Understanding Trumpers

DONALD TRUMP is a self proclaimed sexual predator, apparently proud of it. He is a pathological liar, with all seventeen thousand presidential prevarications documented and verified, time, date, and place, on video, on audio. The Washington Post, owned by Mr. Bezos, publishes them all. The president is a traitor, having committed treason by withholding vital military assistance to a valued ally, assistance intended to discourage aggression of a belligerent, enemy power. The narcissism, the vicious, hateful attacks against all who disagree with him, the chaos within the administration, as witnessed by the constant firings and turnover, all confirmed by inside sources. Every executive department, Education, State, Energy, EPA, is headed by people who are directly antithetical to the intended purpose of the department. The EPA encourages environmental destruction, the state department eschews diplomacy, the department of education under Devos is unfriendly to public education. The list is endless, of Trump's incompetence, criminality, and behavior adverse to American national interests. This makes his continuing support increasingly egregious, increasingly indefensible, increasingly criminal and traitorous, by the day. A prime example of a typical Trump supporter is a gentleman, to use the term loosely, with whom I have the unfortunate fate of sharing our local senior center. He is elderly, evangelical Pentecostal, and quite right wing, politically, a wholehearted Trump supporter. Eagerly he awaits the return of the Lord. He says that Trump is a good president, and is offended that Trump supporter are called "idiots" by their detractors. Actually, we not only call them idiots, we call them traitors as well, but, I digress. This octogenarian idiot assert boldly that the Democratic party is planning to eliminate the Jewish population, and that all Democrats go to hell. How hateful mist a person be to not only believe in "hell", but to desire that all members of an apposing political party spend eternity there merely for political reasons? To even think such reprehensible nonsense reveals an anger, fear, and hatred even greater than the malicious God the evangelical Trump supporters pray to. so great, so pervasive so villainous is this president's criminality, incompetence, and destructive behavior and policies that there is no longer any excuse to defend or support him. On inauguration day, I promised myself I would give Trump a chance, and I did. I would respect Republicans, conservatives, evangelicals, if they would simply say: "I have full faith in my religions, my country, and my political party and political convictions, but those of us who have supported Trump made a mistake, and chose the wrong leader. Now we must correct our incorrect choice." but pf course, this will never happen, as thy choose instead to harden their support, and hence extend their own egregious behavior. It will be a glorious day when Trump, all his supporters, and the vicious religion they espouse are relegated to the dustbin of regrettable history.

Dis Barring, Dissing Barr

ACTING (like an) ATTORNEY GENERAL Wm. "Lower the" Barr gave a speech recently before his own kind, a group of extremely religious people who broadcast their superstition far and wide, hoping that the proverbial shit will hit a wall, and stick; namely, religious broadcasters. Wm. Barr, who stretches law and truth to protect a president with similarly questionable scruples, then turns right around and exalts the virtue of limited government and unfettered religious zeal, and glorifies the holier than thou crusade against all progressive programs, the sort which help people. We are privileged or cursed, to live in an age in which a sufficient plurality of the electorate confronts twenty first century problems with first century solutions to have gained significant political influence, fleetingly, hopefully. Bill Barr, like many if not most Trump supporters, is waiting for the Lord to return, or some other such calamity. Since life as we know it will soon end anyway, why not so behave as to hasten it? Why bother to fight climate change? Why not assist in the implementation of God's will? People like William Barr are frightening, and, like the social critic said, "the fools would be humorous were they not in such deadly earnest". The world never ends when we think it will. It didn't end when the year 999 became the year one thousand, nor in 1843 or when American evangelist William Miller had thousands of gullible Americans standing on hilltops, bags packed, bank accounts liquidated; for good measure, when it didn't happen the first time, he tried again a year later, but with less support. Finally, mercifully, he faded away. Y2K turned out to be a fizzle; all that bottled water, toilet paper, and deep excavations in the back yard gone for naught. Just yesterday our token extreme right wing evangelical religious zealot Trump lover, when told that the Corona virus was beginning to spread, predictably proclaimed that it is written in the Bible that there shall be trials and tribulations shortly before the return of the Lord, and that therefore, said Lordly return must surely be imminent. Of course, they've been saying that for, oh, two thousand years. So, Mr. Barr ranted in front of the religious radio folks about the perils of big government, and the war on God, and condemned rendering unto Caesar and giving unto the poor. Harmless toxin, were he not in an actual position of authority. My local reprobate is less harmful, only because he hasn't the power or authority to help spread the Corona virus widely in self fulfilling prophecy, much as he might want to. The sliver lining is that both of these diseased minds are old, and won't spread their contagion much longer.

Sinking Beneath the Sea, and Rising Into Heaven

CHARMING CHARLESTON, South Carolina, like the rest of the world's coastal cities, is sinking, as the sea level rises, globally. The Atlantic ocean is flooding the land with ever greater frequency. Compounding this is that much of the city is built on filled marshland, sacrament of greed, and demand for oceanfront land. Homeowners of lovely Victorian mansions are resorting to sandbags and stilts. Selling is not an option; there is no market for doomed merchandise and submerged real estate. Meanwhile, in the American south, in mid February, mosquitoes are abundant, huge and healthy, fat and sassy, egged on by mild winters. Jonquils, crocuses, and Iris, likewise confused but emboldened, are breeding lilacs out of the dead land with spring rain, already six inches tall, challenging possible teenaged April temperatures. Here in the south Earth has not been covered in forgetful snow for five years, a record unequaled, but likely to be soon broken. Fifty years ago a short drive along any American highway yielded a windshield covered with smashed insect bodies. Our cliched rejoinder was: "That's me. all over!". Now, hardly anyone needs bother with a windshield wash. Enter the self proclaimed self righteous sellers of salvation, the conservative evangelical Christian community, for whom dire warnings of imminent climate collapse and doom are but an inconvenient noise of the liberal mainstream media; those people are destined for hell, anyway. The Trumper Limbaugh loving religious right has more transcendent concerns; they await, patiently but eagerly, the forever imminent re-arrival of a sword wielding, thunderous, vengeful God from the sky, a deity which in more proactive times of ancient yore and lore wiped away lives by the fifty thousand and seventy, for indiscretions involving taking a peek inside an ornate box, made to exact specification, at the most important document on earth: the law of God, sacred, and for some reason, hidden by divine edict. At the end of the day, as they tritely sa, we all get what we most cherish: the saved elect get raptured into heaven one step ahead of the climatic apocalypse, and the rest of us get to stay and, probably in vain, try to clean up the mess, comforted only by the pleasant relief which will surely descend upon the sane by the sudden, and pleasant respite from those who ascended, kindly leaving us the hell alone.

Killing the Economy, and Trump, Microscopically

THE CORONA VIRUS was so named because under a microscope the wee beastie has spikes, and resembles a king's crown, "corona" being the Latin word for "crown". Never underestimate the human capacity, or necessity, of bringing a bit of sardonic humor to the table even, or especially under the worst of circumstances. Since Leeuwenhoek invented the microscope in the early seventeenth century, about the time the telescope was invented, the micro world, unlike the macro, has revealed to us an endless abundance of lifeforms, and fairly recently we have learned that evolution happens fast in the fastness of smallness; the varieties of life keep on coming. Its not a matter of if, but of when, the Corona bug spreads around the world, taking its toll, as once again homo sapien sapiens pays its fealty to the miniature biosphere. Its happened before, most notably with the recurrent outbreaks of bubonic plague, and it will happen again, this time, next time, and the time after that, until, finally, the world of human domination succumbs to the far better equipped, prepared, and versatile realm of the micro biological. Its as inevitable as the next big asteroid impact. Wave after wave of tiny creatures will infiltrate our bodies, epidemic after pandemic, causing havoc, death, and societal chaos, well into the future, what there might be of it, just as they have in the past, all the way back to Adam, or amoeba, whichever came first. In short we are doomed to suffer the slings and arrows of spiky ugly little things, attacking us by the trillion. Some or most of us will survive, this time. The economy, the most fragile of man's fabrications, will not. Already our vaunted, arrogant stock market, realm of the rich and powerful, is taking a pummeling, its downward spiral predicated not on anything actual, but on the fear of things to come, not on the disease, but, as is usually the case, upon our preparations for the pandemic; the cure is worse than the disease, as we shutter ourselves from each other's contagion, and shut down our supply lines, production, and commerce as an unintended side effect, with unintended but unavoidable, financially disastrous consequences. In the past four days alone nearly two trillion dollars have vanished from our portfolios, with more, much more, to come. And make no mistake; the blame for this, all of it, belongs squarely in the orange rat's nest of none other than Donald J. Trump, criminal at large. Why the hell not? How can it be otherwise? Is he not solely responsible for the supposedly booming economy he actually inherited from Barack Hussein Obama? Well, the way it works, is, you take the credit, you get the blame. Forget that no American president is ever solely responsible for anything, including the economy. Trump is different. By his own proclamation, he alone has brought America to prosperity, has made America great again. Now, as the house of cards he has built crumbles and collapses, the house which houses only the wealthy and leaves hundreds of millions of unwashed, un-portfoliod masses outside his the gated community, he gets the blame, lock, stock , and virus, even though he will inevitably choose to assign it elsewhere, anywhere. Not to worry, There are plenty of us still around, not yet bed ridden, to assign it for him, to him.

Dispensing Justice, Conservatively

THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT is, by design, a legal institution, not a political one. its stated constitutional purpose is to dispense equal justice under law. However, it rapidly became politicized. Thomas Jefferson tried to remove a justice because said justice did not agree with Jefferson's agenda. To that end, Jefferson even invited Vice President Aaron Burr to the White House for dinner, a few sort days after Burr had killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Throughout the nineteenth century, the justices were conspicuous by their disdain for slaves, and factory workers. The court, like the American political system and much of American culture, has tended to favor the wealth ruling class. Except, that is, for a few brief shining years in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, when justices appointed by Eisenhower, including Chief justice Earl Warren, lead a predominately liberal leaning court, a court which upheld civil rights, limitations of police conduct, and protections for workers. That all ended with the ascension of Richard Nixon to the presidency, when the conservative community began the process it continues to this day, of making sure that all appointees to the high court are of a conservative persuasion. for the past fifty years, the court has been conservative, and its decisions have favored the elite corporate wealthy, not the rest of us. Now,money is free speech, rather than mere amplification of speech, and corporations are free to purchase the presidency, as they are currently in the habit of doing. so crucial has it become to install conservative ideologues on the bench that even as we speak, two sexual predators sit on the supreme Court, undeterred, with the gull support of Christian conservadumb. fortunately, one of them never speaks. The only qualification for appointment should be, obviously, a demonstrated ability to analyze court cases and to render dispassionate wise, fair decisions. Instead, to gain a seat, one need only be sufficiently right wing, thanks to shallow ideologues such as Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, and the right wing mob which has seized control of the judiciary and the country. The universe runs in cycles. We may hope and pray that the current one, of right wing fascist dominance of the system, will, like all disease, eventually burn out, and be relegated to another chapter of regrettable history, a crowded field.

Feeding People

THE DOG WAS SWEET LOOKING, as all dogs are. In his mouth was a food dish, empty. The caption on the Facebook post said that he had been abandoned by his family, which had moved away, and left him on the front door step, where he sat for days, waiting for their return, which would never happen. So, he picked up his food dish, and, hungry, waited for someone, anyone, to feed him. All across America's fruited plain, and all over the world, I hoped that people would see the post, and respond to it on a very deep level. I shared the post, often. Of course, on Facebook, you never know. But fake news or not, what does it matter? How many times does this scenario, in general terms, play out in this world of nightmares, and in this country of arrogance and neglect, neglect of people, animals, responsibilities? Beneath the post I wrote: " Let us assume that by now this beautiful sweet creature of God has not only been fed, but has been adopted by a new family, a good family, a family more suited to his needs, his simple but terribly important needs, a family more loving, more deserving of his sweet companionship than the former one, a family of brutal barbarians." Angry, I wrote and posted that. The vanished family are doubtless good people, or what pass for good people in the United States of Avarice. Hard working, and all that. But good people are not all good, and are subject to the malign social influences inevitably spawned wherever folks gather together in large numbers, and become self interested amidst a sea of conceit. Influences such as greed, self absorption, and a preference for personal convenience over moral social responsibility pervade and gain control. No one among us avoids malign influences. Accordingly, we objectify things that are more than mere objects. We turn, at least subconsciously, precious living beings, beautiful women, animals, into commodities, to be dealt with to our advantage, not theirs. It becomes easier, and in the warped thinking of those under the influence, justifiable, to grope, molest, abuse, to simply drive away forever and leave the dog, a family member, left behind to fend for itself. Thus we become cruel, barbaric killers. The right action becomes a choice, a mere alternative, an option, rather than a moral necessity. The sweet dog becomes homeless and hungry, desperately asking the world for nothing more than a chance to live and to be loved and cared for, in a world it had grown to trust but which has turned its back on her. There will come a time, and soon, I have faith, when some new and good family will become the forever home, the place of love, trust, and nurture. She will once again become a vital a part of a loving group of good humans, never again to be neglected, abandoned, and tossed aside like yesterday's garbage. For that, we must maintain the faith, that good prevails, and that, at last, we are good people.

Voting Bloomberg, For The Love Of Money

I LOVE MIKE BLOOMBERG, but only for his money. His stated intention of purchasing the presidency for anyone who runs against Donald Trump is good enough for me. The system is corrupt. High office in America is purchased, whether with one's own money, or somebody else's. This, because advertising always works, even negative advertising, as has been evident since the nineteen twenties, when the public relations industry was born to protect and serve the corporate oligarchy against the fruits of its own failures, against the rising tide of socialism which resulted in socialist presidential candidates receiving more than one million votes in 1920, and a communist doing the same in 1932, the year when one of the democratic socialists actually won, and remained president for more than three terms. Mike Bloomberg, unlike Donald Trump, is a "self made man", insofar as that is possible among a species in which individuals are as dependent upon the aggregate species as butterflies, ants, and bumble bees. Bloomberg started poor, became excessively wealthy. Bloomberg forces me to achieve more empathy with Trump supporters, those mentally and morally deficient animals I so dearly despise. So what if the mayor called a few woman pigs and horse faced lesbians? He must have had a good reason! Maybe he was simply telling the truth! I, reduced to the amoral, utilitarian level of a Trumper. For less than ten billion Bloomberg can probably buy Trump's way out of office, and, in my dreams, into prison. The animosity between the two goes way back, and who can fathom the dark secrets which engendered their mutual hatred among the gleaming towers of Mid town Manhattan? So, maybe I'm not so different from the despicable Trumpers after all. Willing to compromise my integrity for a seat at the table, for a Bernie Sanders presidency. Bernie's three houses and two million dollar bank account do not bother me. Sanders needs to point out that there is nothing in socialist doctrine which says that a person cannot own property or money; only that there should be a limit to it, that taxes must be paid on it, and that it must be distributed with reasonable equality. Maybe socialists ought not be millionaires, but they ought not be penniless either. Bloomberg needs to point out that he made his billions the old fashioned way, he gives plenty of it away, unlike Trump, the he is not alone in trying to purchase political power, its the only game in town, and that he has the decency not to beg other people to do it for him. He, like trump, is a mere symptom of a corrupt political system in a corrupt culture. Sanders needs to point out that anyone who drives on public roads, receives social security, or believes in publicly owned and operated fire and police departments is, heaven help us all, a socialist. We must all live with our hypocrisy. I'll live with mine, you live with yours.

Going Solar

ONCE UPON A TIME, say, fifteen years ago, solar energy was prohibitively expensive. Twenty times more expensive than coal. President Bush and his advisers were looking for alternative energy sources, and they agreed: solar is a non starter. Now, all that has changed, for several reasons. For one, government subsidies, state and federal, have brought the price down, primed the pump, and presented a more even playing field for private investors. Republicans made fun of Obama's solar subsidies, especially when Solyndra, the most famous, went belly up. Of course, republicans are married to coal, and divorced from climate change, Obama, and reality. With the infusion of private investment, research and development, plus good old fashioned free market competition, there ensued a wave of small but collectively meaningful technological improvements in solar panel efficiency which drove the price of sunlight down from one dollar per kilowatt hour in 2005, to a measly four cents today. Today, the thing to do is to go solar. Put solar panels atop every house across the fruited plain. Every building, public and private. Run stop lights and street lights off stored energy from the sun; go running, and fuel your wrist watch interval timer calorie counter heart beat blood pressure monitor with the sun! Solar collector cells have greatly improved too, reducing in manufacturing cost and improving with a lighter, cleaner carbon footprint in their manufacture. The upshot is that the old argument that it harms the environment more to make solar storage batteries than to dig up mountain tops, strip away the coal, burn it, and dismissively toss the residual carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is now completely bogus, whereas before, it was only partly bogus. Listening to Trump and his wolves who currently but hopefully temporarily occupy the EPA hen house rant about bringing back "clean coal", which doesn't exist, becomes more amusingly tragic every day. Haven't these incompetent hacks ever heard of capitalism? Hint: solar is better than coal and natural gas not only because it is healthier for one and all, but because it is cheaper, more competitive in the sacred cow of the economic free market. Instead of assuming that Trump supporters will be raptured into heaven with the coming of the lord, and that therefore we must get our profits now while the getting is good by subsidizing corporate coal and oil, the ecosystem be damned, why don't we come to our senses, vote Trump and his sixty one million member gang out of office, and, hey, while we're at it, save the planet and our posterity to boot?

Learning Baseball, and the Astros

IT IS VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE to explain baseball to anyone born and raised in a country in which the sport is not known. Its like trying to explain cricket to an American, someone like me. To learn baseball when exposed to it for the first time in adulthood is like studying mathematics by beginning with calculus. The curtain is being raised, however, as America's past time, or former past time, spreads across the globe. Still, there are challenges. Hitting a baseball with a baseball bat is difficult for everyone; first timers never succeed. Americans are not immune to the confusion. Why is the defensive team scattered all over the field, but there's only one guy on offense? Do the players have to stand in the same place every time, or can they move around? How many foul balls is the batter allowed? Questions, all perfectly reasonable. I recall years ago taking a girlfriend to her first major league game. She had grown up without baseball. Her first question was: why are the guys in the bullpen isolated from their teammates? Are they being punished? As the game progressed, she somehow got the idea that when a batter receives a base on balls, he has been disgraced and is being awarded first base as an act of charity, unable to hit the ball like the other players. She asked whether when a person in the grand stand catches a foul ball, the batter is out. I'm not making this up. Trying to explain the Houston Astros sign stealing scandal presents its own set of problems. Recently I met a lady who lives halfway between Houston and Dallas, but leans towards Dallas. She had not heard anything about it, which reminded me that to have been born in the United States does not necessarily make one a baseball fan. I decided to keep it simple. Rather than go into the details of catchers flashing fingers at pitchers from between their legs while crouching, while on camera, and the difference between a fast ball and a breaking ball, I simply compared it to international espionage. Corporations have manufacturing secrets, I said, and national governments have military secrets, and all sorts of highly classified information. For this reason, they are forever trying to steal information from each other, corporation from corporation, country from country, ad infinitum, because, well, such secret information is highly valuable, hence its secrecy, and hence the espionage. Everybody does it; its the only game in town. Same in baseball. Teams try to win games by stealing information from their opponents. There are acceptable ways to do this, and there are unacceptable ways, much like international intrigue. I told her that her hometown team had crossed the line, seriously, had gotten caught, and was even now in the process of paying dearly for their misbehavior, and would continue to pay. The total amount and precise details of the penalties had not been fully determined, and is now the subject of an intense debate among millions of American and international baseball fans, I explained to her. She seemed only mildly bemused. I comforted myself that I at least did not have the burdensome task of trying to explain the actual game to her, nor of teaching her to hold a baseball in one hand, a bat in the other, and to toss the ball in the air, and swing the bat, and hit the ball to someone standing a couple of hundred feet away, holding a leather glow, expecting to have the opportunity to chase and catch the ball, before it hits the ground.

Doing Science, Not Fantasy

IN 1960 ASTRONOMER FRANK DRAKE issued his now famous formula by which he attempted to calculate the likelihood of intelligent life existing in the universe, other than on Earth, the intelligence of which is sometimes questionable. The equation is based upon information at hand sixty years ago; the number of galaxies in the known universe, the number of stars in the known galaxy, the theoretical number of planets orbiting the billions of stars, and a projected likelihood of the number of planets being suited, by their physical characteristics, to being able to sustain life. A project, using radio telescopes, to search deep space for signals from extraterrestrial sources was instigated, project "OZMA", which was subsequently replaced by project "SETI", a more comprehensive search, using telescopes around the world. SETI, despite the the unfortunate withdrawal of congressional funding, exists to this day, privately funded. Enrico Fermi, the famous atomic scientist who along with Robert J. Oppenheimer helped design and construct America's atomic bomb during World War Two, became a true kill joy in the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life by asking a single question: "If they're out there, where are they, and why haven't we heard from at least one of them?" True to science, he supplied his own mathematical formulations to substantiate his skepticism, work which, to this day, bears witness to his simple question: there is as of now absolutely no evidence, not a shred of it, to indicate that there exists life of any sort, let alone intelligent, anywhere than on planet Earth. And yet, we persist. Work now is being done with visual as well as radio telescopes. In 1995 the first planet orbiting a star other than Sol was discovered. Telescopes became more powerful, and were launched into orbit, clear of earth's befogging atmosphere. Over the next twenty five years, the discovery of verified extra solar planets accrued like pop corn bursting forth in a paper bag in a microwave oven; with ever increasing rapidity. We stand now at well over five thousand known planets, and the popping has but barely begun. It is highly conceivable that at least one of these, and there must be billions, indeed harbors intelligent life, and that such life has indeed been broadcasting signals towards Earth. However, the expense is great, the galaxy is large, and, well, our boat is so small. It is easy to imagine that an entire galaxy of pulsing signals could get lost amid all the background static the universe puts out, and that the signals are there, but that we, with our puny limits on wavelengths and instruments simply have not yet picked them up, but one day will, hopefully soon. Nothing currently being done on planet Earth is more intellectually exciting. The only barriers to its success are the nay sayers; religious fanatics who only concern is their fervent hope that God comes to Earth soon to rapture them into heaven, the conservative philistines with no imagination nor curiosity, and last but not least, the overly imaginative and insufficiently honest paranormal community, whose members live in their own fantasy world, interacting with aliens of their own imagination, creating science fiction scenarios and embracing them like drug hallucinations, while ignoring the far more exciting reality of solid, traditional, empirical research science. To all such who stand in the way of valid investigation, we can only say; lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.

Awaiting the Lord and Trump

HE IS AWAITING the return of the Lord, a mythological anthropomorphic being who resides in the sky, and who, according to ancient literature, will come unexpectedly swooping down from the vault of heaven, some fine day, bringing not an olive branch in peace, but rather, a sword. The grand event is long overdue, two millennia in arrears, a broken promise, a lie. The promise was that it would occur within the lifetimes of those to whom the pledge was made, two thousand years ago. Still he waits, because his life on Earth is so hollow and meaningless that he longs to escape it. He has, so he says, a one way ticket to heaven. Predictably, he is a staunch supporter of President Trump, dismisses the president's criminality as a hoax, ignores Trump's vulgarity, vicious verbal attacks, pathological dishonesty. The misbehavior of the reprobate president is all a fabrication, a conspiracy of the mainstream liberal media and those insidious Democrats, and matters not, because the president is a self proclaimed Christian, God's appointed leader on Earth. An evangelical, he has convinced himself that everyone who does not share his devout religious views, does not accept the sword wielding Christ as personal Lord and savior, is doomed to spend eternity burning in hell. Quite a guy; taciturn, severe, personality free. His hatred and bitterness derive directly from his inability to achieve any sort of success. From his unpainted wooden shack the old evangelical curmudgeon brainwashes himself that his one way ticket to heaven is guaranteed. For him, Donald J. Trump is among America's greatest presidents, notwithstanding the dozens of women accusing the president of sexual misconduct, the Access Hollywood tape recording, which even Trump acknowledges, and all the rest. Right wing evangelical Christians have an amazing capacity to construct their own fantasy world, and to live security within it, to the exclusion of all reality. That reality, to the detriment of America and humanity, includes the massively corrupt and demonstrably incompetent Donald J. Trump, commander in chief, God's man on in the White House.

Doing Drugs

EIGHTY PERCENT of the world's population, including children, is addicted to drugs. In particular, one drug. The drug of choice is caffeine. Caffeine is by far the most popular, widely used mind altering chemical substance in the world. An overwhelming percentage of the people who use caffeine use it daily, and, whether they know it or not, are addicted to it. An overwhelming percentage of caffeine addicts do not realize, or refuse to acknowledge, that caffeine is a powerful, mind altering drug and choose not to acknowledge their addiction, even if they suspect it. Many if not most long term caffeine users claim to b unaware of any effect that it has on them, so accustomed to and therefor oblivious to they are to its effect on their brains and nervous systems. Anyone interested in understanding his or her relationship to caffeine need only quit using it, cold turkey, for a time, perhaps two weeks at least. Most people find that when they stop the habit, they are irritable and groggy in the morning, have difficulty focusing on normal tasks, and are less productive. When they resume using it, they report a surge in concentration powers, energy, and productivity. I love caffeine. I love the way it gets me going in the morning, gets me out the door for that forty five minute run, sharpens me, gets me pushing keys and producing essays, typing lesson plans. I drank tea as a child, but only started drinking coffee in my late thirties, when I found that it motivated me to get out of the house and start a full day of campaign for political office, an enterprise I had not previously enjoyed, but suddenly did. while under the influence.considering that I have been on caffeine for over twenty five years, I find it amazing how easily I can forego it for a day or tow, with only slight effects. Two weeks without it might be a different story, but I'll probably never find out. Its my favorite drug, followed closely by marijuana and alcohol, both of which I use far less often than hot coffee. Research indicates that caffeine may have certain positive benefits, such as reducing one's risk of cancer and heat disease, but since the drug remains in the system long after the final cup of coffee - one quarter of it remains in the system at midnight - it can easily interfere with deep sleep, which presents its own health risks. conversely, daily marijuana use impedes the dreaming function, which can have serious psychological consequences. Alcohol, used daily over time, can kill you, and is more addictive than either caffeine of marijuana. My late mother, herself a drug (caffeine) addict, once suggested that I consider decaf, but it still has some caffeine, and, well, I told her, it aint gonna happen. Like most people hooked, I will probably drink caffeinated coffee till I die, and enjoy every ounce of artificial energy, sleep, or no sleep.

Censoring Progress, Religiously

THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE AGES, the period roughly between 500 A.D., the Roman Catholic church dominated a politically fragmented and feudal Europe. Education was in the hands of the church, which discouraged learning among the masses, preferring that they remain ignorant, illiterate, and wholly dependent upon the church for information. The Bible was essentially the only book available, and only to the priesthood. It was copied and read only in Latin; all local and regional vernacular copies were forbidden. Any knowledge deemed contrary to Biblical teachings was forbidden. When Copernicus wrote his seminal volume "Die Siderus Orbum" (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies), he mandated that it not be published until his death, fearing the inevitable persecution by the church. Only upon his death, in 1543, did it become available, but only on the "black market". Galileo fared no better. In 1608, after he had used the first telescope to observe the moons of Jupiter revolving around the giant planet, thus proving that not everything revolves around the Earth, the birthplace of Christ, word got out. Galileo was was subjected to ecclesiastical trial, convicted, forced to openly repent his heresy, and sentenced to house imprisonment for life. Legend is that on his way out of the building, he uttered: "I still know what I saw". Three hundred and sixty years later, I, a teenager, using a telescope far stronger than Galileo's, showed the four moons of Jupiter to my adoring mother. She thought they were cute, like babies, hovering around their mother. I kid you not. Tragically, little or nothing has changed in our year of the lord, twenty twenty. The Christian faith, now post protestant reformation and fragmented beyond any hope of reunification, still suppresses knowledge in defense of scripture, clinging to the nonsensical notion that the Bible is the infallible word of God. Today's victim is not astronomical truth, but rather, biological. A high percentage of Christians, especially fundamentalist evangelicals, refuse to accept the obvious reality of human evolution by natural selection. Evolution, of course, is all around us, ubiquitous, self evident. Dog breeding, horse breeding, hybrid crops, for example. The argument that this isn't evolution because it is human engineered ignores the simple fact that humans are part of nature, and that evolution by human selection is, nonetheless, evolution. The argument that if humans had evolved from monkeys there would be no monkeys ignores that fact that evolutionary science does not claim that humans evolved from monkeys, but rather, that both species evolved from a common ancestor, which indeed no longer exists. I can recall fundamentalist friends of mine gathering together at dinosaur digs for the express purpose of proving that the bones were no older than six thousand years. Predictably, they failed, but remained undeterred, shackled to their precious, false convictions. Nature, as revealed by science and concealed by religious dogma, presents a surpassingly beautiful, coherently consistent panorama of phenomena, worthy of our deepest devotion. Our creator gave us the faculties to explore and understand the world. Religion served its purpose during humanity's earliest, most primitive stages of intellectual and cultural evolution, by providing comfort and inspiration and organization in a world our ancestors found frightening and forbidding. For the sake of enhancing knowledge and progress, the time for religion has long since passed, and the time to elevate science to the highest level of our devotion has long since come. There are hopeful signs. Today's Catholic church operates one of the most ambitious astronomical research projects in the world. Millions of Christians now accept scripture as "symbolic", not literal. Perhaps, and we can hope, that this is in itself an indication that slowly, but inexorably, religious dogma is succumbing to scientific reality.

Building A Bigger Wall

PRESIDENT TRUMP intends to abscond with three point eight billion more dollars from the military budget, if he has not already done so, for the purpose of partially funding his great wall of futility. This would be added to the eleven billion he has already made off with, a sum which, considering the president's demonstrated priorities, will be taken from funds previously allocated for veteran's assistance and health support services. At a cost of over twenty million per mile, the entire twelve hundred mile length of the Mexican-American border will be heavily, futilely fortified by the year twenty one twenty, at a cost no greater than several trillion dollars. New construction is actually taking place more than a half mile north of the Rio Grande, giving Mexico a rare opportunity to occupy a tiny fraction of the territory stolen from them by the Norde Americano Yankee imperialists under the leadership of President James K. Polk, in 1846-1848, during the great trumped up war for American expansion. Trump intends to patrol the border on both sides of the wall, which he could just as easily do were the massive structure nothing more than a chain link fence, or strand of brightly colored rope. Either he hasn't thought of this, he doesn't care, or nobody has bothered to tell him. What with the constant turnover and chaos within the Trump administration, and the documented fact that nobody has been able to educate the president on the basics of geography, either scenario is possible. The construction is bringing chaos and hardship to hundreds of landowners, and engendering lawsuits initiated by landowners whose land they would prefer not be bifurcated, and whose livelihoods they wish to defend. People with houses near the wall would prefer, they say, that security lighting not inundate their homes at night. A wasteland is being created between river and wall. Another fact worthy of consideration, but of no consequence to Trump or to those who support him and his inane wall is that migratory routes of hundreds of animal species are being cut off, isolating breeding groups, threatening them with eventual extinction. What was formerly a pleasant and profitable golf course has gone bankrupt, its acreage returned to its natural state. There is one consolation. Parts of the new construction, which consist of vertical metal slats, are being taken advantage of by ingenious Mexican and American children, who, merely by inserting a makeshift crossbar between slats, can install an international teeter totter, thus improving international relations through cultural exchange. Folks can scramble up and over the wall, and picnic between river and wall, on the American side, while observing a natural, desert landscape, which might contribute to natural history knowledge. This could yield some value, to everyone but Trump and his supporters.

Corrupting and Purging

DONALD TRUMP, in his infinite lack of wisdom, is hard at it again. meddling with the federal judiciary, and lying about it. The hoped for lessons from his impeachment ordeal seem not to have been learned, unsurprising, considering the president's decided lack of moral character and stable genius. Instead, he seems to have interpreted the Senate's failure to do its duty as carte blanche for his corrupt behavior. To wit, the tweets they are a flyin'. Unless the federal magistrate bucks up, she might well sentence Mr. Stone to two weeks for witness tampering and intimidation, Mr. Stone, the career political operative dash criminal with the Nixon tattoo on his white supremacist ass. Mr roger Stone, with a wealth of incriminating information on Trump, dirt the president would doubtless rather let lie hidden. Just the other day at my local senior an old curmudgeon, a normally taciturn, bitter, personality free sort, proclaimed our president to be among our best ever. As you may have guessed, the Trump supporter is an evangelical, who is convinced his ticket into heaven is one way, and is living out his few remaining days awaiting the arrival of the Lord, sword in hand. By the way the great god in the sky condescends to descend, Trump will likely be out of office, second term or no, and equally likely is that the sun will have exhausted its last gram of hydrogen. The curmudgeon, who has accused Democrats of plotting the extermination of Jews, as well as fabricating accusations to level at the very stable genius who makes perfect phone calls, complained that he is tired of people calling him and his ilk "idiots". For my part, I plead guilty. But I don't stop there. I further accuse anyone who supports this president of being morally bankrupt, and, for those claiming to be Christian, of being pseudo Christian, like pyrite, fool's gold. I accuse Trump supporters, all forty nine percent of them, of being accessories to the crimes of a proven criminal, the proof having come in abundantly redundant testimony by none other than many members of Trump's inner circle, most of whom are presently being purged from the gang, remindful of Nixon's Saturday night massacre, or Hitler's Krystallnacht. Comparisons of Trump and his supporters to cults and NAZIs become more apropos daily. The blatant lawnessness,and the zealotry with which the cult members approve of it, whether tacitly, explicitly, or by denial. With the great reprobate's reelection seeming increasingly, frighteningly likely, all sane citizens (Trump resisters) shudder at the thought at the depths to which the president and his supporter might sink after January 20, 2021. an even greater fear, not unreasonable, is that Trump, having already staged no less than two coups, could declare a fabricated national emergency to avoid leaving office at all, with the full support of his adoring, amoral cult. This very thought is sufficient to make even unbelievers hope desperately that the Lord does indeed return and put an end to all this, sooner, rather than later.

Socializing

EVERY YEAR the U.S. government spends billions of tax payer dollars subsidizing select major American corporations and industries. Large aircraft and arms manufacturers come to mind, whose very existence is dependent upon federal funding. Agriculture, corporate as well as small family farms, benefit from teh federal price support system,put in place during the great depression by the Roosevelt administration. The fact of life for American growers is that they are the victims of their own success. So great is agricultural production all across the fruited plain that there is a perpetual food glut in America, an annual food surplus of such vast proportions that food prices on the open market are driven downward by oversupply. This alone would drive thousands of small farmers into bankruptcy if Uncle Sam did not have their backs by buying up their surplus yield, and by paying them to let fields lie fallow. Another term for this, a succinct and accurate term, is "socialism", socialism for the corporations, often, socialism for the wealthy.Corporate socialism rears its ugly, much maligned head whenever an economic crash send Wall Street into a depreciating spiral, requiring a federal bailout, as happened in 2007-2008 under presidents Bush and Obama. Vociferously though the great bailout was criticized by both ends of the political spectrum, two facts stand out. It was necessary, and it worked, as witnessed by the eventual complete recovery of the financial services industry, upon which the American economic system is totally reliant, and the fact that General Motors, once dead on the side of the road, recovered nicely, and repaid its entire government loan, with interest. Without FDR's socialist policies during the New Deal the American economy might have gone under, for good. The unavoidable fact is that capitalism cannot survive without socialist intervention; the free market is too inherently unstable,its violent fluctuations too severe to withstand alone. Conservative neo-liberal free market purists live in a fantasy world, one in which America must never allow socialism to enter the country, and any faint trace of if spells doom, and eventual communism. They live in a theoretical world. Here, in the real one, socialism pervades every aspect of every life; streets, roads, bridges, social security, medicare, medicaid - the list is nearly endless. Every American is part socialist, whether or not he wants or admits to being. The next time president Trump accept yet another bailout from us tax payers for one of his bizarre bankruptcy filings, he will undoubtedly fail to admit or admit that he has often been the beneficiary of socialism, because, like all conservatives, he simply doesn't know what socialism is. Or, most likely, he pretends not to know, for the sake of his warped, twisted political ideology.

Arguing With Stupid People

DURING THE PAST FIFTY YEARS the North American bird population has declined by two billion, and nearly half of Europe's insect population has disappeared. Bees, butterflies, frogs, fireflies, among many other delicate bellwether species are facing precipitous decline, and impending extinction. Planet earth is undergoing the sixth mass extinction in natural history, only this time, it isn't natural, its human made, only natural to the extent that humanity is. Simultaneously, the world's oceans are rising, swallowing land throughout the world, as both polar ice caps and glaciers melt, each year is hotter than the previous, endless cycles of drought, out of control wildfires, and torrential rains and floods, extreme weather events, ravage the globe with alarming regularity. Scientists, using copious research, can now tell which events are caused by climate change, and to what extent they are exacerbated by it. All these various manifestations of carbon based climate change are well known to those paying attention. In North America, October is now a summer month, and spring begins in late February. Meanwhile, legions of moronic idiots, mostly American evangelical conservatives, motivated by arrogance, fantasy, and greed, spew inane alternative scenarios, without even the slightest knowledge of or support of scientific fact. It all doesn't matter; the Lord is coming soon. Man climate change deniers have deluded themselves into believing that since climate change is natural, and therefore human control, humanity cannot possibly have any impact on it, a purely absurd notion. As if natural occurring floods and wildfires preclude them from having human origins as well. Such fols consider it arrogant to believe that puny human activity can possibly effect the massive planet; in fact, they are the arrogant ones, for denying science because of their failure to understand it and refusal to accept it. An especially insane pseudo theory circulating among the alternative reality community is that climate change is caused by fluctuations in solar activity, as if any of these loonies had ever set foot in a chemistry, physics, or solar science classroom. we are assured by the actual solar scientific professionals that indeed there has been no measurable change in solar output. Mark Twain said it best, as he often did: "Never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level, and beat you with experience."

Making Lemonade, With A Sling

ONE LOVELY DAY LONG AGO I awakened, and, grateful, arose. Soon I became involved with a minor disagreement with my girlfriend, something to do with cat litter. "You change it" rapidly escalated into "I do all the work around here", turning a minor tiff into a full blown shouting match, she doing most of the shouting. At length, she threw me out of the house, my instructions never to return. I packed rapidly, and drove to work, my SUV laden. pon my arrival, my supervisor started chewing on me, I made the mistake of responding, and she fired me, on the spot. While driving home a bit rapidly, forgetting that I no longer had one, it began to sprinkle. Then, my vehicle died, precipitously. Unable to start it, I soon became convinced that help was not impending, and began to walk. (This was in the days B.C., before cell phones, and I wouldn't've had one anyway).then rain intensified. Before long I was soaked, and nobody stopped to give me a ride. ON I trudged, foul of mood, soaked of clothing and skin. somebody did drive past me, but instead of offering help, splashed muddy water all over me, then gave me the finger, laughing uproariously. The only other the other thing that happened was that I slipped, fell, and sprained my ankle, but, at long last, I made it to safely, and eventually got dry clothing, car repair, a place to live, a new and better job, and, albeit a bit reluctantly, a new girlfriend. It was the worst day of my life, but the funniest, and now I laugh about it in fond remembrance. I think of a couple of Goethe quotes: "One does not always lose if one has to do without". And" "There is no situation which cannot be ennobled through endurance and achievement." I reckon that day way back in the eighties took me a heap of enduring and achieving, but, indeed, it paid off, with a good story to tell. What matters is how we choose to look at things. The best example is the story of David and Goliath. The Bible, and everybody since, assumes that David was a prohibitive underdog, who succeeded only with great courage. we tell that story in that context. the truth, although nobody seems to know it, is that David was the prohibitive favorite. In fact, Goliath never had a chance. It was a complete mismatch. there stood the doomed giant, wielding only an unwieldy ax, useless at a range greater than a few feet. There stood David, at a safe distance, with a deadly accurate, deadly sling, the assault rifle of its day, knowing exactly how to use it. to this day everyone has that story backwards. I am fortunate in my life not to make the same mistake, about me, or about the Bible.

Making Latin America American

THE PERSISTENT PATTERN is that whenever Latin American countries duly elect socialist governments in democratic elections, electing politicians who promise to nationalize and redistribute national wealth and land to poor farmers, often they do it, sometimes they don't. This arrangement, the very threat of it, invariably arouses the ire of American corporate interests, and their spokespeople, the United States government, who have other plans. The result is that American operatives, well funded, fund and support opposition groups, who use the support to overthrow the legitimate governments. Chile, 1973, Guatemala, 1954 are but two of many such examples. This was the intention of the Monroe Doctrine, issued in 1823, declaring Latin America off limits to European powers, which was from the beginning largely ignored by said powers. The doctrine was from the beginning unenforceable, and remains so today. The newly installed puppet governments of the United States are of course beholden to the U.S. and its corporate oligarchy, and become client states, doing the bidding of the plutocracy. The American people are generally unaware of all this and unconcerned about it. American corporations insinuate themselves into local economies, appropriating resources for themselves, and taking wealth out of the country, impoverishing the client states, and causing the refugee situation about which so much has been heard in recent years. Into corporate coffers goes the wealth of other nations, with the tacit approval of capitalist puppet dictators. For an excellent overview of American foreign policy in Latin America, William A. Williams "The Tragedy of American Diplomacy", though first published in 1959, remains highly relevant, a seminal monograph. It is vital that the American people become better informed about U.S. imperialism, which imitates European imperialism, because the current refugee crisis, which now is building towards catastrophic proportions in both Europe and the United States, is the direct result of it, as well as climate change, which is also the product of mainly European and American economic consumer culture, although India, China, and other developing nations are even now emulating the fossil fuel based pattern of rapid industrialization invented by the western world. The effects of imperialistic exploitation of resources and climate change have only barely begun to be felt, bad as the problem already is. It is the moral imperative of the wealthy west to accept and integrate economic and political refugees, but its current refusal to do so is based on racism and nationalism, and a refusal to accept responsibility for its won misbehavior. This has given rise to the right wing white supremacist anti-refugee governments that have for now captured the political systems of many countries in Europe, plus Australia and the United States. Social and economic justice is impossible under these semi-fascist governments, making it all the more vital that they be voted out of office. The sooner the better.

Fantasizing and Crushing

DONALD TRUMP'S ACCUSATION that Senator Mitt Romney used his religion as a "crutch" in voting to convict him was typically malicious of the president, but, uniquely, contained a kernel of truth. Social scientists of all stripes have proven that religion is indeed a crutch, a necessary one in a world beyond human comprehension, fraught with danger. religion gives votaries a sense of comfort and inspiration. Of the thousands of religions in the world, all claim to possess exclusive truth, none do, and, most likely, no religion ever will, unless that religion is empirical science. There is not a shred of evidence to support the fundamental tenets of any religion known to humanity, none to support the existence of any anthropomorphic deity, nor any sort of afterlife, contrary to popular belief. Religion is a fantasy, but a convenient one. Karl Marx was correct in his assessment that religion is an "opiate of the masses". Social scientists also note that the less well educated and less intelligent the individual, the more likely he or she to be deeply religious, and to lack critical thinking skills and powers of discernment. Recent studies seem to indicate that people whose religiosity is fervently zealous and whose political ideology is extremely conservative, or traditional, are likely to have brain damage, specifically, damage to the cerebral cortex. It is observable that religious devotion and conservative political views often accompany each other. The current example can be seen in the fact that a vast majority of evangelical Christians are indeed politically conservative, and staunch supporters of both the Republican party and Donald Trump. The modern conservative movement, which tends to discount or deny human made climate change and to embrace unfettered free market economics, is no less a fantasy than the Christian or any other religion. Even the intellectual founder of modern capitalism, Adam Smith, pointed out that the free market was unlikely to ever be free of distortions which render it unworkable, and every credible scientist and student of science in the world accepts the dire reality of impending disaster through climate change. Even now its effects are seen everywhere in the world, with rising sea levels, massive droughts, extreme weather, and massive out of control wildfires worldwide. And yet, the devoutly religious and conservative community refuses to accept reality, preferring, like the climate change denying Trump, to live in a self created world of fantasy. In our world in which nearly every aspect of our daily lives attests to the truth of science, it seems incredible that religion survives at all, and in fact our old superstitions are in decline; at least one third of the American people report to have no religious views. As religion fades into humanity's barbaric, immature past, and progressive thinking slowly but surely replaces political, social, and economic tradition with progress, the eighteenth century admonition of Voltaire concerning the Catholic church comes to mind: "crush the infamous thing".

Purchasing Power and Pennant

MIKE BLOOMBERG has more money than God, and the Wall Street Journal reports that the former mayor of New York city subsidizes the good lord, much keeping the cosmos solvent, much as J.P. Morgan generously did for the United States during the great depression of 1907. Bloomberg has several times the amount of dough as Donald J. Trump, at least, and maybe several hundred times as much. We'll not know until the justice system at long last pries Trump's desperately concealed tax returns from beneath his orange toupee. Mayor Mike crouches like a tiger outside the estate gate, awaiting super Tuesday, taking billions out of the mouth of God to spend on commercials, with which he has already begun to inundate the plutocratic republic. So far, a quarter of a billion spent, with promises of upwards of two to five billion to come. Not bad, even for a sixty billionaire. The wailing, gnashing, alligator tearing, and shrieking among his Democratic rivals has already begun. He's trying to buy the nomination, cry they! He's the New York Yankees of politics, who were themselves once compared to U.S. Steel, and in some circles still are. Bloomberg and the Yankees have one thing in common, or rather two things in common, other than being located in New York; One, they are trying to buy a championship. Two, they are doing exactly what everyone else is trying to do; buy a championship. The Boston Red Sox spend only a few tens of millions of dollars less than the rich kid Bronx Bombers, and event eh poorest team in baseball, whichever that might be, spends millions, for the same purpose; to pay for a hoped for World Series title. Self described socialist Bernie Sanders has raised more green backs than any other candidate, for example. he spends it just as Bloomberg does; to purchase political power through advertisement, advertisement which, as has been known for a hundred years through sociological analysis, works like a charm. he who advertises first and most, politician or corporation, gets the girl, and rides into the sunset holding trophy aloft. We all moan about the fact that the American political system is for sale, but nobody does anything about it, a familiar refrain, applicable to so many of life's dilemmas, personal and political. We mealy mouth around with weak, purely symbolic campaign finance laws, then wreck it all with a Supreme Court decision grounded in lunacy; the infamous "Citizen's United" debacle. The solution, dear united citizen, rests in nine easy words, enacted into law: "The sale and purchase of political advertising is prohibited". But don't, as we say, hold your breath. Heaven and Bloomberg forbid that we should actually take corrective action which makes sense; after all, what would be the fun in that, and how would God ever pay his bills?

Rushing To Judgment

I BEGAN LISTENING to Rush Limbaugh in 1994, curious about the new radio sensation with the funny name. I had been told that Limbaugh was hammering the new president, Bill Clinton, mercilessly, on a daily basis, and I, a Clinton fan, wanted to hear for myself. I was not disappointed. Limbaugh began attacking Clinton within minutes after his inauguration speech, and he never relented. Clinton's crime was a failure to embrace conservatism, the most heinous crime of all among the far right. Limbaugh's theme, so clearly etched in my unpleasant memory, was "America held hostage". Rush counted the days, smearing Clinton with this meme up until the great Republican electoral victory of 1994, for which Limbaugh and his radio ilk were partly responsible, when he announced that America was no longer held hostage, had been liberated. So vicious did the attacks become that the president, while flying into St. Louis one day, lowered himself to whining about the unfairness of it all, as if he as president had no weapons with which to retaliate. I was determined to give Limbaugh a fair chance, just as I was determined, years later, to give the same to Trump. Problem was, Limbaugh never gave Clinton, nor any other Democrat, the same courtesy. Especially Obama. Within moments of Obama's ascension to the presidency Rush rushed to judgment, calling the new president "a fraud". It didn't take me long to figure out that Limbaugh was a hateful, dishonest, vicious, and covertly racist smear merchant, appealing mainly to people of the same type. Limbaugh won't live long; people with advanced lung cancer never do, and the decline, I hear, is painful. I do not wish ill of him, although many of his detractors do, pointing out Limbaugh's consistent lack of compassion for others. Trump's awarding the nations's highest civilian honor to a man who earned his living by talking, telling lies, and denigrating good people is a travesty on par with everything else in the president's life and behavior. During the entire Obama presidency, Trump, clearly a racist, accused Obama of having been born in Kenya, and Limbaugh did not disagree. Eventually Trump walked back the lie, without an trace of an apology, typical of his low character.Fortunately, both Trump and Limbaugh will soon leave the scene, and it is to be hoped that their kind will vanish forever, never to be seen or heard again, unlikely as that is. The fact that both Trump and Limbaugh ever gained any measure of success and influence in American society tells much about the low moral standards and low integrity of America's conservative movement, and what it tells is tragic.

Touting Trump's Lies

PRESIDENT TRUMP, who has been campaigning for reelection since inauguration day, touts a strong economy and a stronger, safer America among his many alleged achievements. None of them are real. nearly everything Trump says is a lie. Trump inherited essentially the same economy we have now, an economy in which the wealthy do quite well and the other ninety nine percent not so good. When nearly a quarter of a country's population languishes in poverty or near poverty, the economy is not good.The American economy has never been good, except for a thirty year period between 1945 and 1975, when the wealthy were taxed and the workers were paid, reasonably. An cursory examination of the facts quickly reveals that for most Americans, the economy is not good. Good on Wall Street, but not on Main Street, as they say. To gain a grasp of Trump's lies, simply type in the term "Trump's lies", and you're off to the races, with several reliable websites listing time, date, and lie, neatly in order, with corrections on teh opposite side of the page. There are now more than sixteen thousand, since inauguration day. About the president's lies, vicious slander of people who oppose him, crassness, and boorishness, you will hear from his supporters not a peep, which only serves to expose their dishonesty, and lack of integrity. Nearly one half of the republican caucus in the United States Senate now grudgingly acknowledges that the Democrats proved their point, and that the president did indeed "do something wrong", "behave inappropriately", as they put it. And yet, they declare him innocent. we are confronted with a new public more' in which it is permissible for a president of the United States to blackmail another country for damaging information on political opponents, because as Trump's defense team explained, when a president believes that his reelection is in the best interests of the country, he is acting in the country's best interests, and is therefor guilty of no wrongdoing. Tragically, this sick and disgusting rationale for criminal activity will mollify Trump's sycophantic cultish supporters, who will in turn use it to attack Trump's opponents for basing their opposition to him on purely political grounds. Each day Trump and his supporters are more remindful of Hitler and his NAZI gangsters, for whom no lie was too ludicrous in the defense and support of their gang leader, and each day, as the Democrats struggle to produce an electable candidate, it becomes more apparent that Trump's chances of reelection are fairly high. lord help us all.

Partying Hardly

I HOSTED my first Super Bowl party. It was quite by accident, and, lord willing and the creek stays low, I'll never host another. I've seen all or parts of all fifty four Super Bowls, and as the years go by, they seem to get better. fondly I recall when, eleven years old, my boy scout "master" told me that something new was going to happen, something called "The Super Bowl". I thought it was a funny name. My team has played in it twice, and won once, but they beat the new England Patriots, so that's sayin' something. During my college days, which extended forever, and through early adulthood I attended super bowl parties, always enjoyed them, and always pitied the poor people tasked with cleaning up afterwards. Now I know haw they must have felt. Nowadays, my ritual is to watch the kick off at a local bar, where there is an annual Super Bowl chili cook off. I sample a bowl randomly from among the d=zen or so crock pots, and I've never been disappointed. then, I go home, feed the cats, and listen to the rest of it on the radio, which I prefer to television. Everything was going fine this year, as planned, until halfway through the interminable half time show, four cars pulled up in my long drive way, then another four. Eventually the number totaled twelve, and they began parking in my front yard. I have many trees, and now, many tire ruts between them. It seems that they were lost, in between parties, and decided to graced the lonely old man with their presences. Among them was my girlfriend, who I had thought no longer was my girlfriend. they brought refreshments, and left not long after the game, perhaps influenced by a few judicious yawns deliberately tossed out as hints by me. they couldn't all leave my yard at the same time, but they tried to. This resulted in two fender benders, I defecate you not, right there in my drive way. One young dude, half inebriated with margaritas, backed into my beloved ornamental maple tree. The tree didn't give, his bumper did. the other was my ex's fault. her sharp looking Volvo took a ding when she backed out a bit too hurriedly, and into the front bumper of a sharp looking Prius just behind her. When they started shouting at each other, I went inside my house, locked all the doors, an, though tempted to join the cats under the bed, began the odious task of cleaning up. I'm glad I finished before going to bed, because cleaning up a twelve hour old Super Bowl party mess aint no fun, especially when one happens to be a bit hung over.

Waiting For the Election, Making America Greta, Again

MY NEW BALL CAP says "Make America Greta Again", in all caps. You can get one for about twenty dollars on a website called "Etsy", same color, same font, but no flag. For that, you have to go to Wal Mart, or some such, get one, and sew it on yourself. Mine is twice as large, at least, as the one worn by Trumpers who unpatriotically do not think that America is great. Actually, I got two of the bright red beauties; one for myself, and, inexplicably, the lady who ordered mine gave hers to me as well. I intend to loan it out to deserving citizens, with the stipulation that it must be worn, and that wearing it must be proven by emailing me an endless series of selfies from smart phones. If it gets me into a few arguments or fights, or makes me a few new friends, so be it, nothing new about that. The hat proves that most Americans are illiterate. It rapidly became obvious to me that a very high percentage of the American people who look at my cap fail to realize that the word is "Greta", not "great". The right wing racist morons at my senior center, who inspired my acquisition, all said the same thing: "Well...uh..you finally came over to our side, didn't ya?" That, I had not counted on. After careful thought, I decided not to bother to disabuse them of their misapprehension; if they haven't learned to read by now, who am I to help them? Obviously, they are quite content with their impaired state. Greta Thunberg is, seemingly the most intelligent person on the planet; unless there are others who are sacrificing the entire planned lives for the sake of saving the planet. The time to push the panic button has long since come and gone; finally, a teenager from Sweden has pushed it, and may all the teenagers of the world walk out of all the public and private schools in the world, as often as need be, to attract the world's attention, and to force our moribund leadership to take action. Fondly we remember when Republicans cared; Nixon signed the EPA into existence, and Nixon signed the Clean Air Act. We know it can be done, by both ends of the political spectrum. Our leaders today seem to be saying to us that since they themselves are going to die soon anyway, they care little whether, or perhaps would even prefer, that we and all future generations die with them. Tragic, considering how easy it would be for, say, President Trump, to simply utter a single sentence: "If the environmental climate change wackos want to plant a trillion trees, and want to let the free market price oil and coal out of the market in favor of solar energy, hell, let's do it! I, Donald J. Trump, will even lead the way, since I get things done". A single sentence, and Trump redeems himself, and, believe it or not, gains some modicum of support from yours truly. But that may be far too much to expect from a man who can't even bring himself to say: "white supremacists are bad people".