2022 Election Campaign Hat

Maggots are actually larvae that hatch from eggs laid by flies. They are part of the food chain and help to break down decomposing organic matter, like food scraps. In fact, they are pretty harmless to humans, but can reproduce incredibly quickly – a fly’s eggs can hatch and become adult flies within 24 hours of being laid. Their favorite food is meat and fish, but they like any environment that’s warm and moist and they seek these out using their sense of smell.

Unfortunately, a narrow sub-species goes after Democracy in America.

 

Here, There, Where, Everywhere, Somewhere And Nowhere: Are These Real? And Other Questions

 Once there was a thing called a singularity.

It was all alone somewhere.

Then, for reasons only to be surmised the singularity went infinite, or nearly so.

Almost immediately stuff started sublimating out of whatever it was that the singularity became after going infinite - or nearly so. 

And it's still sublimating: atoms, molecules dust and galaxies to name some of the fairly prominent stuff that we know about; there's probably a lot of other stuff that we don't know about.

Recently the United States placed a telescope in an orbit that keeps it in synch with the earth as the earth goes around the sun; that orbit is a million miles from earth; that telescope has started sending back pictures of stuff.

I have seen some of those pictures and heard a lot more analyses than I have seen pictures and it is all mind boggling.

But I need to know where things are, so here come the questions.

First question: where is the "there" once occupied by the singularity?

I assume that wherever that there was it still is - there.

That assumption drives some interesting possible corollaries.

Add the assumption that the rules of solid geometry are in effect, and you get there being at the center of an unbelievably swiftly expanding sphere of - something - that something sloughing off (sublimating) stuff in a crazy 360-degree circular three-dimensional pattern.

Next question: Where is "here" for us?

Building on the corollary, above, we must be somewhere less than halfway from where the singularity started because we think the earth is about four billion years old and we think the outer edge of all of this is about 14 billion years old.

Or at least I think I have heard that. 

Since that new telescope is only a million miles away from us then it is also in that here.

Which leads to the next question: Where is the telescope pointing?

Is it pointing back at there, or out at nowhere, or just at somewhere or rotating wildly at everywhere?

I keep hearing that those first images show the universe in a very early stage.  For me to know what that means I need to know where the telescope is pointing.

Even if I knew that I still have a big problem.  Making the assumption that it is ok to say that where the singularity once was - the happened long, long ago thing - is the oldest and that where the happening right now thing is the newest, it would seem that those images should be coming from wherever there is; but I don't think that's what is happening; I think those images are from where it's happening now at the edge of nowhere.

And if that is true, I have another problem.

I would think that the time it would take for the light from the edge of nowhere back to us at here would be only the net difference of how old we are and how old (how can you be old when you just happened?) the things just happening are, and the total time to that, since the singularity went infinite, or nearly so is almost 14 billion years; that would be 10 billion years, give or take; or alternately, if I am mistaken, and the telescope is pointed at there, then the net time difference should be 0 minus 4 or 4 or so billion years; but apparently it doesn't work that way.

And either way, I would think that one needs to disregard the transit time of light because just because that 186 thousand miles per second is slug slow in a really big place, that shouldn't cancel the logic of that was then and this is now.

A few final questions come to mind.

Is the singularity driven phenomenon of which we are a part a one-time thing, or is it a recurring iteration in which some future outer limit rule of expansion causes the whole thing collapse back into a singularity again and start all over?

If "our" singularity is ever expanding, what is it expanding into? Is there unlimited parking space out there or does whatever it is that the singularity is doing create parking space as it's doing it?

Is "our" singularity the only one or is there another, or are there a few, or are there limitless parallel singularities doing their schtick everywhere?

And do they ever get in each other's way?

Images 072422

 

donnie the dildo thinks he is a don

 I don't know anything about Mafia.

I have watched first two The Godfather movies many times and that is the sum total of what I think I might know.

But I have seen two Impeachment Trials and Eight Select Committee Hearings into donnie the dildo and his Insurrection.

The only difference that I have been able to divine between donnie's activities and what a Mafia Don might do is honor.

donnie has none.

And he's not a don.

He's just a dildo.

The State Of The Dam

 I just heard an audio clip on NPR of Ol' Steve Bannon coming out of the courtroom after being found guilty of contempt of Congress.

He said he thanked the jury for their work but decried the gutless members of the January 6 Committee because "they didn't come down here and testify".

Stevie, Stevie, get ahold of yourself (not there; mentally and psychologically, I meant).

The case was so simple that a moron could understand it.

Which should have been good for you, Ol' Stevie.

But I guess I need to lay it out.

You were accused of refusing to respond to a subpoena to appear before the Committee.

Such refusals are a crime.

You refused to respond.

The prosecutor gave the publicly available details of your refusal.

Pretty vanilla; open and shut; no real issues.

Your defense employed the Tucker Carlson Defense: they just asked a lot of questions, apparently hoping to cause doubt in at least one juror.

It didn't work; the case was clear and open and shut.

And why would anybody with anything better to do - for example Liz Chaney or Bennie Thompson - come to testify in a case that was open and shut; it just needed a lawyer competent enough to say a few words about the law, and present the copious publicly available information about how you had violated it?

And with that, the dam has broken.

But that may not matter.

I hope we make it through November.

Fahrenheit 452

 Now that the primary season is in mid full swing, we are seeing the messages from the two parties that comprise our body politic.

The Democrats are pretty bland: get out and vote for us so we can have enough votes in Congress to do what we should have already done sometime in the last fifty years.

That's pretty boring.

And belies any planning on the part of the party of Jefferson and Jackson.

But it doesn't involve firearms.

Or violence.

That is comforting. 

Not so the republicans.

Fresh from their recent brush with near success in staging a coup d'état they are all brandishing guns in their ads and yelling and huffing and puffing about ferreting out the enemy from his various hidey holes and shooting him with automatic weapons until he stops quivering and has become a mound of ground flesh.

And Porky Pig the chief huffer and puffer is back on the campaign trail inciting the nation back to the violence he started on 6 January 2021; and his contract backdrop of worshipful, slavering, supporters cheer hysterically at his every word.

And one of the gun brandishers - from Missouri - features a video depicting shooting up a house with an automatic weapon, the house being full of Rinos, and therefore fair game.

The hate implicit in all of this is similar to the heat generated by a magnifying glass focusing the light from the sun on a piece of newspaper.

The question, Q is asking, is which page is first to burst into flames?

Who will be the first to go down to the new American patriots and their portable humanburger machines?

I fear we have not long to wait to find out.

I should say that this jumble of allusions and metaphors is so rambling, so various and so mixed that even I, its creator, have no idea what it means.

 

An Email I Received From Bernie Sanders

 

Remember the billions that the banks got back in 08/09?

Remember the $55 billion the airlines got in 20?

Did those disbursals of our taxes do any of us any good?

I'm glad Bernie is asking us to ask ourselves that question this time.

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

Dear Noel:

If you need another reason as to why the vast majority of Americans are disgusted with the status quo, corporate dominated politics of today, here it is.

This week the U.S. Senate will be voting on a bipartisan $52 billion giveaway to the very profitable microchip industry. No strings attached. Just a blank check. $52 billion. Here is an op-ed that I wrote for the Guardian on this bill.

 Let’s rebuild the US microchip industry – not give it a $50 billion-plus check

If private companies are going to benefit from taxpayer subsidies, the financial gains made by these companies must be shared with the American people

Bernie Sanders

Thu 14 Jul 2022

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

For two months, a 107-member conference committee has been working to finalize an agreement on the US Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) which would provide more than $50 billion in corporate welfare to the highly profitable microchip industry with no strings attached.

There is no doubt that there is a global shortage in microchips and semiconductors which is making it harder for manufacturers to produce the cars, cellphones and electronic equipment that we need. This shortage is costing American workers good jobs and raising prices for families. That is why I fully support efforts to expand U.S. microchip production.

But the question is: should American taxpayers provide the microchip industry with a blank check of over $50 billion at a time when semiconductor companies are making tens of billions of dollars in profits and paying their executives exorbitant compensation packages? I think the answer to that question should be a resounding NO.

Let’s review some recent history. Over the last 20 years, the microchip industry has shut down more than 780 manufacturing plants in the United States and eliminated 150,000 American jobs while moving most of its production overseas – after receiving over $9.5 billion in government subsidies and loans.

In other words, in order to make more profits, these companies took government money and used it to ship good-paying jobs abroad. Now, as a reward for that bad behavior, these same companies are in line to receive a giant taxpayer handout to undo the damage that they did. That may make sense to someone. It does not make sense to me.

In total, it has been estimated that five big semi-conductor companies will receive the lion’s share of this taxpayer handout: Intel, Texas Instruments, Micron Technology, Global Foundries and Samsung. These five companies made $70 billion in profits last year.

The company that will probably benefit the most from this taxpayer assistance is Intel. I have nothing against Intel. I wish them well. But, let’s be clear. Intel is not a poor company. It is not going broke.

In 2021, Intel made nearly $20 billion in profits. During the pandemic, Intel had enough money to spend $16.6 billion, not on research and development, but on buying back its own stock to reward its executives and wealthy shareholders. Last year, Intel could afford to give its CEO, Pat Gelsinger, a $179 million compensation package. Over the past 20 years, Intel spent more than $100 million on lobbying and campaign contributions while shipping thousands of jobs to China and other low-income countries. Does it sound like this company really needs corporate welfare?

Another company that would receive taxpayer assistance under this legislation is Texas Instruments. Last year, Texas Instruments made $7.8 billion in profits. In 2020, this company spent $2.5 billion buying back its own stock while it has outsourced thousands of good-paying American jobs to low-wage countries.

In 1968, Dr Martin Luther King Jr said: “The problem is that we all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor.”

I am afraid what King said 54 years ago was accurate back then and it is even more accurate today.

We have heard a lot of talk in the halls of Congress about the need to create public-private partnerships – and that all sounds very good. But when the government adopts an industrial policy that socializes all the risk and privatizes all the profits that’s not a partnership. That is crony capitalism.

In my view, we must prevent microchip companies from receiving taxpayer assistance unless they agree to issue warrants or equity stakes to the federal government. If private companies are going to benefit from generous taxpayer subsidies, the financial gains made by these companies must be shared with the American people, not just with wealthy shareholders. In other words, if microchip companies make a profit as a direct result of these federal grants, the taxpayers of this country have a right to get a reasonable return on that investment.

Further, if microchip companies receive taxpayer assistance, they must agree that they will not buy back their own stock, outsource American jobs overseas or repeal existing collective bargaining agreements, and they must remain neutral in any union organizing effort.

This is not a radical idea. All of these conditions were imposed on companies that received taxpayer assistance during the pandemic and passed the Senate by a vote of 96-0.

Bottom line: let us rebuild the US microchip industry, but let’s do it in a way that benefits all of our society, not just a handful of wealthy, profitable and powerful corporations.

My Paris Spider Friend

 Back in 2012 I spent five months in Paris.

I walked a lot of miles.

I learned a lot new that I hadn't learned in previous sojourns.

I pretty much abandoned the Metro; I walked instead.

But one of my favorite memories from those five months was Laila.

She was a spider.

She lived just outside the window that looked out on my terrace.

Windows offset from the door to the terrace.

If she had built her web over the door that would not have been good.

But she didn't.

Build it there.

So we got along famously.

I thought that she was beautiful.

We talked occasionally, but I never understood much of what she said.

The Now Famous White House meeting of 18 December 2020 Depicted In Stained Glass

 

Which One Is The Coyote?

 During the description of the 18 December 2020 meeting in the White House between the Crazies and the Normals I finally realized that the trump administration was a very long Road Runner cartoon.

just Plain Nuts

Until today the question on the table has been whether donnie is culpable for the January 6 Insurrection. 

After today the question has become is he even sane?

I Guy I Met On Pont Alexandre III

 It was a while back.

Maybe 2012.

I was out trolling for Pigeon Droppers (some call them ring droppers) and pickings had pretty been pretty slim.

Only two total amateurs.

I was embarrassed for them.

It seemed almost cruel to pretend that they didn't exist.

But I'm a fairly cruel person, so I pretended, that they didn't exist, ignored them and waited for my self-reinforcing result; it came; I got the always satisfying - to me - wails of "monsieur, monsieur" wailed with a Roma accent; and the rest of the day passed uneventfully.

I had been on the north side of the Seine and found myself at Pont Alexandre III; that bridge being almost always a great contact point for pigeon droppers, I turned left, and started to cross the bridge.

No sooner had I broached the bridge than I heard a basso rotundo voice: "Hey, asshole, why are you picking on the little people"?

I did a 360, looking like a 70-year-old ballet dancer who should have retired.

But at least I saw the circumference of possibilities of who the voice had been.

There was no one.

Except this guy.

Abbot, ERCOT And Reality

 ERCOT has asked Texans to turn off their air conditioners during the current never-ending heat wave.

The election hasn't even been held yet and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas has already made a deeply left wing, socialist, extremist request to the BY GOD RED BLOODED SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF THE ALAMO citizens of Texas.

Are Texans really so stupid that they will re-elect the wheelchair guy to another term, when, under him, they already have all the disadvantages of being governed by an extremist socialist?

No.

They are even more stupid.

They already have, due to their votes, an incompetent, maybe even stupid (don't confuse intelligence with cunning; they look a lot alike, but if you are depending upon a leader, intelligence wins the day every time) governor who can't even deliver electricity.

If it were me, I would try the alternative.

But they won't.

So, expect the wheelchair guy to continue to drive Texas int the ground.

 

Windows In Stained Glass

 

A Gil Pindar Moment

 It was one of the oddest experiences I had ever had.

It was the scene in Midnight in Paris where Gil Pindar is sitting on the steps of a church.

I knew exactly where those steps were; I had never known for sure where any scene I had ever seen in a Paris themed movie was shot, but I knew where those steps were; and they had some sort of significance that I couldn't explain, so I was not only surprised to recognize them but to share the feeling of significance assigned to them in that scene in the movie.

They had made that impression on me a year before I saw the movie.

So, when my wife and I spent some time in Paris in 2012 one of the first pictures was:

The church is Saint-Étienne du Mont.

I think the steps in the movie were a different, smaller set back to the left of the image, down the hill - on rue Montagne Sainte-Geneviève.

Somewhere I have that image also, but this one pretty well tells the tale.

That notwithstanding, the Peugeot never showed up.

I'm going back later this year.

I'll try again.

At Midnight. 

What's The Opposite Of Woke?

 Ol' Ron Desantis doesn't like woke stuff.

He sneers at that viewpoint every chance he gets.

In fact, the term "woke" is a sneer.

"Awakened" or "has been awakened" is probably the correct manner in which to purvey that verb tense.

(I am taken back to a Pogo graphic novel).

But Ol' Ron is over hard on "woke" stuff".

He has forced his captive legislature to pass some laws that outlaw woke stuff.

He's a real Orban guy.

I think he has travelled over there to learn Orban stuff - the tactics of a tin-pot dictator of a sad little country with a population of 12 million people - 13 million less than the population of the state that Ol' Ron governs.

That's an admirable hero.

Ol' Viktor.

Or so says Ol' Ron.

And Ol' Ron is just what we need for president, I hear tell.

He even speaks Magyar.

With a Yale accent.

So, if woke is bad, what is good, I wonder.

This just in; November 5, 2024, President Elect "Sleepy" Ron Desantis says ...

This just out: cosmic laughter and an image of America dropping off the world stage.

But it was a good run: The little children were never made to feel bad about themselves.

Always remember and never forget, the opposite of woke is asleep.

So, Where Are Parents These Days?

 The History of the United States is littered with laws that have been catastrophes from a functional, societal point of view.

The 18th Amendment is a great example.

As the sinusoidal shockwaves of 24 June begin to damp down, the recent supreme court decision joins that list: health care in America is fileted asunder; maybe that's what the rabbit wanted; I don't know; how 'bout somebody asks her?

The various anti-CRT (I thought that was a display) laws spreading like staphylococcus through an open wound are definitely of that genre.

I'd like to be able to talk to Madison, or Jefferson, or Lincoln or Harry, or JFK, or RFK about a law forbidding the teaching of things that make some children among the great mass of children out there "feel bad about themselves".

A couple of years ago I heard about Tulsa for the first time in my life.

I felt REALLY BAD.

I felt that way for two reasons, the evil of the deed, but, equally, my ignorance, until I was in my final part of life, far beyond any recent education, of ethnic cleansing in America, 

Yeah, I felt bad; the truth is a bitch.

Presumably these laws are predicated upon the assumption that the parents of the hypothetical children being shielded from feeling bad are teaching their children about slavery and racism and Jim Crow and the extension of slavery that is the 13th Amendment.

I hope - for the sake of our country - that that assumption is true, that today's white parents talk to their children, in lieu of having the schools do it (somebody has to do it, after all and the fascist legislatures of an alarming number of states don't want anybody to do it) about what has been wrong about America since inception.

There has been and is an immense amount that is right about America; but not all; maybe not even half; until we look at, admit and, set out to change what is now and always has been wrong about America, we will continue to teeter on the edge of the ashbin of history.

And the fact that the human beings that got to our shores as chattel are still more or less such, in too many cases, says that we have work to do.

And if our children can't even hear the truth because it will make them feel bad, I question if we have a country.

What we have in that instance is a cult of ignorant, uncaring privileged white people in a sea of otherwise. 

And their little children who are all being shielded from feeling bad.

What a citizenry.

Truth is a bitch.

It's All Dependent Upon The Design Point

 In Seattle in the last couple days an inquest into a police incident has just been completed.

Not to anyone's surprise, the inquest found that police had acted appropriately when they pumped 7 bullets into a pregnant black woman in her apartment and in front of several of her children.

The reason for that appropriate fusillade was given as the cops felt threatened because the woman was brandishing a small pocketknife.

I never heard whether she had deployed a blade or just had a closed knife.

No matter: 7 bullets neutralized her.

And that was appropriate, according to the inquest.

And the inquest was correct.

It's all a matter of design point.

The police apparatus in America has always had one purpose: to control, subjugate, neutralize and/or eliminate undesirable elements.

The arbiters of desirability have always been few in number: they are old white money; however, there is a fairly large secondary component to that arbiter class: all the other white people who feel threatened by "the other" or "those people"; all the members of the cult know who "they" are.

To that end police forces have always been paramilitary organizations.

And, over the last few decades, they have become less "para" and more "military".

So, is it any surprise that nonwhite people keep coming out of routine encounters with the cops as dead nonwhite people?

It's all in the design point.

So, let's knock off the charade, cease with the inquests, drop the hand wringing and acknowledge that mass carnage is what is wanted from the cops.

The continued design point of the institution belies any feigned activity to the contrary.

Three Kittens: All In A Day's Work

 "We like posing for promotional shots.  

"Our human works with us all the time and we have a lot of pictures".

"It's a lot of work, though.

"We get really tired and take a nap".

A True Story About Delta Airlines

 In theory I am going to Paris for a month later this year.

I will celebrate many things there, among them my birthday.

To join me for my birthday, various members of my family are scheduled to filter in from various places at various times.

One of those filtering in bought a nonstop to Paris from Raleigh-Durham.

Recently she got a nice email from Delta telling her that the nonstop had been changed to a two leg with connection in Boston.

More recently she got a nice email from Delta saying that the schedule of the Raleigh-Durham flight had been changed and that that change would cause her to miss the connecting flight in Boston.

I think the email concluded that Delta hoped this wouldn't be an inconvenience.

But I may have imagined that.

Since airlines are in the business of causing problems, not avoiding them, nor solving them when causing them has proved to be unavoidable, our situation in this circumstance is we have a paid for worthless Delta ticket that is going to need intelligent Delta Employee intervention - this is not a go to the web site to fix it sort of problem - but the chances of talking to Delta are doubtful.

We really haven't figured out what to do about that: have you tried to call an airline recently?

Looks like checkmate.

I guess Delta gets to keep the money we paid for this now inexecutable flight.

I do feel compelled to assert that a business model that offers products that don't really exist and collects money in advance for those products is probably not legal.

But when you're too big to fail ...

I Found Out What The Airlines Did With That $55 Billion

 They paid bonuses to their executives.

They also funneled a lot of it to early retirement programs that were in many cases accepted with enthusiasm - especially by pilots.

The $55 billion was supposed to pay the airlines employees during the pandemic so the airlines would be at full force when air travel demand bounced back.

But since the legislation funding the employee retention stipend - $55 billion - had no terms other than the money was to pay employees (executives are employees) the airlines were able to use it to induce early retirement; that, after all, they said to themselves, was paying employees also.

So, all those employees are gone.

Except the executives.

They are all impatiently waiting for the next bailout.

And there is nothing you can do about it as you sit on your suitcase contemplating what to do in a strange city where you just got dropped to a cancelled connecting flight.

By the way - you are a lucky one: you know where your suitcase is.

The airlines are too big to fail; you are too small to worry about.

The Mayor Of Highland Park's Point Of View

 Starting yesterday I have heard her say essentially the same thing - again and again.

And it is so accurate, so correct, that in any other place than donnieland the legislature would have called itself into holiday session and enacted a starting point: laws that create a framework for dismantling - over an unacceptable timespan, but nonetheless dismantling ultimately - the idea that Americans have the right to wave guns around in church, on buses, in Super Markets, at Fourth of July Parades and, most especially, in our schools.

One of so many things that needs to not only be outlawed, but ferreted out, that the mention of it makes one just sigh and want to pull one's head into one's shell and hope some future generation outlaws it - "I don't need that kind of friction in my life now that I am so late in my life" - is allowing Americans to buy weapons of war.

They are not hunting weapons.

They are not defense of home weapons.

They are weapons of war.

The AR/15 is an M16 that doesn't have a toggle between automatic fire and semi-automatic fire.

The M16 is the weapon that I qualified on just before I went to Vietnam.

It's a nice little weapon: low recoil, high magazine capacity, light weight, easy to point; I missed my marksman medal by one bullet.

The qualification was on semi-automatic; the Sergeants in charge of the qualification saw no value in turning a paper target to pulp; big, ragged holes in the target told the tale they wanted to see.

But back to Automatic v Semi-Automatic.

Automatic: pull the trigger and until you release the trigger bullets fly out of the magazine until the magazine is empty; the magazine is the cannister of bullets that one can attach to the gun before pulling the trigger; the biggest magazine that I have been able to find for AR/15 id 100 bullets; that's a lot of hamburger.

In Vietnam we had a different gun that used the M16 bullet, but was mounted in various of our aircraft, primarily Hueys, but I think I remember also, C123s.

It was a full "machine gun" with coils, not magazines, of M16 bullets, with a red tracer every five bullets.

I was an intelligence officer, and from what I remember from our sources, that weapon was one of two that really scared the Viet Cong; they thought it was a ray gun.

The other was the B52: the B52 came in at out of hearing altitude and dumped a trainload of 750 pound bombs on a target; the Cong, when they were the target found the transition form silence to Armageddon to be disconcerting.

But pardon the war stories.

Semi-automatic: one needs to keep pulling the trigger; there is a minute lapse between one trigger pull and the follow-on trigger pull; that usually makes the difference between large grain and fine grain hamburger; they use the same magazines as the M16.

Based on the audio content of the video I have seen of the Highland massacre, there must have been some kind of device used to make the trigger pull basically automatic (a bump stock, for example is a passive device that, when placed between the butt of the gun and the trigger puller, causes each recoil to bounce the weapon back to the shooter's shoulder, thus causing the finger to engage the trigger a beat sooner that human fingers allow; voila - automatic hamburger).

One other thing needs to be known about the M16 and its child, the AR/15: the bullet is slightly bigger than a 22-caliber rifle's bullet; but it is designed to tumble, end over end, through the air, as it broaches its target; that design point is on purpose; a tumbling bullet - even a relatively small one, can tear some big holes in a target; most deer hunters would rather have a piece of meat with as little wear, tear, mayhem and blood as possible - venison is best without residual blood - but some hapless enemy somewhere? 

Let it rip.

And that's what weapons designed to "neutralize" humans do.

They rip.

When one adds hollow point to the 223-caliber bullet of the AR 15 - hollow point causes the bullet to start to melt as it encounters friction and makes it a splat instead of a bullet; and it has already started to tumble.

Does this give any of you any idea of what the various doctors who have been interviewed in some of the most recent massacres have been talking about when they have said something about "unthinkable headwounds"?

But, back to the starting point of this blog, let's hear what Mayor Nancy Rotering has to say.

These weapons that keep being used to kill innocent people are "weapons of war designed to destroy human life".

The NRA, Ol' Mitch and the Boys and the republican traitor party all say that those weapons are simply designed to eliminate one step in the production of deer burger.

How efficiently American.

  

We Are Living In Dystopia Right Now

 The dystopian novel became immensely popular - sometime.

It was not that long ago for some of us.

But it was long ago for others of us.

Depends upon when you got born.

I guess.

But Dystopia is a beguiling concept, and its novel manifestations are big buck media possibilities.

It finally hit me tonight, while watching the PBS Newshour: sometime back, more years than anyone would think, we lapsed without catastrophe of identifiable nature, into being a totally dystopic planet.

"Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.'”

I know of three cats who think they pretty much run a household.

And they do.

Because they are kind, and intelligent, and perceptive masters.

So that Genesis 1:26 bullshit doesn't play with me.

But the dystopic manifestations of that bullshit reek with every version of the evening news.

Especially as to how "man" treats his fellow "man".

And that's before one even begins to think about and acknowledge what "man" has done to "the fish of the sea and ... the birds of the sky and ... the cattle".

When one adds those beings to the equation, one wonders why Genesis wasn't titled "Dystopia". 

Bail Out As Gravy

 During the Catastrophe of 2008/2009 the federal government sent massive bailout payments to the major banks; they were the ones who got us into the catastrophe, so they must be the ones who can get us out - that must have been the thinking.

The only widely documented result of that massive cash transfer is that the amount of the payments matched up remarkably closely to the massive bonuses those threatened banks paid to the jackals that had brought the system to its knees.

Today those jackals, and the banks that employ them wax fat, and probably, dumb and happy and are poised to pull off a similar scam as opportunity allows.

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

In the run up to the great pandemic lockdown of 2020/2021 the major airlines waxed fat.

I don't know if they were dumb and happy.

I will let you decide about that.

But they were doing so well that they accumulated about $65 billion in prosperity.

That should have been a nice safety pad against the inevitable rainy day.

That rainy day came in 2020/2021 when nobody could leave their houses, let alone get on a plane.

Those airlines were uniformly replete with economic rue: they had spent their safety pad on stock buybacks, not kept it for a rainy day.

So suddenly they were faced with massive ongoing costs and a massive lack of offsetting revenue.

Most of the hard dollar category of those costs were payroll - people, employees and their troublesome related costs - health insurance, IRAs and the like.

"We don't have any money; we are going to have to fire everybody; we can't keep them unless we get $55 billion" said the airlines to no one in particular.

Luckily the Government, in particular, was listening and it shoveled out $55 billion to the airlines so they could retain their people.

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

This 4th of July holiday has brought the airlines to their knees.

The reason they give: "not enough people to serve the demand".

I thought, just as previously with the banks, so recently with the airlines, we the people had disgorged massive amounts of money to the airlines so they could keep their people.

At the point of that payment, as bad as the service was, the airlines were at least functioning and getting through holiday surges in demand with an acceptable, if sometimes painful, service level.

They must have had nearly enough people.

Now they don't.

What did they do with that $55 billion?

What's In It For The Rabbit?

 I only read three periodicals.

They are The Economist, The Week and Islands' Weekly (the Weekly for the Sherriff's log).

The other two that I read have done a yeoman's job of covering the quivering corpse of Roe v Wade.

They have accurately and mercilessly described the Dark Age Implications of the rabbit and the boys' recent overturn of an instance of stare decisis that, for fifty years, made America a modern nation.

Coney = Rabbit, remember?

I realize that that equation, that I keep proffering, is utterly sexist; but stick with me; I have a question that may alter that viewpoint.

The only over the air/streaming news that I consume comes from NPR and PBS.

I have a Gwen Ifill shrine installed in the corner of my living room; I have always thought of her as my other daughter.

Those video sources have paralleled the coverage I have gotten from my periodicals.

We are so screwed.

So, I have been stewing and bubbling and being brought to a boil ever since 24 June.

But tonight the pot boiled over and then, the flame driving it having been extinguished by the fluid on the flame, I came to "closure" while watching Chelsea Handler do her last - current era - guest monologue on the Jimmy Kimmel Show.

This was the Pro Abortion, Pro Women's Rights, Pro Women's Right To Live, to name a few, icing on their cake.

Chelsea is a woman; the women I have seen in the streets since 24 June are women (nice symmetry there); I think I know that the Rabbit is a woman.

Or is there some weird robotic cloning facility in the basement of the Court?

Just a question.

But then, the question of questions: so, if the Coney is human, not Supreme Court Basement Robotery, what's in it for the Rabbit?

To Be Continued, if I live that long.

Meanwhile, Out In Wyoming

 From The Wall Street Journal:

'Back in the Cowboy State, Ms. Cheney faces a serious challenge to re-election for Wyoming’s sole House seat thanks in part to such comments. Many Republican voters here say they are fiercely loyal to Mr. Trump, and her stance has put her out of step with many constituents headed into the Aug. 16 primary. Mr. Trump took nearly 70% of the state’s vote in 2020, his largest percentage win in any state.

'“She’s kind of a little leech,” said Verna Thatcher, 63 years, of Kemmerer, Wyo., while picking up supplies at a Walmart in Evanston. “Why are we doing Jan. 6? It’s been over a year, who cares?”

'The race serves as the marquee test of whether vocal anti-Trump lawmakers can survive in today’s Republican Party, pitting supporters of the former president against a persistent and unapologetic critic with little patience for Mr. Trump’s false claim the election was stolen.

'State Rep. Landon Brown, a Republican who is backing Ms. Cheney for re-election, said she isn’t someone to back down on her beliefs. It was “not a surprise to me at all that she was willing to burn her political capital” to go after Mr. Trump, he said.'

(British style quotes employed)

 “Why are we doing Jan. 6? It’s been over a year, who cares?”

Actually it's been over since 12 December 2000.

We are so screwed.

It's All Down Hill From Here: That Should Make It All Easy

A friend of mine recently sent me an email reacting to part of one of my recent posts.

That post was as follows:

"Cassidy was such a game changer that the republicans have to negate her.

"Fear, uncertainty and doubts are the first order of the day.

"But after Fox has blanketed nut-land with FUDs for some indeterminate timespan, one fact will remain.

"Ms. Hutchinson's testimony is all under oath.

"The only way to directly attack that is not Fox, no matter how much slime they can conjure.

"The only way to directly attack that is testimony under oath refuting everything Ms. Hutchinson has said.

"Assuming that Cassidy was telling the truth (which seems to me to be a very likely to be true assumption - why would a talented young American with an obviously bright future comit perjury on national television?) that says that donnie and the dildos need to recruit a kamikaze cadre to lie under oath and take the criminal risk that such action entails.

"That all works out, the kamikazes will be, told, because, as soon as donnie has been re-installed, they will all be pardoned.

 "We are so screwed."

My friend replied:

"It’s easy for these cowards to snipe from under rocks rather than under oath."

To which I replied:

"But some of them WILL lie for donnie, under oath, with the promise of full pardon after donnie is back on the throne. 

"So, Cassidy is toast. 

"It looks to me, though, that donnie's chances of re-gaining the throne are not too good.  

"He has a clone with a brain that wants the job.  

"When that happens, of course it will be endgame for the United States of America, but at least the orange moron won't be back to bedevil our lives."

In summary: we are so screwed.

A Chant For A Journey On The Road To Oblivion

From the Boston Globe:

 "Now that the Supreme Court has voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, more than a dozen states over the next month are expected to begin enforcing partial or near-total bans on abortion within their borders. But some foes of abortion have proposed going even further — stopping women from their states from traveling to another where abortion is legal for the procedure.

"Antiabortion groups and state legislators have discussed ways to restrict interstate travel for abortion, according to a Washington Post report. Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, which now bans abortion in almost all cases, said there “will be a debate” about how to handle cases of South Dakota women traveling out of state for the procedure."

From The Week:

From Newsweek:

Lauren Boebert Says the Church Is Supposed 

To Direct the Government

From Margaret Atwood:

From me:

Let's all gather together around the fire and chant: "We are so screwed; we are so screwed".