Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

So there's a lot of cautiously optimistic crowing about the near-miss by the Democratic candidate in the KS-04 House special election to replace new CIA director Mike Pompeo. And there's definitely some good to be observed from this -- where Pompeo retained the seat by a 2:1 margin just six months ago, GOP turd-burglar Ron Estes comparatively squeaked by, 52.5-45.7%. A seven-percent margin, just six months after a thirty-point margin, is certainly noteworthy, especially for a district along the Kansas-Oklahoma border, where the spread at the top of the ticket was roughly the same. And the Goopers pushed hard on this one in the homestretch, with robocalls from Clownstick and his beady-eyed sidekick.

And yet, it must also be mentioned that in the end totals, this was eminently winnable. In the 2016 election, Democratic challenger Daniel Giroux racked up 81,495 votes against Pompeo, while in Tuesday's special election, James Thompson got only 55,310, and Estes received 63,505 votes. We all get that "off-year" and "special" elections get lower attendance, but I guess my question is -- especially given the current circumstances -- why?

Presumably every one of the 81,495 people who voted for Daniel Giroux also voted for Hillary Clinton, and therefore were dismayed by the unlikely ascension of Grampa Walnuts and his ever-changing daily word salad. If only 80% of those people could have mustered themselves to show up to something that takes just a few minutes, it would have been a yuge finger in the eye of this dumpster fire of an administration.

What does it take to motivate people to fucking show up? Do they need a pat on the back, a fucking parade for doing the least bit of engagement to be imposed on a (hopefully) informed citizenry? Seriously, this is the same reason Obama's terms ended up being largely ineffective and ultimately derailed -- because a significant chunk of these lazy fucks don't show up for the midterms. They take it all for granted that Somebody Else Will Do It For Them, and then they're just shocked that Sam Brownback gets re-elected to gut state services some more, that the most inept con-man grifter in recent memory gets the top spot to loot and pillage to his shriveled heart's content.

I'm glad Thompson gave Estes a run for his money and made it close, and I hope he builds on that momentum by throwing in for the regular election in eighteen months, and spends that entire time becoming Estes' worst ankle-biter, tethering him to an increasingly unpopular chief executive and his nepotistic clusterfuck of an administration. And Tom Perez better stake him with plenty of money and support. That's the only way to root out the entrenched scumbags, and put an end to their hypocritical holy war.

But none of it matters if these lazy fucktards don't fucking show up. Ignorance is neither an excuse nor an option. Every single one of these dumbasses can conjure up maps and restaurant reviews and whatever the hell else they want in seconds on their phone. They can sure as fuck take a minute once in a while and check in on the world of people who run their world.

Or not, and then they can get more of the same, while it all swirls down the drain. If Tom Perez wants to send me some cash, I will be more than happy to head out to twine country and smack them upside the head. Here is the day of the election, do you have fifteen minutes to spare that day and do one thing for your country, maybe take a break from uploading pictures of your malformed genitals to Tinder?

I think we all have a touch of nihilism, and mostly I've engaged in the usual sarcastic variety, but the last 12-18 months has stripped away much of the sarcasm, and left a core of really wanting the fucking meteor to hit. And it's stupid shit like this that explains why -- because it doesn't have to be that way, because the little things do affect the larger things, because the people most likely to be adversely affected also seem to be the most indifferent and apathetic. And I'll be goddamned if I can figure out why that is.

Got Woke

Jim Wright has far and away (afaik) the best and most complete take on (cue cheesy Ludlum title generator) The Kaepernick Kerfuffle. Kaepernick's rabid Facebook detractors proclaim that the song and flag worship that introduces professional sporting events is all about Respect. Well, clearly Kaepernick -- and now professional soccer player Megan Rapinoe -- feel that respect is a two-way street, that is something that must be earned, and not given mindlessly. And sometimes individuals might feel that they're not given the same respect that is demanded of them by their country.

The idea that the flag or the anthem stand for freedom and liberty is a nice one, but one that falls on its face when it's only for approved freedoms and liberties. The right to dissent or protest is even more important than the right to simply go along with the rest of the stadium. Anyone can do that; it take guts to decide not to do the (ahem) politically correct thing.

Now, to play devil's advocate, one should also note that if Kaepernick is trying to start a "conversation" or a "dialogue," there were and are any number of better ways to go about that. He is, after all, an NFL quarterback who came within thirty seconds and a dropped pass from winning a Super Bowl just a few years ago. Any number of reputable Bay Area journalists would have been happy to sit down and interview him, if he wanted to start a discussion on race. Performing provocative stunts like wearing socks with pigs wearing police caps, or pointedly sitting down through the national anthem, tend to (you'll be surprised to find) provoke something other than reasoned discourse.

Endless Kabuki

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. -- Frank Zappa
Hollywood is like high school, but with money. -- Martin Mull

Traditionally the "silly season" for "news" has been in the summer, since people (somebody, anyway) are on vacation and paying even less attention than usual. But it seems like this week -- heading straight into what is an unseasonably nice weekend here in the NorCal (I'm barbecuing steaks in about an hour, fool, so suck on it, snow country! Global warming, amirite?) -- has had more than its rightful share of sheer nonsense.

Starting with the State of the Union, a completely useless pseudo-political appendage, nothing more than an extended plug for the now-perpetual campaign that undergirds this nation's version of political engagement. Yes, Obama managed a few bons mots at the stone-faced dipshits on the other side of the proverbial aisle. He's always talked a good game, that's how he got in. Walking said talk has always been another matter, the tedious, mindless intransigence of the opposition notwithstanding.

Somewhere along the line, the SOTU has morphed from a routine of the president giving the speech, and an individual from the opposition party being appointed to giving a single rebuttal, to multiple responses in the same key, all of them stupid. It would be one thing if the respondents each had a fresh take or perspective on what, let's face it, is simply a barrage of self-serving hortatory rhetorical boilerplate. But they don't; instead of orchestrating their views, the teatards all play a triangle, and ting it at random intervals, or perhaps to some indiscernible inner rhythm.

I think we all had the most fun with soup-brained cornhole Senator Bread Bags, who apparently grew up in Dust Bowl Oklahoma in the mid 1930s. Listen close, you dingbat -- I grew up poor, with farmers and dairymen in my family (though we didn't get the gubmint subsidies Senator Hawg Ballz' kinfolk got, apparently not enough to buy her actual shoes). I know what it's like to wear the same clothes and shoes two years at a time, to stretch the same dinner three or four nights.

But I never wore bread bags over my shoes, not the least reason for which is that bread bags are not particularly known for their exceptional durability; they are, after all, made specifically to encase a food item which typically lasts less than a week. I mean, we all know these "stories" are 100% grade-A bullshit, but usually there's at least some believability to some of them. Hawg Ballz didn't even bother to brush the peanuts off this one when she pulled it directly out of her ass.

Hey, whatever. If you're the sort that takes some sort of weird "pride" in stuffing plastic bags and cardboard into shoes that really should be replaced, more power to you. Hell, you might be up for the one-two jib-jab of the King and Queen of Holy Derp pretending one more blessed time to throw their pointy hats in the ring. Will anyone fall for it this time?

Do we really need to ask? No matter what the question is, regardless of the ninth-circle example of sheer stupidity, whenever you read it and ask if anyone is really that fucking dumb, invariably someone shuffles forward, finger jammed into nostril up to the third knuckle, as if to say, "Uh, yup."

Trump and Palin are just two of the speakers -- and you know I use the term loosely -- gathered at something called the Iowa Freedom Summit (because "Fuckfest 2016" would have been too obvious). A larger collection of card-carrying shitbirds you will not find outside of a state penitentiary. These are people who literally cannot wait to destroy what's left of their country, spread the profits among themselves, and then find newer and better ways to export said destruction as far and wide as possible.

The icing on this shit sandwich of a news week is the manufactured outrage over Michael Moore and Seth Rogen tweeting smartass remarks of mild dissent regarding Duh Most Patriotic Movie Evar. You see, when it's some frog rag getting lit up over its disparaging remarks about Islam, every conservadouche is suddenly a fucking free-speech champeen, never mind that Charlie Hebdo had said nasty things about the Catholic Church as well. But it's all good because booga-booga-moooslim.

But a couple people say that the movie felt a little propagandistic (gee, ya think?) and even Dean Fucking Cain (hey, I kinda remember him, I think) comes unglued. You would think that Moore had directly referred to Chris Kyle (PBUH) as a "coward," rather than mentioning that because Moore's uncle was killed by a sniper in WW2, Moore's family had routinely referred to that mode of killing as cowardly in general. (For the record, I happen to disagree; for the most part, killing is killing. I'd say a drone bombing of a wedding party is pretty fucking cowardly, though.)

And you'd think that Rogen had called Kyle a Nazi or something, instead of merely alluding to the reputedly (I haven't seen it yet, not in any rush, will probably Netflix it eventually) propagandistic nature of the film. And so now Dean Cain and, um, Kid Rock want to kick Rogen's ass or something.

There's a thread in the tenor of these hirsute defenders of Chris Kyle's sacred honor, as if they themselves had a vested interest. More to the point, the "he did this in order to give you your rights" tack is just nuts. I don't have an issue with Kyle's feelings about the people he shot, or Iraqis and Muslims in general. No doubt most of the individuals Kyle encountered or dispatched were, in fact, what most of us would regard as "savages"; I sure as hell can't think of many better words to describe the sort of motherless fucks who torture people with power drills.

But that is orthogonal to whether Iraq or any of its demonic hordes presented anything resembling an actual threat to the Homeland, or that we even had a clue as to what sort of people we were supporting or aligning ourselves with. "Destabilizing unfriendly regimes" has a nice ring to it, for the ear of the hegemon; the reality of it is much different, now more than ever. But it's not like any of the people Chris Kyle killed from afar were on the verge of hopping a plane the next day so they could strap themselves with Semtex and ball bearing and hit the nearest mall food court. Yet that seems to be the thrust of the arguments, the japing at Moore and Rogen (who, if you haven't heard, are fat).

Maybe when Martin Mull famously opined that showbiz (and that's all any of this is, folks; you might as well have TMZ doing political coverage anymore) was like high school with money, he was being too generous. Because these days it seems more like preschool.

Home On Derange

So professional asshole Sean Hannity and his comically large head have made welfare rancher and incoherent goofball Cliven Bundy into some sort of martyr -- for what, besides not paying his grazing fees for over 20 years, I have no idea.

One can acknowledge possible additional sides to Bundy's story -- such as how much he was recompensed when the BLM took his land in 1993, or if Rory Reid really does have some sort of sweetheart deal in the works to purchase neighboring land for a Chinese-owned solar farm (answer: he doesn't) -- but there's no excusing the crazy that Bundy and his whackjob cohort have escalated this to. There's no excusing would-be militiamen who openly bragged about using their wives and daughters as human shields, if the BLM agents opened fire. There's no rationalizing the desire these goofballs nurse, to have this situation turn into a Ruby Ridge or Waco.

And there's no getting around that fact that Bundy seems to think he's the living reincarnation of John Fucking Wayne, a smirking narcissist who can't get his story straight about whether he obeys a state government (whose state constitution professes that the federal government is the absolute authority), or rides the range hoisting a giant American flag, banner of a government Bundy smugly proclaims that he doesn't acknowledge the existence of.

The feds weren't going to win this one any which way -- if they had pressed beyond tasing Bundy's adult idiot son, they ran the risk of an armed standoff, but almost as bad, they just showed that they will back down when confronted, that a bunch of surly galoots with an imaginary axe to grind can scare them off. Look for more of these to start popping up, at least as long as the black guy is in the White House.

In the meantime, as always, enjoy yet another meaningless spectacle of armed buffoons going apeshit over something that has nothing to do with them. This is the same species of dunce that self-actualized their stance on "free speech" by waddling down to Chick-Fil-A, and joining a Facebook page to "stand with" a fake hillbilly millionaire who sells them overpriced duck calls and cheap branded shit at Walley World.

Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right

You know, I get what Steve is saying here, and to some extent I actually agree. But goddamn, at some point the truly librul animals have to by god rear up on their hind legs and demand a genuinely transformative figure, rather than one that merely put on a good show of it on the campaign trail (such as Obama), not to mention a neocon warmonger whose only redeeming trait is that she's not quite part of whatever wretched clown car the Adelson wing of the Privilege party will put together in about 18 months.

In other words, if you want something better, you are going to have to insist on it and fight for it. The self-congratulatory rear-guard rhetorical volleys against the (barely existent) micro-claque of bien pensant pwoggies and Naderista holdouts will do fuck-all in the creeping face of corporate fascism. Citizens United opened the floodgates, and McCutcheon will prop them open -- by 2020, probably well before then, "Democrats" and "Republicans" will be replaced in all but name with more accurate Game of Thrones-sounding terms such as "Sorosians" and "Adelsonians."

This is not schtick, folks, this is fact. Winter has been coming for quite some time, and now it is here with a vengeance. The notion that Obama might give more of a shit than John Boehner or Ted Cruz is useless if nothing gets done in that regard, beyond the usual hand-wringing and cheap DFH-punching.

I mean, what does Hillary being "our best shot" entail, really, a face that's slightly less red in tooth and maw for the remainder of the working class? "Our best shot" at what, and who is the implied we in the word our, anyway? Only the very rich and the very poor have any real representation at this point; everyone else is simply a milch cow for the partaking thereof. People vote Democrat at this point because they think the ongoing predation will be held in at least slight abeyance. The chickens are still voting for Colonel Sanders, mind you; they're just getting a day or so reprieve from their inevitable fate.

These fuckers want your soul, and it's really up to you whether you deed it over to them or not. At least in the past, politics was somewhat transactional; you give me your loyalty and I'll make sure your job stays intact. Now it's more along the line of "give me your first-born and maybe I won't donkey-punch what's left of your job, your town, and your pension fund, because the other guy is even more of a sociopath." So what do we (to the extent that there is a "we" anymore, kemosabe) proles propose to do about any (much less all) of this?

Pissing away precious time and energy rallying against this or that random idiot who says something impolitic about gay people seems a poor substitute for taking back what's left of one's country. On the other hand, as I've been saying, Costa Rica seems quite nice.

Purity Bawl

Since it's an election year, it's time for the regularly scheduled plaint of the Thanksralphers, that migratory flock of folks whose bleats and peregrinations have somehow never quite clued them to a small but vital fact -- that Democrats don't lose because of third-party perfidy, but because too many of "their" voters end up voting Republican.

It's been repeated countless times in this here blog, but if the stupid "Mumia sweatshirt" schtick still merits play, then this does too:  in the 2000 electoral debacle, twelve times as many registered Democrats in Florida voted for George W. Bush as voted for Ralph Nader. Hokay? The Thanksralphers and DFH-punchers can ignore that all they want -- and they clearly want, since it's been twelve years and I'll be damned if I've ever seen any Dem animosity toward those party-jumpers -- but like gravity and evolution, this is a true fact whether or not people believe it or act on it.

I've come to believe that the folks who continue to indulge in meaningless Nader-baiting have simply made an easier strategic decision for themselves. It's easier to titty-twist the minuscule number of "purists" who supposedly insist on absolute ideological rigidity, than to take a serious look at the much greater number of people who, for whatever reasons, jump over to the other major party.

Or the even larger number of people who look at a corrupt system run by and for the wealthy and connected, understand intuitively that neither party gives a red-hot monkey-fuck about them, and stays home. It's all well and good to insist that even if one is getting by and not in need of assistance, they should at least vote with compassion for those less fortunate, who are in need of this or that government assistance. But uh, if one is looking at, say, literally spending the rest of their natural life paying interest on $200 textbooks because the higher education system is a fucking racket, that person may have different priorities in the voting booth besides ensuring that the alcoholic vagrant shitting on the downtown sidewalk has adequate health care.

There is certainly a difference between the two parties, operationally and policy-wise. These differences have become larger and more apparent due to the polarizing nature of the teabaggers, and their effect on the Republican party. As much of a disappointment as Obama has been to lefties and progressives, I don't think anyone would argue the point that his strategies and outcomes would have been vastly different with a better Congress and Supreme Court. Still probably would have been dickless incrementalism, because that is all our owners will permit, but the intransigence and idiotic obstructionism of the 'baggers has certainly worsened an already bad situation.

But the real problem here is the idea that anyone's vote is "owed" to a political party, as opposed to the party having to make its case for earning your vote. It's dangerous and undemocratic, it has led to the current situation, where the parties are owned and operated by corporate interests, and simply take your vote for granted, promising everything and delivering jack shit.

Hey, whatever floats people's boats, I guess. I could just live without the smug, sneering, condescending attitude that permeates these sorts things, expending far more energy and effort lecturing a tiny portion of voters on their sincere (if perhaps somewhat misguided or impractical) principles, than on the vastly greater numbers who jump over to the other side without a care in the world.

It's important for everyone to keep in mind that politicians, good or bad, are reflective of their constituencies. Somebody keeps voting -- on purpose, even -- for dipshits like Louie Gohmert and Jim Inhofe. Those people are the goddamned problem, not the handful of supposed purity trolls.

Dearth of a Nation

Scenes from Weernumberoneistan:

Of the nearly 200 homeowners who lost their properties in recent years, one in three had liens of less than $1,000.

More than half of the foreclosures were in the city’s two poorest wards, 7 and 8, where dozens of owners were forced to leave their homes just months before purchasers sold them. One foreclosed on a brick house near the Maryland border with a $287 lien and sold it less than eight weeks later for $129,000.

More than 40 houses were taken by companies whose representatives were caught breaking laws in other states to win liens.

Instead of stepping in, the D.C. tax office created more problems by selling nearly 1,900 liens by mistake in the past six years — even after owners paid their taxes — forcing unsuspecting families into legal battles that have lasted for years. One 64-year-old woman spent two years fighting to save her home in Northwest after the tax office erroneously charged her $8.61 in interest.

So you have indifferent gubmint bureaucracies and soul-dead paper-holders teaming up to prey on the poor and elderly, coupled with the paramilitarized oops brigade, in the service of a machine that uses human beings up like cord wood. Are we having fun yet?