Category Archives: politics

March 6, 2016 · 10:30 am

Making Fun of What’s Funny

 

Senator Tedhkruzh

There is only so much time you can spend making fun of Tronald Dump and Cred Tuz…  Only so many “Ted Cruz is a lizard-man” jokes can be made before they are no longer funny.  But it is never going to be less important during an election season than it is now.

Lizard-man Cruz is a religious-fanatic-poser who will lead us further into the realms of oligarchy and fascism.  We see him constantly in the Republican Presidential debates using lizard tricks to get any advantage he can get.  Telling Ben Carson supporters that Ben the Sleepy Dwarf was leaving the race and his supporters should vote for Cruz, the next best choice.  Of course, Carson was still in the race.  And all we got from the Cruz campaign was a big old “oopsie”. Those of us dedicated to making fun of Senator Cruz, especially those of us in Texas who have to take the blame for him, are trying our hardest to expose what he is to everyone who listens to us, and it isn’t working very well.  Cruz, as sleazy and reviled as he is, still seems to get what he wants… at least preventing others from having what he doesn’t want us to have.

Here’s a lovely video of Ted Cruz from Bad Lip Reading on YouTube;

I have to admit that I had to watch this three times to figure out that they were matching words to his lips rather than just showing us stupid crap that Ted actually says.  I mean, he really does talk and act like this.  How was I supposed to know it was mere satire?

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And as bad as Ted Cruz would be as a choice for President, Donald Trump would be far worse.  The irrational humanoid orangutan is using the same sort of fear tactics that Herr Adolf used to rise in Germany in the 1930’s.  He uses Mexicans and Muslims as whipping people instead of Jews, but he is similar in almost every tactic.  In fact, I believe that Herr Hitler would have his own reality TV show if he lived in New York City in this day and age.  He would definitely relish firing people on television, especially using real fire.  This man is leading all the Republican candidates in the polls.  He is even capable of beating Hillary Clinton due to her Benghazi-and-email tarnished reputation.  We may soon be required to salute and shout “heil Donald!” in this country.

Any of the Republican candidates would be better than these two I have concentrated my ridicule upon, yet any of them would be a disaster.  Kasich and Rubio are the most moderate and least-likely-to-destroy-all-life-on-earth.  But Kasich wants to slaughter public education, and Rubio is actually an enemy to immigration reform, not an advocate.  They are no bed of roses either.  Bed of thorns maybe, but not sweet-smelling like roses.

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A fairly accurate portrait of what Marco Rubio sees when he looks in a mirror.

So now I have used my 500 words to elucidate and lament the evils of politics as they have played out in this election year so far.  I hope you will laugh with me at the ridiculousness of booger-eaters like Cruz and monkey-men like Trump.  But I also hope you will take this humor at least a little bit seriously.

 

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February 28, 2016 · 5:26 pm

The Cowboy Code

When I was a boy playing cowboys and Indians with cap pistols and rubber tomahawks, we all knew that cowboys had a code.  The guy in the white hat always shoots straight.  He knows right from wrong.  He only shoots the bad guy.  He even shoots the gun out of the bad guy’s hand if he can.  Westerns are about right and wrong, good and bad, and the unyieldingly good knights of plains.

And boys believe what they see on TV and in the movie theaters.  People who make television shows never lie, do they?  In fact, Wyatt Earp was based on a real guy who really lived and really shot the bad guys at the gosh-darn real OK Corral.

Daniel Boone was a real guy too.  He faced the opening up of new lands full of deadly dangers.  And when Fess Parker played him in 1964, wearing Davy Crockett’s coonskin hat, he walked the earth like a guardian angel, making everyone safe by the end of the episode.  He even knew which Indians were good and which were bad.  Mingo was always on Daniel’s side.  And when they spoke to each other about the dangers they faced, it was never about killing the people they feared.  It was about doing what is was right, about helping the community at Boonesboro to survive.  Being encouraging… looking forward to a more settled future created by following the cowboy frontier code.

So, I am left wondering what ever happened to the cowboy code?  I listen to Republican presidential candidates talking about dipping bullets in pig’s blood to kill Muslims, and building walls against Mexican immigrants, and why our right to carry assault rifles is sacred, and I wonder what happened.  Didn’t they experience the same education from the television versions of the Great American Mythology?  Didn’t they learn the code too?

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I am old enough now to know that cap guns are not real guns and you cannot solve problems by shooting somebody.  But that was never the point of the cowboy code.  We need straight-shooters again in our lives, not to shoot people, but to tell the unvarnished truth.  We need wise people who can tell who are the good Indians and who are the bad   We need them to shoot the weapons out of the bad guys’ hands.  And I know that’s asking for leaders to be larger than life and be more perfect than a man can actually be.  But Daniel Boone was a real man.  Myths and legends start with a fundamental truth.

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February 25, 2016 · 4:43 pm

Left is Right

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The finished portrait of Marla

With numerous health problems, I have difficulty with sleeping every night.  One of the worst problems I have is nocturnal acid reflux.  It makes me wake up in the middle of night with fire in my throat, like some sort of dyspeptic acid-spitting dragon.  I have to vault out of bed, arthritis and all, and go toss the contents of my stomach into the toilet.  Sorry to be so gross, but it is important to this theme to get a sense of just how bad it is to be on the wrong side.  What do I mean by that?  Well, I learned from a doctor recently that which side you lie on to sleep makes a big difference.  If you sleep on your right side at night, your stomach is oriented in a way that the top opening angles down towards the esophagus.  This leads to an unfortunate ooze of stomach acid that sets off the reflux crisis.  If, however, you sleep on your left side, the stomach is angled in a manner that allows gravity to work for you instead of against you.  I have been intentionally lying on my left side every night for a month.  It works.  No acid reflux.  Until last night.  But when I woke up gagging, I had unconsciously rolled onto my right side.  So it has become obvious to me,  the left side is the right side.

 

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The latest additions to my collection, January & February

Life has to be in balance.  But, unfortunately, it constantly shifts back and forth, up and down, and all around.  Keeping life in balance is a juggling act that may involve lying only on your left side while you sleep.

I worry too about the balance affecting the world as a whole right now.  We are very deeply mired in a time when political right and left are out of balance and have been for too long.  In politics, the right is the conservative belief that things should remain the same.  Since the Reagan administration, that has meant deregulating in the name of profits, free market capitalism, and letting Wall Street profit-makers do anything and everything they want to do to make higher profits.  The left is in favor of change.  When I was a kid, I can remember the left being a very bad thing.  They wanted communist-style revolution.  They robbed banks and blew things up.  But most of those leftists are now dead.  They still exist, but the far right is just as dangerous, the KKK, the militias, and they are far more numerous in this day and age.  The leftist agenda now is more what used to be the moderate position.  Senator Elizabeth Warren and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders want to re-regulate the Wall Street trends that caused the economic meltdown in 2008.   They want to promote progressive tax systems that move the money out of corporate profit-funnels and back into the hands of the middle class, and the institutions that benefit them.  There is a need to shift to the left.  There is need to restore balance.  Once again I think it is proper to say, the left side is the right side.

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Here is some of that leftist thinking from the socialist Public Television initiative.

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February 21, 2016 · 5:17 pm

Truthfully…

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Truthfully… I rarely ever tell the truth.  I am a retired school teacher who now spends a majority of the time left to me on writing fiction and drawing colored-pencil pictures.  Truth is not an asset for that kind of fantastical foolishness.  But that doesn’t mean that the truth is irrelevant.  In fact, after the last round of politics as usual (if 2016 even remotely qualifies for that) it is more important than ever to divine the trends and consequences for who we are about to elect.

If you look at the events in Flint, Michigan… the world becomes a scarier place.  What are the actual consequences of having Republicans in charge?  Because of cost-cutting measures by Governor Rick Snyder’s spend-less-on-the-people so we can give-more-tax-breaks-and-wealth-to-the-wealthy initiatives, the water system of Flint, Michigan has been neglected to the point of poisoning everyone who is poor enough to have to drink city water.  Reptile-man Snyder reassures people with a Republican grin that shows his fangs.  Then he lies, first about the water being safe to give to your children, then that he will do everything in his power to fix the problem… as long as it doesn’t cost actual money.  And the truth is every city in America is under the same threat.  Texas is a Republican-controlled paradise for billionaires. You can taste the taint in the Texas frogwater that comes out of the tap.  Plus, we have all kinds of fracking going on underground, pumping toxic stuff into the ground to pump shale oil out.  North of here in Oklahoma, the fracking has caused powerful earthquakes.  We have felt lesser shakes here in the Dallas metroplex.  The animals are so mad for meat in their feeding frenzy that even the ground under us is not safe from their appetites.

Senator Tedhkruzh, the lizard-man from the doomed planet Galtorr Prime.

After the Iowa Caucus it became very possible that the Republican nomination could end up in the claws of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.  This shape-changing lizard man is the popular choice among the rabid evangelicals.  He is supposedly the most conservative and the most Christian of the Republican candidates.  But if you type into Google the phrase “Is Ted Cruz…” you get a result that says “the Zodiac Killer?”  Of course, he was not born at a time that allows him to be the actual mysterious serial killer who was never caught.  But people are searching this question for a reason.  According to the New York Times, in 1997 a young man named Michael Wayne Haley was convicted of stealing a calculator from Walmart.  The crime carried a maximum two year sentence.  Texas, the loving State that it is, mistakenly gave him 16 years.  When Haley tried to get the courts to fix the mistake, Ted Cruz was Solicitor General for Texas.  He took the case all the way to the Supreme Court to try to force Haley to serve the entire sixteen years.  The Supreme court ruled that Haley should be released for time served after serving six years of a maximum two year sentence.  The man has no compassion, no mercy, no Christian love in his reptile heart.  It is entirely possible that he could become President of the United States.  I confess, ttuthfully…, I am deeply afraid of that happening.  He is the Zodiac Killer.

So, I have run out of truth for today.  Telling the truth is hard to do.  Especially for a practiced liar like me.  But I promise you I will tell more truth in the days that are left to me.  Truth is important.  And the thing about writing fiction, especially humorous fiction, is the point of telling all those lies is to ultimately get at the truth.

 

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February 18, 2016 · 4:45 pm

11.22.63

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The impact of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination ó and its meaning 25 years later ó are explored in the’ hour-long documentary JFK – A TIME REMEMBERED, premiering Monday, November 21 at 9 p.m. (ET; check local listings) on PBS. Presented by WNET/New York, the program is a production of The Susskind Company and is made possible by funding from General Dynamics.

As a conspiracy nut registered with the Monkey-Brained Theorists of America, the grand old MBTA, I was absolutely tickled pink by the new Stephen King series on Hulu, 11.22.63.  I have seen the first episode and loved the mix of fantasy, science-fiction, history, and horror that goes into telling a story of man who walks through a time portal into the past to be able to prevent the assassination of John Kennedy.  Believe me, I know it is not true, despite what some of the anti-conspiracy nay-sayers will tell you about me.  After all, they have a Monkey-Brained Club of their own and don’t even know it.

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I went on a binge of watching JFK assassination-related videos on Hulu and on YouTube.  There is some very good information out there compiled by some very dedicated and dogged researchers.  The man who wrote the book Crossfire, Jim Marrs, is a very talented writer and researcher whose book became the basis for the movie JFK by Oliver Stone.

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Marrs has an unfortunate gullibility that leads him to state as truth some very bizarre things about the New World Order, aliens and Area 51, the research of Alexander Sitchin into the ancient secrets of the Sumerians… and granted, I can’t prove some of the absolutely loony things contained in that aren’t true, but they are absolutely loony never-the-less.  But when it comes to researching documents, interviewing and re-interviewing principle witnesses, and verifying facts, Marrs makes a very compelling case for the assassination of the President of the United States being done by the CIA, Secret Service, FBI, and President Lyndon Johnson.

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It is a logical conclusion that Secret Service performed a cover-up during the assassination and its aftermath.  They spirited the President’s body away in spite of the Dallas rules for murder investigation and autopsy.  They washed and repaired the car it occurred in before the murder investigation could examine anything.  They interfered with the actual autopsy, with important notes, photographs, and even the President’s brain that were placed in Secret Service’s custody going missing.  No matter what you believe about the lone shooter theory, you can’t deny that a cover-up is the only explanation for these facts.

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There is documented evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald was working on the fringes of the CIA operation in New Orleans and reporting to J. Edgar Hoover about their activities.  So, if he was a spy telling the right hand what the left hand was actually up to, who better to frame as the guilty gunman and then silence him before investigators could find out everything he knew?

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And why does all this still matter more than 50 years later?  Many of the actual perpetrators are dead, including former CIA hit man E. Howard Hunt who confessed to having a part in the assassination on his death bed.  They can’t be punished now.  But the corrupt organizations and political elite with their attendant influence are still operating in the world.  This was a murder that never came to trial.  Many of the facts have been sealed away by the very government agencies that have the most to hide.  Connections to other CIA manipulations, like those surrounding 9-11, need to be revealed, and the way the government operates needs to be modified.  But besides the fact that these things seriously impact our lives now, it is simply fun to dig and make connections and learn things that most people don’t generally know.  There is monkey-brained joy in that.

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February 2, 2016 · 4:40 pm

When Lizard People Win

Senator Tedhkruzh

Senator Tedhkruzh, the lizard-man from the doomed planet Galtorr Prime.

The Iowa Caucuses delivered a result that was, to me, not unexpected, but definitely dreaded.  Not that I am not happy that Bernie Sanders tied Hilary Clinton on the Democratic side.  Sanders is a gruff and determined old grandpa-man who says what he means and has been pursuing ideas that I truly believe will benefit everybody for more than forty years.  But my Iowa friends and Iowa family are more given to the conservative point of view.  As a result, they have a tendency to accept as truth the lies they are told by the lizard people who have taken on human disguises and become the leaders of the Republican Party.

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Apparently Grandpa Munster is the winner of the Republican half of the Iowa Caucuses.  Not to say that it is a bad thing that Mr. Donald Trump did not win, for he would be a very bad president if elected.  He does not represent all the people of this country, and does not even represent the interests of all the people who would vote for him.  He is a greedy, ruthless business overlord who favors the rich and has distinct and harmful prejudices against most minorities.  He has a terrible idea of what is good for all Americans.  But, as orangutans will when given the reins of the stagecoach, he will promptly drive us into the nearest ditch and be replaced with a better driver.
Senator Cruz from Texas, however, is another beast all together.  The noted conspiracy theorist, David Icke, insists many of the world leaders are actually serpentoid aliens able to take on human form, and are using their ability to control the world for sinister alien ends.  Now, I certainly don’t believe that David Icke is anything more than a kook and a charlatan making obscene amounts of money lecturing about his conspiracy theories and bizarre fantasy life.  Ted Cruz, in my experience, however, is a cold-blooded creature with nothing but his own appetites for power in his agenda.  He portrays himself as an opponent to Obamacare and orchestrated an unnecessary, expensive, and needlessly destructive government shutdown to demonstrate his power.  The fact that the Affordable Care Act is actually helping people with the nightmare of American health care and insurance access is irrelevant to him.  He is a child of immigrants, yet he is opposed to giving hard-working would-be immigrants easy access to citizenship and fully documented acceptance.  And the worst thing about the cold-blooded politician is that he has the power and ability to enforce his will if we make the mistake of electing him President of the United States.  As a humorist, it is tempting to merely call the enemy names and cleverly insult him.  You can probably tell that I enjoy doing just that.  But I hope you see too that I am choosing against him for myself because of his stated policy positions and past actions.  It is not the man… so much as the man’s potential for doing harm.  I admit to prejudice against him.  But sometimes you fear somebody for actual reasons… not just because he is a lizard man masquerading as a human being.

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January 15, 2016 · 5:14 pm

One For The Good Guys

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I spend most of my political ranting power on the Republicans in that elephant-driven eternal clown car they keep driving through the highways and byways of American politics.  That is because humor is basically a weapon for fighting the many metaphorical battles of modern life.  You’ve heard how it can be more cutting and sharp than any sword. And not having one of the Republican clowns as President is a very serious matter.  But one of the primary truths of Mickian life is this; the best humor is based in on love, not hatred.  It should be nourishing, not hateful.  That’s why electing politicians who can do the Frankenberry face is so important to me.  Better by far than those angry simian faces we saw in the Republican debates, calling each other names, insisting their parents were immigrant-ish enough to be unworthy, or insisting their politics aren’t hopelessly heartless enough to be elected as a conservative.

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So let me start by making fun with some of my favorite good guys.  If you want to put a clown in office to make the laws that will change your life, why not get a real clown?  Al Franken, Senator from Minnesota, is a professional clown.  He was one of the original writers on Saturday Night live, providing comedy material and acting in sketches from 1975 to 1980, then returning as a performer from 1985 to 1995.  He wrote six books, four of which are satires of conservative politics.  He became a political activist, and in 2008, he finally put his wit and wisdom to good political use by narrowly winning a Senate seat in Minnesota representing the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party, an affiliate of the Democratic party.  As a comedian he created the character Stuart Smalley, the slightly askew advice-giving self help guru.  As a senator he has continued to use his warm wit and wisdom to promote programs that actually help people and actually protect them a little bit from the toothy financial predators promoted by the money-hungry conservatives on the other side of the aisle.  It is as if Mark Twain or Will Rogers had lowered themselves to use their focused comedic insights to be a politician and make life less dreary  for the American people.

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Corey Booker, the junior senator from New Jersey, has a grin that reminds me of Magic Johnson, the basketball hero.   And like Johnson, he is capable of using his manic energy to get things done to help other people.

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Feb 16, 2014; New Orleans, LA, USA; NBA legend Magic Johnson laughs during the 2014 NBA All-Star Game Legends Brunch at Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. Mandatory Credit: Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports

Here’s an incident quoted from Wikipedia that shows how Cory Booker goes about wanting the ball to take the game-winning shot;

In December 2012, after discussions with a constituent about New Jersey’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Booker began a week-long challenge attempting to live on a food budget of $30 per week—the amount SNAP recipients receive.  When critics noted that the very name of the SNAP program shows that it is intended to “supplement” an individual’s food budget, not be its sole source, Booker replied that his aim was to spark a discussion about the reality that many Americans rely solely on food stamps to survive.

You can’t go wrong with that Magic Johnson confidence, and that ten-thousand-watt smile.  No matter his human failings, Booker feels like the kind of politician who genuinely cares about people.

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Elizabeth Warren, Senator from Massachusetts, reminds me of my grade school teacher Mrs. Mennenga.  She has that same no-nonsense approach that brooks no foolishness in the classroom.  And I have seen Mrs. Warren lecture the senate chamber on their less-than-perfect behavior.  But she makes it clear that although she doesn’t love our stupidly selfish behavior at times, she loves us as her school children, and wants to prevent the sharks and the wolves of Wall Street from eating us whole.

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I think by now you probably see where I am going with this.  Democrats are far from perfect.  It is probably better for me to think of myself politically as an Independent.  But they are generally the progressive party.  They want to change things for the better for the majority of the people.  Conservative Republicans want to regressively change things back to the days of the robber barons when men like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J.P. Morgan could buy a president like William McKinley to make sure that most of the money in the world stayed in the pockets of the rich while the rest of us worked in sweat-shop slavery and poverty.  We are almost back to that, with no more middle class, and almost all aspects of the economy around us benefiting primarily the Walmart heirs.

So, if I am able to defy my church and my religious affiliation and actually vote in the next election, I will vote for Bernie Sanders.  Socialist though he is, he is promoting ideas that will help all of us.  And, besides, he has the hair thing going for him.  It’s Mickey hair all over again.  No matter how you comb it and brush it and shellac it with goo… well, you know… What?  Me, worry?

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December 16, 2015 · 8:48 pm

Thank God I Wasn’t Born a Republican

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Yes, I know my parents were both Eisenhower Republicans back in the 1950’s when I was born.  But Iowa was always far enough removed from the racial tensions of the South and the Southwest to keep me mostly insulated from the politics of hate.  Besides, the bad guys were Southern Democrats back then.  John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson turned them all into Republicans by declaring that black people and Hispanic people were a part of that “All men are created equal” nonsense referred to by left wingers as the “Civil Rights Movement”.   Dwight Eisenhower warned us against “the Military-Industrial Complex”.  In the 80’s the Reagan Republicans embraced the “M.I.C.” as an essential part of free-market capitalism.   Poor President Eisenhower would not recognize his party today.  Today they stand for giving tax breaks to the wealthy and the corporations that make them wealthy.  As well as standing for taking food stamps away from poor families who haven’t earned them because they only work two or three minimum-wage jobs.  We can’t afford to be giving money away to people who probably do work harder than corporate CEO’s who make tens of thousands of dollars a minute, but their work is obviously not as valuable.

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Sarah Palin was recently resurrected to comment on the Republican debate of 12/15/2015.

Sarah Palin says the front-runners in Iowa, (Donald Trump and Ted Cruz) would both make a good next president from the Republican-Tea-Party point of view.  Horrors!  The scary thing is, not only do these Republican opinion-leaders really believe things Sarah Palin says, they may actually be less intelligent than she is.  Ted Cruz would like to implement a uniform 17% flat tax.  This actually sounds good to Republican ears.  Poor Republicans don’t seem to realize that it will allow the wealthy to pay even less in taxes.  Paying 17% instead of 35% means millions, if not billions of extra dollars to pocket for Donald Trump, Mitt Romney, and the Koch Brothers.  It will also mean that middle-income and poor people will be paying a larger percent of everything the government spends.  Hence, reduced spending falls on social safety-nets and anything else that costs money but benefits people who are not rich.  In fact, Republicans will insist on increasing military spending, so the economy is probably doomed to depths deeper than the Great Recession of 2008.

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Donald Trump is too often tempted to lash out with opinions apparently influenced by the full moon.

The issue of immigration is still the thing that galvanizes the Republican base the most.  Fear of foreigners, Muslims, and Mexicans are equated with fear of murderers, rapists, and terrorists.  It is a roaring flame of fear that is being fanned not only by Donald (ook!) Trump, but also every Republican candidate.  Some of them, though, use slightly less oily words than the Donald (ook-ook!) when fanning those flames.  The good news for people like me who hope no Republican can beat whoever the Democratic nominee is, resides in the fact that Marco Rubio, the candidate most likely moderate enough to win it all, will never be the Republican nominee because he’s too soft on immigration (“too soft” meaning that he actually wants a process approved for immigrants to become citizens, something the Republican base fiercely opposes.

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I really think the only way a Republican can win the Presidency is if they start slicing and dicing the candidates they have, and sewing up a new composite candidate that has the best of all of them.  John Kasich’s common sense is only 25% evil.  They could use that.  Rubio’s immigration views are only heartless when it comes to Muslims.  They desperately need a heart, even if it does only beat half the time.  Ted Cruz could contribute the fearlessness needed in a leader, although to use the immense brass balls in the construct would require an almost anatomically impossible large empty space to keep them in… like maybe Donald Trump’s head (although the ego would have to be extracted from it to make room).  They could also use Rand Paul’s hair for comic relief.  The only drawback to the plan, as made obvious by the most recent debate performance, is that their candidate would be made entirely from monster parts.

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November 19, 2015 · 8:21 pm

Peach Pie

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In the 1960’s back in Iowa, family reunions started happening around this time of year.  We would make long treks to distant parts like Spencer, Iowa or Coralville, Iowa to meet with cousins by the dozens, with Great Aunts and their great families… people we looked somewhat like and were actually related to, but usually didn’t see more than twice in any given year.  And there were some who lived in far off Cleveland, Ohio that you only saw twice in the entire decade.  And it isn’t real easy to play with the kids you are related to but don’t see every day.  Squabbles happen more often than not.  What was the solution to that kind of warfare?  According to Great Aunt Marie, the solution was a nice piece of peach pie.  The offending cousin and I would each get a slice of the solution to eat side by side.  Aunt Marie always had peach pie for family gatherings.  She learned to make them exquisitely when they lived in Texas in the 1940’s.

Now that I live in Texas myself, and the governor of Texas, the heir to Emperor Rick Perry, the estimable Republican Prince Gregg Abbott, has declared that we can’t risk letting Syrian refugees into our State because, out of the thousands seeking refuge from violence and murder, one or two might be terrorists, I am reminded of the way Aunt Marie taught peace with a piece of peach pie.  The alliteration was glorious, and the sweetness lingered long after you had eaten your share.  Why can’t we offer the Syrians a little peach pie?

The Syrians (actually less than one percent of them, ISIS is not a majority of Syrians or Muslims either one) hate Texans for the same reason they hate the French in Paris.  We are dropping bombs on their homes.  Texans went out of their way to insult the Prophet Mohammed by hosting a hate cartoon contest and exhibition in Garland, at the event center next door to the high school where I used to teach.  You have to expect squabbles from people you treat like that.  And I am not saying that we don’t need to fear folks like the two terrorists who died in a shootout with Garland police as they tried to attack the insult-the-prophet event with guns.  But those two guys were not from Syria.  They came from Arizona.  By rights, we should have Governor Abbott refusing to allow refugees of any kind from Arizona to enter our State.  Especially since he is a vocal advocate of their right to openly carry firearms even into restaurants.

I want to give a piece of peach pie to each of the little refugee kids with big, brown, terror-filled eyes.  They haunt my dreams.  Their only desire is to escape the people trying to kill them and blowing up their homes.  Peach pie makes it better.  Aunt Marie is in heaven now, but if you could ask her, she’d tell you, “You should teach to each peace with a piece of peach pie.”

 

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November 2, 2015 · 2:54 pm

Immigration Explanation

Immigration is important to me.  My wife’s half of the family are immigrants from the Philippines.  My wife is a resident alien with a green card.  Her quest for citizenship, once an automatic thing because she married me, has been so contorted and convoluted that she is still not a citizen even though we have been married for twenty years due to the fact that this country’s bureaucrats and wealthy elite are trying to block literally everyone who is not the proper shade of pinkish white from entering this country permanently.  My children, all born in this country, are no different than the many “anchor babies” that Mexican people supposedly have a lot of over here so they can stay here.  So I worry that my wife and children will be summarily shipped back to the Philippines for good because we don’t as a people approve of letting them over there come over here and make themselves at home.  My wife has gotten so frustrated that she has given up trying to become a citizen.  She dares them to send her home.  Of course, I won’t be going  with them.  The climate in the Philippines, as well as the volcanoes and typhoons and mudslides, would do me in quickly over there, and Filipino medicine would finish me off.  So, depending on who we elect as the next president, my family is in immigration and deportation jeopardy.

The colorless, lifeless water-zombie Marco Rubio is 90% sponge material... and sponges have no spine.

The colorless, lifeless water-zombie Marco Rubio is 90% sponge material… and sponges have no spine.

The orange-haired bloviator known as Donald Trump.

The orange-haired bloviator known as Donald Trump.

Now, it is entirely possible that the next president will be a Republican.  We seem to have a proscribed political cycle in this country whereby each Democratic president is manditorily followed by eight to twelve years of Republican administrations.  It is the Republicans’ turn.  And as we saw in the 2000 election, they will cheat and miscount votes in order to get their turn.  There is apparently a rule that after each Democratic attempt to solve the nation’s problems, the Republicans have to screw things up again to maximize profits.

Republican presidential candidates run a spectrum on the subject of immigration that starts with Marco Rubio, who supports a Path to Citizenship and recognizes that even the illegal immigrants are an essential part of the part of the economy that still works, to The Donald who says all Mexicans are rapists, though he assumes some are good people.  Rubio, the best of all possible bad choices, keeps his position on immigration a relative secret.  If the Tea Party finds out he holds these anti-American views, he will not only NOT be president, he might get sent back to Cuba  (He happens to be an anchor baby too.)  Trump, on the other end of the spectrum, will destroy our economy to build a Great Wall of Texas/New Mexico/ Arizona/and California to keep all the brown people out.  Of course, he promises to make Mexico pay for the wall, so it is their economy he will try to destroy as he apparently wages war on the Mexicans.  Republicans seem to be no friend to immigrants.

As the video I led off with points out, even children running away from from violence and murder in El Salvador are not welcome here.  As a people we object to paying our tax dollars to help out innocent people who are just trying to raise children in a state of healthy not-dead-ness.  We never object to bombings and invasions by our military that blow up those innocent people’s homes with them still inside.  That is just good business sense.  War is more profitable.  But I don’t remember any pennies from those profits landing in my pocket.  Immigration is just a big game of hating-them-because-they-are-not-exactly-like-us.  And I confess to being sick of playing the game.  I am not exactly-like-us myself.  No one is… I think.  So, let’s try a little harder to understand this whole immigration thing.  Maybe somebody besides the politicians and goofball cartoonists like me needs to take up the issue and solve the problem in a more loving and Christian way.

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