Talking to the Low Information Voter

So I'm sitting with a guy who tells me he wants to build a wall around his house to protect himself from radical Islamic terrorists.

He's an IT guy, who works with cybersecurity for VISA or MasterCard or one of those, and they have some of their hardware in "silos" which are nuclear hardened or something like that, just in case the Russians decide to launch a nuclear strike on our real vulnerability. The Russians aren't going to worry about taking out our missile silos with our ICBM's with the nuclear war heads--no, they are going after our credit cards, cause if we cannot charge things, the Russians know, our world wide power is just so caput. Finito. Gone. Take out those credit card systems and we are on the ash heap of history.

So this guys believes in walls and I don't know if he voted for Donald. I didn't ask. But it sounds as if he's taken a deep gulp of the Donald flavored Kool Aid (tangerine colored) and he's a wall believer.

Donald in his element 

So I tell him about my wife's recent trip to Saigon, excuse me, politically incorrect, Ho Chi Minh City and she has emailed me from there saying she's been touring through the 25 miles of underground, fortified tunnels just outside Saigon.
These things were extensive:  the Viet Cong had ammunition dumps, hospitals, post offices, spas with swimming pools, sun tanning parlors, fingernail salons.
The American Army, Air Force and Marines had no idea. This whole system was right under their noses. Americans were flying very loud, roaring airplanes overhead, off to drop bombs, spread Agent Orange, make big sounds. All totally ineffective. 

But whenever they wanted, the Viet Cong popped out, shot a few American soldiers or ambushed a whole column of American soldiers and then disappeared underground. It was something called surprise. Kind of like the 9/11 attackers who concealed their intentions until they actually emerged to do their nasty, murderous thing. One thing you could say about those terrorists: They were smarter than George W. Bush.

The Cong were smarter than the American President. My wife said, "There's no way we could have won that war." 
She saw, with the clarity of hindsight, how dug in those Viet Cong were She could not see how ineffective our tactics were. We had faith in big American things that go bang. Sent them a message, we did, with our loud bombs.  Just make them tremble and they will all run away.
The thing is, when we are fighting an asymmetric war with people who are not as big as we are, who do not have big nuclear missiles, big armies, big wheeled trucks, the enemy tends to say to himself: I cannot beat these Americans by slugging it out--so I'll be more clever, which, given what the Americans are like, is not  too difficult.


So, why, I asked are Americans so stupid?


The IT guy laughed. 
Did you read about the Mexican cartel guys who dug tunnels under the wall on the border with Texas and just went under the wall?  I asked him that. He remembered hearing something about that.

But we've got a fine wall going up, pretty soon. Those Mexican rapists will get to that wall and just give up.

It's going to make all the difference. Keep those rapists on the other side of that wall.

And as for those radical Islamists, we're going to intercept them at the airports, because they would never be clever enough figure out another way into the country.
(Hint, long, undefended border with a country to our north, begins with "C" and almost rhymes with stamina, which is what these maniacs have got plenty of.)

This would take a long tunnel from Mexico, but there are daily flights

We are just going to seal America up tight, see.  We build this long wall along the Southern border so nobody gets over that.

Ad in Mexico City Daily News: Visit Canada. It's all downhill from there.

Then we look at the East Coast and at the West Coast and at the Gulf Coast and we say, hey we don't need no frigging wall there, because Islamist radicals can't swim. They're basically desert rats: afraid of the water. 

You can walk across it, and the weather's great!

And nobody's coming from Syria and crossing in from the north, because it's cold up there in Canada and those desert dwellers can't take the cold. 

So, there you are. We are tight as a tick. Nobody can hurt us. 

Hey, Live Dumb or Die.

Dope Slap the Cowering

How many headlines begin with the word "fear" or the phrase, "I fear" or "So and so fears Trump may..."
 Pluleeze! 

If I hear one more person say he's afraid the Muslim ban will alienate, or he's afraid Trump placing Bannon in the Security Council will results in dire consequences, or she's afraid about the environment which her daughter will grow up in because Mr. Trump thinks women ought to be sex objects or he's afraid what will happen to Medicaid or health insurance or Social Security or Medicare or the environment  or the polar bears or Native Americans or immigrants or Dreamers or you name the group or the cause, I may have to start throwing punches, or at least dope slaps.

Our so called President and his men, (especially Steve Bannon) just grin when they hear people expressing fear with quivering chin and quaking voice. That's just the sort of fear they hope to strike in the hearts of their enemies.

If you are afraid, shut the chump up and get out of the way and allow people who are not afraid to speak in public and keep your candy ass terror to your own self  and  get off the field.

If Donald Trump won because he was not afraid, because he was willing to take a risk and because he sounded confident, defiant and bold, then he deserved to win if we cannot find liberals who are all of that, and also correct, unlike the Donald, our so called President who is never in doubt but most often wrong.


Let us not forget this is not a man to be feared. He's a pathetic jerk, a weakling with a weak head, but he is no more to be feared than a drunk driver.
Yes, he can cause damage, but not because he is fearsome.


Get over it.

Best Super Bowl Ads Ever

Whowoulda thunk corporate America would be the voice to stand up against Trump and his scruffy henchmen?
Coca Cola does an ad which says "together is beautiful" and ends with an image of a beautiful Muslim woman in a headscarf.

Another ad, 10 Hair Care, tells us we are in for four years of bad hair.
Audi tells us women should be raised to think they are worth every bit as much as men, as we watch a girl in a soap box derby race win with bravery and skill. Anheuser Bush runs an ad showing the German immigrant nearly perishing, trying to get to America, told he isn't wanted here, until he arrives in St. Louis, where he is finally welcomed and given a chance. A refugee ,who we all know, makes good. There is an ad with a mother and child trying to get north and being stopped, but Fox wouldn't allow the wall to be shown.
I can't remember a set of Super Bowl ads so politically potent.

Bill Belichick emailed Donald Trump on election eve:
Congratulations on a tremendous campaign. You have dealt with an unbelievable slanted and negative media, and have come out beautifully – beautifully. You’ve proved to be the ultimate competitor and fighter. Your leadership is amazing. I have always had tremendous respect for you, but the toughness and perseverance you have displayed over the past year is remarkable. Hopefully tomorrow’s election results will give the opportunity to make America great again. Best wishes for great results tomorrow.

Bill Belichick

Tom Brady wore a Make America Great Again hat. 
So, it was with mixed feelings I watched the Patriots getting thumped.
On the other hand, if you are watching a game with a political sensitivity, the Atlanta metropolitan area was an island of blue in a sea of Georgia red last November.

In these times, we have to take our pleasures where we find them.
I went to bed early--before the 4th quarter and watched the ESPN highlights this morning. A great game. Too bad it was politicized. Not that this is the first time--dating back to the 1936 Berlin Olympics and continuing in the 1968 Mexico Olympics.
Sports can be apolitical and can bind people together. But Belichick took a political stand, and you cannot turn a blind eye.

The So Called Judge

What a relief!  President Trump blows by all that politically correct garbage and finally calls out a so called judge for blowing a huge hole in our border defenses! Here's what Mr. President had to say about that so called judge:

"That judge, who has Mexican heritage on one side and Muslim on the other, who was born in Kenya and who has condoned rape by illegal aliens as behavior which emanates from a deprived childhood, should be sent down to  Arizona and put to work at hard labor building the wall, like the Chinese coolies we hope to import to get this thing built at, well, coolie wages. I'm looking into getting him reassigned as we speak. 
I mean, where does this guy get off calling himself a "judge?"  He wasn't even born in Indiana.

Just look at this guy. It just really ticks me off, seeing guys who are such phonies, pretending to be what they're not. Judge? So-called judge.

So-called judge. Really? A goatee?

Just take one look and you know. A bow tie? On a judge? Really. and what is that? A goatee?  I mean who appointed this guy judge?  
What? George W? Well, now this makes more sense. That low energy family is just brain dead through and through. Starting with George H.W. Bush. What kind of guy needs four names? Not a real man. A real man needs only three, period. You know what they called H.W. when he was President? Wimp. A wimp! And he was, with that wimpy voice of his.  Did you know he had to bail out of his airplane in World War II? What kind of hero is that, bails out?  Personally, I like the guys who do not have to bail out. 
Yeah, I know, he flew off the deck of aircraft carriers and all like that. But he bailed! What kind of so-called "hero" bails?
No, I never flew off an aircraft carrier deck, or landed on one. Right. My heel spurs disqualified me. Bunch of politically correct draft board doctors said I couldn't fight. But I wanted to. Soo bad. But I never got the chance, but if I had, I wouldn't have bailed.  Wind up in the water. Shark bait. I would've been such a hero. I would have been just...FANTASTIC.

Me, as a soldier. Notice all the medals.

Look at me, though. I was, like a soldier because I went to military school. Same difference. Really. 

What I would have looked like, if it weren't for my heel spurs.

That school was incredibly tough and dangerous. And I never bailed. Not once!

That's me. Never captured! Never bailed!

But back to the judge. Who does he think he is contradicting the President of the United States. And you know all those Muslim countries agree with me about not letting those death and destruction terrorists come into our country. 
Borders have to mean something.
What we got now, until this thing gets over ruled is so called laws.
Just look at the vote on this. I got over 430,000 thumbs up on that Twitter. 
I got all the best words."

Donald J. Trump 

✔@realDonaldTrump

The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!

8:12 AM - 4 Feb 2017

 
•  31,26431,264 Retweets
 
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Sweet Joy of the Apocalypse

Radio Free New Hampshire, Februray 4, 2017.

They had me at the photograph.  The grizzled goatee, the dark sunglasses, the black gloves and the patches: "In God We Trust" and "Survival Condo Security team." And don't forget the gun. A really cool gun. I want one. It's Operation Desert Storm tan, with an AK47 shaped clip, air vents and a mounted scope which undoubtedly has a laser site. And next to the guard a glimpse of a vehicle with huge deep tread tires. You know this condo, built in a former ICBM hardened missile silo in Kansas is impregnable. Well, as long as that guard doesn't decide to turn his gun on you. 

Adolph Hitler's bunker in Berlin had nothing on this condo. Evan Osnos, writing in the New Yorker, tells us about the super rich ("centi-millionaires" and billionaires) who are nervous about the future. Having got so rich, so fast, they hear the sounds of the coming apocalypse.  Each seems to have a different vision of what it will be like, where the threat will arise.  Some are worried about a tsunami, some about a dirty bomb in Miami or Washington or New York. Some are worried about that bottom 99% rising up and storming through Greenwich, Connecticut with pitchforks.
But, you know, at base, most of them had some picture of the pie in the backs of their minds:

I am reading a wonderful book now, "The Destructive War," by Charles Royster,  and when I do my treadmill in the morning, I'm watching the 2nd season of "The Wire" and both of these say something about the phenomenon of humankind's capacity to deal with disaster, and with the fear of disaster.

While the ultra rich come at this from different angles, they wind up investing in escape (New Zealand is the most picturesque option, Kansas the most depressing) or burrowing in and digging a moat.

People see disaster coming from natural disasters overwhelming man's engineered solutions, like the tsunami flooding  Fukashima, or from social upheaval.  While some people, like Bernie Sanders, try to focus on fixing things, on working to make civilization more functional, these isolated rich people are more in the Marie Antoinette mode--and really, that "let them eat cake" remark was simply a mix of unconcern about the fate of others with the conviction there is nothing which can be done about it anyway. 

What Royster does in "The Destructive War" is to describe the campaigns of William Tecumseh Sherman and Stonewall Jackson in a way which ignores the details of which regiments were sent where, but which details the actual burning, impaling, raping, shooting, murdering as the Union Army and the Army of Northern Virginia tore through the countryside, or pounded towns and cities.  
Most high school students are familiar with Sherman's remark he would make Georgia howl. But what his troops did in Columbia, South Carolina is less well known. We've seen  the dystopian, post apocalyptic Hollywood movies about the breakdown of civil order after a cyber attack or about the outbreak of a contagion, or about an asteroid colliding with earth.  But what the Union soldiers did to the people and physical structure of Columbia makes the doomsday movies of today look like a tea party. (That analogy is chosen advisedly.)

Cotton bales left in the streets by retreating Confederates were set ablaze and flaming cotton balls became airborne and lit up blocks of houses, mostly in the grandest and most lordly neighborhoods, so it was the rich who saw their homes burnt to the ground.  Drunken Union soldiers pillaged and raped. Stores were demolished. Factories were burned. Railroads, bridges destroyed. They did everything but plow the earth with salt. 
 When a delegation of the town's remaining gentry got an audience with the commanding general and complained, Sherman told them it was their own fault for leaving so much liquor available. Sherman said it wasn't his fault his troops got drunk and disorderly.  
That was disappointing. I'd have preferred he take the Old Testament approach of Stonewall Jackson, who owned the devastation wrought by  his own troops.
For Jackson, shooting down unarmed civilians, shooting prisoners of war, burning homes to the ground was an effective tactic: He did all that, once he crossed the Potomac into Maryland. 
Stonewall hoped to invade Philadelphia and, he reasoned, once the North had enough blood spilled, land despoiled, the Federals would give up. This is not the war of Bruce Catton or Shelby Foote, of grand armies and gallantry and big ideas. This is apocalypse, dreadful, dirty and most foul.  
If those rich guys in Silicon Valley or Wall Street want to think about what the collapse of social order would mean for them, they have only to read this book.

That mean guy with the rifle standing in front of the bunker in Kansas would be long gone, once the mobs arrive.

The 2nd season of the Wire is the least successful of the five. In large part this is because at least half of it is spent with White people, rather than the Black inhabitants of Baltimore.  The Whites are experiencing a slow apocalypse, as their work as stevedores on the docks is disappearing, replaced by robots.  They gather pathetically in their bars and tell stories about the good old days, the capers and characters which emanated from the work in the harbor. As in every part of The Wire, work is the force which gives their lives meaning.  When they lose meaningful work, their families collapse, their humor becomes bitter and they lose their sense of purpose and joy.  
They are funny, but never quite as funny as the Blacks we have come to know and love. 
In the case of Baltimore's Blacks, you have the sense they are doing the best they can do. Education in public schools is not an option when you have no functioning families. Their choices are slinging drugs on the corner, ripping and robbing or dying. Their language is vivid and profane and wonderfully communicative. And they are very, very bright. 
Not so much for the dockworkers, who are mostly sorry for themselves and might have better options, if they hadn't chosen to simply get drunk, get their girlfriends pregnant and to wallow in the past, which was never as good as they remember it.

I remember driving slowly through the streets of Baltimore when I was 6 years old, in the back of the family Studebaker.  We were on our way to New York City, from Washington, D.C., and this was before the completion of the interstate highway system.  There was no Route 95, no 495 beltways. So the trip, which now takes 4 hours was 8 hours, and one of the slowest parts was through Baltimore. White women sat on the white stone stoops, sometimes scrubbing them with wet brushes dipped in pails of water. My father remarked the women were proud of those stoops, but the way he said it was derisive, as if, for some reason I could not understand, they were fools to take pride in their stoops. 

I have the same inchoate feeling now about the Whites of the Wire--they are foolish to take pride in the things they value.

Baltimore is now Black in the inner city, with a fringe of affluent white suburbs, but the downtown, around the inner harbor is being gentrified. The apocalypse has already happened for the Whites who once lived there, who have been pushed out to Dundalk and Townsend. They are now the guys with the pitchforks and people just like them in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania brought  those pitchforks to the voting booths last November. 

Donald's Magic Hair Recipe

The Donald's doctor says the Donald's  got his own hair because he takes finasteride, a drug used to treat prostatism .
The same drug is marketed under another name, "Propecia" sold for hair loss prevention.This is one of those wonderful world of Big pharma sleights of hand--a drug by any other name is a new drug, if you just change the dose and/or the marketing. So we have Welbutrin, an anti depressant, marketed for smoking cessation under the name, Zyban, which means the drug company can open two bank accounts rather than just one.

This pharma naming thing is really cool. It's something the Donald has been fascinated with for some time. You call something by a different name and, presto, it's a HUGE success. So you take, for example, Dress for Success Business School, which was failing, just so badly. Really, a bunch of losers. Who would want a diploma from that place?  Their diplomas were, like, black and white, printed on some off brand printer.  But you rename it Trump University, and bang! You're making money hand over fist.
Anyway, Donald's doctor says this stuff is just great for preventing hair loss and he's declared himself Exhibit A and Donald is exhibit B and don't you know--you can buy this stuff under the Trump name as "Trump Hair," for only $49.99 for a week's supply.

Hey, seeing is believing. Right?

What's just so FANTASTIC about this is, who knew? There is a hair loss medicine! Incredible. Just so incredible. (Think about that word..."in" as in "not" and credible.) This stuff can grow hair on an egg.

It's true. Really true. He's a great doctor, one of the best. Has all the best words. His uncle was a genius who taught at MIT, which is probably how he discovered this great drug. Really. I heard it from some lady in the parking lot. Same lady who told Michelle Bachmann about how vaccines cause mental retardation.

And Donald has told everyone, if it weren't for his great hair, he probably would have lost the election. Well, that and the hats, which protected his hair, which tends to blow away in a strong breeze.

If Bernie had been taking finasteride, he would probably be President today. I mean, I know that may sound superficial and sexist and it's SO politically incorrect. But true. I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying.
Of course, Bernie may not really be eligible to be President because I heard he was born in Poland. Same lady in the Parking lot.  Or, maybe Brooklyn, which may or may not qualify as America.

But about the hair:  look how good Joe Biden looks, and you know the hair follicles on top of his head didn't come into the world right there. They got a little assist from Dr. Transplant. (Donald's scalp had that, too. But the big thing was his doctor's special formula.)

The doctor was actually the Donald's first choice for Heath and Human Services, because, you know he does have great hair, but then that Price guy came in to talk to the President and, well, it's always the last guy he talks to, so Price got the job.

Doesn't matter. No matter who's at HHS, Obamacare is toast.  And we're going to replace it with something so much better. Just so much better. Trump Care. New name, new life.
Trump Care  is cheap and easy to use. You just won't believe how much better this is going to be.  Well, you can ask Paul Ryan, who has all the details. Something about vouchers.
Or was vouchers that DeVos lady's thing? You get vouchers for your school fees.
No, wait!
It was vouchers for Social Security.  No. Medicare you get the vouchers. Social Security you get stocks.
And if you are smart you'll invest in anything with the Trump name attached to it: Trump U, Trump steaks, Trump flowers. You name it.

There's just so much winning now.

Shooting the Moon: The Nuclear Option

Here's a strategy for you:  You force the Republicans to abandon the "filibuster" which means requiring 60 votes for a Supreme Court nominee (not staying up all night in a diaper talking about Green Eggs and Ham) and then you get this right wing lunatic Justice making the Court in Scalia's image.

He started it

Then you bring a Roe v Wade case and, of course lose it, making abortion illegal either nationwide, or more likely in Bible Belt states.


Then you watch as the knuckle draggers in the Rust Belt and even some parts of the South finally realize what they have wrought with their sweetheart, the Donald.


Then you take back the House and the Senate in 2018 and then...
Then you have no filibuster in the Senate and you pass the law which makes the Supreme Court virtually term limited. You can't fire Supreme Court justices (Article III, section 1) but you can pass a law without amending the Constitution to add new justices with each new President, say, two during his first term and two during his second term and only the 9 most recently appointed get to vote.


So then, you have recognized the truth about the Court, that it is every bit as political as the executive or the legislature.  But you have wrested control of the Court from the past and made it respond to the needs of the present.


Of course, once you have Congress, you can work toward defeating Trump on everything else.


You will say this is risking everything, delivering all power into the hands of the Republicans who will then need only 51 Senate votes to deliver whatever they want. I must answer: How different is that from what you have now? At least it will be clear there have been no collaborators, when and if the end to their power comes.