Safe Spaces and Binge Watching Bill Maher

When Jon Stewart left the air, Mad Dog thought it was the last gasp of liberal persuasion in America.

Lately, however, he has been binge watching Bill Maher and he realizes, maybe there's hope.

Maher

He has done at least two shows on "safe spaces" on college campuses, where the delicate flowers at Middlebury College, Yale and other erstwhile pillars of American elite grooming institutions can seek refuge from upsetting thoughts in places where they do not have to hear racist invective, Donald Trump, neo Nazis, Steve Bannon, Huckabee, Rush Limbaugh or anyone else who is obnoxious, with whom they vehemently disagree.

Barney Frank

Of course, there is, as Barney Frank says, so much wrong with the idea of shutting down debate and discussion on a college campus, it's hard to know where to begin, but this idea that we are so right and righteous and sanctimonious we should not even hear the other side has become a religion of the left.
Watch this. It's lovely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wvfxh0PbTQ

Moving from one Maher Real Time show to the next, Michael Moore came on and said what Mad Dog has been saying: Donald Trump will win re election. You'll recall, Moore predicted months before the last election Trump would win. 

"Market Place," the NPR business program, interviewed workers on the assembly line at Harley Davidson motorcycles in Wisconsin, who said even though Trump's tariffs will likely mean Harley will move some production to Europe and Thailand, they are still 100% behind Trump. They love the guy.

Talk about something you want to run away to a safe room to not hear.

Mr. Michael Moore

Moore is apoplectic about the prospect of a Trump supreme court, but so far, apart from Terence O'Rourke, nobody is talking about packing it.

O'Rourke

Mad Dog hates the idea of safe rooms. You have to love the fight.  You have to take pleasure in sticking your nose in the face of the thugs and daring them to throw a punch. 

Tough Guy Heel Spurs

But, it is bracing sometimes, to simply luxuriate in listening to people who think like you do, maybe even who think beyond, and better than you do. 

Bill Maher is not a bad place to start.

He hates kids, and maybe dogs: How bad could be be?

Sob Sister Democrats

Images of children weeping in front of United States Border Patrolmen, great expostulations from Democratic politicians are met with churlish replies from Trump and friends:  Those kids are facing this harsh reality because their parents put them in harm's way.

This is the essence of the divide:  Why should my Congressman care more about that kid on the border than he cares about my kid?

Don't we face a threat from this velvet invasion? 
Aren't those scary MS-13 gangs coming in with those kids?

Where is your concern about the families of all the kids these immigrants will murder?

So Trump quickly assembles families who have lost love ones to the immigrant/criminals who the Democrats invited in to ravage our country.

The fact is, Trump trumped these charges. There is no real immigrant crisis. The fact one illegal immigrant murders a woman in San Francisco does not mean we have an immigrant crisis. Immigration is not a problem of isolated crimes, of anecdote, it is a matter of numbers.

But we lose our listeners when we start sobbing.  Crying Chuck Schumer plays right into Trump's hands when he gnashes his teeth and weeps over the fate of immigrants.
You don't need to get all teary eyed to defend the 30 year old who has done everything right after being brought here at age 3. She should not have to pay for the sins of her father.

We need to find somebody who can sound tough while defending the defenseless.

Here is my ideal Democratic candidate for Congress:
1/ White
2/ Male
Why? Because, like it or not, the last election was a rejection of having tried Obama and every Cory Booker or Kirsten Gillebrand will be seen as more Obama and Hillary. 

3/ Tough guy who doesn't need to tell you how tough he is. 
It would be nice if he was a veteran, undeniably macho.  Arnold Schwarzenegger type tough. Doesn't have to do the Trump boast. The evidence is in front of you.
Be nice if he had some sort of military medal, or were a Seal or something heroic.

4/ A guy who reads history, who can quote it.

5/ Someone who speaks grammatical English, hopefully with a Reagan sense of humor, one liners, which can be thrown out with good timing, delivery honed on stage and screen perhaps. 
Remember when Reagan was asked about his age and wasn't that a problem and he replied, "I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue in this campaigan. I am not going to exploit for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience."
Remember Reagan was great at delivering well  rehearsed zingers and it was not apparent to most observers until about a year after he left office how deeply into Alzheimer's he actually was.
Someone who has watched enough Bill Mahrer to trot out a lancinating put down every time Trump tweets. 
"I would have thought we could all agree, as Americans" on one thing: There is no such thing as a Nazi who is a 'very fine person.'" 
That's nice. 

6/ A policy wonk, who really loves thinking about the issues, who believes that healthcare ought to be revolutionized in this country by taking the profit motive out of it, which means more than just a fix to health insurance but a basic restructuring of the entire enterprize; someone who thinks we need more infrastructure, public transportation, renewable energy, renewed cooperation with our trading partners, not trade wars. And someone who doesn't compromise his dreams before he even describes them: Pack the Supreme Court. Sure, it may not happen, but that's what we should be shooting for.

7/ Someone young, strong, vigorous enough to put his nose in the face of Jim Jordan on the floor of Congress and dare him to take a swing.


Among the 10 candidates running for the Democratic nomination currently in the New Hampshire First only three meet this fantasy creation, and none of them meet this fully, but among those three, we might actually see a star who could one day run for President and generate enough excitement to win.

1. Lincoln Soldati:  He is funny, likes people, loves to engage the crowd, unapologetic, forceful.  But he is an experienced pol, who has been a mayor and a school board member. He is always aware of the possible and that gets in the way of his idea of the desirable. He is not willing to embrace radical change to the Supreme Court, not just because he thinks Democrats will never get the super majorities in Congress and a President in the White House to enable this to happen but because he does not want to do violence to the system we have.

2. Deaglan McEachern:  Here is an articulate 30 something, who listens well and learns and is something of a white Obama. He speaks well, has his lines well rehearsed without seeming too politically correct. But what has he done in life? He went to college, spent 10 years rowing on a national crew team and then signed on as a high tech entrepreneur. When he answers questions he can only make reference to his experience in these protected, privileged and limited arenas. 

3. Terrence O'Rourke:  We should begin by examining where O'Rourke fails to meet the description of the fantasy player.  He has not taken enough theater classes.  When he speaks, he is not Ronald Reagan. His  mind is working so fast his tongue trips over his thoughts.  He's got to rehearse more, get that delivery down to a speed his slow witted audience can follow. He doesn't have to be the amiable Reagan; he can be the rapier witted Churchill, cutting his opponents with--the line about the fine Nazi's was his, and he delivered it well. He needs about 100 more like it.

No matter what happens to him in this primary, he should be the shooting star of the future, if we could only get George Soros or somebody with money to buy him some ads.

Of course, O'Rourke would never stand for a rich patron. That would have to happen without O'Rourke's involvement. But the Koch brothers have figured out how to buy elections; sure Democrats could do the same. 

But the guy won a Bronze Star in combat, has prosecuted bad guys, and he doesn't need to show he's a tough guy by bragging about how big his dick is; he's already shown he's tough enough. When he first started his campaign, he barely mentioned his time in the military but obviously someone has advised him to advertise that now. I would not have done that. It's better if it just comes up. But he's the genuine article, until Captain Heel Spurs. 
 Now, he just needs to sell that other side, and work on his presentation. 

Trump's Very Fine Nazis

"I would think, as divided as this nation is, as polarized as we are, we could all agree on one thing: There are no Nazi's who are 'very fine people.'"

--Terence O'Rourke, Candidate for Congress, New Hampshire First

What O'Rourke was referring to, of course, was President Trump's remark that some of those American Nazis demonstrating in Charlottesville, where one of them ran people down with his truck, speaking of these Nazis, Trump remarked,  "Some of them are very fine people."

Of course, American Nazis and their sympathizers are nothing new. 
The first version of American Nazis were the slave owners, followed by the Ku Klux Klan racists, and in the 1930's there were the German Bund Nazis in New York and elsewhere and Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh were both admirers of the Nazis and thought Hitler was quite correct about the Jews, the International Jewish Conspiracy. 

In fact, Ford published "The International Jew," a polemic about the Jews who sacrificed Christian children in bloody rituals, just as scary as any MS-13 crowd.

Woodrow Wilson believe Negroes and women were not intelligent enough to vote. Eleanor Roosevelt, the darling of liberal scions, was anti Semitic. 

American soldiers served in segregated regiments. A racist American army fighting a racist Wehrmacht. 

Now we have a President who flings invective at Hispanic babies, calling them an infestation.  

Doesn't bother his fellow accomplices in the GOP. All the Republican Congressmen and Senators care about is getting re elected. As long as they can keep their offices on Capitol Hill, their parking spaces at Reagan National Airport and all their perks, they don't care what they stand for. 

Democrats are, for the most part, bed wetters and thumb suckers. And they are aging and tired.  Chuck Schumer, Steny Hoyer, they are low testosterone, kyphotic, easy targets for Trump, who calls Crying Chuck Schumer by just the right epithet to expose his most obvious weakness--he is spineless. 

And who are the rising stars in the Democratic Party? 
Name me some. 
In New Hampshire, we've got some impressive Democrats: O'Rourke, Soldati, McEachern, but none of them are likely to emerge as the winner of the upcoming primary on September 11.  The winner is likely going to be a house cat, the darling of the party establishment, or a woman who just moved to New Hampshire funded by $5 million in dark money, from her corporate backers. She will buy lots of TV ads when the time comes. 


You can't beat somebody with nobody.

Grand Dragon Donald

David Brooks has psychoanalyzed him.
Mark Shields has explained him.
We are told daily he is "Unprecedented!"

Actually, not.

He is doing what every goon before him has done: Point a finger at someone, anyone, blame that group, attribute all evil to that someone, that group, and presto: You've got 40% of the country with you.

Happened elsewhere. Happened here.

Happened here before. 
Willy Horton.

Pia Guerra

Happened all over the South.  

That Black man, he dangerous. String him up or he'll rape your white woman!

Lord of the Flies.

Pia Guerra

Donald Grand Dragon.

Trump The Baby Beater

You got to give Mr. Trump credit: There was never really a problem with immigrants in this country, not like what Europe has. The numbers of immigrants are comparatively small, and we absorb them seamlessly. But now we got babies who are an infestation, like termites, eating away at the soul and substance of America.
Who woulda known we even had a problem had it not been for Mr. Trump? 
He is like that helicopter gunner in Apocalypse Now, who is shooting peasants down below him as they flee from his machine gun fire, and he is asked how he can shoot down women and children and he replies,
"Easy, you just don`t lead them by as much,"
 meaning the children are slower, so you don't have to move your gun to accomodate that.

Da Donald and Why They Love Him

The Boston Globe ran a list of the 10 policy promises Trump made to his base and how thoroughly he's delivered on them.

Working with the former shoe factory workers, the assembly line workers in Methuen and Haverhill, Massachusetts, I see another reason, and it has nothing to do with policy. They can barely articulate a single policy, beyond, "Well, we really should build a wall."


What they like is his lack of civility, his profanity, his lack of manners.


The Brits sometimes say given the choice of a society governed by manners or by laws, you will be better off with manners.


For my working class, paycheck to paycheck folks, this resonates as exactly what they hate.

They are actually made uncomfortable by manners and formality. They take delight in the uncouth. "How are you this morning, Mr. Smith?" actually makes them squirm.

"He's okay. He don't screw around, you know? He just says 'Fuck 'em all. We don't need 'em," these folks say, grinning.

It doesn't bother them he dresses in dark suits, wears expensive ties.

Like the British working class who strove to be just as middle class as they could be, our American counterparts follow a similar path.

"Lady Chatterley's Lover" depicted a society which is very recognizable in today's America, where the upper class moves past the lower classes, separating itself from the "drizzle of resentment" which permeates the country, and living in walled off communities, isolating themselves from those lower beings, much as the young women in the play "The Hairy Ape" did.


The discomfort evident among the anti Trump delights my friends in Haverhill and Methuen.


You had it coming, they say. This is what real revolution looks like.

Immigration: Emotion vs Numbers

"These darkies are like stray dogs. Best not to feed them or they'll follow you home."---Woman at a barbecue to Mad Dog, in Hume, Virginia

"There ain't no room for the hopeless sinner,
Who would hurt all mankind
Just to save his own"
--"People get ready" Curtis Mayfield

Democrats have seized on the images of suckling babes being torn from the breasts of mothers at the Southern border by heartless Republicans while that pink cherub, Southern speaking Jeff Sessions quotes the Bible to justify the Democrat law which demands this nasty face of America.

Whatever happened to the Emma Lazarus poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"?

As vile as the Freedom Caucus, with its moronic Louie Gohmert spewing invective about the invasion poised on our border, all those darkies just straining at the leash for a chance to flood across and rape white women and take our jobs (not necessarily in that order) there is, for Democrats, a trap here. 

Sometimes it is best to Aude Alertam Partem, hear the other side.

Even cells have membranes, which separate the inside of the cell from the non cell parts of the body--although all membranes are permeable.

The question is: Is America a lifeboat in a stormy sea with only enough room for the few, and unless its inhabitants beat off those who frantically attempt to get on board, they will all go down together? 

Or are we a wagon train, crossing the continent, and when someone falls off, we go back and scoop him up and put him on board?

It is probably an apocrophyal story but there is said to be a survey that showed 10% of all Chinese and 10% of all Indians would immigrate tomorrow to the States if given the chance.

It is no stretch of the imagination to think 100% of all Hondurans, El Salvadorans, Nicaraguans would come tomorrow, if they could. Maybe 2% of Mexicans.
So let's add up those numbers:
China:  130,000 million
India:    130,000 million
Honduras:    9 million
El Salvador:  6 million
Nicaragua:    6 million

That's 260,000 million from Asia, 21 million from Central America alone, not to mention Africa, and the rest of Asia.

If we welcomed all, English would be a minority language and the complexion of the nation would be very different. Which may not be a bad thing. But is this what those living here now would vote for?

Most of us can remember our grandparents, many of whom were immigrants. 
The best thing my grandfathers ever did for me was to get on a boat and leave middle Europe and the Baltic.

But how generous can we be? 
How generous do we want to be?
And if we were totally open, would we have benefited the very people, those huddled masses, or would we all go down in the stormy sea together?

I pity the poor immigrant
Who wishes he would've stayed home
Who uses all his power to do evil
But in the end is always left so alone
That man whom with his fingers cheats
And who lies with every breath
Who passionately hates his life
And likewise, fears his death

I pity the poor immigrant
Whose strength is spent in vain
Whose heaven is like ironsides
Whose tears are like rain
Who eats but is not satisfied
Who hears but does not see
Who falls in love with wealth itself
And turns his back on me

I pity the poor immigrant
Who tramples through the mud
Who fills his mouth with laughing
And who builds his town with blood
Whose visions in the final end
Must shatter like the glass
I pity the poor immigrant
When his gladness comes to pass

--Bob Dylan