Author Archives: oinsketta

How a functioning democratic government functions

If you believe in a democratic society, one where the government works for the people who elected it, not the people who paid to rig it, but the people who consented to be governed by it and cast their votes, you take the job of governing more seriously then a minority party that insists on its right to rule everything.

If your goal is to destroy the administrative state, when you come to power you leave entire agencies defunded and understaffed, run by idiot loyalists, the stupidest in-laws of your most idiotic donor hangers-on get jobs running vast bureaucracies they have no experience with. It’s like those 25-year-old preppy assholes Dubya and Cheney put in charge of Iraq after they destroyed the civil society of Iraq. If your goal is to prove that government is the enemy, it’s very easy to make the government you control a despicable fucking enemy.

Take the IRS for example. For the tax year of 2016 I was told by my accountant that I owed zero tax but that I still technically had to file. A few years later I was forced to pay about $2,500 including two large fines of about $400 each, plus interest that was constantly being compounded. The accountant explained later that when the IRS calculates your tax they are not obliged to give you the standard deduction, and suddenly you owe some tax on an inflated income, which is then subject to penalties and interest.

My long calls to the IRS were unable to resolve this, in part, I learned after an eternity on hold and then on the phone and then on hold again, because the matter had been turned over to a private third party collection company, and, I was told, the IRS no longer had my fucking file. They gave me an 800 number for this private third party collection outfit, I repeated the number back to make sure I had it written down correctly, as was my habit during the years I worked as a lawyer. I called the number for the collection agency. It was a recording at a used car lot. Then I got a bill with another $400 fine on top of it and I finally went online fucking paid $2,500 more than I owed just to be done with these evil toxic incompetent assholes. There was of course no appeals process available.

Then there is a functioning government, where the IRS has its budget restored and comptent administrators in charge. I get a bill supposedly for hundreds in penalties unpaid in a previous year, I think it was 2017. The IRS waited a few years to send me any notice of this so-called debt, all penalties and interest, the tax had been paid in full. I was slow to pay the goddamn thing. In my recent mail I had a check from the IRS, it was a refund from 2019. The check was for $23. I thought that was pretty goddamned paltry, then I opened another letter from the IRS which told me that $443 owed had been deducted from my refund.

How much simpler, more efficient, sensible and humane is that? That’s how the government is supposed to work in a goddamned democracy, you don’t farm things out to fucking corrupt for-profit assholes to do the job badly and more expensively than the government which is designed to do these exact kinds of administrative jobs.

Vote Democrat. These Nazis are not a political party in a democracy anymore. They are, quite distinctly, Nazis. Don’t forget the Nazis didn’t start mass murdering until many years in. They first had to establish a fascist state that would make it possible. Don’t vote for Nazis, ever.

Forum shopping (and how Aileen Cannon shot to the top of the short list for SCOTUS)

Forum shopping is the process of looking for the courtroom where the judge (and jury, if needed) will be most hospitable to your claims.    Lawyers who represent the rare policeman facing criminal or civil trial for killing an unarmed Black kid try to avoid urban courts, particularly in the area of the killing; those juries tend to be skeptical of police arguments for why the unfortunate death had been inevitable and legally justifiable.

Judge Aileen M. Cannon, Federalist Society member and federal judge for life, was appointed by F POTUS (“Individual One”) after being confirmed nine days after the election was brutally stolen from him by a vast conspiracy of radical left billionaires and a cabal of international socialists, communists and cannibal pedophiles.  There is a federal courthouse in the Southern District of Florida quite close to Mar-a-Lago.   There is one about 70 miles north, in Fort Pierce, and in that courthouse there is one federal judge:  Aileen Cannon.   Why roll the dice in West Palm Beach, where you might go before a George W. Bush appointed judge, when you can take the highway up to a courthouse where, it turns out (who knew?), there is only one federal judge in residence, loyal Aileen M. Cannon?

Cannon has done her damnedest for her benefactor, completing her legally dodgy 24 page order on a national holiday, to protect F POTUS against “reputational harm” and make sure every day of unwarranted delay his lawyers have demanded, in two fairly incoherent sets of legal papers, will be provided — in the interests of mindfulness.  She wrote her decision “mindful of the need to ensure at least the appearance of fairness and integrity under the extraordinary circumstances presented.”

Also mindful, of course, of putting herself at the center of national news and her name at the top of Leonard Leo’s list of future Supreme Court justices, as Lawrence O’Donnell points out:

Biden’s the FASCIST!!!

So saith Rupert Murdoch, a reactionary billionaire who ought to know.

That’s what fascists do, as everybody knows, you lock up your enemies on baseless charges, like innocently stealing classified government documents you have every right to keep in your desk drawer.

In other news, a Federalist Society judge, out of concern for reputational damage to F POTUS, (apparently his reputation for never being held accountable for anything), wrote this great howler in her labored legal decision on Labor Day.

Because, truly for historically great white men, very wealthy and powerful ones, you never know if a search warrant based on probable cause was legal or not under such extraordinary circumstances. The appearance of propriety you understand sometimes requires impropriety, like foregoing all ordinary legal procedures — such as waiting until you’re prosecuted to raise sketchy Fourth Amendment defenses. Federalist Society 101, baby. Smash your fucking enemies right in the fucking mouth.

Biden is the fascist who is criminalizing dissent, and his buddy Obama was a fascist and communist both. You figure it out, asshole.

Neurotic

I don’t know for sure what the clinical definition of the slippery term “neurotic” is [1], though anxiety is its’ hallmark.  The following illustration comports with my understanding of what it means to be neurotic, that is, so anxious, guilt-driven and chagrined, that you often do things that sabotage your own best interests in relations with other people.

My last remaining friend from a childhood that ended more than fifty years ago was in a desperate death spiral with his wife.  It had long been a very tense, combative, distrustful marriage, and it was coming to an end.  At one point, not long before their divorce, his wife and a marriage therapist convinced him that he had to confront me for deliberately or callously trying to end his doomed marriage.  His wife didn’t respect him as a man, found him weak and contemptible, and only confronting me would demonstrate that he had any spine at all.

I was supportive as I gave him a convincing, and true, response for his wife and the idiot therapist.  He seemed relieved, even grateful.  Things continued to go from bad to worse, and finally, after months of trying, it was impossible for me to maintain my friendship with my old friend.

Recent events in my own life made me realize that I should reach out to the poor devil, a guy I hadn’t exchanged a peep with in a few years.  We made plans to talk, by text (as it is done these days) and there were a few hits and misses due to his busy schedule until we could find a mutually good time to talk.   He was very happy to hear from me.

I told him about a long chat I had with his mother, after she dreamed about me and left me a message.   I described the traumatized friend who was in the hands of a great therapist who’d provided her with some excellent rules about life.  I quoted rules 12 and 13, texted them to him afterwards.   

12. A lesson is repeated until it is learned.  A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it.  When you have learned it, you can then go on to the next lesson.

13. People always do the best they can.  If they are doing poorly, it is because they have not learned the lessons that will enable them to do better.

We discussed these revelations and then he promised that the next time we talked he’d share his revelations.   He’d had some major revelations since the last time we spoke.  I told him I was looking forward to it.

“This might sound funny,” he told me, “but you never actually left my life.  I see you frequently in dreams, just passing by, or sitting around, but you are there pretty consistently.”

I paused and said “well, then I hope this was a dream conversation for you.”

He laughed, and we said goodbye.

One month ago.

[1] apparently the term is no longer used clinically, psychiatrists have replaced the squishy term neurotic with more concrete and identifiable ones. Here’s a general definition from thefreedictionary.com

neu·ro·sis (no͝o-rō′sĭs, nyo͝o-)

A mild mental disorder characterized by excessive anxiety, insecurity, or obsession, usually compensated for by various defense mechanisms.

F POTUS addresses MAGA/Q faithful

As federal lifetime appointee, Aileen Cannon, confirmation pushed by McConnell post-election loss, was getting learned legal advice on how to rule in the bizzarrely convoluted manner of Noemi Rao on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals (in re Flynn, reversed 8-2 on appeal), with utter fealty to her celebrity benefactor, F POTUS addressed a campaign rally in the Keystone State and delivered these strong words.

Translated directly from the original German, no doubt. F POTUS had a book of the Führer’s speeches next to his bed when he was married to the woman he buried on his New Jersey golf course for a tax write-off. One suspects it must have been his favorite book, aside from, of course, the Art of the Deal.

Biden was wrong to qualify the word fascist when referring to F POTUS, his lockstep 50+ voting bloc in the Senate and the people roaring at Trumpie’s rally, there’s nothing semi about them. These guys and gals are proud to be following a guy who’s proud to be as strong and beloved as the Führer himself on his best day.

Except for the ones like Lindsey Graham, Kevin McCarthy, Lyin’ Ted Cruz, Matt Gaetz, Mark Meadows, brave Mike Pence and their ilk, shamelessly desperate for power, but also fearful of the kompromat F POTUS is apparently holding over some of them. Schadenfreude aside, I’d hate to picture the videos F POTUS has of Lindsey.

Getting out the vote 2022

Right before the early 2021 (January 5th, for those keeping score at home) runoff in Georgia for two US senate seats, I came across a great group of women called Tinicum Together, out of Pennsylvania, who organize nationwide targeted postcard writing campaigns to increase turnout in important elections.

I sent 100 postcards to registered Democrats in key districts in Georgia, urging them to vote for Warnock and Ossoff. It felt great to roll up my sleeves and finally be doing something that could bring a few more voters out to vote in that key election.

Send them an email at Tinicumtogether@gmail.com and they will send you a packet containing stamped. ready to mail postcards, the names and addresses of swing voters, and, this year, in the crucial case of Pennsylvania, an excellent concise script.

It hurts to know a friend is dying

I heard from the widow of a beautiful soul I knew for many years that my old friend Les has been struggling for the last few years against a rare and relentless form of cancer called liposarcoma.  He’d always been thin, but this cancer, which attacks fat cells, found plenty of places to grow large, aggressive tumors among major organs inside his body.  Since his cancer is rare, and research dollars are scarce, they don’t have many options to treat it. They remove chunks of him and keep him on chemotherapy, while paring down their predictions for his life expectancy.

His daughter graduates high school next year.  He told the oncologists he wanted to live to see her graduate college and they told him it was possible.  Then it was trying to keep him alive until she graduates high school next year.   Now it is any day, apparently. 

I hadn’t realized it had been so long since I spoke to him, I’d known nothing about his grim situation until a few weeks ago when I found out by chance.  Last I’d heard he’d had complete remission from a scary bout with prostate cancer a few years back.  We’d kept in touch over the years, but not that closely, and apparently not for a while before the pandemic lockdown.

I called today and a woman picked up Les’s phone.  It was his older sister, who told me her little buddy was in bad shape, emaciated and grey as a prisoner in Auschwitz.  Something the doctors told him recently had finished off his will to fight, she surmised.  Her little sister, who lives near Les, had called and told her that if she wanted to see him, she’d better get down there.  She arrived the other day.  

He sleeps most of the time, they installed a hospital bed and have hospice nurses to attend him at home.  He’d been falling, so now he’s pretty much confined to bed, except when he’s helped to the bathroom.   His sister, who I met once during a shiva call after their mother died, seemed glad to talk and we chatted for a few minutes.   She’d moved to Kansas City, which was nicer than she thought, her daughter had insisted she move to where they were.  She passed a Denny’s when she got near her brother’s place in Arizona and bought a shake they used to love back when they were kids in Brooklyn.  He hasn’t been eating, nothing, for days now — never a good sign.  She offered him a sip of the milkshake and “the little stinker drank 3/4 of it”, she reported happily. but nothing since.  

We talked about things, moving between little details of our lives and her brother’s misery and soon to end life.   I told her to send my love, and Sekhnet’s, to Les, since he seemed to be sleeping.  I told her I’d try him again soon.  She told me to hang on and tried to rouse him.  She persisted for a long while, repeating my name a few times, it seemed he was deep in sleep.

Then I heard sounds coming from Les that I have never heard come from a human being.  The sounds were like a series of strangled barks overflowing with emotion.   He was trying to speak, or was in distress, or both.  His sister told me calmly that she needed to call the nurse, she thought he had to go to the bathroom and she wasn’t strong enough to help him out of bed by herself.  I told her to take care of him, and herself, and that I’d call again in a few days.  

I’m still thinking about that sound Les was making.