Just another day in the neighborhood...

Another bright young voice silenced. Another family rent asunder. Another grave. Another's pain absconded and twisted into politics. POTUS will certainly shit a medal if he can. Suggest strongly nay, he cashes in a new shiny bitcoin for the gilt memorial. Soon another brick in the wall. The wall between "his" will and freedom. 

Truth is and always has been that shiny people become targets. I don't give two shits about which side you're on, we have all paid for this kind of insanity masquerading as the price of freedom before. And will continue to do so. Ever since someone conjured a way to send a plug of lead down a tube with a bang we've been turning them on each other.  'Cause it's our RIGHT to do so!

I imagine the first Chinese person that did this either knew what would happen or damn sure meant to when he lit the fuse. Anyone who has ever felt prickled by words or threatened by an idea is susceptible to violence. If freedom demands, freedom gets. And are we talking about real freedom or just some 'muricanized version painted RWB, toting a Bible and baptized in fear of the other?

By setting us against each other over dubious religious oppression, invasive migrants, blaming those we don't like for the price of eggs is like joining a second-line sashaying down an avenue of outrage. Couple that with a well-oiled propaganda machine, it's no wonder we're all a little pumped up. Fake news anyone? Stay tuned while we suck the next few minutes of your life into the gaping maw of advertising. Hey, gotta pay the bills...

Shouldn't we extend a hand rather than a knife? Lend a hand instead of swinging a fist? Shouldn't we still be beating our swords into plowshares? Shouldn't we be more like Jesus instead of just lip service? 

We all need to step up.

Such a deal...

Too many of us have drank the Koolaid of indifference and derision over immigrants. I'm sure there are as many gasps are there are cheers every time a group of masked ICE agents storm into a Starbucks or Walmart. Wait a minute, a MAGAt wouldn't be caught dead in a Starbucks. We choose to look the other way while the Gestapo tactics are taking place a few feet away. I mean, they're skin is different, right? Too bad, I really loved their tamales and falafel.  

Such good pre-war Germans we'd make. 

Maybe we need another Underground Railroad. But we'd need a Harriet Tubman to go with. Our representatives are under the gun too. We decry their ineffectiveness and bemoan their blather about it all. Right or Left doesn't matter when you're being torn from the family, friends and home you might have built here in the greatest nation ever conceived. This country is a place of dreams not walls.

The first Europeans came with nothing but desperation and hope. Of course they brought a host of diseases heretofore never seen on this side of the Atlantic. That said, the first people's helped us survive even though we would screw them royally still. 

And now there's Trumplandia where everyone is invited to bend over and grab their ankles. 'Cause Trump's gonna save us all! Mmmhmm...

 

Mr. Farley and the Founder...

This world as made by CEOs is not a pretty one for the chronically underpaid. But just now a glimmer of hope. A corner turned maybe. We'll see. It didn't happen right away the first time so we should not be getting anywhere near comfortable. What the hell am I going on about? Glad you asked. 

But first, a little history... we know how ol' Henry Ford learned to make automobiles fast and cheap. He vertically integrated his entire system. Mr. Ford realized that buying raw products in bulk allowed him to control quality and costs. Naturally he kept wages where they were at the time too, at a minimum. 

One day Henry realized that his employees could never hope to enjoy the fruits of their labor due to the wages he wasn't paying. He was making cars for the people and the people in his employ had made him fabulously wealthy. It was time to give back some of what they earned for him. Henry doubled wages company wide overnight. 

You might think that was a bold move after all he had a board of directors to answer to. But remember, ol' Henry maintained absolute control of everything. The board bitched but history tells us who won. And it made them all even richer. That's why Henry was crestfallen when forced into a corner by the new up and comers, the union. Eventually he understood that for other companies to follow his lead it had to be a matter of contract rather than largess.

So just now the CEO of Henry's legacy, a man named Farley, has decided to do something similar. He discovered many of his newer younger workers were having to take side gigs with Amazon in order to make ends meet in this increasingly expensive world. He realized what ol' Henry did, you gotta dance with those that brung ya! Besides, no one ever went broke by being generous to the earners. Good on ya, brother! Ford just earned my next ride.

As a side note, the big box company where I worked for a time is union-proofed for that exact reason. All of the assistant managers maintain a side hustle (full-time job) just to make ends meet. To work for that company is nothing more than indentured servitude salved with platitudes, cheap pizza and badges. Their founders own sports teams, stadiums, yachts and jets while 75% of their employees do not make enough to support their families on what they take home. They're currently number one in their industry.

I dare say every company represented on Wall Street treats their employees exactly the same. Abigail Disney pointed that fact out a few years ago with an inquiry into the current spate of CEOs in America. She found that Disney's leadership was just the same as other mega corps. No better and no worse. This has to change if people--if America is to survive.

Unions made the middle class and it was growth in union jobs that made the America everyone remembers. Not some New York real estate developer cum peckerwood politician. Funny, I don't hear anything about bolstering unions or increasing wages for workers from that cocksucker. Though he sure is taking care of him and his kind, isn't he?

So if you want to make America great again, start with strengthening the unions. They're the ones that made it great the first time. They delivered on the American dream. Pay a person enough and they'll buy their own pizza.

Hunter S. Thompson would've known what to say...

Where's Hunter when you really need him? Dead, of course. And dear readers if you're not aware or have never heard of the man, check IMDB for Johnny Depp and back up a bit. Mr. Depp and earlier Bill Murray played him in movies and the former was a friend of the man. What I'm saying is that I'm old enough to know H.S. Thompson through his WORK instead of the shade that was Depp's and Murray's version of the man. Mannerisms, chicanery and the ever present cigarette holder aside, the man was a gifted writer and the preeminent "gonzo" reporter from 1960 through to his death in 2005. 

Nowadays he'd be pilloried for his prose. He simply didn't care about political correctness. He considered it the last defense of the indefensible and a bastion of cowardice. Me too. While the concept is laudable, it's the uneven application that puts my Fruit-of-the-Looms in a twist. I believe that's the prima facie reason Democrats have lost their way. They left behind the working man/woman for the faux Elysium of diversity, equity and inclusiveness. Again, nice concept unevenly applied. 

Hunter Thompson's words dragged us to the well of naked and unadorned truth and held us down by the neck until we slurped. He answered all the questions as great reportage is want of and more. He shined the light of a lava lamp seasoned by his acerbic wit and served up with a heapin-helpin of guffaws. As was always with Hunter, the fun was the context of his reporting and his drive to discover the truth no matter how twisted or convoluted the path. The things he loathed were many. The things he loved were many too.

During his time no one deserved his ire more than Richard Milhouse Nixon. He was relentless right up until the POTUS double peace signed the country before fucking off from the White House for the last time on Marine One. While Nixon's accomplishments were historical, it was his tomfoolery that cost him his job. It can be said that even Nixon knew when to leave. Trump has no such filter nor moral center. He would have had his co-conspirators shot before allowing them to testify. Or at least sent to Guantanamo hog tied and ball gagged.

We could use Hunter now. Unfortunately he was an original and did not come from a mold. His was a singular voice of his generation. With civil rights, Vietnam, Nixon and Wall Street he had fertile ground to plow. And he did so with aplomb. We miss you Hunter. If you haven't already insulted our Maker, maybe you could wrangle a name out of him for your replacement. We need them bad. Send them soon. Send them now.

A particular kind of madness...

 It takes one to know one, right? Is that why crazy goes unchecked? The crazies looking out for one another. That figures. Now that the Trumpian White House v2 is coming what are we to look for that might tip the rest of us off that the neuroses is reaching critical mass? 

Maybe Trump will start by firing someone and have them marched out to the south lawn and really fired. Maybe he'll try to burnish Jeff Epstein's reputation and claim the whole thing was a witch hunt perpetrated by Nancy Pelosi and George Soros. Or more likely give blanket immunity to the traitors that stormed the capitol and tried to overturn a national election by force.

No, you say. Preposterous you add. Well he's already tried flying Matt Gaetz through as Attorney General. I mean really people? What did you expect? There is no other way. To serve the Trump, you have to bend the knee, kiss the ring and flush any self respect down the drain. Oh and yell, "Murica!" really loud and repeatedly.

Such is the state of our malaise. Heads filled with Trumpian dogma. I use little bags to pick up dogma out of my backyard. I used to flip it over the fence with a shovel till the neighbor complained. Some people have no sense of humor. Anyway, if you had a shovel in D.C. what would you do with it? I know what I'd do but then I'm a little crazy, remember?

Extinction event...

It seems Neanderthals were a hairy bunch. They died out a long time ago. So they said. Now there's DNA evidence that the once thought extinct bunch of hirsute bipeds are still with us. Seems some things never die while others like the Dodo and moderate Republicans just can't catch a break.

In science classes we find out that there have been several extinction events that have steered our existence. It's impossible to understand or even consider the ways we have evolved as a civilization without them. Nature isn't cruel. It just doesn't give a damn. 

We're no better. History is rife with examples of unintended consequences of something that up until it exploded or melted down or took out a town or something good at first--turned sour. We forget that it took an entire factory full of women to burn to death before basic safety protocols were invented. It took a school full of kids getting blown to smithereens before they added the funky odor to natural gas so you can smell a leak. Shall I go on?

Suffice to say that we are a thick-headed species. We'd rather be led down the path with promises of rainbows, clean coal and a life without liberals or murderous immigrants rather than take responsibility and triangulate the truth. Ernest Hemingway said for a writer and especially a reporter that they needed to keep their bullshit meter turned up in order to find the truth. Trump blows the fuse on those every time.

Trump has taken over by the not-wrong-headed notion that people don't really give a damn till their grocery cart eats half their paycheck. Then they'll blame immigrants, transsexuals and their dead mamas for the spike in the price of eggs. Even when it's verifiable bullshit, they still believe. Confirmation bias is real. This is exactly why I left "the church" and now the GOP. Bullshit by any other name is still a path to Hades.

The Grand Old Party is finished. There is only the Donald. Why? My guess is that it's every American's dream to be the bull in the Temu warehouse. To break shit, leave the mess for someone else to clean up and nab a few bargains on the way out the door. The scary part is that it's our democracy and not a Hong Kong knockoff shop gone viral. 

Now Americans have another choice to make. Stand and fight or bend the knee. If the Democrats want to be the candle in the dark then they'd damn well better get on with it. Spark it up for chrissake! We need to build a new liberal-conservative Democratic party. An enlightened Left of center movement with education, civil exchange and shared responsibility as their cornerstones. One that seeks substantive compromise rather than innuendo, subterfuge and fearmongering. One that wants to win for people instead of a twisted ideal. One that truly is of, by and for the people. All the people. The ones that were here first as well as all of those that came after. What a wonderful country it could be. 

Meanwhile Elvis has left the building.

We're running out of rope, sir...

I told someone, hell I told everyone that all we had to do was give Trump all the rope he wants because as sure as the sun is a ball of fusion he will eventually figure a way to hang himself. Little did I know that we would have to prevail upon rope making companies worldwide to meet the demand. Which illustrates my point, the rope is but a metaphor for just how far people will double down on the delusions of a madman.

Niccolo Machiavelli said that liars will always exist as long as people are willing to be lied to. Nuff said. If we all had bullshit meters turned up to eleven and had license to deliver one precise blow to the side of the head of any and all who deserve one, the world would be a sore place indeed. Open hand of course. We don't want damage. Rather a good jostle of the cogs, cams and gears of the mind. The brain is but a muscle and prone to atrophy as well.

Proof of this is at every Trump rally and I'm not picking on the boss but rather his minions. Hitler would have been nothing without Himmler, Goebbels and Goering. They were his co-conspirators along with many more unsavory characters. There were no small actors in his troupe of banal evil. No one survived Nazism unscathed. It was the rank and file German, the downtrodden suddenly transformed with purpose and a clear enemy toward which to hurl themselves. Jews were easy targets. The rest of the world didn't stand a chance.

All empires exist to invade, impose and extract by any means necessary for the glory of a king, queen or nation and sometimes all three. They invade and sublimate the inhabitants in order to extract any and all wealth to fill their coffers. Empires are expensive to run even with absconded goods and slave labor.

Ideas both good and bad take time to settle and take hold. The ground has to be fertile and the root stock ready. And we have to know that the bad ones are working just as hard to thrive. So it's up to each of us to caucus with the angels of our better nature and seek the right choice. Our way of life is at stake.

It's Kamala, bitch!

I'm pretty sure I'm preaching to the choir when I say, "Asshats! Every one of them!" Now apply that liberally on any itchy spot you have. Chances are it will offer no relief nor do I claim it will. But it is something to do till the January after the election when we can finally say good riddance to _ _ _ _ _ (insert favorite bowel obstruction here) and say hello to tomorrow. 

Now either you fall one way or t'other but all can freely apply the aforementioned tincture to their aperitif. If you're a Trump minion then you have my condolences. Naaaaaah, fuck you people! You idiots would sell us out to Putin and every tyrant on the planet just because your boy works for gawd and, he is stroooooong. He took a bullet in the ear then told Jesus he had to go 'cause Prezeedint Trump done stole my heart. 

Joe Biden is no perfect man nor president. None of them were. I don't believe we'll ever see one and I pray we do not. The real deal will gain a following that will make a Trump rally look like a sideshow at a county fair in a shit-hole country. Along with cotton candy and the smell of ripe livestock, the real deal politician will know how to drop a deuce, polish it and make you think it's gold. Trump only got half of us with his bullshit. The rest of us called him on it and continue to do so. His minions still thinks he's "the shit." I couldn't agree more. He is THE shit. All other shit just doesn't compare.

The real deal he/she will not stop until the world burns. Here's the rub, I can't blame the leader. I think leaders can be like children from uber rich families. No one has ever told them no and survived. So they surround themselves with sycophants because that's their people. Bow down and all will be fine. Rise up and you're fired! He admits as much by his fawning over Musk's talent for dealing with trade unions.

Make no mistake Trump followers are in a cult. It's hard to get through to folks that have fallen into a cult. Because the rest of us are just wrong, right? Just ask a member of Jehovah's Witness. We can try prayer or interventions but no one gets out of a cult unscathed. It will take a long long time for America to get over Trump. But we have to. He's poison on a stick. He's a taffy monster. You pop him into your mouth and he tastes great. You start to chew and then the taffy monster eats you!

Nowadays we are all giving the short shaft to each other. We'd rather demonize and insult each other than try to understand. Understanding takes time and effort. I find both ends of the political spectrum devoid of will in this regard. Adherents to either side would rather warn each other about the guns they keep loaded and at the ready. In every room in the house! You know, just in case some murdering drug muddled gender fluid illegal from Guadalupe wants to read something funny to our kids!

Immigrants schmimmigrants

The borderlands are fraught. Should we adopt the xenophobic route and continue putting up walls or just let 'em all in? Tell me, what's your answer for people trying to survive? Is it, go back to where you came from and fix your own damn country? Or is it, you poor souls let me get you some soup and citizenship papers?

In my time so far on this earth, I've born witness to the silly bullshit for brains attitude we aim at immigrants. I know the refrain, I don't have a problem with those that come here LEGALLY. Okay lets start with legal. Columbus was an illegal immigrant. Ask a native American how they celebrate Columbus Day. You'll get an ear full. At least a puzzled eye roll. In hindsight the natives should have slaughtered us on the beaches and scuttled the ships. Might have delayed the invention of the iPhone.

In the digital age I think it's safe to assume that none of us has any patience with any current solution offered up as a fix. As far as murder, rape and general mayhem committed by illegal aliens, get a grip people! Most folks are killed by people they know so you really should be a whole lot more anxious around your friends than any schmo that enters the U.S. without paperwork. 

 My question is this, where's the kindness? How do we as a country, the greatest the world has seen (so far) with the full set of tools at its disposal--end the crisis along our southern border? How about opening up an Ellis Island in the sand? How about knocking down those fucking walls (which all migratory animals will applaud) and create a chain of Ellis Islands along the border. Create funnels instead of walls to freedom. Make tax payers out of 'em in the process. Sure, they can't vote but who cares? They work for cheap till they make citizen. Then it's like joining a union. You get to pay dues (taxes) the rest of your life and you could get a piece of the good life.

But seriously isn't that the promise of America? Work hard, press every opportunity, be bold and damn the torpedoes? Tell me what's more American; some homegrown Jethro bitching about the plummeting price of peanuts on the world market or some hungry person from God-knows-where believing in that promise and willing to risk everything just to get here? It sure as hell ain't for free stuff and soft targets.

Let's open up a real conversation and hear from all parties involved and I'm not limiting it to the two we're stuck with. There's a real and substantive way to handle the question of immigration if we but have the will to find it and the courage to execute it. First, we need to appoint only native Americans to the task. Some will see the irony while others will tremble. That's America. Long may she flounder so beautifully.

I know there's something I'm forgetting. Probably something about infants and bath water.

On becoming a 21st century schizoid man...

The only thing that an autocrat needs to flourish is people willing to be lied to. It's as old as mankind. Our forefathers created a nation founded on universal principles. Their words favored neither color nor creed.  They understood the dangers. They understood the possibilities too. They also understood that the only real defense against tyranny is a well informed and armed populace.

The right thinking among us have learned to better pray. Our country has always been peril. If not from without than most certainly from within. The fringe will always be at the ragged edge of sanity. They sing a siren's song. Go right or go left, it does not matter which, both end in abyss. 

Our nation was designed to be pliant so that it would not break. The Right sees this as anathema to their agenda. They crave the solid distinctions of white against everything else. To them all else is taint and tincture. They want their memories renewed and recast in the light of their own image. Simply put, they want what never was. They crave the familiar distinctions. The ones they grew up with. The ones handed down from one generation to the next bereft of facts but packed with anecdotes and flags. Lots of flags.

The Left sees it differently and therein lies the rhubarb. It is true their fringe is dancing with some sort of Nirvana-esque notion of mankind in harmony with nature and itself. Yes and I have a business in supplying unicorns for such folk. In looking at both sides, it's my take that their adherents operate under the notion that they should reap benefits for their taxes. Not exactly a novel notion but it seems to be lost in the form presented to us. I mean, we SHOULD get a lot more for our money than street signs and promises by politicians, right?

The Left sees the Right as a bastion of bigotry, intolerance and patriarchy. The Right sees them as commies and fags. The Left sees the Right pressing an autocratic xenophobic agenda. The Right calls them commies and fags. The Left sees the Right's party of record diminishing in full retrograde toward a fiery end with an orange-haired idiot holding the reins. The Right calls the Left commies and fags. The Left points out that the Right's emperor is buck-ass naked. The Right flips the Left off and yells, "Prove it!"

If you sense a pattern then you're probably right. If you sense that I might be disaffected by the whole shebang, then you're more than right. You're right on.

God is a skeptic...

Otherwise why would "it" have thrown us a bone? He/she doesn't believe in us. It created us, right? The simple question for me that I proffered time and again in Sunday school was, "Why?" Why are we special? And for what? A pass to an eternity that any sane person would consider an absolute bore three days in? Oh look, it's manna for breakfast, lunch and FOREVER! Wait a minute, where's the pulled pork, Jesus? C'mon, that was so five centuries before you, man. Demon possession does not spoil the meat. Lemme at the grill, I'll show you. 

(Quick aside, I got spanked when I was ten and claimed I had no interest in a place without peanut butter. I felt Paradise was sorely out of touch with my needs even back then.)

Wait a minute, whadya mean we don't have to eat? What else is there? Rolling along 24K sidewalks on Segways singing "His" praises for ETERNITY? No friggin' way. There's gotta be more to the mystery than advertised. Otherwise this party is going nowhere and I'm not interested. Take your hymnal and your finely tuned deafness elsewhere. Have a nice eternity. I'm going where there's bacon. You can trust bacon way more than a priest. Just ask a choir boy.

That's how I think of religion. We're raised in it. Steeped in it. Redeemed by it. Absolved of our wickedness weekly when faithfully attendant and paying your 10%. Even the Good Book says you have to maintain in order to enjoy the fruits. And that was the source of my first rub in Sunday school. Salvation is supposed to be free but then there's the actual transaction between the stick of damnation and the dangled carrot of paradise. Wait, you said what? Oh that's gonna cost ya. Then the stick comes down and beats you and the carrot to a pulp. Like Job, just for shits and giggles.

That's just not me anymore. I've lived too long. Seen too much inside and out of the church walls to believe in a "just" God anymore. Like Mr. Palahniuk conjured so succinctly in his book about the existential threat of self awareness, Fight Club where the lead character clarifies, "God's a kid with an ant farm." Spot friggin on, that one. 

What's important is the person beside me. Be they friend or foe. They're what I'm about when in the world moment to moment. Being with that person or people listening and being present. What else is there? Life is either action or memory. Memories are paltry compared to the actual experiences but they do serve as way points marked along a trek. Memories also come in different denominations. Some are are like the rarest of jewels, sensual and soul stirring.

As for my personal beliefs, I defer to the epic, the big picture in minor detail. My heirs can sift through the detritus for worth and value. I'll be onto the next thing whatever it is. The afterlife must be okay because the dead haven't bothered to come back with pictures or an updated brochure and besides, the living don't really want to know anyway.

Friends are always welcome

 Me and the missus, we did it. Turned away from all rabid factions. Covid had it's way with us too and we're still here. For sure some did not make it. Some fell for other reasons altogether. Heart attack, cancer, self-inflicted or whatever. Half of those that died of Covid had already succumbed to ignorance and suspicion long before the virus took them. Their reward was choking to death on what they didn't know. Instead, what they believed was ill suited for warding off contagion. Their faith may have been bigger than a mustard seed but the thing that killed them was microscopic. Strychnine would've been kinder.

We've gotten good at making all of our own meals now. Spend time dreaming of better days ahead. Together. Yes, we'll have two to go, please. Everything has to be portable. We're lightening the ship. Collections put up for auction, extras made scarce, if it hasn't been used in a year, hell, a decade, sell it, give it or Goodwill it! Lighter and nimbler is the aim. 

A hovel on a mountain is the goal. Some place off the beaten. Defensible. It's something we've talked about for years. A cabin in the woods. One with a view or set back in the trees near a brook with trout. Up past where the gravel ends. Down the red clay made hard by us and the neighbors and a scheduled road-grader. Up and up up up then around then down again till where the gravel picks up again. Up one more time then leveling out, you arrive at the gate. 

We are here. We heard your tires crunching gravel. Saw your approach on the critter cams. We're here waiting. Punch the code and come on up. Put it in park and set the brake. Just in case. There's good bourbon and comfort inside. Hurry in, a storm's coming. 

When the truth fails...

Okay, I have to admit something. I live in Florida and I'm a conservative. This is not something I am proud of right now. Of either one. But I digress too soon. First we need a little context.

Conquistadors made landfall near St. Augustine in 1565 and shortly thereafter... aw hell, you know what happened and the natives didn't have a say much less a chance. Florida has entertained its share of villainy and prosperity in equal measure. From the aforementioned Spaniards to the Brits to pirates to slavers, to common profiteers, St. Augustine was just the tip of the spear with regards to what men will do in the name of king, queen, country or company when really it's always just about the money.

Fast forward to now and it doesn't take a degree to understand that this place, like most of America, either by way of the sword, bullets or the common cold succumbed to Manifest Destiny. I'm guessing the Timucua had never heard of herd immunity. Back then we spelled genocide another way--progress. 

Now a pudgy malignancy named Ron DeSantis, our current gov, has become a darling of the Tea Party cum neo-Nazi MAGA hat wearing set that have infected, nay, subverted the GOP. The Republicans are no longer the standard bearers of conservatism but rather a brutish bug-eyed buffoonery normally associated with survivalists, lynchings and Trump rallies. Bobert, Taylor-Green, and Gaetz are but minions. Blindly supportive, loyal to a fault, cultish and mostly lacking in any walking around sense.

They either cannot nor will not stand right-wise to the truth. Rather the truth is buried under a flurry of denial and misdirection and capped off with a two ton slab of certainty. And people loooooooove certainty. Goes right along with their notions of right and wrong. They like things tidy. Neatly wrapped in sanctity and slathered in dogma with a side of damnation. 

Personally, I think they've lost their way inside Donald Trump's colon, can't tell up from down and apparently not one of them brought a flashlight. Or any walking around sense. But I have not lost mine. My conservatism is intact. Theirs is a barrel of rotting fish left on the dock in August. If we would just kick it off so the bottom feeders could appropriately deal with the contents, we might all sleep better. 

Till that day comes, DeSantis will continue to take a cue from his progenitor and lie about anything and everything that he deems worthy to perjure himself for as long as it makes him look presidential. Like he said, "The future of America is at stake!" Heck, even a blind pig finds an acorn once in awhile.

DeSantis is proof of concept for the neo-GOP and their corporate handlers. Remake local governments into fiefdoms for the party. Control the spin into a downward spiral and blame the Democrats when anything gets wonky. They are the bringers of all things terrible. To socialize with a Democrat is to ladle the steaming contents of Das Kapital into your lap without benefit of pants or even a dinner napkin. Even if they are your beloved family members and neighbors you must demean, deride, demonize, deplore and blame them for all our country's woes.

If by chance the Democrats manage to lose again, I know DeSantis will celebrate by grabbing his own ass with both hands so he can fuck the remaining oxygen out of the room. There's a whole lot of smoke in the DeSantis household but not one friggin mirror. This is what we get in Florida's GOP owned state house and gov'nors mansion. More of the same. A grandstanding wind bag who'll spend taxpayer dollars to redistribute immigrant families to other states and blame the Democrats all while making friends in low places everywhere. Lord help us!

Blood and circuses...

Cicero would have had a field day with the latest tragedy replayed in Uvalde, TX.  I miss Ann Richards with her blonde bouffant which I believe was a cooling system for that wit. The same one she kept sharp as a freshly stropped razor and quicker with it than Sweeney Todd.  And I miss Molly Ivans for calling the bastards out with frequency and aplomb.  I also miss what Hunter S. Thompson might have said too.  He was a lifelong .44 magnum fan.  He was also a fan of the truth no matter how ugly. God, I miss the acerbic wit of them all.

With them gone, here I go.  Feeble and growing older by the minute it's time for me to speak up... again. But first a few caveats about me: I'm a ginger, a marksman, a father, a husband, a coworker, a woodworker, a reformed evangelical, a hiker and a lover of movies, women, a friend to all dogs, a proud G-Pa who loves some musical theater, damnit!  Stanley Kubrick and Stephen Sondheim are the GOATs.

But what do we do about the most recent school shooting in Uvalde, TX. Mourn and lick our wounds. That's all we can do today. Tomorrow is another thing.  

The Gun Control Act of '68 was put into place after a decade of high profile assassinations. Shoot the famous and things get done. Shoot up a school full of grade school children or a nightclub full of revelers and you get squeals from the gun lobby about freedom and commies and freedom and God-given guns and FREEDOM! Like some K Street suit in Braveheart makeup brandishing an M5 over his head while dancing on the hood of his/her Hummer.

The GCA '68 created a separate classification for destructive devices such as bazookas, grenade launchers and fully automatic weapons. I remember my older brother getting an army surplus M1 Garrand. Beautiful! He still has it and as far as I know, hasn't used it on anything but paper and spent shotgun shells. The Greatest Generation chased Tojo and Hitler back into the holes from which they came with those rifles. 

Fast forward to today, we have weapons capable of killing an entire room of grade school children with one clip. The Garrand only holds eight rounds. Think about that. How many rounds do you need to take on Bambi? Or your government? The same government with drones, M1 Abrams, Apaches and Javelin missiles? Yeah, that one.

How about we move the assault rifle and all its variants into the Class III destructive devices category? The legislation already exists! Then we can grandfather in (no reg fee) any preexisting weapons into a registry with teeth. You own an AR, you have a record. The G men know where your ARs are. Fuck up and it disappears along with your freedom! Which means we are held responsible for any ill purveyed upon the public by the willful or negligent misuse of said firearm. Carrot and stick. Simple.

I also believe that if you are prescribed and taking psychotropic medications, you have to give up all things that go bang until you are cleared. You're depressed, dipwad, that's why!  You're manic-depressive, you numbskull!  You're taking meds to perk you up or perk you down, tapioca brain! In other words, if you can't control your behavior without medications, you sure as shit don't need an AR with a thirty round clip in the house. The 2nd Amendment wasn't about you! Just sayin...

Maybe we just hold them for you? How about leaving them with friends or relatives? Fine, but they have to know that they'll be added to the registry too. It's as simple as this, we have licenses to drive cars and have to prove that we can do so safely. Why is it that we can't do the same for civilian owned military weapons?

One things for certain, the fight for real democracy, freedom and justice will always be with us. Right now, I think we need to hold the do-nothing bastards in congress up by their ears and tan their asses as my mom would say. Now my Dad, he would have added, "Oughta take a machine gun and..."