Category: politics

Less Is More

Yes, get ready, friends and family who hate it when I go political. They would rather I don’t, and I try not to, but here we fucking go again – will this carousel ever end? 

The tRump WH Budget Chief, Mick Mulvaney, is singing about how great the tRump budget is. Why, they’re enabling and empowering people by taking money away from their greedy little hands.

Mulvaney added: “We don’t want to measure compassion by the number of programs we have and the number of people on them — true compassion is the number of people we want to try to get off of those programs and get back in charge of their own lives.”

Sure, those people who need the safety net aren’t working because of anything except their own damn weak wills and lazy nature. That’s why they’re poor, hungry and sick, or why they need aid from the rest of us. If they need more money, they should work two or three more jobs while going back to school and getting a better education. Taking away the social net will put them back on their feet!

Yea, verily, I was exposed to that hypocritical crap in the military and corporate life. “We must do more with less!” “We must give one hundred and ten percent!” Yes, tell me, how do you get one hundred and ten percent out of your mind and body? Can you drink one hundred and ten percent of a glass of water? How do you eat one hundred and ten percent of that bowl of soup? You can’t, can you? So, with your logic, tell me, where does that extra magic ten percent come from? Nowhere but your feeble, feeble brain.

Yet, strangely, of course, the wealthy must be given more. Why, giving them more will help them help others more! Funny, how their logic changes when it’s applied to their own class, isn’t it?

Ironically, too, when it comes to military spending, more is better. More military spending gives us greater protection. Why doesn’t the less is better logic work in that situation?

Mulvaney must be a good Christian. Seems like it’s always Christians in this modern era who claim that helping the poor is contrary to the Bible. When searching out more information on the Mick, I found out this about him:

As it turns out, Mulvaney has faced questions regarding his payment (or non-payment, as the case may be) of taxes before. In 2013, a blogger discovered that Mick Mulvaney had owed thousands of dollars in back taxes for as long as five years. The website wonkette.com picked up the story, but it barely made a ripple during the negotiations for raising the debt ceiling.

Mulvaney is nothing if not consistent, advocating for the country not to pay its bills while he neglects paying his own.

Sickening, sickening, sickening. Mulvaney, and the White House administration and the agenda he represents, has no morals, compassion or empathy.

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Twenty-two

Twenty-two dead today

More will die tomorrow

In the name of freedom, choice, democracy and God

We’ll strike back to teach them a lesson

Twenty-two dead today

More will die tomorrow

In the name of freedom, choice, democracy and God

Twenty-two dead today

How many more tomorrow?

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Today’s Theme Music

Mom gave this album to me for a Christmas present in nineteen seventy-three, a gift made on my older sister’s recommendation.

I was ecstatic. I’d only heard and read a little about the album, ‘Quadraphenia,’ but I was an enormous Who fan at that point. Come on, they were fresh off ‘Tommy’ and ‘Who’s Next?,’ with the legendary, ‘Won’t Be Fooled Again.’ Their music spoke to a wannabe teenage rebel on the cusp of childhood’s end.

I played the bejesus out of this album, generally at a wall-shaking volume. This song, ‘The Real Me,’ was the opening track. While the song speaks to me with its lyrics and Daltry’s delivery, I’m enamored with Entwhistle’s flowing, active, dominating bass.

The cracks between the paving stones
Look like rivers of flowing veins
Strange people who know me
Peeping from behind every window pane
The girl I used to love
Lives in this yellow house
Yesterday she passed me by
She doesn’t want to know me now

h/t to Metrolyrics.com

I think it’s an appropriate song for the Internet age and the era of fake news. People hide behind anonymous posts and comments, putting forward false identities, deploying lies and false information to stoke fear and doubt, and further their causes.

Can you see the real me?

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Political Dream

The dream was short but intense. Throngs were milling and shopping. Indoors, a warm, festive ambiance dominated. I was with my wife and some friends, going in and out of stores and other places. People, including my wife and our friend, Marty, kept trying to point things out to me or ask me questions, but I was intent and focused, shopping for something for myself that I’d always wanted. I don’t know what that was in the dream, but the dream’s backstory, learned from overheard conversations, was that we were shopping for a new POTUS.

I awoke surprised and pleased.

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Today’s Theme Music

Going to see the Four Tops and Temptations at the Britt this year. Buying the tickets triggered a need to hear some Motown today. What better song for this era of burgeoning WH scandals and a plethora fake news than ‘Ball of Confusion (That’s What the World Is Today)’, from nineteen seventy? Shows just how long we’ve been a ball of confusion.

 

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Returning to my roots of being, I’m streaming stuff from the nineteen sixties today.

I was a big motor-racing, science-fiction and baseball fan then. Mario Andretti, Jackie Stewart, Mark Donahue, Dan Gurney, Peter Revson were among the racers I idolized. The Can-Am, Formula One, Indy (called USAC racing back then), sports car racing, with the Ford versus Ferrari battles at LeMans…I watched them all.

My baseball team was the Pittsburgh Pirates, and I followed them faithfully. But my emerging loves were reading and music. Although my reading tastes were — and are — eclectic, I tore through the works of Asimov, Bradbury, Zelazny, Clarke, and Heinlein. Besides my racing magazines, I bought science fiction magazines every month, and devoured the short stories.

The rock explosion was in full strength and the Brit Invasion was underway. Protests, demonstrations, riots, the Altamont Free Concert and Woodstock were part of our news cycles, along with Vietnam, political assassinations, civil rights and the cold war. The threat of nukes was a constant. Bombers and fighters remained on alert.

Consumerism, television and advertising were gaining strength. What a time, what a time, for a teenage boy in America. Into this maelstrom of my existence came Jimi Hendrix. Wow, his playing amazed me. He died young, just twenty-eight years old, but, man, what a legacy he left. What an impact he had.

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New Trump Sayings

Donald Trump came up with a new expression the other day: “prime the pump.” He was discussing the U.S. economy with a magazine at the time. It’s another example of his tremendous ability to see and grasp complex situations and reduce them to something that can be tweeted and remembered.

Here’s a few other expressions he’s originated since becoming president.

  • A snowball’s chance in hell.
  • Between a rock and a hard place.
  • Once in a blue moon.

In each of those four instances above, the Tangelos mascot said, “Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven’t heard it. I mean, I just…I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good. It’s what you have to do.”

He also claimed that he came up with the famous statement, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” while discussing the Berlin Wall with President Kennedy. Although only seventeen at the time, Trump said, “Walls always fascinated me, always. I had a gut feeling, you know, just a hunch, just a hunch, but I trust my hunches, I trust my instinct, that walls, like the one in Berlin that we built to protect us from communisms, were going to be important in my life, someday, and I was right. I was right.”

#fakenews

Well, almost fake news.

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Amazing News

You read the news today? Sure, what news, which news, right? Sorry.

History was made when a woman breastfed in Parliament. This happened in Australia. The woman who made this news is Senator Larissa Waters. She didn’t breastfeed another senator, but a baby, her daughter, Alia.

I’m amazed that this is news. I think breastfeeding has been around for over fifty years. I know breasts on women have been around at least that long. I’m sixty years old, and I distinctly remember seeing them on women when I was a teenager.

I guess this is news because breast-feeding is finally coming out of the closet in Australia. Actually, reading the article, it seems like it’s news because children were not previously authorized to be in Parliament. That makes sense; if Aussie politicians are like American politicians, that was probably because they’re afraid that children will outshine them in just about every aspect from speaking and making sense to manners, courtesy and intelligence.

Whatever the reason for the celebration, it’s good to see we’re finally making progress. It’s been finally acknowledged with books that ‘Everyone Poops’. That had also apparently been a secret. Soon, we’ll find out that people masturbate and fart, too.

About damn time. Let me know when someone breaks wind in Parliament in Australia.

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Oh, The Times

If it’s the year of twenty-seventeen, then you know an airline is in trouble. I don’t accept the year unchallenged. Like Billy Pilgrim, sometimes I feel like I’ve become unstuck in time. It comes mostly from hearing male Republicans say things like, “Nobody dies because they don’t have access to healthcare.”

Well, not if you’re rich! Ha, ha. Oh, that Raul Labrador. He was kidding, of course. Ha, ha, what a joker. Thank the gods someone in the nation’s capitol has a sense of humor that matches Trump’s White House. You know those guys have a sense of humor when they decide they’re firing scientists from the EPA’s advisory board and replacing them with members of industry. That’s got to be a joke, right?

This year, depending on what Trump does — and his potential for disaster is infinite — might go down as a pivotal year of change for the U.S. airline industry. Each week finds another one in trouble or the news in recent months. First, there was United Airlines, politely trying to re-accommodate a passenger by taking him out of his seat and off the flight, to put him on another. Then American Airlines became the focus of social media ire when an employee bonked a woman on a flight with a stroller. American Airlines tried to fix it all by announcing that they were going to reduce leg room! That’s terrific news! Next they’ll be telling us that they’re going to start charging us to recline our seats or to use the restroom. After all, they’re making money and experiencing record profits, but, you know how it is with money and corporations: there’s never enough.

Delta Airlines, jealous over the the other airlines gaining so much attention, decided to boot a family off a flight from Hawaii.  They made up with them, afterwards, of course, because it was just another spat between an airline and those ungrateful people buying tickets.

Today, in the spirit of U.S. airline news, Spirit Airlines canceled nine flights. People were upset. The airline blamed the pilots. The pilots blamed the airline. We all know that Spirit Airlines really just wanted their time in the news. All the other U.S. airlines were in the news. Even Southwest Airlines made the news after reports that their CEO is resisting changes to the baggage policy and still letting people have two free bags. What a madman! Doesn’t he know he’s leaving money on the table? Gads, the scoundrel.

Of course, the wealthy have had enough of the commoners and their problems with those pesky airlines. They’re either buying their own aircraft or using the terminals constructed for their exclusive use.

It’s exhausting to contemplate. As Alvin Lee of Ten Years After said at Woodstock once, “I think next time, I’m going home by helicopter.”

Maybe he didn’t say it. I am getting old. Or maybe I’m just unstuck in time again, and he’s going to say it in the future.

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Today’s Theme Music

Another anniversary was passed. This one was less remembered and noted than many anniversaries.

Today’s song is ‘Ohio’, by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSN&Y). The Kent State shootings inspired the song when Ohio National Guardsman shot at protesters, killing four, in nineteen seventy. Nine others were wounded. Some of those shot were watching the protest or walking the area, and not taking part in the protests.

I vividly remember hearing the song for the first time. It was a warm morning, but humid after thunderstorms the previous night, and our patch of suburbia was richly green. I was in my friend’s back yard in Penn Hills, PA. Curt lived up the street from me. He, John, Ricky and Bruce, all neighbors and classmates (except Bruce), were the core of my friendships. Curt’s back yard was slick with mud from the heavy rains. Mosquitoes were swarming, along with horse flies.

The Kent State protests were mostly about President Nixon’s Cambodia Campaign, just announced. It seems appropriate for our era, as we’re protesting an American Executive branch’s words, actions, behavior and stated intentions, to listen to this song and think about the words. Appallingly, I saw an FB post encouraging ‘vets’ to run over protesters. It sickened my heart to read such sentiments. Is that why vets went to war, to return and run over others exercising their rights and freedoms?

Some seem to have twisted ideas about how it all works.

Speaking as a vet and knowing many vets, I don’t believe most of them think protesters should be run over. Maybe I’m in a bubble, and I’m wrong. We used to say, I don’t agree with what you say, but I’ll fight to the death for your right to say it. So, on the one hand, yes, the person can encourage vets to run over protesters, as it’s their right, but I find their sentiment sublimely hateful, ignorant, and depressing.

This song captured how appalled some of us were then. I remember being surprised that my friends were unaware of the Kent State shootings or what it was all about. Their parents were aware but guarded. Looking back, I grasp how conservative that housing plan where I lived was at the time.

Listen to the song, though, and the chorus, “Four dead in Ohio,” stays with you.

 

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