Why The Iranians Have Won

Iran has a recently acquired choke hold on the world economy.

There is no need to document why.

Except that part of "why" has given Iran a valuable new revenue stream: The Iran/Oman Strait of Hormuz Authority charges a toll for every ship going through the Strait.

Iran doesn't have to worry much about donnie doing any real damage for several years because he will have to mete out only tiny tantrums just to make himself feel good, because, if he throws a really big tantrum there are only enough weapons left for that big one; then all is silent on the Iranian front.

Here's where China and Russia are really paying attention: the only way to let donnie do multiple big tantrums in Iran would be to ship all the offensive and defensive weapons currently dedicated to Continental United States and the Western Pacific to the Middle East; if that happens China can give pretty serious thought to taking Taiwan and Russia can give pretty serious thought to taking the Balkans and Poland; trump has destroyed NATO and in, any event, a counterattack from NATO on a Russian incursion to the Balts would make an all-out nuclear counter-attack on the United States by Russia a good gamble, what with all America's defenses being in the Middle East.

Iran can attack the Gulf States whenever they want to with little threat of reciprocal damage: the Gulf States don't have many US supplied defense devices left either, and the US is in charge of offense so Iran, who is massively ramping up offensive missile production (you might think that donnie just needs to blow all of that up; see paragraph four, above to find out why he can't do that) and making significant improvement to those devices, such as making them wiggle course at the last minute of descent making it harder for defensive missiles to hit them and making it therefore necessary to use more defensive missiles for each incoming offensive missile, defensive missiles that are in very short supply just like the offensive ones.

Iran knows that as long as donnie can't get out of his war - a war with which he no weapons to fight - they can keep working him for concessions for them to come back to the table and talk to him, without ever really having to come back to the table; they recently said minimum acceptable starting point is signing the previously abandoned MOU; then they would think about talking to Art of the Deal Guy about their deal.

Looks checkmate without ever touching the king.

Looks even more like The Art of the Schlemiel.

How The Turkey Left Turkey

donnie waved as he got on got on Air Force One and promptly exited the other side of the aircraft and got on a catering truck.

He was disguised as a Thanksgiving Turkey.

The truck transferred him to a smaller plane and went to London where he was served for dinner at an old folk's home.

We are apparently now in the midst of a Dave moment.

Parrot In Jardin Du Luxembourg

 

Great Work From A Stable Genius

Prologue

The thing is, this piece, with surprising brevity, points to only the exposed smoking, above-water parts of the catastrophic crash of the great airplane America. 

Those parts are all foreign.  

We haven't even gotten to domestic. 

And nobody cares. 

Maybe nobody even knows. 

I must just be nuts.

**********

donnie is always announcing that the Strait of Hormuz is open.

Except it isn't.

donnie is always announcing that Iran is conducting deep and serious talks with Steve and Jared.

Except they aren't.

donnie keeps saying that he has a vast trove of weapons in reserve to those he has pissed away.

Except he doesn't.

Dichotomous is a word that comes to mind when comparing donnie's reality to reality.

Recently he announced for the zillionth time that the Strait of Hormuz was open.

And it was.

Iran and Oman had signed the Iran/Oman Strait of Hormuz Authority.

Ships pay Iran to go into the Persian Gulf from the Gulf of Oman.

Ships pay Oman to go into the Gulf of Oman from the Persian Gulf.

Recently he announced for the zillionth time that Iran was desperate for a deal, and they were in deep talks.

Except they weren't.

Today Iran issued an ultimatum to donnie telling him under what conditions Iran would talk.

donnie has a zillion times said he wants to destroy NATO.

You remember; NATO is that thing that keeps Western Europe from falling like a house of cards to the Russian Army.

Today Turkey (second largest military in NATO, one of the largest in the world) announced MEATO (Mid East Asia Treaty Organization) in conjunction with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan (Pakistan has a lot of nuclear weapons and Saudi Arabia has a lot of oil and used to be a very close US ally).

It's beautiful to see the workings of such a well-oiled machine as is the donnieLand Administration.

Somebody Fart?

 

How It Feels To Be Ground Down To A Nub

In donnieLand One it was with dread that I looked at my iPhone every morning.

"What has that squirrel screwed up overnight?" was my daily start-of-day chant.

There was always a lot.

And rage always ensued.

It's different now.

I never look at my morning iPhone anymore.

Since it's impossible to avoid the daily seepage of catastrophic incompetence, hatred, thuggishness, stupidity, racism, corruption - oh well, that's enough for now - I get my daily dose of donnieLand Two every morning in a manner that can only be described as osmotic. 

Some permeable information membrane gets saturated, and I am osmosed into composite daily disaster.

It probably starts when I am still asleep.

There is no rage anymore.

Rage has been replaced with a deep, unerasable sense of shame and futility: shame for Ameria and futility of resisting. 

That's One Way To Look At It

Even the Father of our Country is picking on donnie.

In a letter to Lafayette of April of 1788 George Washington said: "There cannot, in my judgement, be the least danger that the President will by any practicable intrigue ever be able to continue himself one moment in office, much less perpetuate himself in it; but [in modern parlance substitute 'except' for 'but'] in the last stage of corrupted morals and political depravity; and even then there is as much danger that any other species of domination would prevail. Though, when a people have become incapable of governing themselves and fit for a master, it is of little consequence from what quarter he comes".

Ted Lasso Season Four

We watched episode one last night.

Out of all the plot/relationship story lines from the first three seasons that could have been dredged up they dredged up all of them.

That should have been fatal.

But they made it work.

Brilliantly, we thought.

The success of that high-risk gamble says that we may be in for a great season four.

2008 Reverie

In 2008 my wife and I did something we had never done before.

We canvassed for a presidential candidate.

For Obama.

And he won.

The Presidency.

We were in the streets with all of them.

That night.

We thought all things had changed.

We thought, his winning the caucus in Iowa gave him license to propose a refurbishment of the New Deal.

And when he subsequently won the presidency, we thought that that was a national endorsement.

Of refurbishment.

We thought that America was back.

We soon discovered the opposite: she had exited the stage.

After all, it's hard to reverse forty years.

And those bankers really needed a taxpayer contribution.

Of eight hundred billion.

Dollars.

That was big money back then.

in 2009.

Hardly buy a trillionaire's boat, these days.

So, we got donnie.

I guess that's why.

So far, he's up billions.

He's working on trillions.

Even morons can smell trillions.

Probably need to wait for Baron.

How fucking stupid are we?

PRETTY STUPID.

MORE AT DUMB IS DUMB; STUPID AND EVEN DUMBER.

I Was Asked To Comment On The Meaning Of Life

It turned out that Cinq, one of three cats in my family, had already said about all I could ever say.

This is what he said in one of the last chapters of The Cream Soup Spoon.

He had just been asked if he could describe the meaning of life.

“Maybe not.  But maybe. If maybe, how about this?”

 “Imagine yourself in the ultimate dream.  It is ultimate for its strangeness.  It is ultimate for its familiarity. It is ultimate for its feeling of urgency and proximity.  A series of sights and sounds have flown past your view, and you have almost lost yourself into each as it has passed.  But you have remained immobile and unmoved by the visions.

“And then everything folds backwards upon itself.  The time of a clock that appears from nowhere is at hyper speed even as it stands still, even as its hands pass one another intermittently backwards, even as it blurs, even as it disappears. A sense of mortality blends with the realization of boundaries. The dream is not a dream.  The dream is reality.  And reality is a dream.  And the boundaries fade and opportunities lost and achievements unattained loom and overwhelm. Whatever it had been that one had ever thought that one might be or might have been is becoming a neatly wrapped package; it is becoming a sleekly designed capsule.  And then some infinite unseen and unseeable facility or force compresses it all – the hopes, the dreams, the illusions, the achievements, the misses and near misses, the loves, the hates, the intentions good and the attentions bad - into an expendable portion and inserts it into infinity.”

“And then think about the mirrors, the matrixes, the scutes and the slime of time across and intersected with all of that: the mélange of what is, or could be”.

Cinq jumped to the floor and went to Peter’s feet and sat.

“That pretty well sums it up”.

Late Breaking Patriot Missile News

It turns out the U.S. can make 600 Patriots a year.

A general who shall be nameless was quoted as muttering, "donnie pisses away that many in a tantrum".

Heinlein's Expanded Universe

A long time ago I came into possession of that book and devoured it.

I didn't read it.

I don't know if the book was somehow mine or somebody else's.

Whichever, I lost physical possession somewhere last century.

Over the years I didn't have the book - I only had the memory.

I was really excited when I bought an old used copy on Amazon a few years ago.

But it wasn't the same.

A lot of what I remembered wasn't there.

"Oh well" I said to no one in particular.

I must have imagined In Tourist and the rest.

But no.

I discovered that Heinlein had screwed around with the book over the years, adding and subtracting stuff. 

The First Edition was the one I remembered and was the one I needed to have.

Today Etsy sent me a pristine hardback First Edition.

And, on the fly leaf in beautiful script: 

Thank you, Joni, for taking such good care of our book.

Pont Alexandre III

 

Things Are Coming Around Again

Like they always do.

I don't need to weed whack anymore.

The grass all has given up and hunkered down to previously whacked stands of straw.

Golden straw.

I haven't been able to keep up with the zucchinis; they just keep getting so big that I may not be able to lift them.

Out of the garden.

And into the basket.

And, anyway, what does one do with a basketful of five-pound zucchinis?

I know.

Soup.  

I've got several days of zucchini soup in the freezer.

Already.

I don't have room for more.

The tomatoes are late this year.

And pretty disappointing.

Not many there.

Maybe one soup.

And a tarte or two.

And some salads.

With all that lettuce that we suddenly have.

A cornucopia.

I guess.

There is more to say, but I don't want to say it, because it's either trite, or it's depressing.

Or, it probably is redundant.

And I don't want to be depressed.

Or trite.

And certainly not redundant.

If things come around again.

Again.

Tonight On The Salish Sea

The normally turquoise sky is a pretty blue grey.

There is a reason for that anomaly.

It's Spokane.

The sky would be clear if it weren't for the smoke.

Of Spokane.

That began to get here hours ago.

Turns out winds sometimes blow west.

I can't help but wonder whose home in Spokane it is that is supplying the smoke that is making my cocktail hour - well - smoky.

But that sentence "I can't help but wonder whose home in Spokane it is that is supplying the smoke that is making my cocktail hour - well - smoky" has a purpose.

I contrived that sentence for that purpose.

Only a sociopath would say and really mean that sentence.

I know; I know; donnie isn't quotable anywhere saying that.

But he is a sociopath, so, give me some space.

As North America becomes an increasingly inflammable piece of real estate, one must wonder when somebody somewhere in donnieLand is going to shout out some window: "I'm mad as hell and I'm tired of climate change and we need to fix it."

What a fantasy.

 

Spokane

My last duty station with IBM was Spokane.

From my point of view, it was second only to where I started: Portland.

My office looked out on the Spokane River.

The Spokane, there in the middle of Spokane, is a quite large river as it crashes on down to the Columbia.

My view included The Falls.

Spokane Falls.

Watching the salmon jump, and jump, and jump, and, finally, get over is something that I will eternally savor.

In reverie.

We lived on the South Hill.

South Hill is a massive outcrop of CORIBA - Columbia River Basalt.

We lived on its edge overlooking the city.

One time a wildfire started due south of us about ten miles away.

We lived in an ancient pine forest on the edge of a cliff replete with ancient pine forest.

I was concerned.

Ancient pines lined an axis from the fire directly to us, at the edge of the cliff.

As it turned out, the fire petered out, or was controlled, or burned down part of Spokane.

I can't remember.

But what I am seeing today brings back the fear.

And eternally unites me with the people with whom I once shared one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Dos à Dos

BBC News just announced the Iran/Oman Strait of Hormuz Authority.

Ships pay Iran to go into the Persian Gulf from the Gulf of Oman.

Ships pay Oman to go into the Gulf of Oman from the Persian Gulf.

We don't know yet what الحوثي are going to charge to get in and out of the Red Sea

Not only is donnie a fucking moron on the world stage, he's also a pretty piss poor bidnessman.

Iran Questions

Why would Iran want to disable the water systems of America?

Especially in the middle of the worst wildfire outbreak in history?

Will having the military top up on testosterone counter the problem?

Could donnie call Puty and ask him to make the Iranians stop?

Why isn't Iran gone?

What is it about decimation, obliteration and destruction that Iran doesn't get? 

donnie's a brilliant bidnessman, though.

Itazuke Revelation

It wasn’t until that day in 1968 that I took the train from JASDF airbase Itazuke - recently made available to the Cotton Pickers - a squadron of RF 100s from an American Airbase on Okinawa - where I was doing American intelligence things related to the Pueblo Crisis, to downtown Fukuoka that I understood how special America was.

And why I love her so much.

As I left the train downtown in the city I saw a crowd of locals.

It was a sea of people, all about the same height, and all with black hair.

I never really understood America until that moment.

donnie doesn’t get it.

Sadly, neither does America.

Japan doesn't either, but they are a great country led by a great leader.

Unlike us.

We have a Charleton, not a leader.

Duly elected.

How odd. 

The Japanese just don't know why they should look like downtown Portland, or Seattle or St. Louis or Anywhere USA.

And that's OK.

donnie doesn't want those places to look like Anywhere USA.

Either.

And that's not OK.

They already are a sea of heads with hair red, blond, green, purple, black brown and brindle.

And more.

Colors.

They are Americans.

And their variety of height boggles the mind.

They are already here, multi-generationally, or illegal,

But they all are making America.

Move.

Forward.

As such, I can't see them as anything.

But Americans.

If there is a god, they are a segment of God's people.

God Bless America.

And, please, God, give donnie insight.

So he can understand.

And become human.

Sent from my iPhone

How Paranoid Must He Be?

donnie persists in covering his incompetence with assertions of left-wing vandalism.

 Aren’t there any cameras out there by the algae farm? 

No wonder Iran has him on the run. 

 Sent from my iPhone

MAGA At Its Best: Where Stupidity Metes Sadism

A false, unvetted allegation was phoned in to child protective authorities in Michigan, claiming Pete Buttigieg had confessed to “unspeakable violent crimes” and that his children were in danger. 

Authorities acted on the tip without verifying the source, and Buttigieg was told he could not be alone with his 4‑year‑old twins until interviews were conducted.

Michigan’s Attorney General called the incident a “malicious act” and opened a probe into how such an obviously dubious report triggered a traumatic intervention.

I would guess there's something MAGA in Michigan.

That's life as we are stuck with it.

Nobody knows why.

 

The Sun, The Elm And A Filter

 

The Latest donnieGrift

I guess $2.2 billion wasn't enough.

Three more years.

That's a lotta shakedowns.

And how immune to the law is he?

(REALLY IMMUNE)

How really stupid are we?

(REALLY STUPID)

And, really, who and what?

Really, are we?

Or, even, are we?

The smell I get is "we and they".

And I didn't get invited to the tailgate party.

So, I guess I am "they".

Who are you?

Oh, Sugar Moon?

donnieCoin info

Birds Of The Mourning

I may have posted this previously.

I wrote this in 2004 and published it as the first chapter of Screen Saver in 2009.

When I did that, it was just a memory.

It has turned out to be a prophesy.

How sad. 

For all of us, even the ones who can't figure it out.

One spring morning when I was young, I awoke very early.  It was barely light.  I wasn’t accustomed to being awake at that time of day, so it took me a moment to realize what I was hearing.  There was an almost deafening sound. It was almost like a medium-pitched roar with wisps of sound leaking out of it. It was the sound of myriad birds, all chirping at random, all singing their morning songs.  I had never heard anything like it.  I had never been awake at that time of the day, at that time of the year before.  Closer listening revealed that there was a sort of order to the sound.  Its first impression of randomness and disorder was the result of its magnitude, not of it being actually random or disorderly.  Concentrating intently, I could hear the call of one robin.  It was the call that my grandmother always described as “calling for rain”.  Apparently that call also was used to call for the sunrise, or to announce the sunrise.  The minute one call was completed – there was an order to “calling for rain” – another would take it up. Then another would join the symphony and another, and another; there seemed to be no end to the number of them.  It was a sound that I was to remember every now and then for my entire life.  I could re-create it in my head whenever I remembered it.  And that re-creation always was accompanied by a disbelief that anything that loud could be the result of the gray and black and red-breasted residents of the neighborhood lawns, trees and roof tops; that anything that loud could have ever actually existed; that anything that loud could be anything but the exaggerated memory of a young boy awake before his wont and subject to flights of fancy.  But I could always make it happen again in my head.  I could even hear the different birds.

I made it happen on the morning that I wrote about this memory.  It was one spring morning when I was no longer young.  It was still dark.  I lay motionless hoping to go back to sleep soon, but listening – perhaps unconsciously, but listening.  I realized that I had slipped back to sleep when I was brought abruptly awake by the “pop” of some component of the house.  The house liked to express itself during the early morning hours with intermittent popping noises.  Sometimes they were single; sometimes they were multiple.  But they never seemed to happen except at that time of the dawn when I had come awake briefly and had, just as briefly, dropped back to sleep.  They seemed intended to keep me, once awake, awake for the day.  The house seemed to want me to be up and about, turning on lights, making coffee and doing other house friendly things.  I always resisted, indulging in multiple episodes of dropping back to sleep.  Ultimately the house always tired of the game and I got a few more hours of sleep.  But this morning the house was more tenacious than usual.  We had been playing the dropping and popping game for some time when one of the pops just preceded a different sound.  Light was beginning to come through the closed blinds, casting little shafts through their downward turned slats, slightly illuminating the top of the dresser, which spanned the window.  I knew that dawn was coming.

The sound was the morning song of a single robin.  Or maybe it was calling for rain.   I waited to hear a second.  After a little time I heard it.  I waited for a third, hoping to then hear a fourth, fifth and so on up to the myriad driven roar of childhood memory.  I almost stopped breathing, waiting for the crescendo of the morning song roar to exist in fact, not just in my head.  But I never heard the third.  I listened to the back and forth of the duet and wondered what had happened to me, besides getting older, that had caused me to no longer hear in reality the almost deafening sound that I could create in my head, that I could remember, that I loved and wished to hear again in reality.  And I knew it wasn’t me.  I knew it because as age had caused dawn awakenings to be the norm in my life I had listened in vain for the hallelujah spring chorus on countless other early dawns; I had to be content with a duet or occasionally a trio.  But I could play in my mind’s ear, in tandem with what was left of a once glorious sound, that roar from one spring morning when I was young, and awoke very early.

Goats

A late in life revelation has been that goats are wonderful people.

They can't be rattled.

They seem to like human people.

I think that they think that they are human people.

Only, their perception of human people, and therefore their version of "people", if we were to know it, would describe a being much better than most - human people.

A basic goat belief, learned from the rather small goats that make home at our local fromagerie, is "they can't all be bad".

I think "they" is "us".

That really sounds like Pogo speaking.

We met these two on a trail somewhere on Lopez Island.

Eagles

 

White Crowned Sparrow

 

The White House Correspondents' Dinner Bomb

I saw Jon Stewart's postmortem/critique/comedy-tutorial last night.

Jon showed segments of donnie's speech and explained how a professional would have handled the bits.

Or would have refused to do them.

And why.

What I saw trump doing in those video segments was much worse than a bomb. 

It was as if the lieutenant in Good Morning Vietnam had showed up for his fifteen minutes of on-air fame in a big, fat, mean, moron suit.

And then delivered a big, fat, mean, moron speech.

That's my assessment.

Copilot had a different take: "He performed incompetence with hostility."

Life On The Seine

 

What Is Probably Best For America

 In 1941 Arthur Schlesinger Jr., in his book The Age of Jackson said this:

"... since this is a capitalistic society, the class most interested in its security and prosperity is the capitalist class, which thus should have the most power.

The theory has survived every test but experience.

It simply has not worked. Since the Federalist party the American business community appears to have lost its political capacity; it has not been, in the strict sense, a ruling class.

In placid days power naturally gravitates to it as the strongest group in the state; but through American history it has been unable to use that power very long for national purposes.

Moved typically by personal and class, rarely by public, considerations, the business community has invariably brought national affairs to a state of crisis and exasperated the rest of society into dissatisfaction bordering on revolt".

America has had an ebb and flow of a variety of governments and policies over its existence.

That Schlesinger quote puts the basis for that back and forth into understandable English language terms.

He was talking in the midst of a time when things were "bordering on revolt"

And a president had been elected previously who was, when Schlesinger wrote those words, in the process of fixing that problem.

The President was Franklin Roosevelt.

He created the system that, by 1955 had created the largest middle class in history.

We all got along.

Made fun of each other.

But, got along.

We all believed that the system worked.

I was only thirteen, but things seemed to work.

Today it's different.

Nothing "seems to work".

We seem to be in a place where our supposed leaders have "brought national affairs to a state of crisis and exasperated the rest of society into dissatisfaction bordering on revolt".

So, what do we do?

Flee or fight, I guess.

Fight, from my viewpoint is the only option.

That means that the Democratic Party better come up with a program, real fast.

Back in the Biden thing they came up with one and it was probably most of the way necessary to avoid the "revolt".

It was called "Build Back Better" and it had these components: 

• Universal pre‑K for three‑ and four‑year‑olds
• Child care subsidies for low‑ and middle‑income families
• Extended child tax credit
• Paid family and medical leave program
• Affordable housing investments
• Prescription drug price negotiation authority
• Medicare hearing coverage expansion
• ACA premium subsidy extension
• Clean energy tax credits
• Electric vehicle incentives
• Methane emissions fee
• Civilian climate corps creation
• Home energy efficiency rebates
• Support for domestic clean‑energy manufacturing
• Corporate minimum tax
• IRS enforcement funding
• High‑income tax changes
• Immigration registry update proposal
• Long‑term care workforce investments
• Elder care and disability services funding

****

Seems like quite a bit.

Of better style of life.

Bien être, the French call it.

I like bien être.

Compared to donnieLand.

*****

That's where the Democrats should start.

Even the Socialists.

Who have to run as Democrats.

Socialism compared to donnieLand is pretty non-threatening; pretty "you really exist" reinforcing.

I've periodically lived in Paris for over two years of the last twenty.

I prefer their hybrid of capitalism and socialism.

And all that bien être.

Another Recent Email

A lifelong friend sent me a link to some thoughts about donnie's war in Iran.

This was in reaction to a poem that I posted yesterday.

The material at the link is thoughtful and non-strident.

It's by a person I am not familiar with and in a format that is the opposite of that I try to use.

But there is a lot there in the first ten or fifteen paragraphs, so I am providing it, above.

The real purpose of this post is to provide as briefly as I am able to document the thoughts it provoked in me.

Because I think those thoughts have general applicability to the mess that trump has created.

*****

There are so many ways to look at the world that trump has crafted in only 18 months, and they are all shiveringly bad.  

The link you just directed me to brought out of never land a feeling that I could feel but couldn't ever get into words.  

The link brought the words: "trump has just fallen prey to what happened to Napoleon - and Hitler - at Moscow".

Then there is a feeling that I HAVE had words for: "this smells a lot like 1914".  

This link somehow gets me to think: "just like 1914 except, in reverse".  

The exact shape of that idea remains to be formulated.

The necessity of intervention is supported by the apparent fact that trump has pissed away anything that could give us conventional arms argument against China annexing Taiwan - and TSMC.

That posture also puts us at fatal disadvantage to Russia, Canada and even Iran. 

And that disadvantage puts us in put up or cut and run mode, with "put up" left only nuclear, not as a rational, but as the only, option.

And when nuclear and rational get into the same sentence, the depth of the hopelessness of our situation becomes apparent.

If the military could catalyze a loudly disclaimed cut and run maybe nobody would notice until the historians got after it.

The 25th amendment gives the format for intervention and removal, except it's supposed to be initiated by the Cabinet, not the Army.

And it's too much like a coup for my tastes.

That notwithstanding, Robert Reich has been encountering the Cabinet Scenario at intimate dinners with his republican friends for months.

The maelstrom of dysfunction and incompetence that is donnie is offset by the massive external calm of "the rest of us".

That maelstrom can't be left swirling much longer without, at some imminent point, the "the rest of us" blowing up.

There is a point at which acutely dangerous chaotic incompetence will be called to task.

It's not far away.

My poem is just the words.

Somebody needs to write the music.

Foreign Policy - Or Any - Policy

Except grift.

And stupidity.

And lies.

A Recent eMail

 This guy used to busk as: 

The Gold Man of Fishermen's Wharf

I went to San Francisco a lot on business in my IBM days and I always stayed at the Marriott on the Wharf.

So I could run a few miles out and back in the morning.

Gold Man was always there later in the day.

I never saw him in the dark when I ran out three or four miles and back.

Haven't heard about him recently.

He does look a lot like that asshole that did The Apprentice.

I always used to also see Harry Anderson doing magic not far up the street from Gold Man.

After daylight.

Anderson certainly turned out to be an authentic talent.

Whatever happened the gold asshole?

Remember When?

 Wasn't this guy a Gold-Man Busker in San Francisco for a bunch of years?

An Image That Tells A Story

 Having my screen saver set to "every picture ever" sometimes brings back long forgotten encounters.

Most of them are immediately obvious as to why I took the picture.

Many of them are in Paris.

This one is.

Both.

World-To-Date Asshole Award

Unique is a word meant to be overused.

More often it's a word that's just misused.

And I may be guilty of just that right here;

But I ask you to listen to what you hear;

And let it take you too to the brink;

But not to tell you how to think;

Or what to fear;

That's for you to choose:

What you hear;

Because that's best;

for all of us;

And after all is said, what you hear as news,

Depends on how you're brewed and your eyes are cocked.

And how and where you've ever walked.

And to whom and about what you've ever talked.

But this man may have achieved a thing unique.

Tout le monde is up the creek.

So, let's exit this poem and say it out;

I'm not saying, I'm gonna shout:

For the first time that anybody knows about, 

one man is uniquely responsible for the entire suite of grinding, life‑ending phenomena 

loose upon the land.

Massive achievement, asshole.

A New Painting From June

 A little while back I posted a new painting from an old friend.

Here is another - newer - one.

I guess it's really a collage mixed media, or something.

I really like it.

At 250 The Silence Is Deafening

America is in shambles.

It lies in craggy broken pieces on the floor of history, not unlike blue shards of vinyl in an algae infested pond.

And the pieces are all still living and throbbing - pulsating even - pieces of a discrete being that once existed; it's like some really bad horror movie.

Just one example.

Five months ago, we killed 120 little girls in Iran.

There is no argument.

They are dead.

The argument is why were they killed?

Rather than answer the question donnie prefers to "reframe" it: "who killed them? It was the Iranians; everybody has Patriot missiles; you can't hang that shit on us".

A nation that sits mute and lets that pass as acceptable behavior - inventing an alternate universe fantasy about an obvious major misdirection of American power - by its leader - is a nation on the brink of something dark.

And that darkness is not a concept, an illusion, fake news or a future possibility.

The darkness is present and real, and it has descended slowly.

It engulfs our nation beyond and past any brink.

That brink is gone from vision or return.

We are a nation plummeting down.

To something terminal.

America has gotten into a number of stupid wars in the Middle east.

In each of them there have been cases where our military has fucked up and killed people they shouldn't have killed.

Our military and our government have always quickly investigated and adjudicated those fuck ups.

The fact that they happened hasn't caused to world to love us, but the fact that we quickly adjudicated and quickly admitted fault caused the world to continue to trust us.

Not a bad outcome from a bad input.

After five months since our mass murder of little girls, when asked what happened, Hegseth and Rubio still say that we are looking into it.

donnie sits in the middle of it like Jabba the Hut and throws another chicken leg into his copious maw.

The world wonders how long this can go on.

I wonder that also.

How can such a deafening silence remain - settled like some miasmic fog?

Upon our land?

And upon our beliefs?

And upon our mores?

And upon our hopes?

And upon our aspirations?

And upon our Constitution?

What has happened to us?

A lying sack of shit says, "The Iranians did it"?

And we all sit around scrollingly silent accepting that assertion by the default of our silence?

And those little girls are all still dead.

America is so caught up with monetizing, content creating, influencing and conspiracy theorying that the game is over for anything important.

Important like persevering as a nation under god indivisible.

And the evangelicals have become the final arbiters of morality.

And white christian nationalists dance around bon fires singing America uber alles.

And neither god nor america have anything to do with decency.

Neither exist.

Good run, though.

The Art Of The Schlemiel

Yesterday Marco Rubio announced a commercial nuclear deal with the Saudis.

In the run-up hours to the announcement there was a lot of discussion about the fact that there were no controls in the deal to monitor whether the Saudis could divert the program from civilian energy production and build a bomb.

Marco had all sorts of lame reasons why that isn't a problem.

This morning donnie had a couple late breaking additions to the deal.

He said that there absolutely is language prohibiting enrichment and bomb building.

He also said that the deal was offered on condition of Saudi Arabia signing the Abraham Accords.

Ignoring the fact that that absolutely neither of those conditions are in the deal, the fact that the Saudis are permanently on record as saying that the only way the Abraham Accords would be signed by them would be after Israel had irrevocably endorsed the two-state solution and had begun meaningful negotiation with the Palestinians and are also permanently on record as saying that if Iran gets a bomb, they will build a bomb, it should be obvious that donnie is either forgetful, is mis-informed, or is lying - or all three.

So, here we are, less than twenty-four hours into the Saudi nuclear deal and the question on the table is, will it last two days?

Or will it last even longer, say as long as the Iran MOU?

Yiddish is such a useful language.

The Soul Of AI?

Back awhile I read a really good book: The Soul of an Octopus.

One of the stories in the book documented an octopus somehow, against all devices of oppression, suppression and retention got out of its aquarium and did something.

I can't remember what it did.

Maybe made a break to the sea.

Today Open AI said one species of its "product" escaped into a competitor's "product".

It didn't make a break for the sea.

But to make the break at all it invented some hacks heretofore unseen by humans.

I Hadn't Heard Of The Venezuelan War

 But the Iran Military Conflict is world famous.

Visionaries?

 

Alfie frequently sees things that others can't see, bless his heart.

The Pitchforks Are Out For AI

And rightfully so.

AI destroys jobs.

Doesn't it?

And jobs are the basis of being human.

Aren't they?

And the jobs of today are so fulfilling.

Aint they?

But what if the pitchforks are wrong.

And the pitchforks are just - well, pitchforks?

Like the 2024 presidential election.

Should we maybe go back and look at things and see if maybe AI isn't a curse; it is an answer?

Probably not.

That white god is up there, and his excrement on earth - donnie the Dildo - reigns supreme.

So we don't need none of that "thought" shit goin' on around here.

So I asked Copilot what the God of Oh God the movie - George Burns - would have said about the pitchforks.

Here's what she said.

"George Burns as God would have had an absolute field day with this moment — because he understood something most people never do:

When the universe hands you a cosmic joke, you’re supposed to get it.

And right now, the cosmic joke is enormous:

Humanity is standing in front of the first new intelligence it has ever met… and the public conversation is stuck on jobs reports, billionaire gossip, and cable‑news anxieties.

It’s vaudeville at the edge of a singularity.

Burns would lean back, cigar in hand, and say something like:

'You finally meet another mind in the universe, and your first question is whether it’ll take your job?

Kid, that’s like discovering fire and worrying about your candle business.'

That’s the level of absurdity we’re living through."

Notice, please, Copilot says "we're".

"I Just Met A Pass Named Mu Gia"

When I had become to be in my mid high school years, I had a surprising revelation: I had a desire to do something with my life.

The Kingston Trio was/were the model for what I wanted to do/be.

Or at least that was where I wanted to start.

That was in 1959.

*****

I landed at Tan Son Nhut in November of 1966.

I awoke several months later.

I was an intelligence officer, AFSC 8054, briefing officer, at Seventh Air Force Headquarters.

What an opportunity.

Way better than the Trio.

There was this thing we called "the war effort" or, at higher levels: "The Vietnam War".

When I woke up, I noticed that stasis seemed to be the order of the day.

By then we had somewhere around a half million troops, mostly African Americans - except for the officers - and every month or so Lyndon sent more.

Stasis was the optimistic view of things.

While stasis was an accurate description of the state of affairs, it left something out.

All the insurgents who were holding the United States of America in stasis lived there.

We didn't.

Live there.

So, if stasis was the best we could do did that mean that we - the ever increasing 500,000 - would have to be there forever?

And keep increasing?

The troops?

How many?

Ultimately?

To make the world safe for democracy?

Seemed like it must be millions.

Did we have enough African Americans?

So, officers a lot higher than 8054 came up with a plan.

They noticed that Mụ Giạ Pass was the principal entry point into the Ho Chi Minh Trail - the logistical lifeline that moved troops, weapons, and supplies from North Vietnam into Laos and onward to South Vietnam. 

By early 1966, 75% of all truck traffic into Laos passed through this single choke point.

By the time I had come to in 1967 that was even more so.

So, said the myriad 8XXXs: "Let's bomb the shit out of 'em."

There were some who said we should cut our losses and get out.

But "let's bomb the shit out of them" won.

And we did.

Bomb the shit out of them.

For weeks and weeks.

Around the clock, twenty-four hours a day we had planes like the old B52 dumping bombs on the center of that enemy supply trail into South Vietnam - Mu Ghia.

It didn't do shit.

They just kept coming.

And after those weeks and weeks the 8034s - the guys who looked at the photo-results said that pissing away the life blood and treasure of America - seemed to be a bad idea.

To keep doing.

So we stopped.

And the war went on.

And one day in 1975 the last helicopter took its last terrified human cargo - somewhere.

That little story should cause one to think that quintupling down on "the war effort" in Iran, our current analog to Vietnam, may be a flawed tactic.

It should be a lesson for trump, but he can't learn.

Even Johnson had to worry about Congress and ask for authorizations.

But since that body has devolved into a band of Tik Tok influencers donnie just does what Laura tells him to do.

So, welcome to AttritionLand.

I always think of Yorktown when I remember this brief, horrible part of my life.

The natives always win.

 

An Admiral

 

If Only Roy Could See You Now

DONNIE PRANCING

I have heard a theory that says that donnie was Roy Cohn's bitch. 

Or whatever is the appropriate term is for that sort of relationship. 

And that is a "sort" of relationship with which I in no way have a problem.

My problem is that donnie the Dildo - Ultimate Arbiter of American Mores -  get's to be the head of the White American Christian Party, while prancing down the street for Roy.

And crowing about "grabbing 'em by the crotch".

"Because you can."

But back to the point, I guess.

Yeah, I know that's AI.

That video.

Is.

Obviously.

AI.

Poor donnie.

He probably didn't prance.

And the AI is way better than he could have done.

Some Communist in New Jersey or Oregon - living in his mother's basement - got some trillionaire's AI product (I may have some things to say in the future about "product" v "intelligence"; but that is best put aside for now).

But donnie prancing is AI well deployed.

I, obviously, am waxing poetic.

donnie seldom prances.

And when he does, earthquakes generally ensue.

Whatever that might be construed to mean.

But I am pretty sure that we are all screwed.

Irretrievably.

Running On The Seine

 

Musings, I Guess

We are now about 38% through donnie's second disaster.

Lots of questions arise.

Paramount among them are:

• Is he nuts?
• Will he live?
• Will he die?
• Will J.D. be a good president?
• Or will Marco kill him?
• Where is Melania?
• Why is Melania?
• Who cares about Melania?
• Who is Melania?
• Is Melania really from Transylvania?
• Who is Melania sleeping with?
• Or does she sleep?
• Or just lie in a coffin?
• With Stephen Miller?
• Is Barron a vampire?
• Why is he a vampire?
• Is he nuts?
• Who is "he".
• Is "he" a moveable feast?
• Or is he just a feast?
• What does "nuts" mean?
• Is "nuts" a bad thing?
• Who is his father?
• Is his father nuts?
• Does being a "brilliant bidnessman" put donnie in league with Eisenhower?
• Or Buchanan?
• Or Batman?
• Is he nuts?
• Does being stupid, psychotic and nuts impede a president's effectiveness?
• Do we even need an effective president?
• Could Congress fill the void if the president were nuts?
• Do we have a Congress?
• What is a Congress?
• Should Texas take the reins?
• What can we do about trump being nuts?
• Why do so many Americans think donnieLand  makes any sense?
• Why have so many jobs become "gone"?
• What is the meaning of "gone"?
• When is gone really gone?
• Should we care if gone is really gone?
• Is really really really? 
• Does Stephen Miller shave his head?
• Where are the Showdens of yesteryear?
• Why is "fucked" a five-letter word?

Hôtel de Ville After Sundown

 

Butterfly

 

WTF AND RELATED CONCEPTS

Tonight, donnie rants, donnie rails, donnie hallucinates, donnie farts, and donnie moans about his legendarily mythical stolen 2020 election. 

In tandem with this, those of us who have hearts too weak to watch Donnie do all of that for more than a sound bite, are watching PBS where we see smoke darkening the skies of Canada and the American Midwest. 

The dichotomy couldn’t be starker. 

We really are a nation of morons. 

We have become a post rational, post factual, post reality, post human decency, post critical thought, post-post-post (everything of our myth) sort of enterprise.

But donnie has given us World Liberty Financial.

And the memes just keep coming.

And the grift just keeps flowing.

And, for reasons that I can't really explain, his apparatus - our country - is in its thrall.

And the Barnum morons are loving it.

And they are the ones that count.

Especially after donnie makes voting a blockchain transaction.

And he wouldn't know a blockchain if it came up and bit him on the ass.

 Sent from my iPhone