Fox "News" at its Finest, #21

(But... but, gas is under $2.00 a gallon now! Response? Crickets, tumbleweeds... Plus this:)

 

(Then, just to show how fair and balanced they are toward all Democrat Socialist scumbags...) 

(Ah, yes. The issues that really matter.)

(Oh, wow, Greg Gutfeld's a Sanders fan! Oh, wait. That's supposed to be sarcasm.)

(I may have posted this in earlier entries in this series but it's a fucking classic.)

(Who needs erudite experts? Let's ask Cousin It for his opinion!)

(Next up: Did the Holocaust actually happen? "Maybe ve should ask ze victims." "Nein." "Vat victims, Sigfried?")

(Such as the ones featuring Ted Nugent, Phil Robertson and Sarah Palin.)

(Even Fox must know that statistically your chances of winning are always going to be 292,000,000 to 1 no matter how many tickets you buy. But don't tell the poors that.)

(Poor fascist bastards. All they have to defend themselves with are tanks, helicopters, fully automatic weapons, tasers, LRADS...)

(To quoth the great Archie Bunker... "Hah?!")

(See? We're not racist because this was said by one of our pre-vetted blacks, one of the "good ones.")

(Rounding out the list, there's this priceless screengrab...)

(...because the sons of Rupert Murdoch usually have that effect on women.)

Our Capitol is Turning into Tombstone

     There was a shooting at the US Capitol earlier this afternoon that placed the entire Hill on lockdown. The shots originated at the Capitol Visitor's Center and one policeman suffered a minor injury while the shooter has been apprehended.
     You have to wonder how many Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats (hereafter referred to as NRA fucksticks) on Capitol Hill right now are honestly thinking to themselves that this mayhem is all worth it to protect our second amendment rights.
     So, go ahead, Trump, go look at your fucking fine print. I'm sure that bringing guns to the RNC convention in Cleveland will prove to be a corker of an idea. What could possibly go wrong?
     Note how far down the Capitol shooting is right now on Twitter. Someone fires shots near the Capitol Building and it barely cracks the top ten. What does that say about our country when perhaps the most accurate barometer of the nation's mood and thoughts after shots are fired within the seat of our federal government shows we can barely notice it?
     It's as if we're, I dunno, used to this.

(Addendum: Actually that was a bad analogy. Why? What's the difference  between our Capitol and 19th century Tombstone?

Tombstone actually had gun control laws.)

(Addendum II:)

Yell, "Allahu akhbar,"- terrorist. Yell, "I'm a prophet of God",  patriot exercising his rights. #Capitol https://t.co/2jJcbzULnF …

— Robert Crawford (@jurassicpork59) March 28, 2016

Happy Flying Zombie Jesus Day

     This is a scaled down version of what we usually have for Easter. Since Mrs. JP is still seriously under the weather, it was up to yours truly to make dinner himself. Baked ham with pineapple chunks, mashed potatoes, corn, Brussels sprouts  and a fine Reisling. What did you have?

The Day of the Bird

     Just a fast Easter post before I make dinner:
     Yesterday marked the first time Bernie could claim a clean sweep on a caucus or primary day. Naturally, Hillarybots are going to sneer and say that the noncontiguous states only have 55 delegates. But the fact remains it's a clean sweep for Sanders. Hillary had her redneck states, now it's the Day of the Bird. And the only chance Clinton has of pulling this out is if the stupendously corrupt super delegate system ignores the voice of the people and gives her the nomination in Philadelphia.
     Off to make dinner now. Happy Flying Zombie Jesus Day.

OK, Last One About the Cruz Sex Scandal

   ...then I swear I'll move on.

Portland Gives Bernie Sanders the Bird

     Sometimes, Bernie Sanders is too busy for Twitter so sometimes Twitter comes to him.
     In politics especially, circumstance and fate can be cruel or monstrously ironic. But every once in a great while, it also shows its whimsical side. This is a shot of Senator Sanders in Portland, Oregon yesterday and, out of nowhere, this adorable little bird just landed on his podium.
     It put us back in mind of the human element of political campaigning. In simply alighting on Bernie's podium yesterday, that adorable little bird interjected a whimsical, spontaneous moment that let us laugh without bitterness of the entire silliness of it all. It created a #1 hashtag, #BirdieSanders and another one, #FeeltheBird.
     And Sen. Sanders recovered very nicely by adlibbing, "It may not have looked like it, but that little bird was actually a dove. And he was calling for world peace. No more wars!"
     Amen, brother.

      Trump? He's not as comfortable as Sanders with the ornithological branch of the animal kingdom. Of course, if the little guy had landed on Trump's podium, the Secret Service would've piled on him and, to use Trump's phrase, been carried out on a stretcher straight to his dinner plate.

Quick Medical Question

     It's not often I post three times a day but this is by special request from Mrs. JP.
     She's been sick off and on for about a month and a half. The first time seemed to be a run of the mill cold and just as she was getting over that, I came down with a chest cold that stayed with me for about two or three weeks. Now that I'm getting rid of the vestiges of that, she's come down with a chest cold that seems similar to mine.
     She has loose congestion in her lungs that makes it virtually impossible to breathe, especially at night, where she can't seem to find a comfortable sleeping position even with a wedge pillow. Sometimes she coughs so hard she vomits. Two days ago, she was feeling so badly she was bedridden about two thirds of the day. Her appetite's suppressed so she's not supporting her immune system.
     The pulmonary congestion is coupled with nasal congestion and sometimes her chronic sinus problem adds to her general misery. On her sister's recommendation, I have her on two nasal sprays (Flonase and Nasacort). I'm also giving her Echinacea Golden seal extract, Mucinex cough syrup, DayQuil and Nyquil for the evenings, Sudafed for her sinuses and various pain relievers. The sprays cost me about $30 and nearly wiped out my bank account and I'm literally going broke buying her meds that just aren't working.
     To anyone out there with medical training or have had this particularly pernicious strain of cold, can you tell me what I'm missing? I'm trying every over-the-counter remedy I can find and nothing seems to be making a dent in treating even the symptoms let alone the malady itself. It seems to be confined to the chest and I don't need a stethoscope to know she has harsh rhonchi in both lungs. I can hear the rattling from the next room.
     We tried to get on ObamaCare in 2013 but here in MA they made us go through the Mass Health Connector which proved to be so God-awful that after a year, they told me resubmit my application from scratch because they lost us in all the red tape of switching over the people that were fleeing from RomneyCare. As we don't have insurance, I'd rather not take her to the hospital's ER but if she doesn't improve soon then that's what I'll have to do. She's really scaring the shit out of me. While she's never in the best of health, in the nearly seven years she's been with me I've never seen her this sick and it's draining me both emotionally and financially.
     What am I missing? Or is this one of those damned trials that has to run its course no matter what we do?

Now You Know Why They Call Him Tailgunner Ted

The #CruzSexScandal: The Cuban Mistress Crisis.

— Robert Crawford (@jurassicpork59) March 25, 2016

     Since there are only two guys left on the seedy side of the tracks, you just know the private eyes who'd allegedly dug up this dirt on Ted Cruz were paid by the Trump campaign, especially after they'd both turned their respective Twitter accounts into a Hunter Moore feed by posting nude pics of their wives and shamelessly sexualizing them in the process.
     But then again, you have to wonder why Ted Cruz's Super PAC suddenly decided to give Carly Fiorina's Super PAC a cool half million dollars six months ago. Gee, you don't think that was hush money, do you? After all, this wasn't just one mistress that Cruz has been allegedly hiding but five. So with whom do you think Cruz had bumped uglies?

     As always, I'll leave it for you to judge.

From the Mailbag

     As some of you know, I directly correspond with several of my readers from all over the world and one of my most faithful, and perspicacious, correspondents happens to be an ex pat living and working in Hong Kong. Some of my fiercest jeremiads about the things that piss me off, including the occasional observation that can't possibly be made in public, are to this person who wishes to remain anonymous. Frankly, I don't understand why CC doesn't blog about politics and I say that not because our views eerily jibe time and again but because this person has a fine, discriminating mind that can cut right through the bullshit infesting politics today.
     So this morning I found this in my inbox and I thought it was so good that I decided to post this email with the author's permission. It came with a link to the Huffington Post but I won't reproduce it because I hate and despise the Puff Ho plantation with every fiber of my being (although you can find the post in its entirety at Common Dreams). But if you don't have such reservations, go look up "Open Letter to Dolores Huerta" by Rosario Dawson that went live on the 'net yesterday. Huerta, you may remember, helped perpetuate this disgusting and dishonest meme on behalf of the Clinton campaign claiming Bernie Sanders supporters were shouting down a Latina in the audience by chanting, "English only!" It was a palpably disingenuous Howard Dean scream moment and Dawson called bullshit on it. What follows are my friend's comments on the Clinton legacy in general, perfectly encapsulated in 227 words:

Many Americans still look back to Bill's presidency as the good old days.
         Compared to what followed, they were, but the Clintons mortgaged the future for the then and there.
        They made Bush the Lesser and Obama possible.
         Had they really enacted change that achieved social justice, Trump would still merely be known as a developer, casino magnate and womanizer.
         Instead, they sold the country snake oil, the residue of which remains on many who voted for them.
         Looking back, I'm happy to say that I never voted for them.
         I remember in my last job in the U.S., I heard a co-worker, a Latina, say that she was voting for Gore because she wanted to see Clinton's policies continued.
         She believed that Clinton had been good for the country.
         I kept quiet, but thought to myself, What did Clinton do for Latinos except put more of them in prison, enact NAFTA, and end welfare as we knew it, on which many Latinos depended?
         All of those policies hurt Latinos not just in the U.S., but throughout Latin America.
         My now former co-worker didn't see her preferred candidate in the White House, so I wonder how she is doing.
         Is she like the woman whom the article... addresses - still enamored with the Clintons?
         Stockholm Syndrome is the most powerful form of snake oil there is.

George Will, George Won't

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

"(Trump) would have to get 70 percent of the white vote. A, it won’t happen and B, it would destroy the Republican Party by making it the party of white people." - George Will, March 20, 2016

     With the death years ago of William F. Buckley, George Will seems to have inherited by default the mantle of the conservative movement's Incredibly Serious Intellectual Savant (the acronym, of course, is strictly coincidental). When one looks over the conservative intellectual landscape populated by Jonah Goldberg, Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson and other right wing intellectual flyweights, it's easy to see how Will got the standard shoved in his hand. He sounds like an obsolete android, he wears strictly conservative suits and he wears glasses, Goddamn it.

     George Will carries a lot of gravitas and weight in his columns and occasional public pronouncements. Granted, he's not influential enough to shape policy on the Hill by one iota, no journalist is, but I imagine his syndicated column is read by a lot of Wall Street types in their 50th floor corner offices who feel a significant tumescence when they think and fantasize about the size of their portfolios. In other words, white men.

     Which brings me to the thrust of this article.
     Yesterday morning on Fox "News" Sunday, Will made an amazing pronouncement. It was amazing not for its stunning incisiveness but for how thoroughly cherry-picked its conclusion was. When talking about Roger Ailes' abusive domestic partner Donald Trump, Will confidently set about reciting numbers memorized by rote like a Red Sox fan talking about Ted Williams' achievements. And he was right about every one of them.

     Then he gets to his peroration, that if Donald Trump gets elected President, he will turn the GOP into the party of white people.

     Yes, Virginia,there is a Santa Claus, although, contrary to Megyn Kelly, he's not necessarily white.

     As he was working his way up to his conclusion, Will, seemingly without the slightest trace of irony, then listed examples of other white men who had run for and won the presidency, including George HW Bush, George Wallace, Mitt Romney and Ronald Reagan. And all George W proved in name dropping those august statesman was in proving that in recent memory all the GOP ever has been was not only old white men but old white men named George.

By George, I Don't Think He's Got It

     But wait.Wasn't George Wallace a Democrat?

     Yes, yes he was. He was a Democrat in the technical sense that Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller was not to mention Strom Thurmond early in his political career. Wallace, to anyone who doesn't watch television involving an octagon, a wrestling ring or a NASCAR track, was what's long since been called a Dixiecrat. Thurmond, while Governor of South Carolina, ran for President against Thomas E. Dewey and President Harry Truman on the 1948 Democratic ticket. But Thurmond's entire platform seemed to consist of enforcing the segregation in the South he felt would be threatened by the more liberal elements of his party.

     Thurmond, as we all know, later became a Republican when he felt his obsolete, antebellum view of the Democratic Party had betrayed him and the cause for "states' rights." (Remember Reagan's famous comment that "I didn't leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left me." In other words, it left him in the 19th century while the Democrats progressed into the 20th.) And while Thurmond's defection itself didn't bring about the Nixon-era Southern Strategy completely ignored by Will, it was certainly symptomatic of the disaffection the South felt about the fall of the confederacy, the abolition of slavery and the humiliation of Reconstruction.

     The Republican Party's ingeniousness was in convincing millions of low-information voters to blame liberal Democrats for their miserable lot in life instead of the conservative values that brought about the ruinous Civil War in the first place (a war of "states' rights" that still, over a century and a half later, has destructive consequences). Will slipping in George Wallace's name was sneaky and apparently not even noticed by the Fox panel. It seemed to be Will perpetuating the old trope that Democrats (aka liberals) also engage in antebellum racism. It doesn't seem to matter to Will that George Wallace, and others of his ilk, did not represent the mainstream Democratic establishment that gave us the Civil Rights Act (which Thurmond viciously filibustered for over 24 straight hours in 1957) and the Voting Rights Act in 1964 and 1965, respectively. And it's no coincidence that Thurmond became a Republican in 1964, the year LBJ signed the CRA into law.

What if We Held a Debate and No Republicans Showed Up?

     How soon Will forgot his recent history, such as July 12, 2007, when xenophobic racist Tom Tancredo won the NAACP GOP debate simply by showing up. One could almost suspect the NAACP of entrapment by even agreeing to host a GOP debate in the first place but if that was their aim, it worked magnificently. Out of the nine GOP contenders invited, all but Tancredo had "scheduling conflicts" that prevented their attendance. Of course, we all know the reason for the almost unanimous absences: It's the same reason Donald Trump pretends to have never heard of David Duke while refusing to condemn the KKK:

     Alienation of the disaffected white southern voters who still believe, and will always believe to their dying day, that mainstream Democrats and liberals are the root cause of all their ills. Forget the fact that a direct line can be drawn between the old Dixiecrats and the latter day GOP simply by taking a cursory look at their never-ending attempts to disenfranchise African American and other Democratic-leaning minority voters. The common denominator for the official and unofficial Jim Crow laws is the very racism embraced and used to cynical advantage by Trump and his conservative predecessors.

     But the fact remains that to this day, there are only three African American Republicans currently serving in Congress, including appointee Senator Tim Scott from Thurmond's state of SC, the first southern African American to be voted into the upper chamber since the 1880's. And there's a perfectly valid reason why, without exception, every single African American member of Congress up until 1935 ran as a Republican. That was during the early Roosevelt years when the Democrats became the good guys and the Republicans eventually ossified into the party of white men.

     Which Will is only now saying it will become in a purely theoretical sense, if Trump gets elected president.

     Perhaps the quintessential right wing bean counter needs to attend a Cruz rally or any Teabagger rally and see if he can count the black faces. Perhaps he can dig up four year-old pictures of the Romney campaign to see how many black people were in attendance. Or McCain's campaign from eight years ago, especially after the introduction of a certain Wasilla hillbilly who spoke about "white real America."

     And when Will's time comes to join William F. Buckley on that Big Fainting Couch in the Sky, perhaps David Brooks will then assume the mantle of America's most prominent intellectual conservative. But Brooks is himself the master cherry picker, the Earl of Ideological Elision, unable to see the real, inherent racist evil of his chosen party. And when Our Dear Mr. Brooks does assume that mantle, the conservative movement will be no better off than it is now.

In the Most Perishable of Mediums

     As in real life, we tend to be shocked when people we know online pass away. I don't know if it's just me but I at least, and perhaps some of you, tend to think our online presence confers some immortality upon us. And up to a point, that's true. Many who have died still have active Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Youtube accounts as well as blogs.
     But in many cases, that simply isn't true. Take the tragic case of Diane Hugo, aka Dusty Taylor.
     Diane was apparently murdered by her own son roughly a year ago with a gunshot wound to the head. Her body was then stuffed in a freezer, along with that of her dog, and it wasn't found until last November by a squatter who'd been occupying her home. By this time, her son had committed suicide in San Luis Obispo two days after being served eviction papers for nonpayment of rent.
     I can't speak but for myself for how familiar any of you reading this are with the history of liberal blogs and those who write about politics. As bloggers are of course mortal creatures, we've had to say farewell to quite a few of our own: Jon Swift, Joe Bageant, Steve Gilliard, Bob Rixon and Andrew Olmstead, just to name a few. But aside from the obvious, there are many things in particular that are disturbing about this death.
     Diane and I followed each other on Twitter, as we both knew of each others' existence. As far as I know, we never directly communicated on that domain nor did we comment on each others' blogs. But we were both at least on the edge of our respective radar screens and that has to count for something.
     And now it seems, despite her having no other family of which I'm aware, much of Diane's online presence has been erased. One of her blogs, thankfully not the infamous Left Wing Nut Job, and her Twitter account have been deleted. Her abrupt and violent abduction from our lives especially bothers me because I'd unfollowed her Dusty Taylor Twitter account (with the avatar of a cat wearing a tin foil hat) some time last year for the simple reason she wasn't posting any more (I do that with inactive accounts every other month or so).
     Her death bothers me because I've been so out of the loop lately I did not even know about Diane's murder until minutes ago when I read an old post by my friend Lisa Golden she'd written last January. Yeah, Diane's been dead for a year, during which much of the time her son lived with her corpse in the house like something out of Psycho and I, someone who used to pride himself about being informed and a good researcher, didn't even know one of my online friends and colleagues was dead.
     Unlike virtually all my other posts, I don't have a point in mind. Yet moreso than usual of late, I feel compelled to write about Diane. I need to do this because she was one of us. She was an unabashed, shameless liberal political blogger who also didn't much like Obama (just before she left Blogger and went to her now-defunct Wordpress blog four and a half years ago, she'd called him "the worst negotiator in the history of US Presidents", which he absolutely is. The ACA proved that.).
     And it's almost as if she never existed. Life in Oildale, where she'd lived and died, has moved on and her murder and the bizarre circumstances arising from that hardly even make anyone shake their head anymore. Her online presence had mysteriously been almost completely erased. And there's something very unfair and intolerable about that.
     Maybe that's it. Maybe my entire motive for writing about Diane Hugo and her murder was so we do not forget her, what she'd written, what she'd stood for and the profane, often obscene but indelible way in which she'd framed her jeremiads. We work in a very topical medium about a subject (politics) in which a week can be an eternity. What's relevant today can easily be irrelevant and old news by tomorrow.
     And especially since Google stopped caching online material, we work in the most perishable of mediums. I've been saying this for years, that we're just one server crash, hack or delete button away from being silenced almost as if, like the Pottersville George Bailey, we'd never been born. But it doesn't make it right when one of our own is taken from us, especially so senselessly and violently. Her life and death could still stand for so many things:
     She was a 62 year-old woman when she died, a foul-mouthed old hippie who nonetheless usually found herself on the right side of issues. She did not succumb to outrage fatigue and was my soulmate in irascibly railing on about the new administration, the new Blogger, the new Firefox update and everything else that made her howl with indignation.
     She could stand as a symbol for the need for sensible gun control and the importance of adequate funding for mental health counseling.
     Or you could remember her just because she was our friend. As Lisa put it last January,

I know that some of you were friends with Dusty. I wanted you to know so that you might honor her memory, say a little prayer or just think of her, her intelligence, her passion for liberal causes and her unforgettable foul mouth.

     I do not know if anyone will memorialize me on my own passing or even if anyone will break the news. Diane had no one, no partner or confederate to tell the world what had happened. And sometimes we bloggers wonder about that. Who will break the news, especially those of us with one man blogs. Will our thoughts survive our bodies?
     I refuse to forget Diane Hugo, although I hardly knew her at any level. But she was often on the peripheries of my consciousness, with her familiar avatar of the tinfoil hatted cat showing up on my Twitter feed before it suddenly disappeared for good. She was a human being and an intelligent, discriminating one, a passionate woman and one of us.
     And she deserves to be remembered even in this most perishable of mediums.

Good Times at Pottersville, 3/19/16

 

The Kitten's Just to Get Your Attention

     But our current circumstances are more serious and analogous to poor kitty above.
     I've tried to hold back since late last year from asking for help because after seven years of constant bad luck, a lot of you have, understandably and justifiably, washed your hands of me. But last month and this month, financially, have been brutal for us when everything came due almost at once.
     A quick rundown: Biannual registration renewal: $60
     Annual excise taxes: $45
     Annual inspection sticker: $35
     Last car insurance premium: $76+ (which will get my broker off my back until June)
     Book cover for my next novel: $75 (Some of you may think this is an extravagance but in the event I can't get it represented, I'll have to self-publish it and that requires a cover. Besides, this guy, James Moore out of Mobile, Alabama, did my last cover and he does excellent work & in record time.)
     This July, Mrs. JP's license is also up for renewal and Lord only knows what they jacked that up to.
     And that doesn't include the regular foreseen bills such as rent, electric, gas, phone, cells, internet, gasoline, sundries, etc. Despite one very kind benefactor who's our sole lifeline, we're still falling further and further behind each month and our Paypal account is virtually empty.
     Plus I'll have a tie rod job looming on the near horizon on account of my driving over a curb today to avoid hitting a woman who tried to cut me off. That'll be at least $200 and it was bad to begin with (if I didn't know the mechanic who did my inspection this month, it would've flunked me). My power steering is fucked up and the wheel will no longer straighten itself out. So by this time next month, barring a boost, we could run out of money before the end of April. And our new landlord's a total douchebag who wouldn't take kindly at all to being told to wait for his rent money.
     To give you an idea of how straitened our finances have been, for the first time we didn't even turn the heat on this winter. Keep in mind we live in central MA and we've had some sub zero nights this past winter. If we need some quick heat, we just leave the oven door open.
     On a positive note, as proof of the luck of the Irish, yesterday my new Kindle and paperback novel, Gods of Our Fathers, got requested by two literary agencies, the first time that's ever happened in one day. Hopefully, the worm will turn and my luck will finally change for the better.
     Remember, I have more than just me to look out for and we're still reeling from the huge outlay of cash we made a year ago when Mrs. JP's mother passed away last year and the incidental expenses since last month didn't help any. Any assistance you can give us would be so appreciated. In fact, I'll renew my offer from last time and offer anyone who kicks in $25 or more a free paperback copy of Gods of Our Fathers or any of my other titles. I've got lots of spare copies lying around and a few boxes to ship them in.
     But we really are figuratively at the end of our rope and your assistance would be YUUUGELY appreciated, as Trump would say.

A St Patty's Day Joke

An Irishman was out golfing when he sliced his shot and drove the ball into the rough.
     Poking around in the woods, he came across a leprechaun caught in a hunter's snare.
     "Ah! kind Sir, please free me, for I am caught in this trap!" the leprechaun cried. Then the man kindly took the rope from his ankle.
     "I thank ye, dear man. And for your good deed, I will grant you one magic wish, I will. Anything you want, 't is yours."
     The golfer thought for a minute then said,
     "I would like to have twice as much sex, I would."
     "Granted!" the leprechaun said with a gleam in his little green eyes and the two went their separate ways.
     A month later, the same golfer was on the same course and again he sliced his shot into the rough. When he passed the treeline, he saw the same leprechaun sitting high above on a tree limb.
     "Well, did your wish come true, me boyo?" the leprechaun asked.
     "That it did," the golfer replied. "I'm having sex, two, three times a month."
     "Two or three times a month?" the leprechaun asked in dismay. "Is that all?"
     "Well, that's not bad for a priest..."

Good Times at Pottersville, 3/17/16

 

Hate Means Never Having to Say "I'm Sorry."

Good Times at Pottersville, 3/16/16