30 October 2018

Lindsay Abets donnie’s Latest Sham: From “The Hill”

Graham, that is.

…he plans "to introduce legislation along the same lines as the proposed executive order" from Trump. Congress is out of session until Nov. 13.

If Graham is going to propose legislation to amend the Constitution, his bill would need to win over not only two-thirds majorities in Congress, but also be ratified by three-quarters of the states.

His announcement comes hours after Trump said in an interview released Tuesday that he will sign an executive order intended to end the practice of birthright citizenship.”

I guess he’ll get to this just after donnie’s latest tax cut has been enacted.

Genocide Is …

I have received copious derision for calling Kroger and Squirrel Hill “genocide”.

I believe that that derision is at best the view of people beset with an undo and overly optimistic view of America’s current situation.

Genocide is two things.

First it is the exterminator’s view of some group of other humans.

Second it is acts of killing executed by those who espouse the exterminator's view.

Genocide is one death at a time.

donnie knows that and is inducing it.

I fully expect him to rail in the near future “Fred Rogers was a loser”.

A Random Paris Image

The violent left wing mob.

The hoard of unnamed middle easterners and rapists working north.

Genocide at Kroger.

Genocide in Pittsburg.

A massive donnie induced campaign of bomb seeded terror against progressive Americans.

And that’s just a summary of the best of the trumped up lies and trumped up donnie induced incidents of the last week or so.

It’s hard to remain even tempered.

So when something pleasant happens, I choose to share it.

Such was this image that just popped up on my Screen Saver.

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28 October 2018

From The Washington Post Overnight Re: The Pittsburg Massacre

“Many Americans believe that the increase in anti-Semitism, xenophobia and racism over the past two years has been stoked by the rhetoric of some of the nation’s top leaders, particularly President Trump, whose ongoing rallies are marked by denunciations of immigrants and the deriding of “globalists,” which is viewed as a code word for Jews. Most recently, he has declared himself a “nationalist,” thrilling some of his followers who identify themselves as white nationalists.”

I have to ask this again: when are we going to bring this nightmare to an end?

27 October 2018

Bubbles?

One of the never ending stories about how divided America has finally catalyzed a thought that I have been sensing but haven’t been able to get out into a form I could evaluate.

The heredity of that thought is quite complex but its most interesting parent is the constant coverage of how ecstatic the trump voters are with everything that is going on.

What finally came out to me was what that must mean.

The inverse insight that led me to my alter insight was my introspective view of my post 6 November 2016 situation.

That situation can be summed up with the words “darkness, despair and disgust”.

The catalyzed revelation that ultimately emerged recently was that, other than a buffoon in the White House, my situation hasn’t changed post disaster and my situation is pretty good.

So why all that gloom?

That led me to thinking differently about the trump supporter archetype: the victims of the sophistication of America’s manufacturing system and supporting supply chain.

Quickly stated was that, rather than concluding that they are all cretins, I came to the view that they are living in a state of euphoria diametrically opposite to my profound darkness.

But for those people – except for a buffoon in the White House - nothing has changed since donnie took over.

“So why are they so happy?” I thought I heard someone say.

“And for that matter, why are you so depressed?” I heard the same voice rejoin.

If neither of us is any better or any worse off than we were on 5 October 2016 why the stark dichotomy of viewpoint?

“Because you are all living in self absorbed bubbles” the voice shrieked at me.

“Hell, they aren’t bubbles; they are eggs”, the voice continued.

“And until you all figure out how to hatch your are all on the road to perdition”.

25 October 2018

Beware The Second Wave

I have been trying to figure out something about all the pipe bombs that have been delivered to people who dare to disagree with donnie.

Why have none of them gone off?

On the various interviews that I have heard from the various experts who make a living knowing about terrorism I have heard a singe theme proffered.

They all say that “we have gotten real good at keeping track of potential threats and stopping them en route to execution: we have intercepted every one of them in this recent outbreak”.

I fear an alternate situation is afoot.

In nearly every suicide bombing I have ever heard of there has been a first wave that causes some death and damage, but usually of limited scope.

In every case massive numbers of people rush to help the victims of the attack only to be disintegrated in a much larger second wave attack.

I don’t know how, I don’t know when, but I fear deeply that that tactic has been adopted for this trump inspired American terrorist attack: the first wave has been just to get everyone’s attention; the lack of detonation is designed in; the intent is to lull us all into a sense of security analogous to the humanitarian instinct to ignore fear and rush to the aid of our fellows.

As donnie says, we’ll have to wait and see.

On the other hand, what we may be waiting to see will be that the whole bomb mail campaign is another Russian troll operation.

I can hear it now: “there is no collusion; there is no collusion;fake news; failing New York Times” etc. etc. etc..

22 October 2018

The News Cycle

As the Keystone Sheiks stumble around the “Rogue Elements” farce, and as donnie stands on the sidelines cheering them on with “and then? and then? and then?” and as the confluence of those twin shams  provides the world with countless hollow and ironic laugh lines, the horror of what the crown prince did – apparently in a childish tantrum – begins to recede into the darkening opacity that always precedes the world moving on to the next big news item.

I say “well done” donnie and the assassins; you have successfully Putinised the world: straight out of Arkady Ostrovsky’s Invention of Russia.

19 October 2018

Two For One

These two are related.

It turns out the first may have been prophetic.

The second is just sad.

But it fleshes out the prophesy.

1. https://noellivefromparis.blogspot.com/2018/10/why-emoluments-matter.html

2. https://noellivefromparis.blogspot.com/2018/10/its-depressing-but-fascinating.html

The End

It’s Depressing, Fascinating, Disgusting and Ironic

It’s that sequence of reactions.

First one, then the next and then the third, then the fourth.

As Riyadh and Washington float their trial balloons and refine their lies and alibis one is depressed.

As the “rogue killers” farce gains momentum one is fascinated..

As the momentum continues and as donnie’s slime rises around him one becomes deeply disgusted

And, as the slime mixes and mixes and mixes with the blood of a Washington Post correspondent only irony remains.

Given donnie’s love of the Saudis and his hatred of the Washington Post how could it have been otherwise?

Only irony remains.

Ducks

They are called mergansers.

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17 October 2018

Ol’ Bret Is Back

donnie says that the Saudi Crown Prince is just like Lying Bret.

It’s taken three years, but donnie has finally said something with which I agree.

So that means, I guess, that we get to be entertained by another donnie directed charade?

Another little gem of a reality nugget?

Kinda puts the Supreme Court in better focus, doesn’t it?

Or in clearer context, perhaps?

I’m really looking forward to seeing Lindsay Graham puff up and start shrieking about how the Turks are trying to destroy this good man.

I know; I know; he has already puffed up and shrieked against the little prince.

But donnie hasn’t ‘splained to him yet.

Stay tuned.

Why Emoluments Matter

Saudi Arabia.

16 October 2018

What Is Behind The Curtain

Mexico Beach got chosen, either at random by a godless universe, or by an All Loving Divine Father, for apparently near total destruction.

If it was the godless universe that did it, it exposes due to the inherent randomness of that scenario, how much of a sham is the American Dream.

It is statistically unlikely that a different random selection would have found a community much better off than Mexico Beach.

Very few of us live with the One Percent.

So I offer a few thoughts on the American Dream (an increasingly elusive hallucination).

This randomly selected American community apparently, if I am to believe the news that I hear, is never going to come back for a variety of reasons.

But those reasons can be summed up by saying that those people live from paycheck to paycheck and Michael has stopped the paychecks.

Even missing one would have put the Mexico Beach people permanently out of the American game.

Not ever having any more paychecks does something that I am not going to attempt to describe.

But it sounds a lot like some kind of shithole country to me.

Whether shithole or not, America has a system that gives massive tax breaks to the very few, very wealthy among us, bumps the amount spent on war toys to seven tenths of a trillion dollars and then says to the rest of us “that resulting deficit is going to have to be paid out of something; looks like Social Security, Medicare and Unemployment Insurance need to be eliminated”.

That was ol’ Mitch McConnel speaking this morning.

He neglected to remind us of how safe that seven tenths of a trillion is going to make us.

After all, we all know about the Russians and all of that.

If, on the other hand, the mayhem wrought upon Mexico City Beach was thought up by that All Loving Divine Father, I just don’t know what to say.

Even I don’t like toying with lightning bolt discipline.

But I can say that it looks to me that if the results of Michael are an Almighty Choice wrought upon those people, it still looks to me like those people – and most of the rest of us (99% or so, let’s say) -  live in a country looking more and more like a shithole.

A common thought for atheists and ecumenicals and all stripes in between.

This Is Gonna Be Good!

Mike Pompeo is in Saudi Arabia helping the Saudi’s trump up a new version of the rogue elements version of the dismembered newsman version of the disappearance of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

This version is almost certain to include a cameo from the 300 pounder from the basement in New Jersey.

donnie loves that one.

15 October 2018

The Great Saudi Sham: donnie Plumbs A New Low

We are on the verge of the president of the united states (lower case to acknowledge the illegitimacy of lying donnie) endorsing a monstrous lie.

That lie is that some sort of rogue intelligence operation caused the disappearance of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Until the last few hours the Saudi’s have denied that they knew of anything happening to him.

They called the Turk’s insistence to the contrary to be nonsense.

But something happened to him.

He is just plain gone.

And the last known of him is that he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

And something of a din has arisen and continues to rise from the unarguable truth of Khashoggi’s continued non-existence.

In the face of the din donnie has talked to the little king.

Little king cole now has changed his story.

He says that there was indeed malfeasance and chicanery afoot in the consulate, but that it was from rogue elements.

donnie loves that.

Rogue elements are big sellers with “the base”.

Puty Putin loves it too.

After all: there was all sorts of roguery and chicanery from all sorts of rogue elements, including that mastermind 300 pounder in the new jersey basement who rigged the 2016 elections for donnie.

Anyway donnie is about to endorse that ridiculous lie.

And the Presidency, and the United States of America will be shoved even deeper into the slime of donnie and the accretion of slime that surrounds him.

I am really surprised.

13 October 2018

Heinlein Lives

I am what is now known by “The Base” as a Nancy Pelosi left wing liberal nut – I really don’t even agree with the tone and timbre of Pelosi, but since I think that healthcare is a human right I am thus categorized.

And even though I know that Heinlein was far from liberal (and all that Pelosi stuff) he was close to correct about stuff - so many times.

And, if you read much of what Heinlein wrote just after he had to retire from the US Navy, you might even think that he was a Nancy Pelosi left wing liberal nut

Later he morphed into a kind of a head of clan, old man paternalist in his later writings, but even those were at least entertaining.

*************************************************************************

But back to how “right” he often was as his writings document: read one of the chapters toward the end of Expanded Universe, about what was, as best as Robert and Virginia, his wife and manager, (she spoke Russian) could figure it out, really the economic and logistic truth of the USSR.

Or (I’m stretching my memory here for the name of the chapter) read “She Needs a Bedroom”, one of Expanded Universe’s opening chapters.

*************************************************************************

I mention Heinlein because I just watched Bill Mayer interview Steve Bannon.

Both were articulate, charming and really entertaining.

For Bill, no surprise.

For Steve …

I was unprepared for charm from Bannon, having seen him in other venues and other contexts, and – maybe – other time slices.

But he came off as someone with whom I didn’t have a lot in common viewpoint-wise, but as someone with whom I might have a beer and with whom I might politically spar, to our mutual enjoyment.

It was obviously a sham.

But, as is sometimes the case with shams, little pin pricks of truthy light crept out of the miasma of the sham.

Those creeps of truth are always unintended.

By the sources of the creeps.

And they are always significant: Bill alluded to Steve having been fired by donnie.

Steve riposted with the observation that he wasn’t in this game to be a lackey of some president.

“I have an agenda and I have been finding recruits for years; they will come and they will go; but I will prevail”.

He really didn’t say those exact words; but that is the essence of what he said.

*************************************************************************

Hey, Steve: I am totally open to talking to you about me being your speech writer and chief concept lackey.

The word whore is dominating my present view of myself.

*************************************************************************

But back to the point of this post: Robert Heinlein wrote a book called The Puppet Masters.

12 October 2018

Le longue La Seine


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White Privilege

I am listening to The Daily.

It’s about the trial of the cop that killed Laquan McDonald.

Laquan McDonald is not, for me, a unique person, court case, situation, or story of how the cops act.

He is a very important young man, nonetheless; he had guts; and he died manifesting that fact; I should not pretend to know what was in his mind as he walked away from those cops, one of whom killed him with sixteen bullets; but I think I can so pretend.

Therefore he is a banner under which I can march.

*************************************************************

I have always distrusted cops.

I’m not really sure why that is true and why that is the case, but I do remember being not very old – we moved to Portland from Seattle when I was five – and sitting in a car where my mother had briefly double parked so she could pick up my father from work, with a big fat monster yelling at my mother; he was yelling; he was blue; he was disrespecting my mother and he was a Seattle cop; that may be where I started distrusting cops.

But it has continued from that not very old point in my life to now, as I write this post (the Belvedere California Force being a sole exception) and I hear the stories of Fergusson and the rest with nothing but contempt for the “I was afraid” bullshit that the police always offer (because, if they were afraid, one might make the case that that is part of the job – being afraid; shooting another human being, and killing another human being should not be a part of the job - a perk, almost, of being a cop.I would furthermore argue that, if fear drives one to murder, one ought not be a cop).

In Screen Saver I wrote about several encounters I have had with cops in my life; they were uniformly unpleasant; none of them resulted in my being arrested, or shot; but, in at least one of them, viewed from the vantage point of years, I can see that, if I had been black, I never would have written Screen Saver.

I would have been dead.

Here is that little vignette from Screen Saver:

“One early spring evening of my junior year in high school I found myself bored. My friends Joe and Frenchy were also bored. Frenchy’s real name was Patrick. He had been a transplant to Portland from The Dalles where his father had worked as an engineer on The Dalles Dam. He had come to Central Catholic High School in his sophomore year. He lived in the same neighborhood as Robert and Joe and I, and several other friends from school, so he took the same bus. In fact most of the Central Catholic bus takers started out at the same bus stop when going home from school. Several parts of the city were served from that one bus stop. So Jack was at that stop also. So Jack and Joe and Robert and I met Pat at the same time at the bus stop. One of the things Pat had told us about himself was that he was taking French. To the rest of us who were all taking Latin this seemed like an extreme oddity. As a result when we were talking about “the new guy” later, and none of us could remember his name, somebody referred to him as “Frenchy”. It took him several years to get us to call him Pat. At one point even his mother was calling him Frenchy.

Anyway, during the Frenchy-era the three of us had found ourselves together one evening and mutually at loose ends about what might be fun or interesting to do. The mortar was a device known to all three of us because all three of us had participated in varying degrees in the rocket development project. I had been more of the research and development component and they, along with Jack had been more the launch observation and recovery component, with me supplying the ignition technology.

We had decided that it would be fun to go shoot some projectiles at Madeleine, the grade school Joe and I had attended.

We had gotten ready at Joe’s house prior to departing. Preparations had included making several steel wool filaments, making sure that the 150 feet of electrical wire was not tangled too badly and putting the battery and launch tube in an athletic bag. It had also included cutting the heads off numerous books of safety matches, enough to fill four empty CO2 cartridges with enough left over to use with the ignition pan, and populating several additional empties and ignition pans if we wanted to go beyond four shots. Since there was some noise and a flash of light associated with each launch we thought four might be the upper limit of launches that prudence would allow. We always shot the device with prudence, or so we told ourselves.

So when we got to the school we were almost set up. The only thing left to do was to walk around the perimeter of the whole wooded launching area to see if there were any late night strollers on the sidewalks below the hill or any other type of activity that would affect the prudence of our intended launches. The launching area was a sloping vacant lot with a stand of Douglas Firs across Klickitat Street from the school. Everything was clear.

It was too dark to see where the cartridges were going to land, and they were too small to see in any event if they got as far as the intended target, which was the school building. But the initial explosion, the flash and the metallic “bing” “bing” ‘bing” of the cartridge hitting something, even if we couldn’t be sure it was the school building, was sufficient entertainment. We launched all four cartridges. We were standing there discussing the merits of populating a couple more projectiles with fuel when a car rounded the corner on 24th and Klickitat. We moved forward a little bit from our equipment to shield it from view. The darkness was already doing a good job of being a shield but we just wanted to be sure. The car was moving quite slowly. As it came opposite to us it stopped. At this point one of my companions said “George”.

George the Cop was a combination urban legend and bane of teenagers. He was not a real cop because he was on somebody’s private payroll - some neighborhood association probably. He did wear a cop uniform. It was blue and he had a badge, and most of all he had a flashlight. As the car stopped he rolled down the window and pointed his megawatt cop flashlight at us. We stood our ground taking the deer in the headlights approach to the situation. My indignation quotient was rising at an alarming rate. That indignation was fostered by my self-serving view that all George could possibly see was three guys standing in a vacant lot looking out at street and, probably, talking. It was a nice spring night and kids ought to be able to do that without having cops shine flashlights in their faces. It helped my indignation that the car had come into view several minutes after the last projectile launch.

He didn’t say anything, turned off the flashlight, rolled up the window and started moving up Klickitat toward 23rd. Somehow, that was more than I could stand. He had invaded our space without justification, and then hadn’t even said “good evening” when he decided we were OK, or at least not a problem. Something snapped.

He was about half the distance to 23rd when I started following. Joe and Frenchy asked me what I was doing. I just started walking after the car, which was traveling at a cop crawl and started shaking my fist at him and yelling. Afterwards I never could remember what I was yelling. I may not have known at the time. That state of affairs lasted a surprisingly long time. I was in pursuit as the car turned right on 23rd and up until it stopped somewhere adjacent to the middle of the land parcel. When it stopped I didn’t. I caught up with the stopped car yelling and shaking my fist. George shined the mega-beam on me again and I came down the bank to the street and the car. I had no idea what I thought I was going to do, but I was not going to yield. I was convinced that this pseudo cop had wronged me.

When I got to the car my lack of agenda was pre-prempted by George. He had a companion who jumped out and pushed me up against the car and frisked me. At this moment Joe and Frenchy appeared and fairly aggressively called their bluff. “What are you doing?” they said. “Noel is just a little excitable – his mother was scared by a cop once” they said. “We have rights,” they said.

The specifics of their defense of my behavior probably didn’t matter very much, but the fact that there were two witnesses who would obviously not have been pro-cop in the event things went much further downhill probably helped calm the situation. We agreed to mutually disengage. When George had been gone for a suitable amount of time we gathered our equipment and went back to Joe’s house. I had had yet another unpleasant cop experience.

In one of life’s little ironies, Frenchy became a cop later in life.

11 October 2018

It’s “We”, Asshole

I am watching the PBS Newshour.

Judy is interviewing some vapid young man who is head of some Homeland Security Department tranche with a totally unrememberable name – it has to do with voting, though; I got that much out of his title.

And then:

He has just assured us that this election will be the most bulletproof in American history.

And he looks a little bit like donnie jr..

Probably coincidental.

(He really doesn’t look like donnie jr.; he’s just vapid; like donnie jr.).

Anyway, after assuring us of the ridiculous, he just did something that always pisses me off.

And it has consistently pissed me off since I first heard it from the American Press in the early stages of Bush Sr.’s Iraq war.

Here is what it is.

It is when an American, talking about something America is doing, refers to the Americans doing it as “the Americans”.

It’s “we”, asshole.

I really think that the farming out of agency that seems to be the way things have worked for the years since iraq I is what has caused America to cease to be a great power.

“We” always were “we”, not some brand name that could be disavowed if whatever the brand name was doing went awry.

Like Sears.

Best example I can think of of the danger of the farming of out is: what would have happened if America had been allowed to think of our fathers and grandfathers – their kids way back then - as they leaped into chest deep water at Normandie, as “the Americans”.

It’s “we”, asshole.

Or maybe not, anymore.

drumpfianism has a separate power source – “THE BASE”.

09 October 2018

?????????????????????? Proven Innocent???????????????????

“Donald Trump, speaking at a triumphalist White House ceremony, has made the baseless claim that the new supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh was “proven innocent” of allegations of sexual assault.”

That is from the AP.

So:

donnie never tells the truth.

he always lies.

But saying that the tandem outbursts of recent Senatedom (Lindsay and Lying Bret) “prove” anything, is a lie, even for donnie, of drumpfian proportions.

In the privacy of my home I refer to him – among my numerous other characterizations of ol’ 45 – as a “lying sack of shit”.

That seems to me to be an adequate description.

Of note also is the fact that Lying Bret’s acceptance speech at the trump campaign rally where donnie made the referenced statement, was of Academy Award quality: “I’d like to thank …”

08 October 2018

Couple More From Paris


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Forgetful Saudis

donnie was asked what he thought about reports that Jamal Khashoggi had been dismembered and shipped out of Turkey.

He answered “I guess they forgot about him is what I get out of him being dismembered”.

How droll.

Au Revoir Les Courgettes

At three o’clock this afternoon I decided to go look at the garden.

The sun was already heading toward la couche and the clouds were dark enough to cover most of what the sun had left for the day.

It was somewhere between dim and dismal.

“Autumn in the Pacific Northwest”, I thought to myself.

The chard whose seeds I planted six weeks ago are trying valiantly to become plants before the first frost.

I hope they do.

Mysti makes a chard tarte that is as good as a steak.

Sprinkled with vigorous and random, but copious, abandon among the chards are some children of this year’s lettuce crop; there are two kinds; I haven’t figured out yet what, though.

I scanned the tomatoes.

“I have picked all that can be expected to be of use this year”.

“Maybe a burst of late season warmth will redden up the rest of the cherries, but I doubt it”.

Then I looked at the zucchini.

There are nine of them.

I planted them as seeds rather than buying starts.

They all came up on schedule and I was confronted with the need to thin them.

But I just couldn’t do it; they were my little green friends; they had done what I had asked of them; they had sprouted; I felt obligated to let each of them live; so I figured out how to expand the bed and spread them out; and they all prospered.

Tonight’s dinner is the last bowl of the soup from the last of their progeny.

I looked at them, all yellowed and barren; even before the frost, cold nights, and dark days, take the last spirit out of them.

“How sad”.

But then, “mes tres, tres, tres chers amis”.

06 October 2018

How Appropriate

How appropriate that Babbling Bret get’s confirmed and and sworn in in a process that looks like a shotgun wedding.

We now are permanently beset with the drumpf slime.

03 October 2018

It Really Doesn’t Matter

How out of bounds donnie gets.

In Mississippi he mocked a heroic woman and the crowd cheered and applauded.

He used the same tone as he used previously when making fun of people with disabilities.

He calls “old news” new documentation of his criminal tax evasion.

If the tax returns are old news why didn’t we see them in 2016, during the campaign?

All he ever does is lie, so the untruth of the donnie myth, needs not even be mentioned.

And now he and his cretin son are promulgating the doctrine of the threatened male.

I would be appalled.

For America.

If America weren’t lapping all of this up with an occasional contented burp.

We really are in Back to the Future II.

01 October 2018

I Don’t Understand Shouting As Some Form Of Reasonable Behavior

But, it seems, most American men do.

Most American men, from the polls I have seen, say that they all think Ol’ Bret is pristine as the driven snow.

And that he should be confirmed, post haste, to the Supreme Court of the United States.

And because he can rant and rail and yell loudly and be disrespectful to the Senate of the United States of America, he should be on the Supreme Court of the United States of America; that’s balance of power, they must think; no, that’s the Ol’ Boy system in hyper drive.

But they believe it, I guess.

I really don’t think so, though.

I am an American man.

And I can’t understand what these people seem to use as the touchstone we call reality.

I can’t figure out how most other American men can be so vapidly clueless.

Or stupid.

Or both.

Or, perhaps deluded about their place in the Universe.

I don’t “know” that Dr. Ford is telling the truth.

But what she says rings pretty true to me.

And I can’t figure out why she would want to sign up for death threats to her and her family for the opportunity that I have heard ascribed to her to “have a book out in two months”.

We have already seen everything she has to say; putting that in a book would be pretty thin gruel.

What she has said is that Ol’ Bret is a foiled rapist.

He can yell and cry and sniffle all he wants, but that isn’t going to change anything.

********************************************

Since this post was posted another Post weighed in – the Washington Post:

“‘The trauma for a man’: Male fury and fear rises in GOP in defense of Kavanaugh.”