A Day In The Anti-Life - Impeachment Diary 2019!

And now as the impeachment of a president looms yet again, I find I'm at another period of life. I'm a widower with two grown daughters who are off and working in this wide world. I live alone pretty much save for a little snippy mutt I inherited from my late lovely wife who only ever called our current leader by one dismissive but deadly accurate sobriquet --"Dumb Ass". I spend my days teaching school for a little bit longer and watching old movies and reading old comic books and from time to time hacking out a dram or two for this here blog. The President being impeached this time is Donald J. Trump and rarely has a public figure earned more scorn and so deserved to driven into the backwaters of public discourse . He is a one-man blight on our land.

Trump is the most flawed individual to ever take the helm of these United States, a narcissist with a sadistic twist who craves power for its own sake and who appears incapable of any actual empathy for his fellow man or especially woman. He has found a groove in American politics, one scratched out by years, if not decades of open as well as secret corruption, and played that against those he dubs members of "the swamp". Intimidated by anyone with actual experience and acumen, he uses his office and the power it carries to beat off criticism of his often evident ignorance. And he's used his office and the integrity of the nation's interests to further his own individual campaign to be seek the office yet again in the Ukraine matter. It's called abuse of power and he attempted to coerce a foreign power to do his personal bidding. His constitutional violations are manifest and it only remains for the other authorities in our government to do their due diligence.

When my first impeachment happened I was a feckless youth and the President in question bowed to the will of the Congress and resigned before he could be removed, showing at least that level of respect for the office he occupied. When my second impeachment arrived, I was a husband and father in the middle of a career and the President of that time grudgingly accepted the condemnation that Congress delivered. With my third impeachment nearly here I am an older man, near retirement and the President in question is a threat to the republic who should be removed forthwith, but who won't be. And I only fear that if and when he loses his office a year hence he will respect the will of the people enough to step down. That is an open question in my book, one that only the future can reveal. The system has failed utterly to hold him in check save in a few instances of the courts, so it will remain for the people to decide if this self-absorbed, often witless, bullshit artist (and likely traitor) is to represent the American people yet again. Sadly I have come to fear the worst. The ugly shameful truth is that if Donald J. Trump is reelected to the office of President with all we know, it will be because as hard as it is to admit, he will be the leader America deserves.

But this is Thanksgiving Day, my favorite holiday of the year, a singularly American holiday. And I'm thankful that I am able to belch my displeasure at the way things are. Our current leader will not be our only leader, such as the citizens suffer under in Russia, China, North Korea, Turkey, Syria,  and other regions of the globe. This buffoon is our cross to bear for a little while and then he will be done, and if not then the streets of this land will well and truly fill. Today I choose to be hopeful.

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Utterly Incredible Comic Book Covers!

A lot of folks seem to see a parallel between our current "So-Called" President and a certain dim-witted radiation-spawned monster from the world of Marvel Comics. So what does Donald Trump the orange-hued...ahem... "Leader of the Free World" have in common with the Hulk, a green-hued man-monster who is driven by his out-sized impulses and doesn't fully understand the implications of his power or the influence he has on those around him, if he thinks of them at all. Quite a lot actually. Here's a tiny gallery of Hulk-Trump covers.

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A Day In The Anti-Life - Royal Decrees!

I've always remembered the stupendous page above from the pages of the delightful and sadly defunct Fantastic Four series. This is from the story sequence in which Doctor Doom captures the Fab 4 and holds them as "Prisoners" of sorts inside his Lateverian "Village". I thought of this Kirby rendition of  self-absorbed self-aggrandizement when I first saw our Prevaricator-In-Chief's first Cabinet meeting yesterday.


I have nothing else to say about this gobsmacking ass-kissing spectacle. If you've not seen it, just watch the video (this is an edited version...believe it or not it went on much much longer).


If you need to cleanse your essence after all that insincere schmaltz, then give this off-the-cuff parody from Chucky Schumer a try.

As one fictional monarch once remarked "Sufferin' Shad!"

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A Day In The Anti-Life - Alternate Universes!

I sometimes think my long years of experience with comics and science fiction and the myriad worlds and variations on worlds which are encountered therein has in particularly prepared me for the coming of what is often referred to in the media as "Trumpworld". "Trumpworld", or the reality which surrounds our current "so-called" President is a "reality" (note the quotes...as we've learned quotes are mucho important) which is often filled with alternative facts and downright hoaxes, the stuff and matter which fills the "brain" of our current Crackpot-In-Chief.

I'm a lifelong follower of hoaxes and crackpot theories, though more as someone fascinated by what makes such claptrap tick rather than involving myself in the theories themselves. Whether one adheres to the outlandish concepts of the Flat Earth Society, the acolytes of Erich Van Daniken, or even the invariably disproven claims of the current "Leader" of the Free World (again notice the quotes), it is incumbent on reasoning people to use the best information available to them to calculate a reasonable understanding of the world around them.

I've long used Carl Sagan's oft-quoted approach of "extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence" to help me sort out the daily chaff which fills the coffers of the modern internet-consuming citizen. You suggest something is amazing and true, then it's up to you to put forth evidence which is compelling and it absolutely ain't up to me to disprove the negative (actual reality most often) to refute your nonsense. Thus it is with the "great and powerful" Trump.

When in a fit of old man rage he ranted that Barrack Obama had "wiretapped" his NYC obelisk, he made a claim so extraordinary that it was incumbent on the common folk to demand extraordinary evidence. Instead we get nothing, but a smear based on nonsense cobbled together from random speculation based on scant actual facts. In an alternate universe where enthusiasm and conviction replace reason and wisdom, we are now consumed by the evident fact that our current "so-called" President is an unctuous liar. We already knew this, but always people who hope to glean a bit of ready cash off the power bestowed on Trump are willing to throw themselves and their tattered credibility on the pyre of his prevarications.

Hopefully this ends, but of course it will never end until the mope who pretends to lead our country is at the end of his natural tenure, is removed from office, or wanders off Palin-like after a few years having grown bored with the actual day-to-day grind of being a leader of the people. Our "emperor" has no clothes and it's well past time that everyone with even one good eye told the jaybird so.

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A Day In The Anti-Life - Deep States!

Suddenly my "so-called" President and acolytes are railing on about something called the "deep state". I admit I didn't know what a "deep state" was until I looked it up -- here's what I found:

"a body of people, typically influential members of government agencies or the military, believed to be involved in the secret manipulation or control of government policy"

Now I see. It's a crackpot theory to explain away the rank incompetence of the current administration, a fanciful target to help our "so-called" President justify to his hordes of followers why he is too ham-fisted to keep any of his really difficult promises, the ones that don't involve demonizing people of color. (It's the 21st century incarnation of the old "Trilateral Commision" hoodoo.) I've come to the simple conclusion that the current leader of the United States is not only a flim- flam artist who has pulled off the greatest heist in American history, but now I know he's also a complete and utter fool.

Unable to control the people who work for him, he instead screams to his hot-headed followers about a "Shadow Presidency" run by the the former leader of the free world, his ready target of convenience. The the word "shadow" here has two meanings when applied to our former president should not be lost on anyone. Trump is a racist, and based on current evidence always will be. You can mix that with whatever fruit juice you care to find if it offends you to hear it, but it's the awful plain and  painful truth.

It's pitifully ironic that a political party which makes so much hay bitching and moralizing about how poor folks and folks of color should quit whining about their lots in life and not make excuses, are downright eager to identify scapegoats to excuse and rationalize their own failures. Personal responsibility is for those who can't afford a publicist I guess, or in the case of our "so-called" President a press secretary.

Whatever failings you attributed to the Obama administration, it was a remarkably fresh period for recent American history in that despite for nearly all his tenure having an adversarial congress that there were no significant or even minor scandals. The Obama administration seemed to play straight most of the time. claptrap about the IRS (never proven by even the slack standards of FOX news) or Benghazi (more a myth after crackpots got finished screwing with it) notwithstanding. Even the current flap over Susan Rice attempting apparently to uncover the nefarious schemes of the Trumpsters is being cast in the light of the state pounding the poor lowly citizen instead of what it is, the outgoing administration attempting in whatever legal way it can to forestall or at least reveal the foreign plots of its replacements.

The new guys on the other hand are so wantonly corrupt they can't even see the investigations slap them upside the noggin. Even with a friendly congress Trump and his gang of cronies are about to endure investigations into several scandals not the least of which is the presence of Mike Flynn in the administration, a man who we now know actually did work for a country (Turkey) which actually did have a "deep state". Now that's some "deep state" indeed.

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A Day In The Anti-Life - Poison Pills!

I am constantly bewildered by the fact that people will time and again vote against their own best interests. If there is anything that a vote should register, it is the needs of a particular population, and when those people choose for whatever network of misguided reasons to ignore their own situation and instead cast votes which help others (often others who don't need the help) it's a curious thing. Now that's not to say that people shouldn't vote to help those who need help, that's a different story, but when you consciously vote to harm your own station in life, it seems a strange way to approach politics.

I live in Kentucky, a commonwealth with a varied landscape. In the west there are rolling hills and large meadows with abundant water, which make agriculture profitable, and in the east there are mountains which have for many decades isolated the people who live there from the larger world. That's where I was born, in the hills of Appalachia, a territory which in my more romantic moments reminds me of Robert E.Howard's Cimmeria, a nigh mythical land full of tough folks who live hard scrabble lives and prefer by and large to be left alone. That said, they are often preyed upon by pols who want to curry votes by appealing to the strongly felt and tightly held religious values of the people.

Driven to a near frenzy by gay marriage a few years ago, Kentuckians voted into office a governor who was (ironically enough in a state with more than its share of  the bituminous stuff) a "canary in the coal mine" of sorts for the coming of the awful Trump. The appearance of "leadership" like this has caused much of the social fabric which was in place to assist the poorest folks in my state to wither. It's arguable that no state benefited more from Obamacare than did Kentucky, but despite that, the Democrats who made that profound improvement in life possible have been rebuffed nearly in totality. Now with the latest farrago in Washington over healthcare even more people, the poorest people will be cast out into the cold so that the bank accounts of  the already comfortable can inflate a wee bit more.

But, maybe even as we speak, my fellow Kentuckians, a group who voted for our "so-called" President in droves, are realizing that their beloved leader, Paul Ryan and his Republican "Gang of Hate" are about to throw them into the ditch for the miserable sakes of the wild cats on Wall Street who can score an extra fraction of a point of profit in their quarterly reports. The sick and elderly are about to be told that the United States of America, the richest country on the face of the planet does not have the resources or more accurately the will among its population to guarantee each of its citizens even the most basic healthcare. They are being told that getting sick and not being able to afford the exorbitant care which is all that they have at their doorstep (if they're lucky enough to have that) is a personal moral failing, and that they should've thought ahead and saved money they never had for a rainy day when in truth they live day in and day out in a fucking monsoon.

Kentucky is, to put it in the most purile Randian form, a taker-state. We extract more from the federal government than we contribute, but in spite of this humbling situation, we are saddled with two Senators who seem intent on making sure that the poorest of this poor state, their own constituents, get as little from their government as they can arrange. Even if Rand Paul in his adolescent philosophy imagines that people ought to do for themselves at all times, I cannot for the life of me figure out how a man who purports to be a healer can look at the folks around him and say to them that they need to do with less support for healthcare. (All the while, he follows in his father's footsteps in the family business which it turns out is drawing a perpetual federal paycheck for all their palaver about private industry.)

The Republicans are intent on "repealing" Obamacare, even though they know perfectly well they cannot do so really without Democratic cooperation. So they will simply defund the current healthcare program by a series of parliamentary gimmicks instead of repair it as it needs, and replace it with a matchstick variation guaranteed to satisfy few and instead merely allow for the pols to shuffle off and wash their collective hands of this difficult responsibility. They can get to their true work of seeing to it that the wealth of this nation which has aggregated into a tiny set of hands stays there in hereditary perpetuity. So much for the American dream, unless you happen to hit the lottery, an inordinate number of three-point shots, or perhaps three hundred on the field of dreams.

Maybe I'm all wrong and the reduction of taxes (yet again) will allow all boats to rise as the economy drinks its fill. But history says that is not going to happen and that the cruise ships with which the rich and famous trim the waves will eventually leave behind their fellow citizens, the unfortunates who can only ever afford a tiny raft, if they're lucky.

But then as we've learned from our Crackpot-In-Chief -- "Nobody knew health care could be so complicated."

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A Day In The Anti-Life - Fourth Estate!

I've been a consumer of television news my whole life. I'm part of that generation which didn't move from newspapers to TV, but rather always suckled at the glass teat (as Harlan Ellison put it). News was something that happened a few times a day in my early years, in the morning, at noon and then again in the evening. There were local news reports often followed on by national news which hailed from three networks, of which the most venerable seemed to be CBS headed by Walter Cronkite. I personally grew up in an NBC household and the venerable team of Chet Huntley and  David Brinkley were the go-to voices for important things in the world. News was just news, and then it changed.

With the advent of cable news and more specific types of television channels came into existence. Famously people think of MTV but the most important addition to the TV dial was a project from Ted Turner, the owner of the Atlanta Braves and a major force in early cable development with TBS (Turner Broadcasting Services) and later Turner Classic Movies. What that addition was, was Cable News Network or CNN for short. CNN changed the way folks consumed news, now you were forced to wait for the dollops of news that the networks delivered in neatly packaged half-hour and sometimes hour long dosages, but were able to see the news when you wanted to.

One of the problems of course with a station hosting twenty-four hours of news is that finding enough news might be an issue. It sometimes was, but early on CNN's format was sort of to just keep doing regular news reports but over and over with occasional updates. By many reports it became normal for CNN to be left on in many offices and breaking stories merely unfolded in real time before our eyes. The first Gulf War really was an opportunity for CNN to show its mettle and it did so.

CNN proved successful and soon there were others like MSNBC and FOX who jumped onto the cable news business and CNN's luster faded. The network has been a real disappointment for many years and seemed content with light material with an entertainment spin or glomming onto whatever story seemed to be the center of spectacle at the time. While some critics still had regard for its overseas efforts, domestically CNN was a station I came to avoid. With an eye permanently on the ratings meter they milked meager stories for all they were worth and then some. A low point for me was the Boston bombing story which was generally a debacle for news reporting but for CNN offered countless chances to screw up as they seemed unable to even properly report what was happening before their very eyes.

And then came Donald Trump, the man destined to become our current "so-called" President. And with the advent of "The Donald" CNN has blossomed and become again a news organization worth the title. One one hand it can be suggested that the rise of Trump is just the latest fad they have glommed onto, but it's been a long long time now and they seem to have left that attitude behind for now...at least I hope that's the case.

What I'm seeing from CNN these days is for real hard-nosed reporting by competent experienced tough-minded reporters taking proper journalistic care and delivering the goods on a regular basis. (MSNBC is too political too much of the time and Fox is downright disreputable too much of the time. Of note is how Mark Levine hijacked their air to rant and rave about the "wiretaps" in Trump Tower. A miserable bit of blather which got no push back but rather got merely pushed.) Reporters have not been slow to speak truth to power and they have been stalwart when the powers want to strike back. "Access" has always been the weapon that the powerful have used to tame the press, in other words demanding concessions in coverage to guarantee the ability to speak with the particulars. That weapon seems to have lost its potency with the Trump machine who either don't know how to use it deftly enough or are so egregious that finally at last that trade off is seen as too profane for the consciences of those in charge of the Fourth Estate.

Trump and his cronies have tried to belittle and undermine the press and they have been successful to some degree. The general public is convinced that the "media" (whatever that is) is not reliable, at least not as reliable and trustworthy apparently as a proven racist misogynistic serial liar who stumbled into the role of "Leader of the Free World". But sometimes people get pretty desperate to believe what they want to believe.  Despite these attacks by the powers above, the press and in particular CNN have not relented nor swooned in the heat of criticism. Instead they seem inspired to pour it on even more.

Cutting the mainstream press out of the loop in the White House is a foolish attempt to curb criticism and it's doomed to fail. The press does not require access to cover a public official nor a public event and now that "The Donald" has fallen out of his private tower of personal glory and moved into the "People's House" he will find much more difficult to hold the press at bay.

CNN is fulfilling its promise when it launched all those decades ago. It is doing what journalism is supposed to do in a free country, bringing the tough news to those folks who are in charge of this country really, the people. That some of those people might still prefer to drink the Kool-Aid provided by the Trump machine is not something purveyors of the facts can be concerned with. (I notice that Fox is doling it out in heaping helpings about this most recent fracas over wiretaps; disgraceful claptrap that even their own reporters have trouble defending, though others seem downright eager to once again stoke up the outrage machine which they keep primed with annual blasts at those who don't celebrate Christmas in the correct manner.) So it is even more important that CNN's folks keep their noses to the ground and find the facts and present them. You know those facts are uncomfortably close to the truth when the focus of the investigation begins to squall and  yells foul.

The purpose of journalism is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. To that end CNN is the tip of the spear in the modern American news landscape, I congratulate them and challenge them to keep it up for all our sakes. And I hope that if and when the ratings slip, they don't abandon their mission. It's too important.

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A Day In The Anti-Life - Retrograde!

I will never forget the amazing sense of pride I felt nearly a decade ago now when my country rose above its centuries of shame to elevate a black man to the highest office in the land. It was hoped in that grand moment that finally, at last the United States, a country built on ideals had in some small way made good on promises long ago imagined and codified but almost always ignored in the grim reality of a grudging history. A nation conceived in liberty but for too long beholding to rank slavery  was a nation which suffered the gravest of cognitive dissonances when it came to offering freedom to men and women. The progress of liberalism, the notion that freedoms and opportunities should be spread to an ever wider array of different kinds of peoples has been the hallmark of a country which often ignores these ideals for the convenience of a moment. What was once imagined and fashioned to be a nation for the benefit of white men has slowly become a nation built for the benefit of women and peoples of all races and ethnic backgrounds.

Or at least that was what we thought.

So long ago now it seems on that chilly day when Barrack Hussein Obama took the oath of office to become President. It was like watching a dream I never imagined I'd see in my lifetime, and I was filled with pride that my fellow Americans had finally done such a thing.

Now we know different.

The election of our current "so-called" President can only ever be seen as a backlash directed at the grand achievements of that time now seemingly so distant though less still than ten years gone. While the goal of seeing a black man lead our nation was inspiring it clearly filled many folks with dread. and even unspoken they fabricated all sorts of fanciful fables of fear to justify their irrational animus. They will tell you now that they were just motivated by his "radical" ideas, ideas such as attempting to modify the healthcare system in the United States using a Republican template as the model, continuing to press the wars begun under Republican leadership against terrorism in dozens of nations across the globe, and of course deporting the invidious aliens who have penetrated the sacred veneer of American society and thrive in our midst, more than any Republican in modern times. Yeah, those kinds of ideas. Obama was a centrist President in a country that no longer seems to understand what that word means; Obama promoted policies which once would have seemed commonplace in any moderate Republican administration. For the most part he governed like Nixon.

And now we have another one inspired by Nixon.

The current "so-called" President looks to Richard Nixon not for policy guidance but for a model on which to fashion a secretive cult of personality inside the oval office which attempts to skirt the normal practices of lawmaking and invest the executive with supreme power. That attempt at such overwhelming power has been to no small degree rebuffed by the courts, and so the nation will survive I suspect and dearly hope. But will it thrive? Our current "so-called" President is lost in a nest of personality ticks and his avaricious desire to keep access to his personal wealth even as he "serves" the country,  could well be eventually undone by the nature of his campaign which appears to have been infested with foreign interference. Some speak blithely of what could be the greatest scandal in American history. I've heard reporters who I know are calm and careful, state with what appears to general understanding that our current "so-called" President is compromised in the most fundamental ways. That remains to be uncovered.

But in the meantime we lose sight of the hope inspired by that election nearly a decade gone which filled me with pride. We now have a leader who seems eager to gather up as many brown people as he can locate and usher them out of the country so that those of us of the proper complexion who are left can cower behind a fence which in the end will keep us in more than it keeps anyone out. In a country which is producing not enough children to replenish the population  we depend upon the great wash of immigration to refuel our mission to make life better for everyone. Now the country seems intent on just the opposite. Under obscure phrases like "economic nationalism" the nativist impulse has found yet one more shadow box to hide within as cowards, afraid of the wide world seek to make of America one enormous gated community.

Progress is not an easy thing and it's the nature of things that as they move forward they will move back a bit. But the cause of freedom in the United States, for all its limitations has moved forward over the years and will continue. Going back might occur for a moment in time as those afraid of what's to come take hold of the fear change brings, but we must always believe that despite the retrograde nature of change that change will come regardless.

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A Day In The Anti-Life - Medium Massacre!

I did not intend to do another one of these for a while but then the clown car driven by our "so-called" President got personal. My daughter who lives in Bowling Green, Kentucky e-mailed me at work the other day and said not to worry that she had survived the "Bowling Green Massacre". I had no idea what the heck she was talking about in that moment and with a mote of true concern immediately responded as a parent is wont to do (helplessly with a dash of mild panic). But then I garnered a strain of satire in her note and decided to google the phrase "Bowling Green Massacre" and learned that Kellyanne Conway (she of the infamous "Alternate Facts") had babbled on about some sort of shoot out in Bowling Green Kentucky in 2011, and was using this imaginary bloodbath to justify the current attempts by our "so-called" President's team to keep out students, doctors and cancer patients from seven mostly Muslim countries. But like so many Trumpian pronouncements the truth took a hit, a palpable hit. Here is the true story of what happened in Bowling Green in 2011, well within the living memories of most Americans. (And by the way are you listening Chris Mathews, that tingle running down your leg is your credibility burning up -- call this crap out when it happens.)

Such misbegotten missteps would've forced most spokesmen (and women) to have walked the plank by now (or jumped ship at the very least). But in the morass which is led by the most brazen liar the modern world has ever had to suffer in high office, she's but a small fish in the very murky pond. But this uproar did spark a lot of snarky response, some of it quite funny. See the bogus landmark marker above which some talented soul has fashioned with dazzling digital skills. That got a straight up guffaw from me. The Frederick Douglass line is just "amazing".

As absurd and unintentionally hilarious as this most recent humbug is (still early in the morning so it could be topped at any moment at the rate this gang pops off ) there's a core to this nonsense which is truly scary. The "Bowling Green Massacre" is now in the bloodstream of the internets (I'm adding to it right now) and will still be believed as a true thing years from now by those determined to make themselves comfortable with the current "so-called" President's cretinous confederation. It joins similar balderdash like the fake moon landing, Bigfoot, and our "so-called" President's popular vote victory on the grassy knoll of nonsense. Truth and objective reality are taking a shellacking right now in this land of ours,and I don't see any sign of it letting up, but those of us with clear eyes and ready memories must battle on. We are about to enter a realm which Orwell could only begin to imagine where not only will facts not matter, but they will change fortnightly (or even more quickly it seems) to suit the immediate wants and needs of those in power.

The "Bowling Green Massacre" never happened. But the casualties of that bogus battle in a southern Kentucky town might well be each and every one of us, and we will suffer from it for a very long time to come.

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A Day In The Anti-Life - Mucho Sadness!

It might be worse than I thought.

One of the many reasons that Jack Kirby is a hero of mine is not only his utterly earth-shaking creativity in the relatively small world of comic books, but his dedication to promoting themes of individual freedom and his utter rejection of the mindset which makes dictatorships possible. This is most evident in his "Fourth World" material in which the mcguffin that lies at the heart of so much of the action is a dread secret  hidden in the brains of some humans which the deadly Darkseid and his minions scheme to get their cold bloody mitts on called the "Anti-Life Equation".

This symbolic device was for my teenage self a mystery of sorts. I never really grokked what the hubbub was about, but it was sufficient for me that this thing, buried in the subconscious minds of various humans was a proper motivation to make the New Gods fight and supply me with diversion and entertainment. That I didn't understand the complete theme was at the time beside the point. But I've grown up.

The Anti-Life Equation is an arcane formula which gives its handler the power over the minds and wills of other humans, it is the ability to make slaves of others and bend them to your will for whatever purposes you desire. It is the master scheme to make all of humanity slaves, never allow them to realize it, and instead make them relish their fate. It is the willful sacrifice of personal freedom to enter into a pact with an unholy master, to make of oneself a submissive acolyte.

Kirby explored the concept in the New Gods saga and to lesser extents in Captain Victory and elsewhere. The sundry insect armies he created at Marvel, DC, Pacific and elsewhere point back to this notion that individuals can disappear inside an army of drones dedicated to the welfare of an overwhelming master intellect.

That grim reality, so deftly explored by Kirby so many decades ago and informed by his Jewish heritage and experiences before during and after World War II are of great moment to us in America today when we find ourselves once "again" asked to surrender our selves to something "great", to something which promises to a select company the chimera of perfect security if only they will hold at bay all those "others" who threaten the modern myth of perfect tranquility.

Our new Leader is an exceedingly dangerous fellow, callow and glib, and apparently lacking much if any empathy for those who fall outside his immediate family. He is overwhelmed with a need to constantly punch up his degraded self-worth by constantly lying about those who he imagines should adore him. If you fail to fall at his feet, he imagines you are an enemy and are to be sent away. If he cannot corrupt you with is charm, then you are a threat and should, according to his worm-tongued counselor, just "keep [your] mouth shut".

America's foreign policy is now slave to the bottom line of Exxon as its former head man now leads the charge to drop the sanctions on Russia to allow Exxon to exploit the billions of dollars of leases they hold in that distant land. The drive to make Russia our friend is all about the mighty buck as are most things when it comes to this leadership team. As the new Leader pushes the country into a mewling defensive crouch we will fail to even lead from behind as we had been doing. That will inevitably cause problems and then we'll end up on another foreign battlefield somewhere fighting all over again to make America rich again. 

Democrats are at the moment relatively weak and will offer only a token resistance to the whims of his new autocrat who chafes at the limits of constitutional authority. It is up to Republicans to tame the monster they have uncaged and unleashed upon us. But at the moment they are too distracted by the avaricious desire for tax cuts to pay attention to anything else. Once they have secured the fortunes of the rich and mighty then maybe they might deign to pay attention to the problems of the people who find themselves confronted with something relatively new in American history.

I don't want to spend all my time railing against the new order and I will not, but I do feel the need from time to time to get things off my chest and this blog will have to serve so I apologize in advance to those disinterested in that sort of thing. But expect to see "A Day In The Anti-Life" posts from time to time as the destiny of all Americans and the rest of the world spins into all sorts of directions. It's going to be a hair-raising ride I fear.

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The President Who Came In From The Cold!

The news just keeps getting better and better. Not only is it becoming evident that the Russkies hacked the Democratic National Committee and funneled the results of those hacks through the wild west worldwide web outlet of Wikileaks, it seems the incoming President doesn't even believe that happened. (My new measure of how true something is might well be to what extent does Trump disbelieve it. Not perfect, but looking to be often reliable.) When it comes to the former Soviet Union, our incoming leader is just okay with whatever they do, or so it appears.

As I write this we have Trump himself, who trades compliments with the savage Putin, and we have countless new American oligarchs getting posts inside the administration. What's most ironic is that  as is often the case with these "heroes of the workers" it's the workers who suffer the most. (What's with all the hating on unions for instance...sheesh.) As the United States mumbles along in the coming year anticipate amazing tax cuts for the "haves" and not inconsequential tax increases for the "have-nots" and soon to "have-even-less". They won't have to worry about buying health insurance because apparently the plan to repeal and replace has been cut in half and only the first half of the long-bragged-about mythic plan is now operative. So it's back to going to the Emergency room for basic health care at ten times the price, a price we will all eat in our steadily increasing premiums. (I bet they sill blame Obama for it though...just saying.) I'm just waiting for word that medicare is going to go private and that medicaid is going away entirely.

The folks who happily voted for the great and powerful Trump are about to have an exceedingly rude awakening as the Tweeter-In-Chief spends his time watching "the shows" and ignoring the problems of the world. Ensconced in the phallic celebration named Trump Tower he will hover above the fray free of the nagging problem of facts and details.

I suspect folks will want a change in four months, but we're stuck with this mope for four years. Democrats need to get busy. If they can't win after four years of unplugged Republicanism then we are well and truly screwed.

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