The Desperate Ones

I keep hearing this all of the time these days: “The American public is desperate and that’s why they are going to vote for Donald Trump.”

But who are these desperate Americans…these Desperadoes? Current literature indicates that desperado is derived from the Spanish term desesperado which means a person with no hope. So are there that many Americans who are feeling hopeless in America today? So much so that they see Donald Trump as their only hope to save a ruined America?

And is America in ruins? Here where I live, in white, suburban, New Jerseyed, America most of my white friends say that’s exactly how they feel, “Hopeless and ruined” …and they say this on Facebook and out-loud almost everyday and as often as they can.

Right after they wake up in their big suburban houses with affordable, almost paid-off mortgages and manicured lawns and with a big cup of $10 Starbucks in their hand they like to say, “Just look around. The USA is going to hell in a hand-basket!”

Then they are off to play golf or hangout at the local gym where they like to kibitz about how all of their money is being wasted on needless taxes to pay for entitlement programs and the poor.

Later, while washing their shiny new car, which they like to replace with a newer model every 3 years or so, they’re happy to chew your ear off about how ISIS is destroying the world and embarrassing our military and keeping us from getting more oil for our gas guzzling cars…but they’ll leave out the guzzling part.

On Facebook they love to post photos of their summer vacation in Cancun where the weather was beautiful, the people friendly and the prices cheap. Then their next post will explain exactly why we need a nice big wall built on the border to keep those personable yet pesky Mexicans from visiting us here. “Because they’re no good, lazy job destroyers!” (however, they do possess just enough energy for raping and murdering)

My desperate, white, American friends also like to tell me how illegal immigrants are taking all of the good American jobs, while destroying the American way of life and contributing nothing to our society…and they often say this right after the Spanish-American army has just finished roofing their houses, mowing their lawns, cleaning their homes and picking up after their children.

Many of my friends are also desperate for a return to the rule of law and for fair and balanced justice for all Americans! And as soon as they get it they want Hillary and Obama arrested and imprisoned immediately and without warrant or charges because that’s how it should be done in an America that needs to become great…again!

Yes, all of the Trump supporters that I know are very desperate… but what they are truly desperate about or for is hard to figure out, since they already appear to have just about everything they want or need.

What I do know however, is that should Trump be elected president then the truly desperate ones in America will have less than they have now. I know this because the Republicans have already told us their plans…and Donal Trump is indeed a Republican and one who will see to it that the Supreme Court will be as Republican as the Senate and House of Representatives already are.

And so in a completely Republican America what we know will happen is:

The hungry will become hungrier. The poor will be made poorer. The homeless will remain without homes. The unions will diminish. The pensions will disappear. Women will lose rights to control their own bodies. Those who need healthcare will lose what healthcare they have now. Those who are now married in what some feel is an nontraditional way will find themselves un-married. Higher education will grow more expensive and be out of reach for most Americans. The planet will grow hotter still… And last but not least, The 1%  at the top of the income ladder will grow richer and with no regulation, while the other 1%, at the bottom of the income ladder, will do all of the fighting in far away countries and with no respite.

We know all of this because that is what is in the Republican platform…which you can actually read if you’d like, on the internet. And Donald Trump is, after all, no savior…just Republican.

So if it is not for restoring an old white man and old white values to the Presidency of the United States of America then what pray tell, are the self proclaimed desperate ones really so desperate for? Can anyone out there honestly tell me?

 

 

 

Do All Lives Matter? Really?

This is something that I wrote a little over a year ago as the political frenzy here in the USA was just beginning to heat up. Now that it’s on full boil I thought that I’d post it again. We have a lot of good things going for us here in the USA and we have a lot of problems too. But what is it that matters the most to Americans? Is it our fellow country-men’s lives, fortunes or sacred honor?

I saw a post on Facebook recently espousing this thought:

“We must put an end to economic freeloading…There must be no place for parasites who draw their sustenance from society without giving anything in return.”

We have over 50 million people in this country who live below the poverty line. And it’s a pretty low line…certainly not one that we or anyone else that I know would want to live under for one day… let alone a year or two or a lifetime. And of all the industrialized countries in the world we, the United States, the richest, mightiest, most boastful country in the world… is last in helping its poor people.

Wow! We’re last in the first world at charity…and as far as I can tell it makes most Americans sick…and not because we’re last but because we can’t get any lower… without leaving the first world and joining the second and third world countries in order to do it that is. Most folks and certainly all Republicans, would like to cut programs for the poor (like food stamps, rent assistance, healthcare and welfare) all together and completely.

After all there is no place for parasites is there? Unless we count prison, and we are first in prisons and prisoners aren’t we? Huzzah! At least we are proud to be number one in some category among the wealthy, advanced nations of the world. But if the poor are parasites and undeserving moochers who draw sustenance from their hosts while offering nothing in return, what are we to do with them? Kill them? Eat them? We already ignore them don’t we? If they aren’t already in prison then they certainly are pretty much invisible. Right?

I mean seriously, do you see a lot of poor folks during your daily routine? You pretty much have to go out of your way or take a wrong turn or exit on the freeway to bump into them don’t you? Or maybe you sometimes see them get shot by scared witless policemen in their efforts to “protect and serve” as you channel surf on your cable TV. So really, what more can we do besides cut those checks?…and I mean cut as in off… not as in… write.

But who are these undeserving poor that beguile and bewilder our great United States of America with their hands out for more and more of our hard earned money every day? Who are these 50 million or so ingrates who can’t stand on their own two feet? These huddled masses who are bankrupting the richest citizens of the richest country in the world? Which, by the way, they aren’t because in case you missed it at the beginning of this blog post, we don’t really give them anything, because we, in all actuality and factuality, already are the STINGIEST, wealthy country in the world!

But I digress…

Because, who are these money grubbers anyway?!

Well… 35% of the 50 million or so poverty stricken Americans are kids! They are all under the age of 18 so how much of a slacker can they all be? Are we going to call 17.5 million children parasites and undeserving moochers for whom there must be no place in our society because they don’t pull their own weight in this world? Yet? They haven’t even graduated high school.

Another 10% of the poorest Americans are elderly. They are all over 65 years of age and can’t work or shouldn’t have to work anymore. How much financial independence and personal accountability do we require from those who may not have had any pensions or 401K plans during their working years or who saw them swallowed up by banks or government cuts or by the financial sector’s mismanagement? Can we give these folks a break and help them out with food stamps, medical and housing assistance or is there simply no room in our society for this particular type of societal parasite? You know…the old and feeble kind.

So that accounts for almost half of all the poor citizens in our country: old folks and children. But did you know that another 31% of the poor in our country are poor because they have mental and/or physical disabilities that prevent them from working or that caused them to lose their jobs in the first place? They might be veterans, paraplegics, developmentally challenged, perhaps those who suffered on the job injuries where no workman’s comp. was in effect or those who were suffering from severe mental incapacitates when their hospitals were closed during the cutbacks of the Reagan years and beyond. Are these citizens to be considered freeloaders also? Lazy work shirkers on the public dole? Irresponsible no-gooders who need to have their food stamp purchases monitored lest they buy an occasional steak or seafood out of season so that we do-gooders can treat ourselves to another tax cut?

A full 76% of those who live below the poverty line here in the United States of America are either children, senior citizens or disabled…that’s 3 out of 4… and what of the other 24%? Mostly they are comprised of mothers: more than likely they are single, divorced or unwed women with children (and a man on the lam from his child support)

And all together they comprise the Approximately 50 million people who can’t make ends meet in this, our Land of Plenty. Sure it’s a big number…but we’re a big country…and a rich country…the richest country! One that can afford to spend 20+% of its budget on blowing the citizens of other countries up and then debate whether or not we should be spending more on such endeavors.

But when it comes to helping our own poorest of citizens, the great majority of whom are either too young, too old, too disabled… or mothers trying to make ends meet…we wag our fingers and say, “We’ve given you enough! What more do you want?”  And yet, We as a nation are last in the world at helping our fellow citizens get back up on their feet now, so really, How much crueler and indifferent can we be?!

Well…The United States also has the highest poverty rate among the major industrialized nations of the world! And Our poverty rate for children is just as bad. So that means that we are first in creating poor people and last in helping them! Do we now need to make sure that we constantly refer to the poor in America as Parasites? Fraudsters? Morally bankrupt? Undeserving? Lazy? Cheats? Thieves?…

Do we really need to add insult to penury?

Because after all. Haven’t we fortunate Americans…God Bless Us…done enough already?

Making America Safe…

And From Whom?

According to CNN, since declaring its caliphate in June 2014, the self-proclaimed Islamic State has conducted or inspired at least 126 terrorist attacks in 23 countries other than Iraq and Syria. Those attacks have killed at least 1,735 people and injured thousands more.

In North America there have been 7 attacks inspired by ISIS

On October 23, 2014 A man with a hatchet attacked four police officers in New York. Police said the attacker, was self-radicalized and believed to have been inspired by ISIS. On May 3, 2015 — Two men opened fire outside a Prophet Mohamed cartoon contest in a Dallas suburb. The gunmen wounded a security guard before police shot and killed them. The attack is believed to have been inspired by ISIS. On November 4, 2015 — A University of California student stabbed four people before being shot to death by police. The FBI concluded the attack appeared to be terror-inspired. On December 2, 2015 — Tashfeen Malik and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, shot 14 people to death and injured 21 others at a gathering of local government health workers in San Bernardino, California. On January 8, 2016 — A man was arrested after a Philadelphia police officer was shot and wounded. The assailant later claimed to have committed the attack on ISIS’ behalf…

And On June 12, 2016 — A gunman killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. The shooter, was killed by police three hours after taking hostages in the club. He was a 27-year old U.S. citizen of Afghan descent who pledged allegiance to ISIS in a 911 phone call during the siege. The attack is believed to have been inspired by ISIS.

There is no doubt that these have all been horrible attacks carried out in the name of a Radical Islamic organization, leaving 63 dead and 79 injured throughout North America. Many Americans are outraged and want these attacks avenged, no matter the cost and no matter how long it takes. America’s 2 political parties will be debating 24/7 how to solve this crisis for the next 5 months and beyond.

Earlier this year 100,000 citizens were discovered poisoned with lead in the Michigan city of Flint. The Governor of Michigan was hoping to save money for the state by rerouting the cities perfectly clean water supply through a corrosively polluted river and into the cities aging lead lined pipes. This went on for nearly 2 years before the state would admit to any wrong doing on their part.

We hear about ISIS every day on the news but Flint, Michigan? Not so much anymore. The Governor of Michigan just had to say “My bad” and everyone in America seems to be satisfied even though the residents of Flint will never, ever, recover from their lead poisoning.

Now Imagine for one second that ISIS had been responsible for the poisoning of 100,000 American citizens over the course of 2 years while American state government did nothing to stop it even though they had been aware of it all along.

That’s all I have…just imagine that…

Freedom to Ejaculate

Donald Trump’s presidential running mate, Governor Mike Pence of Indiana recently signed an anti abortion bill passed by the Indiana legislature. Mr Pence opposes all forms of abortion no matter the reason nor complication. He also hopes to help the Republican party De-fund Planned Parenthood if he and Donald trump are elected. I can only assume because all lives matter.

But have you ever noticed how men are never mentioned during the debate over abortion. A debate that continues even though the Supreme Court of the United States decided long ago that a living woman has more right to her body than an unborn fetus in the first trimester of pregnancy. And have you noticed  how in fact men are hardly ever in the conversation when it comes to the discussion of pregnancy and abortion rights in America… not even as a responsible party in the equation of life?

So vote for Trump/Pence because women are bad! And men must be allowed to freely ejaculate whenever, wherever and inside whomever they please…because men are good! Here’s to making America great again… one ejaculation at a time!

Rhetorical Question

This week is the opening of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland Ohio.

Ohio is a traditional open-carry state. The open-carry of firearms by those who legally possess the firearm is a legal activity in Ohio with or without a license.

But this week, in the wake of gun violence across the country, the head of a Cleveland police union called on Ohio’s Governor John Kasich to declare a state of emergency and suspend the open carry gun law, during the Republican convention.

The union head said that he was concerned about copycat shootings at the Republican convention, but a spokeswoman for Governor Kasich said that the governor did not have the power to suspend Ohio’s open carry law.

However, as everyone in the Republican party knows, guns do not kill people. So why should there be any problem?

Crapology

Did you know that 2.5 billion people in the world do not have regular access to a toilet? And of those 2.5 billion people over 1 million of them poop in the wild! That’s 1 out of every 3 people without a toilet, and 1 in 7 dumping au naturel…

This is the 21st century isn’t it?

Right now my country (the USA) is debating whether or not to spend over 1 trillion dollars to upgrade our nuclear weapons arsenal…so that we can defend ourselves against who? Outdoor crappers? I know that our presidential candidates want to “Bomb the shit out of “them”… but are we not already spending enough on scaring the shit out of them? Right where they already stand?

And after all, In 2014, even in the U.S. almost half a million households still did not have complete plumbing facilities; defined as having access to hot and cold running water, a toilet that flushes, and a shower or bathtub.

Not to mention Flint, Michigan and 2,000 other cities across all of our 50 states that have excessive levels of lead in their water! Who wants to drink that?!

And yet we have soldiers stationed in silos all across the U.S. just waiting for the word to push the button so as to defend our society by blowing the rest of the people of this world… into the stone age…where apparently 1/3 of them already live!

I say, make toilets not war. Let America lead everyone to the bathroom and not the battlefield! And let’s fix our infrastructure and water pipes while we’re at it too…and let’s stop being afraid of everyone else, especially whether or not the toilet you are using (that is if you are lucky enough to have one) matches the sexual organ in other people’s pants or under their dresses.

Go poop in the woods like everyone else if it worries you so much!

 

 

 

 

Who Am I?!

This month I have to renew my New Jersey Driver’s License. 4 years ago, for the first time in my life (I’m 61) I needed to show 6 points of identification to prove my identity (which includes Birth Certificate, Social Security card, Voter Registration card, Utility Bills, Tax bills and my old Drivers License) and then have my picture taken so there would be no mistake that from that point on I was who I said I was. This was all done in 2011 as part of all of the states compliance with Homeland Security rules and regulations.

Here is the copy as it appears on the Homeland Security News Wire explaining just how sophisticated the new NJ driver’s licenses are.

In compliance with Secure ID, the federal law that mandates that states create more stringent identification cards, New Jersey has unveiled a sophisticated new driver’s license; according to New Jersey officials, the new Enhanced Digital Driver’s License puts New Jersey among the ten states with the most secure identity cards; to prevent counterfeiting, security features include an embedded pattern on the license, one and two dimensional bar codes, and “purposeful errors” like misspellings; to implement these new licenses, the state’s MVCs have had to undergo a $19 million upgrade to install new computer systems, hardware, and software.

Notice how NJ had to spend 19 million dollars to upgrade their software etc. But the new licenses had photos and embeds and bar codes to make them super secure and fraud preventive. So whenever I go to purchase my Claritin-D  all the pharmacist has to do is look at my face and compare it to the face on my license, then scan the back of my license which inputs everything there is to know about me into their pharmacy computers where then even the Federal government will be notified and able to track my pseudoephedrine purchases to make sure I’m just into allergies and not into crystal meth!

Anyway, my license is now expiring and I have to have it renewed…in person…at the NJ Motor vehicles office…And I have to bring my 6 points of ID with me, just like I did in 2012…to prove who I am!…Again!

Why can’t they just look at my face and then look at my Super Secure Homeland Security Specific NJ drivers license… with my face on it, and then scan the super secure embedded bar code on the back and say “Hey it’s You! Congratulations! Go home and have a nice day!”

Why do I have to go through the entire 6 point, prove who I am, like nobody but me knows, like you can’t see the face I’m wearing, that matches the drivers license I have, that I couldn’t have gotten, unless I had proven who I was, 4 years ago, so I could get the license that I’m holding in my hand now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Apparently My NJ Drivers License proves who I am to everyone except the NJ Motor Vehicles Department! And they gave it to me in the first place when I proved to them who I was! These guys are worse than my bankers. Who also pretend to NOT know who I am whenever I go there to get some of my own money, that I could only put there by proving who I was!

So off I go tomorrow to hopefully once again prove who I am to bureaucrats with a short term memory offering the promise of a long term ID card that they can’t ever make good on.

I’ve got IDs up the wazoo and still nobody knows the me I really am! Do I? Does anyone?

All I can say is… Thanks a lot Alzheimer bin-Laden!

 

Hazards To Ourselves!?

Here is a little known factoid, at least I think it is little known, since I was not aware of it until just this week nor had I heard anyone speak of it before…Did you know that in the United States more than twice as many people commit suicide than are murdered by someone else? That is, we kill ourselves more than we kill each other…

In fact, world wide,  suicide takes more lives than murder and war put together! And those statistics come from the World Health Organization. The WHO reports that the death toll from suicide – at almost one million people per year – accounts for half of all violent deaths worldwide. And the toll is rising with 1.5 million yearly fatalities from suicide predicted by the year 2020.

And yet the newspapers and telecasts are filled each and every day with stories of murder, terror and war, cancer, disease and traffic accidents and yet an estimated 10 to 20 million people attempt suicide each year! And they are almost never mentioned, reported nor talked about publicly.

Even the Pentagon has recently released statistics revealing that while war (as everyone would expect) was the leading cause of death in the military nearly every year between 2004 and 2011, suicides became the top means of dying for our troops in 2012 and 2013! Our soldiers are now killing themselves more than our enemies do!

The WHO reports that the highest suicide rates are in Eastern Europe, and the lowest in Latin America, Muslim countries and some Asian nations. Suicide rates also tend to increase with age but for some reason and worldwide, there has been a recent increase in suicidal behaviors among young people aged 15 to 25. Men are more successful at committing suicide than are women… except in rural China and  parts of India.

And The most common methods for committing suicide? Swallowing pesticides, using firearms and overdosing on painkillers. But did you know any of this? I did not and for whatever reasons just about everyone avoids the subject,  suicides are hardly ever reported, and not many seem to think that it is a problem worth discussing or trying to solve.

And yet we stock pile guns to keep ourselves safe, worry about who’s walking through our neighborhoods, demand an ever larger military to protect us from the world and stand on lines for hours to make sure our planes and trains have not been infiltrated by madmen (and women) who actually kill very few of us.

And despite all of our fears of “them” and “those people” and that disease and the next natural disaster…what we should really be most afraid and cautious of is… what we might do to ourselves… For in truth, The statistics show us in overwhelming numbers that here in the 21st century, the greatest danger to my health…is most likely going to be…me!

 

Welcome to 1984!

I think that President Obama has done a good job as President of the United States. I know that not everyone agrees with me and even though I don’t agree with everything that President O. has done, our 44th elected President is about to do something that no other president in the history of the United States has ever accomplished.

He is about to become the only president who has been at war during all 8 years of his presidency! And when you consider that President G.W. Bush had the nation at war for the last 6 years of his presidency then the United States has been at war for the past 14 years, non stop…with no stopping in sight.

Hillary Clinton, should she become our next president, is well known in Washington for being a “war hawk” herself… and Donald trump, should he become our next Commander in Chief, has vowed to “Bomb the shit out of them!” Whoever “they” may be…but does that matter anymore? Who they are?

Does anyone know why we fight everywhere and for always these days? We’ve been at war now 7 times as long as we were involved in WWI and almost 4 times as long as we were involved in WWII. And Vietnam, our longest war, was a matinee short compared to our current involvements in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Even President Lincoln was able to bring about the conclusion of our very own Civil War in one third of the time that it has taken for our present day armed forces to secure the fighting “Over There”against nations that don’t even have governments, let alone, armies.

So why do we fight so long and so hard and at such great expense to our nation and our citizens? We are currently over 19 trillion dollars in debt and a 2011 Brown University study concluded that the cost of war since 2001 will reach 5 trillion dollars, or $16,000 per American; $64,000 for a family of four…by 2020. And that was a 2011, Pre-ISIS, estimate!

If you are voting this year for a political party or person who you think will reduce our national debt…good luck with that! Unless you are hoping that our government will trade Social Security and Medicare spending for a reduction in the debt, it will just never happen. And even then the ever increasing costs of our never ending wars will simply chew up that savings and add more debt to our society anyway.

And then what would we be left with… but war, debt and absolutely no societal programs for our society that we have been fighting to protect? What does it avail a nation to spend a fortune and lose it’s soul?

But now, at 19 trillion dollars in debt and rising by the minute, how will we, without war, keep the peace… and the economy? Our dollars now remain strong because we back them up not with gold (we ran out of that in the 1970s) but with guns instead.

In 1960 President Eisenhower admonished us to “beware the military-industrial complex”, and we apparently have not, for it seems to me that war has now become peace in the minds of many if not most Americans. So shall our ignorance become our strength too?

 

 

 

 

Happy Belated B-Earth Day

Happy Birthday once again to Mother Earth! Even though Earth Day is not Earth’s official birthday perhaps this would be a good time to celebrate it anyway. After all the earth is now 6,060 years old…give or take, and deserves a birthday celebration…don’t you think?

I only mention the Earth’s young age because according to Gallup surveys  30% of Americans say the Bible is the actual word of God and should be interpreted literally, including 54% of those who attend church weekly and 46% of those with a High School education or less. And 60% of all Americans believe that evolution has has little or nothing to do with the development of the human species.

So according to the Bible, and those who study it carefully, and literally, the Earth and all of it’s carefully designed creatures have been around for only a little over 6,000 years. So actually Earth Day would be the celebration or birthday of everything Earth related…including us.

But since the earth was set awash during the Great Flood of Noah’s time perhaps we should be celebrating the Re-Birth of Earth which literal Biblical scholars put at around 4,200 years ago. So happy Grand Re-Opening Mother earth!

And while we’re at it we should get ready to celebrate Mother’s day and the four mothers who gave birth to us all…Bible speaking, of course. Because after the Great Flood and the landing of Noah’s Ark there were only 4 mothers left alive on Earth. And they would be…

• Emzara…The wife of Noah
• Sedeqetelebab…The wife of Shem
  
• Ne’elatama’uk…The wife of Ham
• ‘Adataneses…The wife of Japheth
  

Names you don’t often hear anymore and names never even mentioned in the bible! Imagine that: The 4 mothers of all Earthlings and not even a mention in the Bible? Go figure. We have since learned their names from other ancient texts, like the Book of Jubilees but isn’t it odd that Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth get all of the credit for inseminating the women but the women get nary a mention for having carried and given  birth to all of our Earthly ancestors. That’s like saying you watched Gilligan’s Island because of Gilligan and the Skipper and not Mary Ann and Ginger.

And what a job that must have been, nurturing and caring for all of Earth’s forefathers… and fore-mothers. You’d think that with all of the Americans who faithfully believe in the bible and who faithfully disbelieve in evolution there would be more respect and recognition paid to the mothers…I guess they figure that if God didn’t bother to mention them in the Bible, then how important could they be?

Oh well, life is funny that way I guess.

Anyway,  Just thought I’d give another shout out to the planet Earth. Happy Birthday and many more! Because, No matter how old you are, you’re all we’ve got. I’m sure you’ll be letting us know in the future if you need anything. And I sure hope we’ll be listening!