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Category Archives: “funny”
Sanitizing History
It’s a cliche that history is written by the victors, “victors” being a supremely flexible term. By victor we often mean people who remain very wealthy and influential even after their own plans cost thousands of lives and their righteous “cause” turns to shit. We see history today being loudly written and rewritten, in real-time, by powerful, well-funded electoral losers, as it was rewritten by the wealthy, embittered daughters of the defeated Confederacy, decades after their beloved pappies were in their graves after the disgraceful “Northern War of Aggression”.
Trump’s party has removed from the RNC website the bragging page about Trump ending the long war in Afghanistan. The brag was scrubbed almost as soon as Biden made good on Trump’s promise to remove American troops and the Taliban immediately retook control of the nation that has never been militarily subdued by anybody in thousands of years of recorded history. The mess in Afghanistan, all those lost lives and a trillion dollars later, is fucking illegitimate Sleepy Joe’s to try to talk his way out of.
The name of celebrated diplomat and war criminal, Nobel Laureate Henry Kissinger, came up the other night (OK, I probably brought it up). The old Nazi, a one-time orthodox Jew who at 15 fled here with his family from the original Nazi paradise in 1938, is 98 years old, and still getting his ample ass kissed regularly by conservatives as an elder statesman, a supremely pragmatic American genius of international politics. I knew only a fraction of his actual war crimes, and threw a wet blanket over a small party by describing them briefly (without the numbers, which I found out later) the other night. I mentioned his advocacy of carpet bombing in Laos and Cambodia, to destroy the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and the thousands of Cambodian and Laotian civilians killed.
The number, it turns out, is at least 300,000 dead over the four years or so Mr. Kissinger kept his foot on the gas pedal of the secret, illegal carpet bombing (nice phrase, carpet bombing) campaign against densely populated civilian centers in two countries the US was not at war with, during the long “police action” against Communist North Vietnam. Not to mention the panicked instability the continued bombing created, which lead directly to the regime of Pol Pot and his genocide against millions whose remains were later found in the Killing Fields of Cambodia. Shit happens, as Mr. Kissinger might say.
After heading up to bed (my comments about Kissinger immediately reminded everyone it was time for bed) I looked up his biography and the first hit I had was this one:
The anodyne weaselishness of “he was later critiqued for some of his covert actions at home and abroad” rivals Mike Pence’s wonderful accounting of the January 6 MAGA riot when the boss he’d obsequiously served sent a crowd to string him up for cowardice and disloyalty. “We may never see eye to eye about that day,” said Pence philosophically, referring to his former boss and him.
“You mean about that day he sent a lynch mob to grab you and lynch you?” asked a wag on the internet.
So, you know, some critical critics critically criticized Kissinger just because he deliberately prolonged the senseless slaughter of the Viet Nam War by at least four years, for political reasons (to hurt Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and ensure Nixon’s election and then reelection) and was the architect of a vast secret, illegal bombing campaign that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.
He indisputably won a Nobel Peace Prize for ending the war (his Vietnamese counterpart didn’t accept his own bullshit Peace Prize, knowing the true facts behind Kissinger’s mass murdering treachery). Biography.com takes no position on whether this critique of Kissinger is fair or not, we merely mention it out of a sense of fairness since so many seem to believe that the mass killings in Asia that he was deeply involved in was an American war crime.
This is how winners write history. Those leftists on East Timor that posed an ill-defined political threat to nearby Indonesia? Well, you visit the leader of Indonesia, give him some excellent weapons and tell him to wait. He waits, until the plane carrying you and Mr. Nixon taxis and lifts off Indonesian soil, then he slaughters one third of the civilian population of that island, including tens of thousands of cringing women and the crying children they tried to protect. Nothing to see here, what had WE to do with THAT?
I heard Kissinger interviewed by Leonard Lopate on WNYC a few years back. Kissinger had a new historical memoir out and was making the rounds of the talk shows. Lopate asked Kissinger about the slaughter on East Timor, which apparently began the moment Air Force One was wheels up, inches above the tarmac of an Indonesian airport. Kissinger responded in self-righteous fury. “You are so arrogant! You know nothing about history! How dare you?!!”
Lopate kept his cool, said something like “well, I may very well be arrogant, I don’t know, but that has nothing to do with my question. I’m reading directly from your book, on page 383 where you write….”
Kissinger attacked again, but the damage was done, among those of us who have long found the icon of international diplomacy to have been a self-righteous, unaccountable, murderous pile of dreck who always argued that in geopolitics the ends justify the means (means necessarily hidden under a cloak of secrecy, much of the time). Any status quo, no matter how flawed, is preferable to international chaos and possible revolution, Kissinger argued. That he was one of America’s greatest beneficiaries of this status quo apparently never entered his calculations.
Kissinger, who was never elected to any government position, greatly enjoyed his vast power of life and death over countless “enemies”, power which he famously called “the ultimate aphrodisiac”. One does not want to imagine Kissinger deploying that aphrodisiac.
Apparently power is a great aphrodisiac, if you think of a certain type — star fuckers, who will let you do anything to them if you are a big star. Apparently they let you walk right up to them and grab ’em by the pussy, LOL! The aphrodisiac effect of power is even more undeniable if consider a sex partner’s apparent lack of reciprocity to be no indication of her sexual appetite not being enhanced by the powerful aphrodisiac of the powerful person who is doing the fucking.
Muammar Gaddafi had unlimited power in Libya and, apparently, an unlimited, if sometimes sadistic, sexual appetite. He had a special crew going through the crowd wherever he spoke, picking out good looking young women to be taken to rooms to wait for the great man to give them a whiff of the ultimate aphrodisiac. Critics later called these rooms “rape rooms”. Mussolini apparently ran a similar game, stayed very busy with as much fucking as possible, but apparently found more willing women than the handsome, charismatic dictator of Libya. Both men ended badly. Fuck ’em.
When Henry Kissinger finally dies he will be lionized as a giant of American politics in the second half of the twentieth century. He will also be criticized, of course, by the critical critics, for what can arguably be called “war crimes,” but . . . well, those are critics who hate him. Who are you going to believe, those who loved the man for his brilliance and his measured, realistic view of world politics or those who hated him just because he might have had something to do with the deaths of a few hundred thousand so-called innocent civilians? Those anonymous kids that were killed would have grown up to hate America anyway, most likely. You can’t win, can you, Henry?
But wait a second —
“he was later critiqued for some of his covert actions at home and abroad”?
At home? Covert actions at home? Wait . . . could Henry have played a Bill Barr-like role, as Nixon’s Secretary of State, in justifying, or even authorizing, say, the murder by hit squad of one of Nixon’s declared enemies? Covert actions at home? Like that squad of federal marshals that jumped out of two SUVs in the state of Washington and opened fire on a guy accused of shooting a militant pro-Trump fighter who’d come to Portland to kick some commie ass [1]? Things like that can’t happen here, they can’t happen here!
They can’t happen here, can they, Henry?
[1]
Barr sent federal troops to protect a federal building in Portland, Oregon, pursuant to an Executive Order about protecting federal property from violence. Violence escalated immediately, once the anti-riot forces arrived on the scene. You recall the unmarked shock troops jumping out of unmarked rented vans to grab protesters, who they drove around, handcuffed and hooded, and released without charges. It was a radical experiment, to see if federal forces could be widely deployed to put down this threatening Black revolution. Black Lives Matter was portrayed as a violent terrorist group, as was antifa. People who claimed that police killings of unarmed Blacks is a serious ongoing problem in America were themselves the serious ongoing problem in America. These lawless rioters would not be tolerated.
Recall how things escalated in Portland. Trump supporters began staging counter protests in Portland. An armed Trump supporter was shot to death one night by a violent “antifa terrorist”. Four days later, the suspected anitfa killer was found 120 miles from Portland and quickly died in a hail of police bullets when federal marshals staged a raid. The story of the original murder of the Trump supporter, was reported, by the Washington Post, at the very end of the article about the police killing of his suspected murderer, this way:.
The incident came after a caravan of Trump supporters, including members of the Patriot Prayer group, made their way through Portland, sparking skirmishes with those who objected to their presence. Portland has seen more than three months of often violent protests after the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, and the shooting seemed to intensify the persistent tension.
As for the police killing of the suspected killer of the Trump supporter? From that same article in the Washington Post:
A vocal proponent of the far-left antifa movement who was suspected of fatally shooting a supporter of a far-right group in Portland, Ore., this weekend was shot and killed in a confrontation with law enforcement Thursday, the U.S. Marshals Service said.
Investigators were seeking to take Michael Forest Reinoehl into custody in connection with the fatal shooting of 39-year-old Aaron J. Danielson on Saturday after confrontations between supporters of President Trump and Black Lives Matter counterprotesters.
The agency said Reinoehl was shot by police near Olympia, Wash., after drawing a weapon as officers tried to arrest him.
“The fugitive task force located Reinoehl in Olympia and attempted to peacefully arrest him,” said Jurgen R. Soekhoe, a U.S. Marshals spokesman, in a statement. “Initial reports indicate the suspect produced a firearm, threatening the lives of law enforcement officers. Task force members responded to the threat and struck the suspect who was pronounced dead at the scene.”
source
The attempt to peacefully arrest him was accomplished when officers jumped out of two SUVs that had sped to the scene, cut off Reinhoel’s parked car and opened fire on the left-wing suspect, killing him in a barrage of 37 bullets.
The rest of this largely forgotten footnote of an American Death Squad story, of task force members executing a hated enemy while “responding to the threat” from the unarmed man they opened fired on, is here, in the second half of the April 13th post (below the Amazon ad).
If your asshole could speak words
No doubt, the Democrats, who were in charge of every ANARCHIST JURISDICTION under Trump, set the tone by DOING NOTHING when some protesters became violent, set fires and broke windows in outbreaks of violence at mostly peaceful anti-racism protests (when met by militarized riot police) which, of course, led directly and predictably to a violent attack on a joint session of Congress where other protesters broke windows, fought police and did only a few minor unlawful, though patriotic, things (for which they have become political prisoners and, in some cases, martyrs).
And horrifying as it is to hear a guy like Jim Jordan use reasonable sounding words to stir the shit pot, at times it still fascinates me to see a sphincter designed for pushing out solid waste forming actual words and stringing them into understandable sentences.
Drop me a line
When I was a teenager, and I made friends who lived in other states, we’d keep in touch by letters and phone calls. Long distance calls were expensive, but letters could be written any time, drawn on, dropped in the mail and delivered within two or three days for the price of a full-sized chocolate bar (in those days less than a quarter, believe it or not). “Drop me a line,” we’d say, taking our leave of each other, and get busy, on a bus, a train, lying on a couch, setting pen to paper. It was always a great moment when a return letter arrived, particularly when a friend came up with an inventive envelope (for a time we always tried to top each other with wild, ridiculous hand-made envelopes).
Now, those were, to be sure, primitive times, very similar, in terms of communication, to the previous hundred years or so. We did not carry small, powerful personal computers in our pockets that could also be used to text, tweet, make phone calls and video chats. We sat and wrote by hand, folded the pages, put them in an envelope, addressed it, put a stamp on it and dropped it in the mail box. Seems unreal now, even though I sometimes still send drawings and scrawled notes to a small circle of people from time to time.
Here’s a “funny” thing, though. People regularly don’t know what to say when they get something in the mail (and, admittedly, my letters are often more visual than literary, so theres’s also that). As often as not I never even find out my letter has reached its intended recipient, unless I follow up later by text. I have a few theories, including that people in general don’t know how to react to “art” (particularly if it is not monetized, official, etc.), but it is notable, I think, that if you ask a question in a colorful, handwritten letter, you will virtually never get an answer to that question. Although, of course, it’s not hard to see why this letter may not have received a response:
I get that there’s something a bit maniacal-looking there. It is part of my graphomania, when it strikes, I am helpless against it. On the other hand, it is not uncommon to have a question, asked simply, unaddressed when it is written on a page, with other stuff, and mailed to somebody. This is my experience anyway, not many people are attuned to the art of old-time correspondence in our era of super-terse hyper LOL instant response-demanding knee jerks. It was not always this way, my young friends, and, like anything else, the old way was not without its pains in the ass.
I had a close friend for many years, a prodigious correspondent, who was a solipcist. By this I mean that he was convinced of his own reality in the world, (because he thought, and therefore, he was), but was not convinced anyone could ever truly know what was in somebody else’s mind or heart, or even if they actually existed, independently, outside of his perception. This belief, to me, is the essence of intellectualized alienation and a ticket to misery, as it was in his case, but he sure loved to write long, complex letters, in spite of his deep skepticism about anyone actually being able to truly understand anything he expressed.
At a certain point, tired of getting ten page, two-sided letters, mostly about his troubles and unresponsive to anything I’d written, I negotiated a deal with him. We agreed that in every letter, often at the end, we’d re-read the other person’s letter and briefly respond to everything of note. These quick responses would be set off between ellipses, the old dot dot dot (or in the Orange Polyp’s case dot dot dot dot dot dot) in the manner of famous antisemitic doctor and novelist Ferdinand Celine… the Celine section we called it… as in “now I will review and Celine your latest”.
It turned out to be a great innovation. You’d get actual feedback on things you’d written, a response.
“Yer description of the putz — on the nose … no, I never tried ayahuasca, did you ever find some?… she’s always like that, remember August 1971 for but one famous example … they suck, as you have noted whenever the name of their Nazi owner comes up … funny bit about your urinary troubles, if you know what I mean … further comments on the issue of solipcism are in order, remind me next time, if you actually DO exist independent of my perceptions of you …”
While not spontaneous or ideal, this enforced mutual responsiveness was a great improvement to our correspondence and probably extended our friendship by several years.
To me, having a dialogue is like having a leisurely catch. You throw me the ball, I hold it for a second, feeling its texture and its weight, and I toss it back to you, placing the ball in the air where you can easily catch it. We do this until we agree we’ve done it enough. Nothing is more natural, I think, than tossing a ball back and forth on a nice day.
This kind of meditative back and forth is tragically a more and more rare experience in our always in a hurry, time is money, make your point in 140 characters, too late, wait, I was distracted, what was I saying? society. Because we are always in a hurry, and time is not only money but money is free speech, and because so much free speech is also false, and the firehose of mendacity sprays full bore, torrent so powerful it can rip your skin off … I’m sorry, what were you saying? Wait, I’m getting another call… oh, God, here’s a text coming in too, a very important one, can you… hang on, Oh I don’t believe it! I don’t fucking believe it! Wait til I send you this… on second thought, maybe not, can you hold, can I call… what the hell do they want now?… can you text me later?
Ah, you know what, I’ll drop you a line.
Though I’ve learned to deal with it better and better in recent years, I am predisposed to a tic about silence by way of reply, because my father, in his most sadistic moments, would simply refuse to reply, deploying the old deniable silence (“what are you whining about, I didn’t even fucking hear you”) to wound quite effectively. So silence by way of reply when I ask a question has long had a kryptonite effect on me. Still, as a general rule, we all want to know we are being heard and replied to sensibly. It does not happen enough these days in general, which is one major reason people are so isolated and ready to jump into an online rabbit hole like QAnon that provides a false sense of community to those lonely, crazy souls who embrace it, “where we go one, we go all”, and shit.
It is worth the minute or two it might take, when a friend asks you a question that requires an answer, to actually digest what they are looking for, indicate confusion if there is any, wait for clarification and then think for ten seconds or so before giving your thoughtful reply. Worth it in my humble (and my conceited) opinion, anyway.
Trump is “not free from fault”
Let’s roll the video tape, as Warner Wolf used to say (the clip is 57 seconds).
Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) tells Congress on January 13 that Trump, while he doesn’t deserve to be impeached again, is not “free from fault”. He states that Mr. Trump bears responsibility for the January 6 “attack on Congress by mob rioters” and that the president “should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding”.
He says “these facts require immediate action from President Trump: accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest and ensure president-elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term”.
He says “the president’s immediate action also calls for immediate Congressional action” a fact-finding commission and a censure resolution in Congress, after “the worst day I’ve ever seen in Congress.” He added “our country is deeply hurt”.
Of course, after meeting with the furious, deranged former president in his Florida resort a short time later, McCarthy got his alternative facts straight. They are now both on the same page, along with all but two elected Republicans in Congress, two very conservative members of Congress now reviled as RINOs (and “Pelosi Republicans”– thanks, Kev) for rejecting their party leader’s constantly repeated lies (stolen election, he had nothing to do with planning or fomenting the spontaneous, peaceful riot by honestly outraged patriots at the Capitol).
As the former president mischievously claimed for the thousandth time, the other day at a pep rally in Arizona: “the radical left Democrat communist party rigged and stole the election.” House Leader Nancy Pelosi, the former president and his buddy McCarthy both agree, is responsible for the January 6 MAGA riot, is a witch, and is currently conducting another purely bogus, like, totally partisan witch hunt against a completely innocent man.
Kevin, of course, still claims to love the taste of the “ring” he is constantly kissing.
The expression on his face, and his past remarks to the public, may tell another story, but who are you going to believe, your lying eyes and ears, or a debased sycophant, contradicting his own statements to Congress (a hundred years ago), the man next in line to be thrown under the bus by the Supreme King of Loyalty (oaths)?
I can’t wait for Kevin to try to fight the, like, totally unfair, partisan, communist Congressional witch hunt subpoena for his testimony, under oath in front of the commission he called for on January 13.
Biden Derangement Syndrome
I got a nice collection of political cartoons emailed to me by a friend in Tennessee. She picked some good ones, every one of them hit the current ugliness right on the nose. I thought of another cartoon the cartoonists should be working on about now.
There is a reason millions of Americans felt sick when the DNC orchestrated Biden’s nomination by jockeying him into the front-runner position as all the other “moderates” bowed out of the primaries on the same day, on the eve of that big primary when Biden sprung from the back of the pack to become a contender and then the DNC-chosen candidate. Many of us felt, at the time, that with literal Nazis and Klansmen literally howling at the gates, and after the vast amount of damage their deranged leader had done in a mere four years to create “American carnage”, the smiling, compromising, moderate who couldn’t muster an apology for Anita Hill or a hint of regret for any of his many bad acts during a long career in the Senate, was not the one to be standing up for democracy, particularly against an irrational and violent movement led by an insane and sadistic narcissist whose constant lies are promulgated to tens of millions of credulous followers by a well-oiled mass media disinformation machine.
Sarah Lazarus at Crooked Media reported a sickening item last night that I hadn’t seen, instantly giving rise to that all-too familiar DNC-induced existential nausea:
- Democrats aren’t ready to boldly counter all forms of GOP obstruction just yet. During a CNN town hall on Wednesday night, President Biden said that as much as the filibuster sucks ass (paraphrasing), eliminating it entirely would “throw the entire Congress into chaos and nothing will get done.” (You know, by contrast to the relentless legislative juggernaut we have now.) On the bright side, Biden did voice his strong support for a return to a talking filibuster, and said he might be willing to go further if the filibuster causes total gridlock. (The For The People Act would like a word.)
Seriously, the president doesn’t yet understand what he’s up against? How is it possible? He doesn’t understand that the filibuster was a tool of slaveholders and then the Klan, almost exclusively? And that McConnell took the trusty flintlock pistol of the filibuster, which at least required the effort of standing there and pulling the trigger, and transformed it into an email nuke that any one of his minions can deploy any time, while lying on their couch drinking vodka, to block debate on anything– permanently.
Silver lining? There’s a good cartoon in that quote, the Capitol in flames behind him, Confederate flags and swastikas all over it, Biden, in a gas mask, surrounded by panicked looking Secret Service “ending the filibuster would throw the entire Congress into chaos and nothing will get done.”
Vug him and the “moderate” corporate, status quo-committed whores he rode in on…
USA! USA!!!
And the Lord slew him, also
The Bible is full of great, if sometimes divinely ambiguous, passages. Somewhere in the Book of Leviticus (chapter 26) God tells His People about the blessings He will bestow on them if they heed His commandments. He does this in a full paragraph of generous promises. In the next few pages He details the escalating curses He will afflict them with if they disobey His commands. In the end their great-great-grandchildren are eating their own children and fleeing in terror from the rustling of a leaf on a tree [1]. Great stuff from the All-Merciful.
Perhaps my favorite short bit is the brief story of Onan. Onan is known in polite society as the father of onanism, which is Victorian slang for masturbation [2]. It is not recorded that he actually did the solitary, self-pleasuring for which Victorian children were severely punished. Onan, every Bible reader knows, practiced coitus interruptus, as detailed in Genesis 38:9.
The story is that Onan’s older brother died and Onan’s father instructed him to do his duty to his brother, impregnate his widow, as the law demanded, and raise up seed to his brother’s name. This would allow the baby of the eldest son to inherit all of his grandfather’s property when the old man died, cutting Onan out of the inheritance entirely. Onan went to do his duty, had second thoughts, pulled out, spilling his seed on the ground. He apparently got in the habit of doing this, as Er’s widow, Tamar was not getting pregnant in spite of his many conjugal visits. Then, my favorite bit:
And what Onan did was hateful in the sight of the Lord and the Lord slew him, also.
Also!
Meaning, one assumes, that the Lord had slain Onan’s older brother, for some wickedness not reported in the Bible.
I am not a faithful or careful reader of the Old Testament, am only fleetingly acquainted with the New Testament. Of course, the fault here is my sloppy reading. The Holy One, blessed be He, didn’t spring this as a mischievous surprise, a punchline, the way I did, He carefully explained everything in Genesis 38:8, writing in His customary third person:
…6 Now Judah acquired a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. 7 But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the LORD; so the LORD put him to death. 8 Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife. Perform your duty as her brother-in-law and raise up offspring for your brother.”…
Genesis 38:6-8
Always remember, the Devil can cite scripture, for a laugh. If you think that’s funny, try swallowing a bite of your child’s tender flesh as you fight your need to flee in terror from the sound of the wind rustling a dead leaf on a tree branch, punk.
Further reading:
Job 5:2
For wrath killeth the foolish man, and envy slayeth the silly one.
[1] from the final part of the great Leviticus 26:
36 “‘As for those of you who are left, I will make their hearts so fearful in the lands of their enemies that the sound of a windblown leaf will put them to flight. They will run as though fleeing from the sword, and they will fall, even though no one is pursuing them. 37 They will stumble over one another as though fleeing from the sword, even though no one is pursuing them. So you will not be able to stand before your enemies. 38 You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will devour you. 39 Those of you who are left will waste away in the lands of their enemies because of their sins; also because of their ancestors’ sins they will waste away.’”
[2]
OK, you got me, I pulled that Victorian reference out of my ass, here’s the actual origin:
early 18th century: from French onanisme or modern Latin onanismus, from the name Onan (Gen. 38:9), who practiced coitus interruptus.
Why do they keep attacking the guy?
Unscrupulous prosecutors are now going after the small family business of the former president, the Orange Polyp, for allegedly cutting corners (and keeping two sets of books) the way any hugely successful business does to pay less tax. The man is out of office, out of power, all he does now is appear at rallies to continue insisting that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that he will ruin anyone in his party who says otherwise.
He is still immensely popular among his solid 39% base, he works closely with the RNC (who supported him in him in his literally hundreds of fruitless anti-voting suits) and his party leaders and foot soldiers obey him unconditionally, but otherwise, it’s not like he’s an active threat to democracy, unless the laws passed in many states based on his transparent but galvanizing lie about rigged elections work as designed and his candidates win majorities in both houses in 2022. Of course, that scenario is about as likely to happen as thousands descending on, and hundreds overrunning, the US Capitol building in the belief that they’ve been deputized to stop an injustice in progress by their lawful president.
Look, to be honest, the only thing they actually have on him are that his “university” was a fraud, though he didn’t have to admit it when he shut it down and paid only $25,000,000 to settle the case. They also have the fraudulent charity he ran, a charitable foundation that gave almost no money to charitable causes and was shut down after negotiations with vengeful NY State authorities.
Paying off a porn star for silence about having sex with her right after your wife gives birth? Nothing, at worst a technical violation of some kind of campaign finance law nobody ever heard of. Hundreds of pious Christian pastors defend him for that bit of prudent adultery, not nearly as bad as what God’s other flawed vessel, Kind David, did when he sent Bathsheba’s husband off to die in battle so he could possess the woman he coveted. And the union between King David and Queen Bathsheba gave us King Solomon, so, God indeed works in mysterious ways!
The rest of the accusations agains the Orange Polyp are all just allegations: his perfect call to Ukrainian president Zelensky asking for a political favor, arguably a tiny bit imperfect, his call to Georgia Secretary of State Raffensberger to get him to “find” 11,780 votes, that might have crossed a line, even violated a local Georgia law that makes it a crime to try to influence an election outcome. The fact is, they have nothing really concrete and airtight on the guy. Sure he’s on tape doing everything possible to get Raffensberger to change electoral results that have already been recounted and certified, but why wouldn’t he do that?
Sure, some “evidence”-based court may find differently at some point, after other indictments begin rolling out (hello, Fania Willis in Fulton County, GA!) but at least 74,000,000 of our fellow Americans believe that these cases will all be witch hunts, like the toothless witch hunt Mueller headed (he found nothing, less than 140 points of collusion with Russia, no collusion!), and the second so-called impeachment over simply making a speech that supposedly set off an “insurrection”, because when you’re a big star they let you get away with all these nickel and dime “offenses” they are trying to throw at the former celebrity pussy-grabber.
The rule of law is crucial to the administration of justice. Which is why these partisans have no business trying to come up with supposedly legal ways to get this guy. His trial, if any, should only be in the court of public opinion. If the public repudiates him, his ratings will go down and he will have less influence, that’s the way Free Market democracy is supposed to work, after all.
It’s not like he actually did shoot somebody in the face on Fifth Avenue (which, by the way, the law would have allowed him to do, without consequences, had Pence done his fucking job and made him president for life). People are always so brutally unfair to the true prophets of their age! They crucified Jesus, just for speaking God’s truth, and they’re trying to crucify this guy, just because he may have lied a few thousand times. Sheesh.
Reason to feel slightly heartened
This is the man the organized right-wing and the entire Republican party is putting all of its money on going forward.
Selfish, incapable of loyalty, petty, cruel, vindictive, delusional, bigoted, America’s greatest sore loser?
Perhaps, but all of the smart, dark, right-wing money, at this second, is on the Orange Polyp and his loyalists, by a nose, in a midterm already being fueled by hate and threats of further violence, amid litigation challenging new voter suppression laws in the fourteen states (and counting) now actively making it harder for people in cities to vote [1].
If it was me donating the big bucks to keep the GOP firmly in the driver’s seat, I’d be looking to base the operation on a genius just a little bit more stable. Maybe someone who hadn’t had his “university” and his “charity” both shut down for fraud? Just spitballing here.
[1]
Between January 1 and May 14, 2021, at least 14 states enacted 22 new laws that restrict access to the vote. The United States is on track to far exceed its most recent period of significant voter suppression — 2011. By October of that year, 19 restrictive laws were enacted in 14 states. This year, the country has already reached that level, and it’s only May.
Worst Case Scenarist
If you are a pessimist, given to worry, and you have any kind of imagination, you have the tools to be a certain kind of novelist. As the disheartening plot turns, everything that can go wrong does go wrong, everything that could easily have been avoided is painfully collided with, every accident is for the worst, complications are always infinite. In the worst case scenario, luck turns inexorably against the doomed protagonist until the reader can read no more, or the reader simply dies, as we all eventually do.
And so it was with your recent medical diagnosis, shocking, suddenly skyrocketing numbers that often indicate cancer. Your own fault! Why was it a year and a half, maybe even two years, all crucial months in catching tumors early, since your last blood test?
Sure there had been a pandemic, but you attempted to get your annual physical on time only to learn, by a form letter from a corporation, that your doctor was no longer participating in your medical insurance plan. Not a problem losing your long time PC, you just pick a new doctor from a list, have an annual check-up, get a blood test, pandemic or no pandemic. Meantime, there were distractions, the pandemic was raging again and a crazed idiot was fomenting an armed insurrection that failed, in its first attempt, to impose a dictatorship in the country you live in.
Later, as people in your city get vaccinated in high numbers and society begins returning to normal, seeking medical records from your former doctor’s office, you learn your longtime doctor is back on the insurance plan, his earliest appointment a few weeks away. You get the blood test.
But, ominously in hindsight, it is now seven crucial months after you originally tried to get your annual physical.
Is the number really so terrifying? It is PSA, prostate specific antigen, a number that roughly correlates with a healthy prostate (yours has been bleeding on and off for months, the urologist told you not to worry about it, just flush the system — and piss out the soft blood clots — by drinking more water). If your PSA is under 4 it is generally considered normal and nothing to worry about. PSA level is roughly correlated with prostate cancer, what they look for is a sudden increase, which sometimes is an early (or late) indication of cancer. The rise in your PSA is what the doctors watch out for, a steady four that is suddenly a five can sometimes indicate the presence of cancer. Your PSA almost tripled in the last year and a half, a long stretch for a tumor to grow undisturbed, the 300% upward leap gets your attention.
Your doctor says “go see your urologist” because it is not his call to tell you “this is something to be very worried about, get to a specialist as fast as you can”. He may feel that way, but he’d rather have a specialist who knows how to treat it break the bad news.
The only problem with seeing the urologist right away is that you will have to provide current insurance information to make an appointment. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ends, with two weeks’ notice, at the end of the month you turn 65. Should have expected that, shouldn’t you have? Your window to enroll in Medicare suddenly shrinks from three months after your 65th birthday to two weeks after. If you’re about to turn 65 you find yourself, suddenly, with days to navigate a complex and unwieldy bureaucracy to avoid a gap in health insurance.
Naturally, the best way to apply for Medicare is online. It turns out to be quite simple to do. You log into your Social Security account (ssa.gov, medicare.gov cannot help you apply) and within ten minutes your application is done and begins to be processed. The only problem you will encounter is if you have not been on ssa.gov since you last logged in five years ago when you created the account. Personal ID? No idea. assword-pay? Not the foggiest.
Eventually a receptionist at Social Security, after you answer a few questions, tells you your Personal ID, which turns out to be the full name of your girlfriend’s beloved cat — of course. Now they can email you a PIN to reset your password, which they do. Now just answer three simple questions and you’re in. Street you grew up on, favorite teacher, make of first car. Easy.
Except that the computer needs an EXACT match to verify your identity. Did you write Miss Richert, Mary Richert, Miss Mary Richert, Richert? Did you include make and model of the car or just the model? Did you write your street number with or without the “th” at the end of the number? You will never know. At least one of your guesses was wrong and you were locked out after the third try, unable to log in that day back in May, when you could have had Medicare in place before the Patient Protection Act stopped protecting you.
No worries, the kind receptionist tells you, they will send you a new PIN, by US Mail, within ten business days. They do, it arrives the second week in June. Only a few weeks after your previous thwarted attempt you are able to log in. Ten minutes later your application is submitted and being processed. Ten days later it is 2/3 complete, pending final assessments of some kind. There are millions of people applying, there is nothing that can be done to expedite any individual application. The pandemic means that anything that once worked a certain way no longer does, because, the pandemic.
There is also the matter of your kidneys, since you had a sometimes fatal (not in your case) kidney disease, you need to track certain things. Your last appointment with the nephrologist showed no sign of the disease, you breathed a sigh of relief and the doctor bid you goodbye. But you should still continue to track certain things.
One of those things is Vitamin D level, since excessively high Vitamin D levels can damage the kidneys, apparently. Sunshine and dairy products provide most people with enough Vitamin D, but if you’ve had five cancer cells removed from your nose, and avoid dairy, you may also avoid walking in the sunshine. Doctor gives you a prescription Vitamin D supplement, a mega-dose, once a week. The nephrologist, who had been tracking your Vitamin D, noted that it was a bit high when he tested it two or three years ago (the private, third-party lab, for whatever reason, didn’t follow his order and test it in the most recent, pandemic blood test…). He advised you to take it only twice a month. Latest blood test shows your Vitamin D level is excessively high, which is bad for the kidneys and other tissues and most commonly causes hypercalcemia [1] — none of which you are aware of.
Doctor tells you your recent blood work shows your blood calcium level is also high (hypercalcemia, which you learn about the next day). When you ask what could cause that he tells you it may sometimes indicate a benign pituitary tumor.
Five minutes on the internet tells you the six most common side effects of excessive levels of Vitamin D — elevated blood calcium levels checks in at the top of the list. Look, nobody is blaming you for not knowing any of this shit, it just is what it is.
Why was your Vitamin D level not tested during your last physical in November 2019, by the private third-party lab (ignoring the nephrologist’s request, which was always done at the hospital lab) in 2020? Anybody’s guess. The pandemic, it was probably at least partly because of the pandemic.
Best case scenario, Medicare is in place in time to make the appointments you need to make and you learn, to your great relief, that you have neither cancer nor the return of that sometimes deadly idiopathic (“cause unknown” from Greek ἴδιος idios “one’s own” and πάθος pathos “suffering”) kidney disease you underwent chemo for a few years back.
Of course, doctors go on vacation this time of year. Plus, the pandemic. Could be a few months before you can see the busy urologist, the busy nephrologist, a competent dermatologist, etc. Nobody’s fault that you didn’t get everything in order months ago, pandemic or no, just in case the worst case scenario was the one that was going to unfold, especially during a pandemic, which messed so many things up, was itself a worst case scenario.
And, seriously, why wouldn’t the worst case scenario be the one that is already unfolding? Hope is good, unless it’s dumb hope. Look at the signs and you will understand that you are most likely fucked. It’s been a good ride, bumpy but good. No complaints, no regrets. Try not to think of your prostate every time you urinate, ignore that slight stinging, it can be anything. Do NOT google warning signs of prostate cancer. Check your Medicare progress bar every other day, maybe it will move from 2/3 done to complete. Try to get some rest and forget those nightmares, things are never as bad as in your worst fears, until they are — which might not happen, except, of course, in the worst case scenario.
[1]
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