World Central Kitchen workers were going about the business of saving some civilians from starvation. The convoy was moving at night along a route specifically arranged with and agreed upon by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). The cars in which they were riding were clearly marked as World Central Kitchen vehicles on their roofs to make any air units of the IDF aware that the vehicles carried neutral, non-combatant aid workers.

    As this aid convoy made its way along this allegedly safe and pre-cleared route one or more IDF drones appeared overhead. These drones were equipped with U. S. provided Hellfire Missiles. They also were equipped with cameras specifically used for targeting, cameras which sent their images back to some one or more IDF pilots controlling the drones from a chair some safe distance away. Because cameras need to see in the dark, these drones had either conventional lights or night-vision sensors or infra-red sensors on board to give their controllers specific information about the vehicles and their passengers.

    Before we go further, let me make clear, the person or persons controlling the drone or drones above the WCK convoy could see the vehicles blow those drones.

    What happened next has been clearly attested to and explained. A drone fired a Hellfire Missile at 1 of the convoy vehicles. The survivors of that missile strike got out of the wreck and ran to the the next vehicle. When they arrived at that next vehicle another Hellfire Missile hit that vehicle. The survivors of the 2 Hellfire Missile strikes then ran to the third vehicle in the convoy. When they reached that third vehicle a third Hellfire Missile destroyed this new vehicle finally killing the rest of the 7 WCK employees who had survived the previous 2 missile strikes.

    The IDF and the Israeli Government have brushed this horror off as a terrible mistake. Let me ask you, is that denial of responsibility credible? Is there any iota of truth in that denial?

    Remember that the convoy was on a prescribed route pre-cleared by the IDF. Remember that the vehicles were clearly marked specifically so that they could be identified from the air. Now remember that aid workers who survived the first missile strike weren't targeted until they reached the second vehicle and again weren't targeted until they reached the third vehicle in the convoy. Finally, I would ask you how utterly full of shit are the IDF and the Israeli Government? How clearly, I ask you, is it that those WCK workers were targeted over and over again. 

    Two ships laden with food for those starving in the Gaza Strip turned back to Cyprus and WCK withdrew from Gaza following the murders of their fellows thus insuring that more Palestinians would die of starvation, a horrible, lingering death that takes children first. How, I must ask you, can the malignant, meretricious and mendacious IDF and Israeli Government of Benjamin Netanyahu retain any scintilla of credibility. And finally, I ask you to look up or call to memory the piles of emaciated corpses in the Nazi death camps, the skeletal survivors in the Nazi death camps, the destruction of Lidice and Ležáky and the Warsaw Ghetto and then I ask you how can the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who suffered those horrors can consent to visiting the same horrors on any of their fellow human beings?

    All Palestinians are not Hamas. I would suggest that even as honorable and decent Jews (I am excepting Stephen Miller who is Jewish but otherwise neither.) oppose the Netanyahu Government, so are there Palestinians who oppose Hamas. Just as there are Hamas fighters who dehumanized Jews to commit the atrocities of October 7, 2023 so there are some Israelis, the drone operators in this WCK case for example, are no better than the vilest of Nazi SS officers, non-coms and camp guards. I have spoken with and respected survivors of the Nazi death camps. I have known men who liberated the Buchenwald Camp, one of those being one of my uncles. I find it incomprehensible that Israelis have dehumanized Palestinians as the Nazis did the Jews. I find it incomprehensible that Israelis, no matter how threatened they may feel, would sink so low as to dishonor the the 6,000,000 murdered in the Shoah by becoming like their murderers.

    I do find those things incomprehensible yet there is plenty of room left to rend my heart that my country, my government, my president is willfully complicit in the on-going Palestinian genocide and in the wanton murder of the 7 workers of the World Central Kitchen.

HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING GOOD FROM 1942?

 

    On May 27, 1942 Czech and Slovak partisans assassinated one of the vilest of the Nazis, Reinhard Heydrich, the chairman of the Wannsee Conference that systematized the extermination of Jews, Roma (Gypsies) and all other conquered or peoples otherwise considered "inferior" by Hitler's Third Reich. When Heydrich ultimately died of his wounds on June 4, 1942 Hitler ordered revenge for the assassination by razing to the ground the villages of Lidice and Ležáky whence the partisans may have come. In the attack on those villages, every male 14 years-old and older was taken to a field and shot. The women and younger children were sent to the extermination camps and "disposed of" there. In all, 572 men, women and children were murdered in the 2 towns while 7 children were given to SS Officers' families to raise as Nazis.

    On October 7, 2023 Hamas Terrorists from the Gaza Strip attacked Southern Israel killing about 1,300 Israeli citizens and taking over 200 hostages. Embarrassed by the failure of his anti-democratic and ultra-right wing government to detect this attack before it happened, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the razing to the ground of the Gaza Strip. First, by indiscriminate bombing of the area under the excuse that Hamas fighters hide amongst the general population. Second, to complete his revenge on the Palestinian population of over 2,000,000 persons and with little or no regard for those 200+ hostages, Netanyahu ordered a ground invasion of Gaza to complete the razing of the Palestinian enclave. At the time of this writing somewhere over 31,000 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children, have been killed by the Israeli Defense Forces largely through aerial bombing. Israel excuses this horror by claiming that Hamas "terrorists" live amongst the general population. Prime Minister Netanyahu, in a paroxysm of Orwellian rhetoric, has claimed that not "eliminating Hamas" means that Israel is weak and open to further attack. That is no more nor less than his excuse for a blatant genocidal attack on civilian targets.

    I support the existence of a safe and secure Jewish Homeland in the Middle East. I also support a contiguous and free Palestinian Homeland in the ancient land of Palestine. It is possible to have both if the murders on both sides stop for the most part, the parties respect one another's rights and allow the fury that reciprocal murders generate to die down without excesses on either side over the coming 75 years.

    What I do not and cannot support is the Netanyahu government of Israel inspired by its fanatical approach to land rights based on a book of mythology mixed with history. Though the Jewish peoples held much of what we call Palestine in the ancient past, that hegemony was broken after the Roman Armies won the Jewish War in 70 CE. Until the 1880s when Zionism began its defense of persecuted Jews by suggesting a home in Palestine, Arab and Bedouin peoples lived in and ruled over Palestine. Despite their ancient claims and mythology, modern Jews were and are interlopers in Palestine. Those Jews have established a homeland that they definitely need and should have but only as good neighbors to their fellow Semitic brothers and sisters.

    The none-too-soon death of Reinhard Heydrich brought about retribution 579% greater than the loss of that one vile Nazi.

    A death toll 579% greater than the 1,200 Israelis murdered on October 7th would yield a Palestinian death toll of 694,800. Thankfully, Israel's genocidal attacks since October 7th have not reached that horrific toll yet the attacks on Gaza stink of Hitler's response to Heydrich's assassination. Before we get anywhere nearer the 35,000 mark of Palestinian deaths, the bombing, the invasion, the blockade and dehumanization of Palestinians must stop.

    Unlike Netanyahu's Orwellian attempt to distract from his government's failings, further attacks are not a demonstration of Israeli strength. This frenzy of genocide is an admission of weakness. What would show strength by Israel is a ceasefire, withdrawal of invaders and a demand that Gazans, the majority of Gazans who are not Hamas, surrender all hostages and also surrenders the leaders and planners of the October 7th attacks. A truly strong leader of Israel could demand that the Gazan people surrender weapons, including rockets, in exchange for opening of border crossings and importation of materials for rebuilding homes, medical supplies and food aid as soon as the surrenders began.

    And my President could be the godfather to an incipient peace by demanding this much of his friend and client, Netanyahu. 

    I must at this point look at the use of the term "genocide". Israelis broadly and even the wider Jewish community have a special connection to that term. The Shoah perpetrated by the Nazis culminating the centuries of discrimination, pogroms and individual murders is most certainly the attempted genocide of the Jewish people. However, that does not make "genocide" a term uniquely applicable to Jews. The Bible tells us that the Abrahamic Tribes committed genocide against the Midianites. Crusaders of the Middle Ages carried out genocides of anyone who held beliefs at odds with their own regardless whether those they murdered followed Islam or a different Christian sect. The Ottoman Turks carried out a genocide on the Armenian people. The Nazi's genocidal machine devoured 6,000,000 Jews and additionally included gays, communists, socialists, and the Roma condemned to the ovens or mass graves. The Rwandan majority Hutus carried out a genocide of the minority Tutsis in 1994. Genocide as a term and a fact is not the sole property of any one people or group. Genocide continues today against the Rohingya in Myanmar (Burma) and the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China. The Netanyahu Government's indignation at being called out for genocide in Gaza is only slightly less indecent than the genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza that it is currently carrying out.

    Amidst the genocide disguised as counter-terrorism we have organizations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and The American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) egregiously conflating criticism of the Netanyahu Government with the broader evil of antisemitism. Those are somewhat different issues though they do have some overlap. The important fact to recall is that they are not entirely the same. Being an antisemite and opposing the Netanyahu Government is almost a given while opposing the policies of the Netanyahu Government does not make one, ipso facto, an antisemite. Just ask the thousands of Israeli citizens who spent months demonstrating against Netanyahu's attempts to co-opt the Israeli judiciary in his attempt to evade conviction for massive corruption how antisemitic they are.

    Further, opposing the genocidal slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza to further an unjustifiable land grab does not make one a supporter of Hamas. It does make one an humanitarian who opposes genocide. Amongst those who oppose the genocide of Palestinians there are, undoubtedly, members of and sympathizers with Hamas militants but just as the larger Venn Diagram of those opposed to Natanyahu's Government includes some antisemites, so the Hamas faction is a smaller subset within the larger throng of humanity appalled by the Gazan genocide. In fact, one can justifiably argue that the Israeli Defense Force under Netanyahu is the most effective recruitment arm of Hamas that has ever existed. The senseless murders of Palestinian civilians since October 7th has unquestionably brought many survivors of this horror perpetrated by Israel into the Hamas militant fold. 

    We here in the United States have listened eagerly to interviews with Palestinian survivors of incomprehensibly great losses who see that only forgiveness and reconciliation can stop the continuing killing on both sides. The forbearance and decency of those rare souls shames all of us lesser mortals even as we praise their nobility. Yet I cannot help but believe that each of those few great souls has more less forgiving and justifiably angrier counterparts who, even now, plot revenge against the state and people who have murdered their loved ones.

    I would suggest to the right wing Israelis eagerly cozying up to the Christian Evangelical neo-fascists of the United States that they question that support more closely. A significant majority of the Christian Evangelical Movement sees Israel as a major step toward the Armageddon, the return of Christ in glory and the genocide of all who refuse to accept their perverse version of Christianity. These Christian Evangelicals need Israel to exist as one step in their bizarre train of prophecies, a red calf without blemish to resanctify the Temple, Armageddon and the subsequent mass execution of Jews, Islamists and other "unbelievers" in the ashes of the destroyed world. Perhaps allying with those who look forward to your people's ultimate genocide is not the wisest alliance one might make. But that would require some thought to the future rather than for just immediate gain, commitment to intelligence rather than willful ignorance and forgiveness rather than revenge. In short, being humane rather than minimally human.

     Unfortunately, because of those who cannot understand that peace and security do not follow from anger and revenge, I write of a world that could but stubbornly refuses to exist in which weak, authoritarian leaders refuse to see anything beyond their own advantage, people dehumanized by a majority of others turnabout and dehumanize those that are a minority in their sphere and revenge for real and imagined wrongs incite more revenge from the revenged upon. It is a cycle of vengeance, a perfect circle that grows ever smaller as neighbors devour one another leaving nothing but horror, resentment and ashes generation after generation.

    I see little or no hope, little or no sanity and unsurpassed amounts of weeping. Still, the weeping can stop if the first step is a ceasefire.

 

WHICH SHEPHERD IS A GOOD SHEPHERD?

 

Long ago I was very committed to my Methodist religion. One of the parables that the great teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, gave to his friends and believers posited a "Good Shepherd". This shepherd was rather well to do. He had 100 sheep but, one day, he found that one had gone astray so he took the rather perilous step of leaving the 99 sheep that had stayed in the flock to go find the 100th sheep that had gone astray. While he was hunting for the strayed sheep anything could have happened to the other 99. Nothing, as far as we can tell from the parable, happened to the 99 that stayed together while he was away. In any case, this "Good Shepherd" so cared for that 100th sheep that he rejoiced on finding it, brought it back to his main flock and drove the whole hundred home. Generally this parable shows god's love and forgiveness for the sinner who goes astray while ignoring some very risky behavior by the "Good Shepherd".

I mention this parable, this little bit of New Testament lore, because there's been a lot of very odd talk about "sheep" lately.

In January of 2020, the United States began to see the effects of a new, deadly and unique virus designated as Covid-19. The then President of the United States, our Failed Orange Führer, decided to take this global pandemic personally and said, out loud, that it was a hoax designed to make him look bad. Of course, we all know that viruses know somewhere in their cytoplasm who is President of the United States and have a bias against neo-fascist Republiscum. Also, this predicates that it would somehow be possible for anything or person to make the Failed Orange Führer "look bad" given all that mighty work he himself had done to make himself and the nation "look bad". That "hoax" took over 600,000 American lives before the Failed Orange Führer left office.

The "hoax" of Covid-19 upended the lives of millions of Americans and continues to do so. Since the beginning of this year, 2021, we have safe and effective vaccines against Covid-19. Over the past year we have been told to take some reasonable measures to avoid spreading the virus or contracting it ourselves. Most of those measures have worked reasonably well in places where they have been generally adopted. Once the Failed Orange Führer made preventing Covid-19 a political act a lot of his followers made it their duty to protest and flaunt measures to reduce the virus' spread. The result has been that many of these Anti-Vaxxers and Anti-Maskers and Covid-Deniers are now clogging the emergency rooms and Intensive Care Units of the hospitals in the states where this madness is most rampant.

I generally ascribe to the view of the great John Donne:

...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

Yet I have reached a point beyond which my forbearance does not reach. I am heartened by each tolling of each death's bell.

There is a joke about the Baptist/Christian/Evangelist faced with a flood. At successive levels of the waters' rise a canoe, a motorboat and a helicopter come to his rescue but each time he waves the rescuers off because his deep and unshakeable faith always insists that, "The Lord will provide!" Of course he drowns in the flood and, coming before his god he demands to know why he, a man of great faith, was allowed to drown. His god answers, "I sent you a canoe, a motorboat and a helicopter, what more did you expect?"

To the Anti-Vaxxers, Anti-Maskers and Covid-Deniers, I say, "Fuck you!" You were told to social distance. You were told to wear a mask to limit transmission. You were given multiple safe and effective vaccines and you were too fucking stupid to take those reasonable precautions so when you end up in an ICU on a ventilator for the last days of your miserable, ignorant and self-indulgent lives, tough shit! Die already and stop draining resources better spent on people who had 2 brain cells to rub together.

Frankly, if it weren't a violation of a medical professional's most basic oath, I would say that there should be some triage in the Emergency Room: if you've been vaccinated, you get the best care available. If not vaccinated, so long! Go home to die you pathetic imbecile! Don't overwork the medical staff or waste a bed in the hospital when the outcome you tried to achieve so assiduously is upon you.

As a good Liberal/Lefty I feel bad that I feel that way. I give about 15 minutes per day to mental self-flagellation for being so callous. The remaining 23¾ hours each day I shall smile at the removal of one more idiot from American society.

That said I will return to the parable of the "Good Shepherd" because the Anti-Vaxxers, Anti-Maskers, Covid-Deniers like to think of those who mask up, are vaccinated and take the deadly Covid-19 virus seriously as "sheep" even as they themselves follow the Judas Goats of the Failed Orange Führer and their evangelical preachers to death from Covid. So who are the "sheep"in this situation? Are the sheep the millions who are vaccinated against a deadly virus and who are, therefore, able to resume a semblance of a normal life? Or are the "sheep" the gullible imbeciles who are filing through the chute to the slaughter because they are so utterly and unalterably stupid that they can't see they will meet their end at the slaughter house blades shining before them? I'll give you 1 guess as to how I define "sheep".

Having written this I think I can smile ruefully for the next 96 hours before I need to do a 15 minutes of penance.

Praise the Lord And Put More Money In The Slot

 

I shouldn't be surprised. After all televangelism is all about putting money in the slot...sorry...collection plate to get the jackpot of salvation from your "big imaginary friend in the sky"©*. The other night I was watching a movie that someone else had put on the television when a Caesar's Casino ad blared forth (blare is a modest term for what they do) with the news of the...I am not making this up "The Jesus Slots". Now we have one-armed bandits to match the two-armed bandits like Creflo Dollar, Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, Greg Locke, and their Simoniac ilk.

I thought that I had seen the ultimate when I saw the Jesus on the cross flicker picture that Cheech and Chong so effectively satirized. I also, years before that, saw at Easter season a chocolate-marshmallow crucifix, your sweet, chewy way to consume the body and the blood together. Yet "The Jesus Slots" bring us to a whole new level of religiose absurdity, I fear.

I have said before that Evangelicals have given Christianity a bad name what with their incessant money grubbing, not to mention their using religion as a pretext for tax avoidance and expounding and encouraging neo-fascist politics. Evangelicalism is the untreated sewage of Christianity. In fact, the marriage of Evangelical CHRISTIANS and the neo-Nazi Republiscum Party is a match...dare I say it?...made in heaven (the one that's only a myth like Santa Claus). Evangelicals will swallow whole and in amazing quantities any bullshit that the con artists posing as pastors and prophets feed them. The Rapture? Sure! Qanon? You betcha! Then there are the old standards like anti-Semitism, white supremacy, religious bigotry and hate of anyone who doesn't adhere to a lifestyle that they find glancingly referred to in some passage of the inerrant Bible that Jim Bakker or some other charlatan has just edited for his own flock of bleating sheep. The Republiscum Party is for "the little guy"! Sure!! That's why so many million and billionaires fork over a chunk of their quarterly dividend payments to keep the sheep thinking that nonsense.

But wait, you might say, most of these "bleating sheep" are simply good people, good, simple people. There's no need to insult and denigrate them. To which I say, your standards of "good" and mine differ widely. I exclude from "good people" the racists, the xenophobes, the hate-filled fools who rail against the gay or lesbian or transgendered, the religious bigots who insist that only their religion worships their particular and special, one and only "big imaginary friend in the sky"©* properly and that all others must be converted or destroyed, any "good people" who insist on following a "prophet" none of whose predictions come true, who insist that demons possess anyone not playing a part in a movie, who insist that women do not have a right to choose what happens within their own bodies or an education or work outside the home or refuse to have sexual relations with their husbands ever or report their husbands to police when the husbands abuse either the women themselves or their children. Such folks are not ever included in my definition of "good people".

These same insane people who insist that women have no individual right to choose abortion now rally to insist that they have the individual right to go maskless and infect others as well as refuse to take a safe and effective vaccine which could save their lives, the lives of those in their families, their neighbors, fellow congregants and also prevent the Covid-19 virus from mutating into more dangerous and deadly forms. To call these people insane and imbeciles is not hyperbolic. They can't discern that their refusal to get vaccinated and masked is as inimical to human life as they claim abortion to be. If they can't figure that out they are either insane, imbeciles or insane imbeciles or, worse yet, insane imbeciles who credit Fox News, Newsmax, Sinclair or OANN.

Too harsh?

Let me put it to you this way: vaccines made by Pfizer, Moderna, and several other companies, including Johnson & Johnson, have proven safe, effective and have reduced both infection and death rates in the United States and around the world. Those vaccines have allowed many areas' businesses to reopen, sometimes fully, and encouraged economic growth but that doesn't matter to the insane, the imbeciles, insane imbeciles and, to be redundant, Evangelicals among us whose latest snake oil cure-all is horse dewormer. The con men selling Ivermectin to their audience of fools will tell you that the Covid vaccines can make men sterile. They can't and don't but when have the facts ever stopped a con man? In place of the actual effective vaccine, they tout a veterinary medicine that actually can sterilize humans. When the con men know they have the attention of the insane, the imbecilic, the insane imbecilic and, to again be redundant, the Evangelicals their villainy knows no bounds. Yet a part of me thinks that sterilizing these fools is a thing devoutly to be wished.

We should not be surprised at this. Evangelicals are so steeped in the idea that this life is a "world of sin", "a veil of tears", a world so deeply flawed that their "big, imaginary friend in the sky"©* has decreed that it should be destroyed and that we are thus in "The End Times", that their great joy is the total destruction of their "big, imaginary friend's" handiwork. It never occurs to these fools that planning your life for the destruction of your god's creation might be offensive to that very god they claim to worship.

The bleating sheep who trust that their "big, imaginary friend in the sky"©* will protect them from a world-wide pandemic are dying like flies. In states run by the Republiscum Party, the infection and death rates soar while their preachers and radio blabbers tell them that their god is angry at the United States for allowing (take your pick from the following list):

• Abortion
• LGBTQ rights
• Black Lives Matter
• The Anti-Fascist Movement known as antifa
• Eliminating prayer in schools
• Feminism
• Not reelecting The Failed Orange Führer
• Rigging the 2020 election to defeat The Failed Orange Führer
• Allowing anyone to even think about Critical Race Theory
• Teaching Evolution 
• Liberalism
• Communism
• Any "ism" that your preacher says is bad
• Some cabal of politicians, celebrities and folks they don't like that are actually reptiles who steal the essence, blood, pheromones, something from babies and children and wear red, high-heeled shoes
  
• All of the above

They never seem to wonder why their "big, imaginary friend in the sky"©* is taking it out on his worshipers of the "one, true faith" and not killing off the nasty people included in the list above. Could it be that the disasters inflicted on these "good people" happen randomly, or because of climate change (oops! I almost forgot. It's not climate change it's Chinese weather machines and Jewish Space Lasers!") or maybe, just maybe, if their is a god looking out for his special planet, those disasters get visited upon the "good people" because their god is pissed off that they are so utterly stupid and wants to sift the Evangelical chaff from the Liberal grain so that creation, with all it's nasty flaws, can continue to chug along without their bullshit?

We'll just have to wait and see who gets the jackpot from the "Jesus Slots" of life.

To close, let me quote Maxwell Anderson's lyrics for the title song of the musical Lost in the Stars:

Before the Lord God made the sea and the land

He held all the stars in the palm of his hand

And they ran through his fingers like grains of sand

And one little star fell alone.

Then the Lord God hunted through the white, night air

For the little dark star on the winds down there

And he stated and promised he'd take special care

So it wouldn't get lost any more.

Now a man doesn't mind if the stars grow dim

Or the clouds roll over and darken him

As long as the Lord God's watching over them

Keeping track how it all goes on.

But I've been walking through the night and the day

'Til my eyes get weary and my head turns grey

And sometimes it seems maybe God's gone away

Forgetting the promise that we heard him say

And we're lost out here in the stars.

Little stars, big stars blowing through the night

And we're lost out here in the stars.

Little stars, big stars

Blowing through the night

And we're lost out here in the stars!

*©George Carlin

The Idiot Opposition I Can Deal With; It's the Assholes Who Are With Me That Are The Problem

 

As a high school and college student, I was expelled from many left wing groups. I was not some right wing gadfly in their lefty ointment. Actually I was expelled or simply not invited back because I kept seeing the absurdity or outright wrong in their positions. Often I was too far left for the group. Even more often I'd get nixed because I pointed out some nonsense they were spouting by laughing it all the way out the door, that is my exit, not that of the stupid idea.

Back in 2016, as a delegate to my county's Democratic Convention, I was involved in a debate over a party platform plank regarding discrimination. A lady from one community was adamant that the plank had to delineate ad nauseam every sub and sub-sub-group of those who could be discriminated against unfairly. Her heart was in the correct place but she was engaging in a kind of rhetorical overkill. Another woman, a solid Democrat (else why would she be a convention delegate?) rose to object saying, "But I don't want to outlaw all discrimination. I want to discriminate against the people I don't like." Without meaning to she had summarized the whole history of discrimination in 2 sentences. I did my best to stifle my shocked guffaw and took the microphone to say that her caveat was not exactly what we want in the platform. I wasn't thrown out but she did look daggers at me.

Now we have a lunatic fringe that denounces public health on the very thin reasoning that they should not be required to...

...wear a mask in public if they don't want to

...get vaccinated against a deadly disease if they don't want to

...avoid large gatherings if they don't want to

...do anything they don't want to

I have 3 daughters all of whom are long since grown to adulthood with families of their own. Yet when my daughters were 2 and 3 years old I didn't tolerate that behavior from them nor should we tolerate such 2 and 3 year old attitudes from people who are posing as adults. In fact, I told one of my daughters, when she was almost 3 years old and throwing a tantrum because she didn't want to do something that the rest of the family was about to do, "I love you. Daddy will always love you no matter what but you are 2 if you want to be 3, do what I tell you." She didn't quite understand how I could prevent her up coming birthday, but it puzzled her enough that the tantrum stopped and she complied.

Here we are in the second year of a pandemic with a renewed surge of a new variant of the virus and the 2 and 3 year olds among us are throwing tantrums over being asked to wear masks in public, get vaccinated and avoid large gatherings with strangers whose vaccination and infection status they have no way of knowing. These willful and stupid infants don't think clearly enough to understand that their overwhelmingly idiotic behavior is what is causing the Covid-19 virus to spread and mutate. They are the reason that masking and avoiding large gatherings is necessary.

These petty, selfish infants, regardless of age, have come up with many excuses for not getting vaccinated. They insist that the vaccine has made them magnetic, made men sterile by killing of sperm, includes a microchip so that Bill Gates can personally track every one of the millions of people who've been vaccinated, isn't safe because it hasn't received full approval from the Food and Drug Administration which, by the way, they think is in thrall to satan worshiping, child sex trafficers who steal the child's 1)essence, 2)blood, 3) vital organs, 4)something else unspecified while wearing red high heels so that the FDA can't be believed even when they do fully approve a vaccine after millions of harmless injections have been made.

It's like the 2 year old screaming, "You say we're going to get ice cream but there isn't any ice  cream I like in the whole wide world except strawberry that NOBODY HAS!" Objecting that the supermarket down the street has freezers full of ice cream including strawberry makes no difference in the mind of that 2 year old who stubbornly won't take a cone of strawberry ice cream offered because it's "not the right kind of strawberry."

To get to the point, I now believe that our society is well within its rights to protect the majority of the population by chase down every anti-vaxxer 2 year old of any age, restrain him or her and pump that person's arm full of vaccine. I am also for crazy gluing masks to the faces of those brats when they are in public.

Also, to bring this diatribe full circle, I am for gagging my friends on the left and craven dunces in the mass media for giving any credence to the infants' arguments. No more pussy footing around the unestablished rights of individuals to put the health of community after community at risk simply because these idiots look like rational individuals when they regularly demonstrate that they are not.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote that, "My right to throw my fist ends at the other person's nose." The idiot 2 year olds right to go unvaccinated and unmasked ends at the virus I might inhale. To that end, I think that the anti-vaxxers and unmasked have no special rights at all and that good Liberal folks who might think that the idiots have a point, should shut the hell up and help hold the idiot down while someone vaccinates them.

Praise The Lord and Pass The Blame Onto People You Want Everyone To Hate And Fear

 

I have just spent almost 2 years in the not quite loving embrace of an Evangelical Sect of CHRISTIANS who have a thoroughly bizarre idea of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. They have left me with the jaundiced view that Evangelical CHRISTIANS would not recognize Jesus if they fell over him and that they only mouth the teachings of Jesus while actually worshiping the dark powers of evil because they can't get a sentence out without warning of "The End Times" and "Satan" and "Demons".

These sleazy CHRISTIAN snake oil salesmen and their imbecile followers are so in heat for the end of their god's creation that they are blind to the fact that wanting their god's creation to end is, itself, an insult to their god.

This weekend a tropical storm née hurricane has come up along the east coast of the United States. It has wrecked some serious destruction and death as far inland as Tennessee, an important link on The Bible Belt and the state that, nearly a century ago, prosecuted John T. Scopes for teaching Darwinian Evolution in a public school. And, no, the good people of Tennessee haven't moved far from that benighted act since.

The death and destruction wrought upon the good, god-fearing folks of Tennessee by a mindless and random wind and rain storm caused by equally mindless and random phenomena in the South Atlantic and Caribbean plus man-made climate change will, no doubt be blamed on Democrats, Antifa, Chinese Weather Control Machines, LGBTQ+ Rights Movements, Black Lives Matter, Abortions, Satan Worship by Democrats and Liberal Elites, and so on, etc., ad infinitum. Blah-Blah-Blah and also on unCHRISTIAN behavior by anyone that a bunch of neo-fascist demagogues masquerading as preachers and prophets happens to desire to personally gin up hate towards at this moment in time.

Hint: If some self-appointed preacher calls himself a prophet and claims that his god speaks to him directly, he's lying like a rug.

It's all sad and predictable because these demagogues who loudly proclaim their CHRISTIANITY aren't anything like the Jesus we find in the Gospels. 

Hint: If someone has to repeatedly report that they are a CHRISTIAN (not just a Christian), then they are certainly lying to you and to themselves as well

Let's be frank here. No one knows what any god wants for our world, for good or ill. We have more than enough nasty, vile people who are our neighbors and fellow congregants that satan, demons and all supernatural evils are simply unnecessary, regardless of what movie special effects show us. Some of the most worthless activities that human beings have ever engaged in are searching and finely sifting through their holy books of all types and faiths for "God's Plan". If some god had a plan don't you think he would have set it out so that even the dullest, most benighted dunces among us (e. g. self-appointed preachers and prophets) could figure it out? Actually, it is spelled out clearly and specifically in most holy books which is why I would refer you, dear reader, (I'm sure that there's, at most, one of you) the 25th Chapter of the Gospel According to Matthew in the Christian Bible where we are told that "I was naked and you clothed me, hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me drink, sick or in prison and you visited me, And for as much as you have done this to one another, you have done it unto me, your god." That's simple and direct. It does not require numerology, secret codes in the text or calculations that always prove to be wrong. It simply says be good to one another and you'll do what your god wants you to do.

After my 2 year CHRISTIALONIAN Captivity, I have found myself in the cool, green, decent pastures of secularists who seem to have taken that Sermon on the Mount to heart. They are humanitarians who think that helping their fellows is a good thing in and of itself. They have done away with cartloads of strictures about what a big, imaginary friend in the sky (thank you for that George Carlin) imposes and decided that treating other human beings as we would wish to be treated ( e. g. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.) is a pretty good way of getting along with others in this world.

Americas Evangelical movement has been taken over by charlatans who claim that they know what a god who exists nowhere outside the mind of man wants for all mankind. In fact, they know only what they want (i. e. your cash) and ways to keep you in fear and ignorance in order to keep that cash flowing. They have given Christianity a bad name. These heirs to Simon Magus like Jim Bakker, Pat Robertson, Creflo Dollar, James Dobson, Ralph Reed and their ilk trade on the name of a good man and great teacher named Jesus of Nazareth to fleece the foolish and unwary of cash and property while selling the snake oil of sedition, fear and hatred. 

I have noted before that Dr. Samuel Johnson in his Dictionary of 1753 defined "Patriotism" as "the last refuge of a scoundrel." More than a century later, the American writer and satirist, Ambrose Bierce, in his "Devil's Dictionary" noted that "Patriotism" is the first refuge of scoundrels. So what is the last and best refuge of a scoundrel? Why religion, of course! It's largely tax free, protected by our Constitution and largely immune from prosecution. If you doubt me on the immunity from prosecution part, I suggest that you check out the decades of immunity that child abusing Roman Catholic priests secured and Mr. Bakker's short prison sentence for fraud.

If a scam artist cajoles an elderly widow into giving him her house, be that scam artist a stranger or the woman's child, the scammer can be prosecuted. If, on the other hand, the scam artist is a preacher who gets this same elderly widow to turn over her property and live in a shelter for the homeless or a cardboard box under an overpass, that is the protected work of the lord. The veneer of religiosity is all that separates the 2 craven criminals.

Now, having excoriated Evangelicals let me point out that none of the world's religions (excepting only, Scientology, Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Science) are inherently bad or evil. It is fanaticism that turns a humane course for living one's life into a horror of people who fly jet liners into buildings, shoot abortion doctors, beat up and kill people of a different religion or sect, assault others of their faith who move their cars from one side of the street to the other on the sabbath or tears down the temple of one religion to build their own temple on that site. The fanatic picks and chooses the injunctions from his or her holy book and enforces that stricture on all and sundry around him or her. They brook no deviation from the narrow, blinkered view their personal prejudice confines them to. In doing so they explicitly violate those humane injunctions to show others the respect you wish to be shown. The fanatic is the worst apostate of his own religion.

Hint: If your big, imaginary friend in the sky (ibid. George Carlin) wrecks destruction for some actions carried out in far away places like New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco on his god-fearing, righteous flocks in the Bible Belt might it not be that your imaginary friend in the sky is actually angry at his god-fearing, righteous flocks? Maybe your just god ought to punish the people you say he's angry at rather than you who trust in the lord, don't you think? Except maybe he's angry at you for your behavior and smiles on those people you hate. Just saying.

You might want to think about that except that you wouldn't be Evangelical congregants if thinking were your forte. Just saying.

FASCISM IS ALIVE AND WELL IN THE U. S. AND, AMONG OTHER COUNTRIES, IN ISRAEL

 

 I am an American citizen. My ancestry in what is now the United States goes back to Peregrine White, the baby, born November 20, 1620, to William and Suzannah White aboard the good ship Mayflower. My mother and her sisters were members of the Daughters of the American Revolution. I did not support the mal-administration of the Failed Orange Führer and think that that con man and criminal should never be allowed to run for public office at any level again, a prohibition that should extend to his biological and affiliated crime family unto the fifth generation at least.

At the risk of jumping with both feet into a cliche, I have Jewish friends, many of them. Some of the teachers I revered most were Jewish. Nine of my grandchildren are Jewish. I also support Israel's right to exist. I support a Jewish homeland. I do not support the Netanyahu government. 

The Failed Orange Führer attempted to overthrow not just our Congress or our government but our Constitution. The Maga insurrectionists of January 6th and the Republiscum who excuse and support them and their Führer are nothing like patriots despite being born in this country.

The recent purge of Liz Cheney confirms that the Republiscum Party and the great majority of its office holders and supporters have no respect for or allegiance to our Constitution. Their only fealty is to The Failed Orange Führer. As such every Republiscum office holder at every level of government who does not reject The Failed Orange Führer should be removed. They have, by swearing fealty to The Failed Orange Führer and his Big Lie, violated their oaths of office and should never again be allowed to serve in any level of government.

Speaking of con men who should never be allowed to hold office, I give you Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. Netanyahu has called repeated elections in a decreasingly effective quest for a solid majority in the Israeli Knesset. He failed once again in the most recent elections and subsequently failed to form a majority government. In need of some excuse to whip up support within the most extreme Israeli communities, much as his friend, The Failed Orange Führer, did following the 2020 election in the United States, Netanyahu suborned evictions from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Palestinian East Jerusalem a program that has continued for decades thanks to corrupt Israeli courts and refusal to recognize historical documents that give the lie to Israeli claims to ownership of property there. This action also whipped up anger among Palestinians who gathered for prayers in large numbers on the last Friday of Ramadan, May 7th.

Into this powder keg, Netanyahu tossed a lit match by sending Israeli "Defense" Forces (I"D"F) onto the Al-Haram Al-Sharif and into the Al Aqsa Mosque igniting Palestinian anger and inciting Gaza. Now Netanyahu's planes have bombed Gaza repeatedly and subsequently invaded Gaza. Palestinian armed resistance has fired many rockets into Israel, as Netanyahu knew they would. Several Israelis have died as a result while the Palestinian death toll is exponentially higher.

The I"D"F is Netanyahu's primary instrument of genocide against the Palestinian people. I do not believe that the average Israeli soldier is a genocidal monster but I believe that there is ample evidence that Netanyahu is such a monster. His lust for power has plunged Israel into repeated conflicts with their Palestinian neighbors.

The answer to peace for Israel is peaceful coexistence with the Palestinian population. Bombing and invading Gaza, expropriating Palestinian property and insulting the faith of their neighbors may be a route to short term political gain for Netanyahu but it is the dark, vile route to never ending war and insecurity for both sides. It is past time, long past time for the Israeli public to understand that Israeli's killed by an Hamas rocket are less the victims of Palestinian animosity than they are of Netanyahu's cynical and corrupt quest for power, just as the January 6th insurrection was the cynical and corrupt result of The Failed Orange Führer's similar quest.

Respect for Palestinian rights will go much further than bombs toward increasing Israel's security just as rooting out the Maga fanatics in government and the military in my nation will go toward creating a just and peaceful nation amongst neighbors and all of our states.

SPRING THOUGHTS 2021

The Proud Boys have little to be proud of and much more that is their shame.

Are you really a "patriot" if you want to tear down the democratic government of your country?

The people who attacked the U. S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 and the lying scum who encouraged that attack are "PATRIOTS" in the same sense that right-wing Evangelical CHRISTIANS are Christians (i. e. they are not!).

Dr. Samuel Johnson defined patriotism as "the last refuge of a scoundrel." Ambrose Bierce, writing in America and over 100 years later, corrected Dr. Johnson noting that patriotism is the first refuge of a scoundrel. I think we need a new word for love of country. The word "patriot" has been so abused for 60 years that it has no positive meaning anymore when lunatics, fascists, cultists and assorted other scum can call themselves by that name.

If people like James Dobson, Jim Bakker, Creflo Dollar, Franklin Graham, Tony Perkins, Pat Robertson and Roy Moore are CHRISTIANS it is just as well that Jesus of Nazareth has been dead for more than 2000 years.

The Oath Keepers might want to look for an oath that's actually worth keeping.

If Stewart Rhodes is an actual patriot, I'm the Queen of Sheba. Please note: I have never been a queen in any sense of the term and have never visited "Sheba" in any sense of that term either. 

The Second Amendment to our Constitution reads as follows:

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

We have only to look at the Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021 to see that these self-styled militias are anything but "well regulated" and oppose "the security of a free State". In consequence of their NOT meeting the conditions set forth in the Second Amendment their right "to keep and bear Arms" needs to be "infringed" and actually curtailed in the same way that we would take a firearm away from any other lunatics.

When we're being polite we call Republiscum office holders, candidates and voters Republicans even though they can't. The Republiscum Party and its adherents have made a disastrous mess of the national economy causing a total of 22 Recessions and Depressions of the 35 Recessions or Depressions since the Republican Party was founded. In almost every case it is Democrats who have had the task of cleaning up the mess that Republiscum have left the nation. Please note that the Republiscum Party bills itself as the party of "fiscal responsibility".

We also call them "Conservatives" when "Fascists" is the correct term. Why?

Once upon a time there were Republicans and Conservatives but largely since the 1950s there have been Republiscum and Fascists with few notable exceptions.

Jeffrey Epstein, his girlfriend and abbetters Ghislaine Maxwell and fellow trafficer(?) the Failed Orange Führer, trafficed in underage girls. Now Rep. Matt Gaetz, who describes himself as the most dedicated of dedicated Failed Orange Führer supporters, is under investigation for trafficing in underage girls. One of the most basic lies of the QAnon Cult involved in the sexual exploitation of underage children. I wonder how the right-wingnuts came up with that idea?

Antifa is shorthand for anti-Fascist. Other notable anti-Fascists include Dwight D. Eisenhower, George C. Marshall, Mark Clark, Omar N. Bradley, Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Josephine Baker, Frederico García Lorca, Berthold Brecht, Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr, George Kistiakowsky, Alan Turing, Reinhold Niebuhr and most of the soldiers and sailors who fought in World War II. So what's not to like unless, of course, you are a Fascist?

About half of white, evangelical voters say that they will refuse to be vaccinated against Covid-19. While their decision is both stupid and a prime example of sheep being led by the Judas Goat of disinformation  to the slaughter by from Fox, OANN and other right-wing media outlets, look on the bright side: many idiot right-wing evangelicals will be culled from the national herd, an outcome devoutly to be wished. If that makes me a bad person, so be it.

Unfortunately, many of those unvaccinated imbeciles will go out and infect smarter people and some imbeciles will survive this pandemic. That is a tragedy.

One of the reasons that the Republiscum Party has been so successful in locking in the evangelical vote is that the majority of evenagelicals will believe any bullshit that's fed to them. They believe in The Rapture. They believe that mental illness is caused by demonic possession. They believe that they can tell who is possessed by nonexistent demons. In short, they believe the same utter nonsense that allowed 20 citizens of Salem, Massachusetts to be murdered in 1692 and 1693. Technology progresses but we remain the same ignorant apes  century after century.

WIDDLE PEETY AND THE QANON CON

 

In the past year and currently I have had the utter displeasure of encountering a couple of QAnon Cultists. 

One was Jeff, not the racist, anti-semetic Jeff who was just a garden variety bigot. No. This Jeff was a self-made imbecile. He was 20-something and had devoted himself to Meth. Jeff hadn't a single tooth left in his face and not two brain cells to rub together. That latter characteristic may have been the reason that he'd gotten involved with Meth in the first place but the Meth had killed off any brain cells that might have helped him overcome his addiction.

One of the things about many addicts is that they never overcome the addiction qua addiction. They simply switch an addiction to drugs or alcohol for an addiction to religion or some other, more acceptable object of desire. Jeff had transferred his addiction to Meth to QAnon. Jeff's faith in the QAnon Con was absolute, as absolute as had been his addiction to Meth. He constantly had his phone tuned to some right-wing loonie channel. His earbuds carried directly to that malfunctioning brain messages of fiction that he never questioned. Worse yet, Jeff felt, with the zeal of the new convert, that everyone within earshot needed to hear the latest verse in the Gospel According to QAnon. When told to shut up and not annoy those who had not had his vision on his personal road to Damascus, Jeff would, in true Republiscum fashion, became irate that someone would impinge on his "Freedom of Speech". Explaining to Jeff that he was welcome to speak his lunatic nonsense somewhere else had no effect on his well-schooled indignation.

Jeff moved on to somewhere - I neither know nor care where - though I would not have been at all surprised to have found him smearing shit on the Capitol's walls on January 6th. Jeff could do something like that but might well have no idea why. In any case, Jeff now fades completely from my narrative although I hold him up as one very dangerous type of the QAnon Con Cultist.

Let us now turn our attention to Widdle Peety. Please be aware that the sarcasm is mine alone but Widdle Peety's actions are all actual, verifiable facts.

Widdle Peety is 50-ish if not 60 already but that's only the outward appearance of Widdle Peety because in his heart, in his soul, in every fiber of his being Widdle Peety is only 2½ years old. At some point in the past Widdle Peety fell out of a chair at the charitable institution where he lives (and I live too) and "hurt his back". I place that in quotes because Widdle Peety can pick up a 35 pound dog and carry him 10 or 20 yards if he wants to but he cannot pick up a paper towel that he dropped on the floor or an empty plastic bowl that he dropped. He especially cannot pick such things up if there's someone around whom he can con into cleaning up his mess. In one notable incident Widdle Peety clogged a toilet in the communal bathroom. There was no plunger handy, not that Widdle Peety would have cared to use it had one been close at hand, but, in this case, no plunger was present in the communal bathroom. So Widdle Peety, being so little and defenseless, rousted out of bed another dorm resident, a young man with serious mental health problems who is both quiet and pathologically helpful, and sent him to find a plunger and unclog the toilet. And, no, Widdle Peety did not offer to help.

In any case, thanks to that fall from a chair Widdle Peety's back has the Worstestest Owie® in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD! Nobody should ask Widdle Peety to do anything that might aggravate that Terwible, Terwible Owie® and you should know that aggravating that Terwible, Terwible Owie® can be anything at any time that Widdle Peety doesn't want to do. Why it's even so bad that Widdle Peety's Terwible, Terwible Owie® makes it impossible for him to lift those terwibly heavy wrappers for toilet paper rolls and put them in a nearby waste basket.

In the interests of full disclosure, you, dear reader, must know that Widdle Peety thinks that Bahstan Rob is the Meanestest Man in the Whole Wide World and He's Fat too®! Bahstan Rob is fat. Widdle Peety is, on the contrary, just "big boned". 

Being only 2½ years old, Widdle Peety has very few ways to defend himself against the mean, nasty, horwibleness of Bahstan Rob. Every time Widdle Peety thinks of a way to get back at Bahstan Rob, Horwible, Horwible Bahstan Rob® makes it so other people think that Widdle Peety, who is the Bestest, Smartest and Most Wonderful Widdle Peety in the Whole Wide World®, did a bad thing but it's only because Horwible, Horwible Bahstan Rob® reported Widdle Peety for doing it that other people think that Widdle Peety did a bad thing which he would never, ever do, except maybe the time Widdle Peety shit in the communal shower stall and left it there for Bahstan Rob to clean up. But that was only because of the horwible, horwible things, like breathing or not wanting to clean up poor Widdle Peety's shit, that Horwible, Horwible Bahstan Rob® did to poor Widdle Peety.

It should come as no surprise to you that Widdle Peety is a QAnonsense cultist. Widdle Peety believes that The Failed Orange Führer is the Mostest Greatest Man to ever, ever live, next, maybe, to Jesus, but only maybe, Widdle Peety believes that all Democrats are demons who traffic in minor children and drink the blood of babies, especially Hillary Clinton and Oprah. You should know that Widdle Peety has only been married once (once was enough says Widdle Peety) and is now divorced because no self-respecting woman would want to stay married to a 2½ year old whose shit she would have to clean out of the shower. Rejoice, dear reader in the fact that Widdle Peety has not passed his gene cesspool along to a new generation. Widdle Peety knows for an absolute fact that there is no disparity between the pay of men and women because that lie has been debunked by the very knowledgeable people who tell him over the Internet that they or the researchers whose credentials they never cite have debunked it. He also knows that it is a crime that the Deep State® keeps Hillary from being LOCK HER UPed for her many crimes. The late, great Rash Lamebrain told him so before ascending bodily into Heaven.

In short, the shit that Widdle Peety left in the shower stall was only an infinitesimal fraction of the overflowing shit that fills Widdle Peety thanks to his commitment to QAnonsense and neo-Nazi radio and Internet sites. Widdle Peety is a bundle of misogyny, bigotry, hate and ignorance. Widdle Peety attended college but found it unrewarding because professors were "not open" to the "different ideas" that Widdle Peety expressed to them.

These QAnonsense cultists are, like Jeff and Widdle Peety, people of no mind or closed mind. Like the ultra-right wing Evangelical CHRISTIANs the QAnonsense cultists will believe any bullshit that a self-appointed prophet or preacher shovels at them. The critical reason that the fools and fooled accept these noisome piles of utter nonsense is that they come from a person who has some claim to authority. People who cannot think for themselves or simply don't want to do so deliver their autonomy to someone they trust and they trust people they see on television or on their other screens. They trust the loud voice on the radio that appeals to their weaknesses and/or bigotry. If you doubt this I would suggest that you look again at the ascendency of The Failed Orange Führer.

A friend of mine has a framed calligraphic saying on her wall that reads, "Never try to teach a pig to sing. It only frustrates you and annoys the pig." Widdle Peety is, unquestionably, a pig. I have never heard him sing and hope that experience continues to elude me. I certainly will never offer him singing lessons.

We who are capable of rational, critical thought have been bombarded with many messages urging that we learn how to speak with QAnonsense cultists like Widdle Peety and Jeff. That impulse is inherent to our rational thought and a fallacy that we cherish because we believe that everyone else is also capable of rational, critical thought. It is absolutely and unequivocally a fallacy. The QAnonsense cultists, Evangelical CHRISTIANS, 3%ers, Proud Boys, Bugaloo Bois, White Supremacists, Oath Keepers, Anti-Maskers, Anti-Vaccers and their similarly mindless, irrational fools have, as an inherent tenet, rejected rational, critical thought. In fact, they have rejected thought itself. We need to stop the frustrating practice of trying to teach these pigs to sing and simply ostracize them from all access to the institutions of rational society. They must be banned from all aspects of communication other than person to person meetings. The public media that promote their lunatic conspiracies need to have their licenses to use the public airwaves revoked. Their lunatic views must be exposed and disqualify them from holding public office. Colleges and universities, indeed even lower level private educational institutions that do not teach rational, critical thought and the actual scientific method, should not be certified as being like those public and private institutions that do teach those disciplines.

I am not for censorship but rather for separating lunacy and stupidity from rational behavior. We need to distinguish between fact and belief. Widdle Peety and Jeff have the right to believe any idiocy, bigotry and hate they choose to believe. They may communicate their lunacy to anyone they please and be heard, person to person, to anyone patient or foolish enough to listen. I will defend their right to their beliefs and right to communicate those beliefs in person. However, that does not stop any hearer from turning his or her back on them. If they wish to use a public utility, like the public airwaves, to communicate those lunatic beliefs they have no special right to do so. 

Belief is something that needs no factual basis. Belief is not and never is fact. Belief is not understanding. No belief should ever trump fact. The distinct difference between fact and belief must be a preeminent distinction maintained for the benefit of public discourse. If you have and can present verifiable facts you have access to public means of communication. If you have beliefs not based on facts, regardless of how venerable the mythology you accept, you are welcome to present your beliefs in person to others who are willing to listen but not to use public resources to vent your un- and often counterfactual beliefs.

I just don't want the multitude of Widdle Peetys, Sean Hannitys, Tucker Carlsons, Marjorie Taylor Greenes, et al. out there to be able to continue shitting in the communal shower.

REPUBLISCUM - APPARENTLY THERE IS NO LIMIT TO LOW

 

So now 43 Republiscum Senators have ignored their oaths to support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. These 43 Republiscum have endorsed the January 6th attack on the U. S. Capitol, defended the criminal who incited that attempted putsch and allowed an attack meant to do away with American democracy to spawn further attacks.

T. S. Eliot had it correct:

This is the way the world ends    

This is the way the world ends   

This is the way the world ends   

Not with a bang but a whimper.  

 

American democracy didn't entirely die today with the whimpering, simpering Republiscum of the Senate but we are picking up speed on the downhill roll toward Fascist Dictatorship. The brakes are not only off, the lines have been cut. There is nearly nothing to halt the rush toward Fascist Dictatorship. If not The Orange Führer it will be some other Republiscum Führer in waiting. Perhaps the Führer will be Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley or some as yet unknown craven villain who wishes nothing but power and has no regard for decency or law.

To return to Eliot's Gerontion once more, the Republiscum who acquitted The Orange Führer, they...

...are the hollow men    

 ...are the stuffed men 

 Leaning together 

 Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

 

The 43 Republiscum, the hollow men and women voted alphabetically as follows:

1. John Barrasso (WY) 
2. Marsha Blackburn (TN) 
3. Roy Blunt (MO) 
4. John Boozman (AR) 
5. Mike Braun (IN) 
6. Shelley Moore Capito (WV)
7. John Cornyn (TX) 
8. Tom Cotton (AR) 
9. Kevin Cramer (ND)
10. Mike Crapo (ID) 
11. Ted Cruz (TX)
12. Steve Daines (MT)
13. Joni Ernst (IA)
14. Deb Fischer (NE)
15. Lindsey Graham (SC) 
16. Chuck Grassley (IA)
17. Bill Hagerty (TN)
18. Josh Hawley (MO)
19. John Hoeven (ND) 
20. Cindy Hyde-Smith (MS)
21. James M. Inhofe (OK)
22. Ron Johnson (WI)
23. John Kennedy (LA)
24. James Lankford (OK)
25. Mike Lee (UT) 
26. Cynthia M. Lummis (WY)
27. Roger Marshall (KS)
28. Mitch McConnell (KY)
29. Jerry Moran (KS) 
30. Rand Paul (KY)
31. Rob Portman (OH) 
32. James E. Risch (ID)
33. Mike Rounds (SD)
34. Marco Rubio (FL)
35. Rick Scott (FL)
36. Tim Scott (SC) 
37. Richard C. Shelby (AL)
38. Dan Sullivan (AK)
39. John Thune (SD) 
40. Thom Tillis (NC)
41. Tommy Tuberville (AL)
42. Roger F. Wicker (MS)
43. Todd Young (IN)

Following his vote to acquit The Failed Orange Führer of the high crime of trying to invalidate a free and fair election by sponsoring and inciting an armed insurrection at the U. S. Capitol, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gave a speech excoriating The Failed Orange Führer for exactly those crimes. Some might be willing to gloss over McConnell's reaction as "cognitive dissonance". Some, less kind and more psychologically oriented, might say that McConnell is "bipolar". His attack on The Failed Orange Führer is neither of those facile things. The attack was simply McConnell's baying at the Republiscum electorate that he's now the pack leader of these curs. (My apologies to dogs, even the worst of them, for the insult to all canines that a comparison to Mitch McConnell entails. Then again, I'd have to apologize to reptiles had I compared him to some particularly obnoxious reptile.)

Some neo-Nazis speak of "taking over the Republican Party". Those idiots are 60+ years too late. As late as 1974 there were remnants of a "Republican Party" but that ceased to exist by the time we had reached 1996. The old money, Republiscum Old Guard (now asking themselves what happened in meetings of The Lincoln Project) that had been bankrolling the Tea Party and Birther loonies convinced themselves that they, and their sock puppets like Mitch McConnell, still controlled the Republiscum Party that they had lovingly built out of racists, bigots, neo-Nazis and other scum over decades. They stitched together the Evangelicals, anti-abortionists, gun nuts and conspiracy cultists into a large minority and then committed themselves to suppressing voters in the good, old fashioned way that Strom Thurmond, John Stennis, George Smathers, Richard Russell, William Rhenquist and George Wallace had done in the 1950s and 60s. Keeping legitimate, mostly minority voters out of polling places gave the look and tallies of a majority to their minority party.

What the Republiscum Old Guard in their wealth and entitlement hadn't foreseen was that this Frankenstein monster they had built would go off on its own to lay waste the countryside and, incidentally, the Capitol building, at the behest of one they considered a loud-mouthed one of their own, The Failed Orange Führer.

The Old Guard Republiscum and Mitch McConnell are no more in control of the Republiscum Party than I am. They, like the Krupps, Mengeles, von Witzlebens and Hugenbergs in the Germany of 1933 sit in, let's call it a skybox, overseeing the chaos below and thinking that they control the monster they've unleashed. Down in the field of retail politics they are not in control of their monster's rampage. They will find out how little control they have only when the monster breaks down the door to their "skybox" and defenestrates the lot of them. Let's hope, for our own sakes even though it save the Kochs, Mercers and Mellon-Scaifes among others, that we have our own Nürnberg Trials before the monster does yet more damage.