SPEAKING ILL OF THE DEAD I

On Friday, November 30, 2018 George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st President of the United States, died and has been graciously and effusively eulogized since. Some of those attempts at hagiography have been genuine and valid but they ignore the gross weight of the negatives justly heaped upon Bush 41 for the great evil that he did.

First, George H. W. Bush carried on a tradition of questionable heroism in war. His father, Prescott Sheldon Bush, served in the American Expeditionary Force in World War I. He claimed in a letter to his parents that he had batted away from General John J. Pershing an artillery shell and thereby saving the life of the A.E.F. commander. Prescott's proud parents made the letter and his alleged act of heroism public. However, once out in public Prescott's great heroic act came under scrutiny which quickly determined that his baseball skill, let alone that of Babe Ruth, could not have altered the course of an artillery shell. Prescott's claim of heroism was utterly false and physically impossible. Faced with public derision, Prescott was forced to admit that his purported saving of General Pershing was a complete fiction. Whether Prescott ever intended it to become public or not isn't and cannot be known. There is no doubt that Prescott's son, George H. W. Bush was a Navy pilot in the Pacific Theatre during World War II. On one of his last missions, George H. W.'s plane was hit by Japanese fire. He was able to bail out but his two crewmen died in the crash of the plane. George H. W. was quickly rescued by a submarine that happened to be conveniently on the ocean surface nearby. During the 1988 presidential campaign some serious questions arose as to whether George H. W. had bailed out of his torpedo plane early leaving his crewmen to their death and, much like his father's heroism, his serendipitous salvation by that submarine wasn't as serendipitous as it's said to be. The question that has never been answered was did George H. W., piloting a damaged plane, see the submarine and parachute out leaving his crew to die. We don't know but it would carry on a less than savory family tradition.

Prescott Bush became a protege of W. Averell Harriman and Harriman's investment banking firm in the 1920s and took up residence in the Connecticut commuter suburbs of New York City. In the explicitly Liberal 1930s and 40s Prescott became an officer of the the Connecticut chapter of the United Negro College Fund and of the American Birth Control League in Catholic dominated Connecticut where all forms of birth control were illegal. In a period in which such things were not anomalous, Prescott was also the finance chairman of the Connecticut Republican Party. The long connection to support for birth control and abortion became a millstone around George H. W.'s neck when he sought the presidency in 1980.

During World War II Prescott set another family tradition of making loyalty secondary to business. Prescott was a director, along with his mentor Harriman, of the Union Banking Corporation, a bank that held significant assets for German steel magnate Fritz Thyssen. Thyssen's Vereinigte Stahlwereke AG controlled about 75% of Germany's iron ore reserves and made much of the steel that went into Hitler's planes, tanks and other armaments. Thyssen was a Nazi supporter from 1923 onward. He was one of the signers of the letter to German president Paul von Hindenberg that convinced von Hindenberg to appoint Adolph Hitler as German Chancellor in 1933.  He was in complete agreement with the Nazi expulsion of Jews from jobs and industry but demurred in the mid-1930s when Hitler turned on the Roman Catholic Church. Shortly after Germany began World War II by invading Poland, Thyssen, believing that war was not appropriate at the time, fled to Switzerland. He was subsequently condemned by the Nazi Party and government. However, Thyssen continued to profit from his steel industry. Rumors were flying that Union Banking Corp. was holding gold for high ranking Nazis including Thyssen and in October, 1942 the U. S. Government seized the assets of Union Banking under the Trading with the Enemy Act, retaining those assets for the duration of the war. Though there is no reason to believe that Prescott Bush was a Nazi sympathizer, it is impossible to believe that he was unaware of Thyssen's Nazi sympathies, anti-Semitism and involvement in the German armaments industry. Thus, Prescott Bush established his son, George H. W.'s belief that loyalty to country is one thing that's all well and good but loyalty to money is forever.

In 1950 Prescott made his first run for senator from Connecticut against Sen. William Burnett Benton as a Liberal Republican, something that was then not the imaginary, fantastical beast it is today. He lost by 1,000 votes. Prescott planned a run again in 1952. As part of that planning W. Averell Harriman advised Prescott that he could not be elected if he did not take a vigorous anti-communist stance in line with Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy and California Senator Richard Nixon. Prescott won election as senator from Connecticut in 1952 riding the wave of Dwight David Eisenhower's presidential campaign and anti-communist fearmongering. Thus Prescott set another tradition that George H. W. followed in 1980 and 1988 of jettisoning all personal beliefs and ethics in favor of claiming power.

Following his military service George H. W. moved to Texas where his family wealth and prominence gave him entree into the oil industry and even greater wealth and influence.

Prescott Bush retired from the senate in 1962. His second son, George H. W., ran for Congress unsuccessfully in 1964 when Barry Goldwater led the Republican's to near universal defeat. George H. W. ran again in 1966 and won the election to represent Texas' 7th District where he served for 2 terms. During George H. W.'s 2 terms in the House of Representatives the Vietnam War was at it height as was opposition to it in America. Coincidentally, his son George W., hereinafter referred to as "Shrub" (the late Milly Ivins' delightful nickname for "Dubya" graduated from an undistinguished 4 years at Yale University and needed both a military "career" and to stay alive. George H. W. got Dubya a position in the Texas Air National Guard far from even the faint prospect of actual combat. Dubya managed to be accepted for pilot training despite low scores on the pilot aptitude tests, irregular attendance at pilot training and frequent drunkenness. In 1971 Dubya miraculously got transferred to the 187th Fighter Wing of the Alabama Air National Guard but really so that he could work on the senatorial campaign of Winton Blount. Shrub's pilot career ended when he refused to appear for a required physical leaving him with a military career less distinguished though less public than his grandfather's.

Once George H. W. lost his seat in Congress, his father's friend, and our first overtly criminal president, Richard Milhous Nixon appointed him U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations, a cabinet level position. In January, 1973 as the Watergate Break-In began to develop into the Watergate Scandal, George H. W. became chairman of the Republican National Committee. He held that post until September, 1974 when newly anointed President Gerald R. Ford shipped him off to be chief of the new liaison office in China, effectively making Poppy Bush our ambassador to Beijing. That job lasted about 16 months until Ford brought Poppy back to Washington, actually Langley, Virginia, to head the CIA. Ford acted in the shadow of the investigations of the Church Committee (Senate) and Pike Committee (House) into CIA operations many of which flagrantly violated U. S. and International Law and treaties. Poppy came in to the CIA as someone ostensibly untainted by the questionable operations and bizarre policies of the Intelligence Community.

Once Jimmy Carter became president on January 20, 1977, Poppy retired to investment banking in Houston, Texas, joined the Trilateral Commission and prepared himself for a run at the presidency in 1980. That year the ultra-right wing of the Republiscum Party made it's comeback from the Goldwater debacle of 1964 with Ronald Reagan as their front man. Reagan, who was probably showing signs of Alzheimer's Disease, needed a reliable vice-president. Poppy put himself forward as not only that reliable man but as the representative of entrenched oligarchical power within the Republiscum Party. Carter's inept handling of first the Shah of Iran and then the subsequent Iranian Hostage Crisis doomed his bid for reelection and Poppy became the 43rd Vice-President of the United States.

When Reagan was clearly losing mental capacity during the 1984 campaign, Poppy Bush became an increasingly important part of the Administration. Though he claimed to have "gone to the bathroom" during the time that Reagan authorized the illegal actions that became known as the Iran-Contra Affair there is plenty of reason to believe that Poppy was deeply involved in the illegal acts in Iran and Nicaragua with Col. Oliver North and Admiral John Poindexter. Poppy Bush's involvement in Iran-Contra is the most likely reason that his son, Shrub, immediately on taking office, changed the availability of presidential papers to scholars from 25 to 50 years following the end of an Administration. The Reagan Administration papers would have become available after January 20, 2014 while his father's papers would have been open to scholars after January 20, 2018. Now the Reagan papers are locked up until 2039 and the Bush 41 papers won't become available for critical review until 2043. Justice delayed is justice denied and history delayed is truth denied. We won't know all of the crimes of the Shrub-Cheney Administration until 2058 far too late for the American people to know and understand how they have been misled and ill-served by Ronald Reagan, Poppy Bush, his feckless son.

So belatedly I am here to speak ill of the dead who deserve to be spoken ill of. I am sure that there are good things to be said of George Herbert Walker Bush but as a public man, I cannot think of any and can think of more than I've listed above that are ill.

As far as that goes, for more speaking ill of the dead I eagerly await the obituaries for the following:
Richard (Dick) Cheney
Donald Rumsfeld
Oliver North
John Poindexter
William Barr
Donald J. Trump
Michael Pence

None of those obituaries can come too soon.

MODERATION IN...NOTHING

Two years ago I listened to a lot of news up to and following the 2018 mid-term elections. One of the tropes that kept coming up was the "demise of the Moderate Republican". It seemed to be something that news outlets enjoy discussing and airing interviews with self-appointed experts and even alleged Republiscum Moderates. The problem with this Republiscum Moderate trope is that it comes 50 or 60 years too late, possibly even more. The only reason that some Republiscum look "moderate" is that, like Ivory Soap, the Republiscum Party is 99 and 44/100ths per cent pure fascist shading over to full Nazi. If you're a Republiscum elected official who doesn't think that our military should be shooting refugees from Central America, you're a moderate because you only want to make it impossible for those same refugees to gain acknowledged refugee status and ultimately become U. S. citizens. The only way that is "moderate" is in contrast to the "build the wall and shoot anyone who tries to climb over" vast majority of Republiscum.

I'm sorry, Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, and a few others but you would have been right-wing extremists in 1950 and Goldwaterites in the early 1960s. Now that the vast majority of your colleagues are goosestepping to whatever tune The Orange Führer is tweeting you look moderate but you are absolutely, definitively not anything like moderate. Jeff, brokering a week of seriously curtailed investigation of Brett Kavanaugh and then voting for the alcoholic, rapist, ultra-right-wing bastard is not the stuff of which moderation is made. You may be a fascist looking for some cover in case we ever get a U. S. version of the Nürnberg Trials but that is not the stuff of moderation.


I have been paraphrasing General Philip Sheridan for decades saying the only good Republiscum is a dead Republiscum. That doesn't mean I or anyone should go out and start shooting Republiscum. By ignoring sensible precautions to control the corona virus pandemic the Republiscum will be making plenty of dead Republiscum without my or anyone's intervention. What I mean by that phrase is there are plenty of good Republicans but they are all dead: Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, Robert LaFollette, Margaret Chase Smith, Millicent Fenwick and Elliot Richardson to name but a few. All moderates and even Progressives of their day but they are all dead.

Actually, I'm being a little unfair because Pete McCloskey is still alive at 93 and William Ruckelhaus only died last November at 87. Some might point out that Mitt Romney passes as a moderate but that is sort of like saying that Albert Speer wasn't much of a Nazi. Mitt, whether governor of Massachusetts or senator from Utah, is a vacuum filled by whatever makes Mitt look good for the moment. That self-serving thing of the moment can then be whisked away in the slightest breeze from a different direction. Mitt Romney is the walking, talking personification of there being no "there", there.

Currently the Republiscum Party has committed itself to Trumpist dictatorship. Mitch McConnell has been running the U. S. Senate with a playbook cadged from the Nazi takeover of the Weimar Parliament. Like the rise of the Nazis in 1929-33 there is no concern with venality and corruption in government as long as those corrupt, venal Republiscum in question adhere to the Republiscum Party line. There is no concern with actual violation of the Constitution so long it is a Republiscum who's violating it.

There are some differences between the Republiscum of today and the Nazis of the 1920s and 1930s. For one they don't resort to assassination, so far as we can tell. They just make as many legitimate voters as possible ineligible to vote so that their inability to attract a majority, one they congenitally despise anyway, won't be a bar to elective office.

Unless I am somehow mistaken, along with every dictionary and close to two hundred and fifty years of political rhetoric in this country, "democracy" means "government of the people, by the people and for the people" just to add in Abraham Lincoln's apt phrase. Keeping "people" from casting votes on specious and spurious grounds is the very definition of "anti-democratic", that is opposite to democracy itself. But that doesn't bother the Republiscum. They are only interested in the oligarchs who fund them and in hugging a flag now and then for show or using a Bible as a prop and means of paying no taxes.

The Orange Führer and his Republiscum allies like Mitch McConnell and Tom Cotton decry voting by mail as an invitation to vote fraud. They ignore the fact that many states have used vote-by-mail for a decade or more without any hint of voter fraud. Meanwhile the only confirmed case of voter fraud in the nation over the last fifty years was a systematic action by the Republiscum Party in one Congressional District in North Carolina in 2018. If we are worried about vote fraud, it is the Republiscum Party whose actions we must vigilantly check, not the individual voter mailing in a ballot.

When the demos, the Greek word for the people, take to the streets peaceably because, regardless of our skin color, we have had more than enough of police abusing their power by murdering citizens, most often citizens of color, the Republiscum start screaming about riots and suppressing dissent. I seem to recall that their attitude was a bit different when smaller demonstrations by the Astroturf "Tea Party" group their oligarchs funded were carrying idiot signs that read things like, "Keep Govt out of my Medicare!" The Orange Führer's attitude toward protesters was different when neo-Nazis demonstrated in Charlottesville, Virginia and one of their number used his car to murder and maim protesters. Also, it's particularly interesting to watch the talking heads of the Volkische Beobachter (i. e. Fox News) scream about violent protesters when time after time in Minnesota, Colorado, Washington and California it has been police who have initiated the violence or the Republiscum and "Libertarian" supporters like the "Proud Boys" or the "Boogaloo Bois" (spelling and, more broadly, education are not the strong suit of these thugs) who have infiltrated peaceful protests and initiated violence.

The fact is that the Republiscum have no shame and no moderation at all. They incite and condone violence in defense of their anti-democratic attempts to establish a neo-Fascist oligarchy in the United States. There is no instance in which we can rationally speak of a "Moderate Republiscum". Like fairies, demons and unicorns the "Moderate Republiscum" simply does not exist except in the rhetoric of some news networks desperate to fill air time. How "moderate" is the Mussolini-style Fascist when compared with his Simese Twin brother the neo-Nazi anyway?

MISCELLANY, JUNE, 2020

Let's get this out of the way quickly: Donald Trump is an intellectual micro-midget who is incapable of governing himself, let alone the United States. He is an embarrassment to the nation and a danger to it as well. Trump is a congenital Fascist. Eighty years ago we combined with Britain, the Free French and forces from many other nations to defeat Fascism in Europe and the Far East. It is crime for us to allow Trump, Mitch McConnell and the Republiscum Party to bring Fascism to America and it is also an insult to the men and women, living and dead, who fought Fascism in the 1920 through 1945 period. If we want to honor "The Greatest Generation" we must remove these Fascists from government no later than the November elections if American Democracy is to survive.

I have been homeless for just over a year. I currently live in a dorm in a shelter run by a Calvinist fundamentalist religious group. We are in Washington State. The manager of our shelter expressed his distress at the "tyrannical orders" of Governor Jay Inslee in March when sensible regulations for controlling the Corona Virus came down. I am in one of three dorms with ten other men who are either pigs or babies when they are not being bigots. The fellow, a young man with very serious physical and mental problems, in the bed next to mine spent months saying that he'd decided he was Jewish because Jews are all rich and control the world. He also uses the word "Negro" as if it were the even nastier variant on that term. The fellow next to him is very sympathetic to him and is also a big Trump supporter. Two others of my dorm mates are very distressed that NASCAR has banned the Confederate battle flag.
You, dear reader, if there are any dear readers out there, need to know this background because this morning (June 11, 2020) I awoke at 7:30 A. M. to find myself utterly alone in the dorm. That situation is so completely unusual that my first reaction was, "Well, finally The Rapture has happened and I get my choice of cars!"
Sadly, about ten minutes later one of the Confederate flag supporters came back and my plans for a road trip evaporated.

When I tweak the folks who run the shelter in which I now live, please don't misunderstand. They are good people and are expressing their faith in the way truest to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as set forth in the Book of Matthew 25th Chapter. Their failings all centre around getting bogged down in the Old Testament prophets, the Revelation of St. John and the letters that purport to be from Paul of Tarsus. They believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of god but have no compunctions about editing it to comport with their belief that demons are abroad in the land. I choose to know them by their acts rather than their failings though I still like pointing out the absurdities of those failings.

I have some hope that the Corona Virus in the United States is natures way of weeding out the Republiscum. I encourage "Red" states to abandon sensible virus control measures especially in towns and counties with big Republiscum majorities.

Isn't it great that Stephen Miller looks like the villain he is?

Remember how we were sold William Barr as a solid defender of law and an adult in the room? Remember how we were sold first Dubya and later Trump as a "business man" who would bring a responsible business perspective to government? Now, I ask you, do you really think that we aren't going to order some other dose of Republiscum snake oil in the future?

Yes, I know I was getting the Trump matter out of the way at the start but there's just too much of it to to fold into one paragraph.

I am so relieved that Donald Trump is taking hydroxychloroquine. It is supposed to be dangerous for the elderly, you know.

I'm glad that Donald Trump refuses to wear a mask in public. It wouldn't improve him any and might allow inattentive people to mistake him for a decent human being.

Let's give a cheer for the unsung hero Warren G. Harding. When his administration was rife with corruption and beset by scandal he had the decency to die in office.

I have been going to demonstrations and singing We Shall Overcome for 60 years. Now, thanks to cell phone videos, we just might.

Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from the Winklevoss twins so why do we expect him to act nobly now?

How come we don't see anti-vaccers out demonstrating against creating a Corona Virus vaccine?

The Republiscum are constantly talking that our sovereignty is threatened by international treaties and organizations while they threaten our Constitution. Could there be a connection there? A distraction?

Can we agree that Twitter is for Twits?

I have fallen in love with Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Rachel Brosnahan (Fleabag and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel respectively). What more can a man want than a lovely, smart woman who is sexy, sensual, funny and talks dirty?

Republiscum believe that patriotism means wearing a flag pin or hugging a flag while trampling and then pissing on the Constitution. Over a century ago Ambrose Bierce wrote that Dr. Samuel Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel. He then corrected Dr. Johnson by definitely stating that it is the first refuge of a scoundrel. The Republiscum prove Bierce correct every minute of every day.

Once we include African-Americans and Latino Americans, the black and brown peoples who are our neighbors, brothers and sisiters, in "All Lives Matter" we can use that slogan. Until then Black and Brown Lives Matter is something to push for.

Wouldn't it be nice if the CHRISTIAN Fundamentalists actually followed Jesus of Nazareth?

If this world is the creation of the Judeo-Christian god, then isn't it a bit presumptuous to be so all fired up and eager for the "End Times" and the destruction of their god's handiwork? Wouldn't it be more respectful to step back and let their god get on with his or her work and take things as they come?

The United States has had over 100,000 deaths from CoVid-19 with the death count rising daily. Is anyone surprised that that total could have been much smaller if we weren't led by a congregation of fools who despise science and think that mental illness is caused by demonic possession?

And, by the way, bad Christian Rock is redundant. It falsely implies that there is good Christian Rock which, like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, does not exist. I know this from a year's worth of experience.

If you've been stuck at home since mid-March and need something to do, read a good book -NOT THE Good Book. Read a novel that you've never read before by an author you've never read before. If you have children at home, read to them. Read them Harry Potter or the Oz books of L. Frank Baum or the Gormengast books or Lord of the Rings or something else that's age appropriate like Pippi Longstocking, Mary Poppins or The Saggy, Baggy Elephant or A Child's Garden of Verses. Reading is what got us to the heights we've reached so far. Not reading is what got us Republiscum and Donald Trump.

While I'm on the subject of reading, a couple of years ago I waded through Herschel Parker's 2 volume, 1937 page biography of Herman Melville. The other day I came across another quotation from Ambrose Bierce that fits that work exactly. The quotation is , "The covers of this book are too far apart."

Well, that's all for now. I'm sure that there will be more to recommend or skewer in July.