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The Trump Success

31 Jul

So tiresome, the incessant media question . . . “with all of the ignorant, course, foul comments made by Trump how can he continue to do so well?” This is not a question; this is a well worn media strategy to keep a marketable story kinetic. In media land it’s like Trump, it’s the gift that keeps on giving. This maneuver masquerading as a question insures an endless parade of talking heads babbling on about how unprecedented and confounding it all is. This media position; this disingenuous search for the answer is as Madison Ave. as Trump himself. The repetition from program to program broadcasts to us that there is no explanation to be had, we are hopelessly adrift in the Trump fog but we, the media, will keep up our end by continuing to book experts. The covert aspect of “the question” is that it has boarders. Permissible on air conversation is confined to Trump’s charisma, media savvy, his sculpted persona of strength and decisiveness, his blue collar language and attitudes, his fearless use of deceit. For the supporters piece the boundaries include disenfranchisement, disillusionment, stagnant wages, perverted patriotism, and plain old rage.

What is never discussed is racism, sexism, homophobia, and Christian bias. It doesn’t matter what Trump says it only matters what he projects. He constantly spawns new ways to say the same thing over and over, to reassure straight white people that they will not become a dreaded minority class; that they will always remain the ruling power in America. More than anything his supporters desperately need to hear that their whiteness will always be preeminent in the American caste system. There are millions upon millions of scared white people who can feel it, the shift. It’s been coming since the sixties and seventies. They thought they had it tamped down but beneath the boot mitosis was under way. People of color have been procreating as Jesus counselled. Also some serious mixing has been unleashed; unabashedly bi-racial babies are on the rise, why they’ve had to add a new box on the census form. The cultures of people of color have soaked permanently into main stream Americana: music, cloths, food, language, attitude, philosophies, the staples, the launch pad for life. For God sakes the TV ad folks have even bet their all mighty money on commercials featuring diversity. The white comfort of the 1950s, even for poor whites, is slipping further and further into the before time. Despite the white man’s premier military position it hasn’t knocked out anyone since World War II, even the shockingly under armed Vietcong kicked our ass. This evolution creates great confusion and fear for white folks. With the advent of the internet the white people’s control of US history is increasing being exposed to the light of day, authority over the narrative is being lost. The internet coupled with “devices” is neutering the once powerful tool of isolation. The masses can now communicate and educate at will, hell, give them a second and they’ll send you the video.

This is the very simple ugly unspoken answer to why Trump continues to do so well. May the Force Be with Us.

Power to the People

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Bergdahl: A Dessenting Opinion

4 Jun

Of course for all of us millions that weren’t there we don’t know the specifics yet of what took place for Bergdahl on June 30, 2009. News reports say that he left his assigned Forward Operating Base before he was scheduled to go on guard duty that date. His FOB appears to have been Sharana, if so, not a mere hill or ditch running through the landscape. If so, the Sharana photos look like there would have been more than one soldier on guard duty at any given time. Negative news reports say that Bergdahl deserted his post implying that he was on active guard duty and just walked away leaving the FOB exposed to attack. Did the soldier that Bergdahl was to replace desert his position before his replacement arrived? On this date, per the Army logs, was there ever a period of time when the designated number of guards were not on duty?

By all reports so far it would seem that Bergdahl resigned. The military of course calls it desertion; the working world calls it resigning. He shed his soldier stuff, guns, rifles, and then quit the soldier job. It happens thousands of times every day in America, people max out, lay down their building keys, office card keys, ID badges, etc. and quit the job that has become literally intolerable to work. The job Bergdahl was working was far worse than most jobs we give the boot to here at home and the consequences of quitting he faced as a result were staggering.

Oddly enough through the negative reporting there hasn’t been any mention of his being a fearful person, a man afraid of dying. That is his reasons for resigning so far as reported don’t seem to have anything to do with the classic fear of dying on the battlefield of war. Many already have started calling him a coward but from what was he cowering? He left unarmed, figuratively naked into a severely hostile environment with possibly his only asset being the power of his clearing conscience. People may not agree with his reasons for quitting or his timing but he can never be accused of quitting for profit.

So called leaders do start wars for profit and for the personal acquisition and sensation of power. And some soldiers slowly discover the lies wars are built on. Understandably they become disillusioned over time and a few, like Bowe Bergdahl, act upon what has been discovered before their tour is over. Per the war masters most of the disillusioned have the good grace to finish out the macabre contract and quietly kill themselves when they get home.

Those in the country who blood lust for a court martial regarding the six soldiers that died searching for the guy that left the war; let them start instead with the guys that told the enormous lies to launch the wars, Bush, Chaney, Rumsfeld et. al. And in the charges don’t stop with these six that lost their lives, add on the thousands of US military personnel dead over the decade of these wars and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani people dead from our wars. Unfortunately, as the collective American psyche operates chances are that once home Bergdahl will have a miserable life and Bush, Chaney, and Rumsfeld will continue their’s in great comfort. This scenario is the cowardice.

Power To The People

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Racism Alive and Well

23 May

Many people try hard to say that racists such as Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling are an aberration.  That all is ok in America now, really; after all we have the black president now, twice actually, so it must be true, racism must be dead in America.  What is true is that in the last two presidential elections enough non-racist Americans of all races voted and fortunately outnumbered the racists that voted.  Certainly not the same as racism is in the past.  One only has to look at gerrymandering to see the current strength of racism and bigotry in America.  There doesn’t seem to be much debate, republicans do have the smaller party, yet they totally dominate the House.  Despite getting fewer popular votes in the last election, because of gerrymandered districts they maintained control of the House.  If you contort the districts to concentrate the bigots and dilute the non-bigots in the correct proportions you can steal the prize, it’s math not democracy.  Not very honorable but then honor is not the objective; power, control, and ultimately money is the objective.  Regardless of district manipulations it still takes a real boat load of bigots to pull this off; a handful of left-overs from a mythical by-gone era won’t cut it.  Republicans understand well the potential inherent in bigotry.  They already have the rich folks but to stack the numbers they really need they cultivate these bigots like sand in oysters. And bigots are an easy mark; they are so consumed with their hate for the “others” that they can even be openly lead to vote against their own self interests.  And the media really needs to stop referring to these congressional republicans as ideologues.  It’s dishonest and makes them (the media) complicit in promoting the scam.  Call them what they are, hard core strategists protecting their individual revenue streams for as long as they possibly can.   This is classic hair on the knuckles.  The country be damned, the constituents be damned, it’s business, it’s about staying flush.   I get it, I wish I was flush.  Now if we were to follow the logic of black president = racism dead  we would have to conclude that if Hillary wins the presidency then wife/girlfriend beatings in the US will cease and desist, that girls and women will no longer be sold into sex slavery in the US, that pay for women will no longer be less than that of a man, blah, blah, blah.  

Power To The People

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Duck Dynasty

23 Dec

Christians: generally the worst messengers of god and christ. The bible was written by men. Right there, men are not characteristically the best messengers of the heart, women are. First and foremost jesus, by legend a supreme being not a man, spoke from the heart. The bible in all its iterations is what a bunch of guys thought, fantasized and said a couple of thousand years ago. And likewise a whole bunch of other guys have tweaked it over the ensuing centuries to further their own mortal agendas. The bible is a 100% faith based publication. You can’t prove that god or jesus said anything at all that is attributed to them in that book. The party line is that these men, the original propagators and the tweakers, were either inspired by god or jesus to speak doctrine or even better yet they claim that god or jesus actually spoke to them. Enter the faithful. I once asked a Jehovah Witness that approached me with the book if he would believe me if what I was about to tell him was truly a bonafide inspiration from god. He smiled sweetly and said no. I asked him why not and he just smiled nervously again, dodged the question, hit the reset button and resumed the party doctrine. Within any so called christian community if I were to repeatedly insist that god or jesus was speaking to me directly, using me as a mouth piece, I would be put on Halaperidol or Thorazine and moved into “the system”. It is unfortunate that christians can’t just get with the spirit of jesus and drop kick the book of man. This new pope would like to get there but he too has a hard time retiring the book. And sadly, even if he were so inclined his crew would never allow it; he would be muzzled and put to pasture tout suite. Actually, he better watch himself. Contrary to popular catholic lore the pope is not the head of the church, the institution is the head of the church and the pope is a sentimental suggestion. If Phil Robinson was really as tough and hard boiled as he sells himself on TV he would walk naked with jesus, no biblical safety net just the raw spirit of jesus.

Power to the People

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The Almighty Job Creators, Praise Jesus

15 Oct

Why does this go forever unchallenged? Truly, what’s the real deal breakdown on these wealthy people who supposedly create all these jobs for us plain folk? I need a job, where’s my wealthy job creator, I need an address.

How many of these nameless wealthy people needing tax breaks inherited their wealth, never worked for it, never actually built a company with employees, just had it transferred to them at the reading? Maybe changed brokers; the end.

How many of these oh so vital job creators don’t even get their income from any kind of tangible business source at all but live, very well thank you, off of stock piled dollars, money making money? Making money off of money in and of itself does not create jobs but it does grow personal wealth. One does not invest in order to create jobs, one invests to net a return, the gain or loss of jobs is irrelevant. Not illegal but not job creation either, and certainly not noble.

Seriously, how many of these so called job creators have sought out and invested in start-ups that do employ people but are both risky and often don’t pay out anything for years if at all? And even when these investments are made, how many are initially calculated as losses to offset tax liabilities?

If republicans are going to constantly refer to wealthy people as the job creators then these wealthy people need to be thrown into a spreadsheet . . . . break it down for us plain folk, slap a pie chart on it, show us the money, where it came from, where it went and who got a god damn job out of it.

And the progressives and the media need to quit letting this job creators propaganda slide by day after day unchallenged, demanding no proof. Where’s the fact checking? The legitimacy of the job creators argument is paramount in the tax/budget debate being shoveled at the electorate.

Footnote:
How many years has Romney benefited from capital gains tax breaks?
When was the last year Romney started a company that created jobs?

Power to the People

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Republicans: A Few Dichotomies

3 Oct

Most would agree that republicans are not usually described as the warm and fuzzy people. They are not considered the “mommy” party and most republicans would say that that description is just fine with them. Most have no tolerance for anything that could possibly smack of female coddling or nurturing of the citizenry. Every man for himself and all that, rah rah. But the ironic thing here is that they’re not the stereotypical masculine party. They’re weenies. They broadcast panic like little children. The sky is falling, all will soon be lost. The Mexicans are coming, the Mexicans are coming. There’s socialist monsters under every bed and black Muslim bogymen in every closet (especially the black bogymen). Republicans are constantly spraying fear and paranoia like skunk juice. Rightly or wrongly, this is not a stereotypically male image. Why would anyone vote to put a bunch of scaredy cats in charge of anything, except maybe the back door?

Then there’s this whole republican embrace of the economic survival of the fittest doctrine. Boy they love that one. Everybody just pull themselves up by their boot straps and if you can’t, well too bad for you, guess you didn’t pull hard enough or something, too bad for you, survival of the fittest. And yet they steadfastly maintain that Darwin is a pile of crap.

Now the republican push to delegalize most forms of birth control, there’s another odd one. We have to estimate that at least 50% of the republicans are men, sperm shooting men. We just know that the over whelming majority of them are not having sex strictly for procreation purposes alone. Please. Likewise it’s fair to assume that again the over whelming majority of them are not practicing abstinence (for any reason). Very hard to believe that these married men want to risk adding more unplanned children to their families or especially that single men want to add child support to their personal budgets. Logically one would think these republican men would want to shut down this nutso delegalization thing. And one would think that the republican strategists would also want to shut it down. After all, what did the last census tell them? We are currently undergoing the browning of America. People of color are the fastest growing populations in the United States. Do republicans really want “these people” without birth control? Do they know that by in large “these people” do not like them? Are republicans that short sighted or do they just calculate that they will be dead by the time this manifests into material votes?

Power to the People

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Obstructing the Vote

29 Sep

The super hypocritical thing about all this push to legalize obstructions to voting and the practice of gerrymandering is that these very obstructionists are the hardest flag wavers in the country.

One person one vote is held as the ultimate symbol of all that is American; except, it would seem, if the flag wavers are panicked about losing an election.

These flag wavers would boast that the United States is the fairest most honest country on the planet, that all the world should follow our voting practices, that corrupted voting abroad is a bastardization of democracy.  They would say with great pride that here in the United States we are staunch champions of the fair fight; that we hate filthy cheaters; that we despise athletes that cheat with performance enhancing drugs.  We even pee test horses after races to make sure the races are fair and free of artificial advantages.  Cheating is seen as a shameful weakness, a character flaw and those who practice it should be shunned.  A fixed prize fight or (God forbid) point shaving in a football game is a disgrace, it’s simply unAmerican.  These flag wavers would tell you that America is the Poster Child for the level playing field . . . . except, it would seem, if they are panicked about losing an election.

Our wildly flag waving Tea Party was founded on the bumper sticker “no taxation without representation”.  Where are the Tea Party folks now that this most sacred of American rights is under attack?  Quiet as a thief in the night.  Would they argue that there is a category of Americans who can be taxed but who don’t merit representation?  If there’s an election at stake in America is the catchy slogan suspended, does the end justify the means for an inauguration?

Maeve Reston of the Los Angeles Times talked to donors on their way to one of Romney’s several fundraisers in the Hamptons.

“A New York City donor a few cars back, who also would not give her name, said Romney needed to do a better job connecting. “I don’t think the common person is getting it,” she said from the passenger seat of a Range Rover stamped with East Hampton beach permits. “Nobody understands why Obama is hurting them.” We’ve got the message,” she added. “But my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies – everybody who’s got the right to vote – they don’t understand what’s going on. I just think if you’re lower income – one, you’re not as educated, two, they don’t understand how it works, they don’t understand how the systems work, they don’t understand the impact.” 

So waving the flag while wagging the tongue . . . .  that pesky common person vote, it makes maintaining power much more of an effort than it should be for her people; the people who know best.

Power to the People

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