And Georgie Got His Gun.... back

George Zimmerman killed a sixteen year old kid who was just going home and agressively confronted him, and possibly, the kid tried to defend himself from the creepy ass cracker who was following him..   

George Zimmerman was acquitted.  And the court gave him his gun back.

His racist lawyer said he needs it because now he is more threatened than ever.   open seson on black kids....  or something...  scary.

Seriously, if that were here?  Well...  I've never wanted a gun, but am fairly sure the laws in ma countra would prohibit me from owning one...  And I'm fine with that.  We don't have crazy ass crackers going after minorities out on the square...  it would be a blood bath.  We did have one liquored up asshole backwater mountain guy stab and egyptian ....   once.   Some time ago.  We don't have a culture of violence...  

But we also don't get easy access to high grade weapons...  like at all....  

But Georgie got his gun back.  Here he'd have undergone strict psychiactric evaluation.  There?  n'yeh...  they just returned it to him.  Some people didn't find it a good decision.  I  wonder why....

LET him go out on a RAM-page,    And then they'll say... 'WHO WOULD HAVE SUSPECTED HE'D DO THAT???#

Yup...  Georgie got his gun back.  God help the people where he lives in the future, and oh!  fun fact.  He had a rap sheet.  His victim didn't.

How incredibly devastating...,.

I just learned of the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial, and had been certain, given all I'd seen of it, and the intense discussions concerining it, that there would be at least a manslaughter decision, seeing that the murder 2 bar was set very high given the lack of evidence...   

That he was acquitted left me speechless for two hours.  Literally.  I hadn't written about the case before now, because I thought it would be a slam dunk for the prosecution.  

The verdict only proves that there is no justice for african-americans in 'Murka, and that the stand your ground laws only invite disaster.  

It's disgraceful.  But there's a lot of that going around these days, and not only in 'Murka.   

One of the interesting things about msnbc is that they have really increased their hosts with racially diverse backgrounds, and from them I get to hear points of views that I normally wouldn't not having contact personally, and that enriches the discussions people have.

Like the incredibly handsome and intelligent Touré on The Cycle, who can sound off about what it is like to be a young  black man who just by nature of the color of his skin is perceived as threatening , and he gets very vocal about how frustrating it is, or how he and his peers have to behave in ways that do not get them into life-threatening situations.

B ut it was the women who really drove home the results of what that verdict meant to the african-amercan community...  what to say to their children.  Melissa Harris Perry put it best...  she said they have two choices...  live in a predominantly black community where young people can die on the street, usually killed by other young blacks..  or live in a gated community, and even there...  like Trayvon Martin, they can go out to the local store for a snack, and end up  being profiled and killed without having been up to any sort of mischief.  And her frustration was so palpable...   ending with...  there's no place you can go where your children will be safe.   

That is a really damaging conclusion to have to come to.  But didn't surprise me.  The right will make George Zimmerman a He-ro...  but Trayvon Martin is still dead and the justice system in the US failed their minorities.

Disgrazia!  Disgraceful.

Filibuster

So...  juis before the weekend, the almost best filibuster EVAH was carried out by a texan lady with brass ovaries...  Wendy #Davis.  The coverage was awesome.

Not so awesome was the response of that half-witted entitlement Bush wannabe Perry.  Texas is so weird...  And he was so out of line with his personal counter attack, I'm sure he'll not get much traction out of his egregious reaction.

A friend gave me a present two days later...  a restored version of Mr.Smith Goes to Washington on dvd.  The timing was so ironic.  I hadn't seen it in over forty years, and it was from the golden year 1939.  

Needless to say, it became so timely when watching, I got goose bumps.  James Stewart has to defend himself at the end by staging a filibuster, which in those days was a rare and nearly unused procedure in the Senate.  

Although nowadays, all anyone has to do is say filibuster, and the process gets shut dwon, back then, it was dramatic.  It jmade me cry...   not because it was a moving story and is a masterpiece of filmmaking, but because of how relevant it is to today.  I would reccomend it to all who have an interest in history, and see how nothing changed, but indeed, became worse.  

Wendy Davis of Texas became the real-life James Stewart of today by standing up and giving the state senate bore than it ever bargained for.  Good on her.  I'm sure she'll go far.

A History Lesson for Michiganders, Wisconsinites, and all the rest

We once had a very brilliant chancellor who did not suffer fools gladly.  Famously, when asked a stupid question in a press conference which exposed the ignorance of the 'jornamalist', he went on a rant with the famous line, while shaking his finger at him, 'Learn history, young man!'  It was a classic moment.

I think it would be a good moment for the people in the above-mentioned states and the ones where the so-called 'freedom to work' laws are in the works to learn a bit of history.  

And as distasteful as it is to put that image on my blog...  well, it's to the point, isn't it?  And isn't it peculiar that the GOP is following Adi's playbook, in the oh-so-wholesome, 'values loving' center of the country...  

Learning history might be of value, but I assume they sanitized everything meanwhile, as they so often do.  

Found the graphic on an unlikely blog, but used in the same context, so hat tip to Kyle.

How DARE they?

It is beyond my comprehension that people like the one in the clip above can receive national attention spouting such hatred, or that anyone would even think to take them seriously.  This asshole is from the American Family Association...  whatever that is...    

Thoroughly disgusting.  Children died because the schools didn't '
embrace God'.  Reallah.  

And the crazies of Westboro Baptist Church are gonna picket the religious ceremonies, which is no surprise.

How very 'christian', especially during the horriday season, to want to guilt trip the parents and educators of innocent children. How tolerant, forcing their warped 'religion' on the grief-stricken.

Something is very wrong with US society.  It makes me sick to my stomach. 

Heinous

I slept through most of last night for a change.  Imagine my surprise when I went to the supermarket to get my food for the weekend, and saw the cover of our local rag.  With a foto of teachers briskly escorting munchkins away from the scene of yet another mass shooting in the US.  

Well, I quickly went home and turned on the internets...  and was fairly well ...  gobsmacked.  Killing kindergartners...  that's a new low even for the US.  

And, let's see, there was the mall shooting in Oregon just a week ago, and a heart-breaking interview with the parents of a young african-american kid who got shot dead because his radio was on too loud while he was at a gas station, and some mouf-breeder didn't like it...  what the hell is wrong with these people?  

Next we'll probably hear they got shot because they weren't coloring within the lines, for cripes sake.

The trouble is that they all have easy acess to guns.  As a kid, I remember seeing cowboy movies, and you always knew the guns had six bullets, so when there was a shoot-out, you'd count,knowing how many were left, you know?  It was part of the history and culture, and that's why they were called six shooters, right?    

Nowadays sociopathic freaks can arm themselves to the teeth with 32 bullet clips, re-load in seconds and create immense heart-break, destruction,  and havoc.  Using weaponry that was designed for war...  not hunting.  And wow, 40 percent don't even have to have back-up checks, they just buy them.  

Some people need to get a grip and start restricting unlimited access to weapons...  of any sort.

America has always been a violent country, but if I were living there and had children, I would seriously consider going elsewhere if only just for their safety.

The sad thing is, for the people who profit, they thinks it's collateral damage.  

I wonder when something will happen to make people stand up and say enough is enough.  And am not holding my breath.

Who the Fuck knew that Howdy Doody was poltiical??? Or the root of media beginnongs being indocrination of small children?

I just had my mind blown in so many ways today, and it only took one clip of old video to do it.

I was watching news this morning, and there was a clip of Howdy Doody in one of the blocks.... which made me all nostalgic and feeling fuzzy, because I only vaguely remember Howdy Doody.  

He was a marionette.  This sort of wimpy red-headed freckled cowboy marionette with too much cheek and a plaid shirt and jeans and of course the boots...  sorta wimpy.  I know I had a Howdy Doody lamp on my night table for a long time, sitting beneath the shade, so I must've liked the show...  

As above...  my memories are sort of warm and fuzzy.  I could only vaguely remember Buffalo Bob, and Howdy, and used to get a kick out of the 'evil' Flubadub, which was supposed to be a conglomeration of seven animals, if I remembered correctly, and having a sound mistrust of Clarabelle the clown, who only honked and was lame.

So I thought I'd go down memory lane, and look into the birth of the tee-vee media, and see what I'd seen as a small child.  I remembered the signation, and the peanut gallery...  a tier of small children, who could be raucous and led to the saying 'no comments from the peanut gallery!'  

The rest was vague...   

The first clip I looked at had some nerd in NY named Daniel who had a ukelele, and Howdy sang about how important it was to look both ways before you cross the street...  teletubbies for the Fifties.  

But that was in 1949, and I'd just been born.

By 1952...  I was a tee-vee consumer of three or so years.    It's one of the first things I remember, if vaguely.  A year later, my parents were getting a divorce, and I was back to listening to radio, my grandfather was a fierce follower of listening to the McCarthy Hearings, and they upset me, because all I knew was....  the fucking senators were mean and putting good people under extreme duress.

Later, it was the Cold War, and our teachers taught us that when... not if... the Russians took over, our parents would be put into re-education camps, some of us would never see some of them again and we would all be indoctrinated.  Needless to say, the lady in question was a radical Rethug.

But we have to go back to 1952...  and the peanut gallery.   Now the structure of the show was simple.  The intro song, something with Howdy, then a lesson, then a silent classic film narrated by Buffalo Bob, and some sort of marionette conflict resolved by the end of the show and a sing-out.

In 1952...  there was a presidential election.  Eisenhower vs. Adlai Stevenson.  And in the April 1st edition...  the peanut gallery got an immersion in presidential campaign politics that....  well today, if you would put that on the tube, it would send heads exploding left and right, because it was crass indocrination.    

I'm still speechless after viewing this.  Let alone how they used direct pressure to make mommy or daddy buy the sponsor's products.  It was a new media.  And boy, did they make the most of it.

This is how my generation learned if even sublimanily, about presidential politics, swing states, and voting.  Just skip over the silent film part of the clip and listen to the message being the massage.  

Looking back, it is fucking astounding.

The cap is about influence peddling to become vice president.

This really is amazing, and not wing-nuttery.  It's a look at how even at the beginning of media, there was an agenda.  I will  never think about it ever in the same way again.  Manipulating the votes to go to Howdy, and the hokey applause machine.  You can't GET more timely.

And please take the time to actually listen to the main parts of this.. skip the silent film... the rest is indoctrination.

I shudder to think what it is they do today, and the peanut gallery was only five or six, I think...  heavy.  And funny when ou get all the nut jobs nowadays claiming winky tinky and bob spongepants are gay...  what s come down in political discourse.

Boeing Takes the Low Road..

Refusing to give their gay married employees equal pension rights.  

Stephen Colbert called them out on it, as only he can do.  And explains why it will cause a 'gay job explosion'.  He cracks me up sometimes.  You can see his 'twisted' reasoning here.

I think I saw a glimmer of greatness today....

Clips of President Obama going back to Staten Island. 

It amazes me that so little press coverage has been devoted to what that storm really did to people.  Maybe not enough people drowned, is my cynical thought.  But the damage!

New York and New Jersey got drowned in the sea of media masturbation over the elections, and the people in the affected areas got shafted.  That's my opinion.  They got a week's worth attention.

I keep wondering how the family of a long-ago co-student and friend of mine from Oyster Bay on Long Island might be faring, in that very beautiful home they had.   I lost contact decades ago, but remember...  and worry. 

They were warm, loud, Italian, New YAWK, and so funny I ended up getting hiccups for a record 72 hours.  I miss that sort of laughter.  

Whatever...  I ton't think he wen't back for a photo op.  I think he went back to find out how best to help.  It wasn't so high profile in the media. 

Time will tell, but with all the man has on his plate...  I thought it admirable.

Local elections

A week from tomorrow, we have elections.  Wow.   It's the municipal one, where we vote for who rules our fair city, and it is a bastion of christian conservative enclaves.   oooooo......  with pockets of opposition, there are five parties involved.

A municipal campaign lasts about six weeks, and is 'fought' out in newspapers, and via placards and posters.   Mostly.  You don't really hear much, and the slogans on the posters are 'empty promises'.  No one gets too excited about them. 

And after all the spectacle of the past two years of watching the US ones...   I feel cheated.  No robo calls.  No polling calls.  No one ever calls me, and if I get an IFES questionnaire call once every six months asking about my buying preferences, or whether I feel safe in my neighbourhood, it's actually a welcome diversion in a rather dull day.

So here is how we do it:  you don't have to register.  You ARE registered as soon as you are of voting age, or become a citizen.  I have never seen the inside of a voter registration office, but they know me.  I can move, I can move to another state, but they always know where I am.  And that is because, if you move, you have to go to the neighboorhood office of the part of the city you live in and register your residence.  Which gets passed on to the election board, which updates you on the voting rolls.  Easy.

If you want to, you CAN register with a party affiliation of your choice, but I've never done so.  For that, you have to get directly involved and do party work, and then you are a known affiliate of that party.  I've always preferred to remain independent, and take my voting right seriously, weigh all the sides, and vote as I think is right.

Some people would think it is creepy to register your residence, but on the other hand, some criminals get caught that way.  Or used to be...

Fourteen days ago I received my notice in the mail.  It was just a slip of paper telling me when the election was, where to go to vote, and what the opening times were.  This you present when you go to the polling place assignated.

In the city, such as mine, they are in public schools, and where I go, there are four stations, so you go to the one on the slip of paper.  It's simple.

Once there, you might have to wait for a couple of minutes if there is much interest in the vote.  There might be five people ahead of you.

But mostly not.  There is a table with stern looking poll officials from all the parties presiding over the procedure with lists of the people who will be coming in. 

You present your slip of paper and your passport or national identity card as proof you are who you say you are.  And I know that will throw some people off balance when I say that.  But it was never unreasonable to ask for one, having one was always a fact of life and a necessity, because, you see, most of the EU countries are small, geographically and until the EU became the EU, those documents were necessary to go from one place to another. 

For instance, you wanted to go to that super fish restaurant of an evening in Maribor, Slovenia, then Yugoslavia, only an hour's drive away?  Well, you had to have ID to cross the border, for instance.

Therefore, having the one or the other used to be a necessity, and had absolutely nothing to do with the voting process, but was just a check on proving you were the person on the list.  We've never had a problem with it, because the documents were always a necessary evil.

Whatever, you show them the document, you get your ballot, and they are fairly clear cut and easy, because it used to be, you voted for a party and they delegated your votes and assigned who got positions.  Meanwhile, you directly vote for whoever you want on the city council, for instance, can split your ticket however you want, and can write in candidates if you so please.

So it's not rocket science, and done in a minute or so.

And you seal it in an envelope, dump it in a box, and the commission is responsible for the counting.  Also simple.

The national turnout used to be really high...   up to 80%.  It hasn't been that in a long while.  People got cynical.

I used to go ballistic when US ambassadors would inject themselves into the discussions and said they would 'teach us about democracy'.  Reallah...  really?

The polls close around four pm.  By six, seven at the latest, results are known, but the country is small.

There was one nugget on the news last week during the long discussion on msnbc about voter supression regarding someone having been in Vienna, and got laughed at for propagating the US system of voting.  And it was a conference where they decided that if the US sends people to oversee fair voting in third world countries, they would send delegations to oversee elections in the US, because things weren't kosher.  The commission members got kicked out of five states.  Says a lot.  And they had no reason to be insulted...  they insult us all the time...  That was in a former election, but should have been done in this one.

The US has national data bases for every damned thing you can think of.  You would THINK that they would register all eligible citizens in that, and there wouldn't be the individual state nightmares that are the result of bigotry and resentment, that the impediments are incredible in the eyes of the world, but they do muddle on, don't they.  Broken system.

And as Peter always says...  'that's the different'.

Generals Redux

It always takes Rachel Maddow to put things in perspective.  Common sense reigns here. 

Elsewhere, the Petraeus story has become a sophmoric joke for the entire world.  As in a DJ on a rock station here in the middle of the night picturing the General getting down and dirty with Rihanna.  Snicker, snicker, snark, snark. 

Shit happens when you put up heroes to the world, and they turn out to have feet of clay. 

I'm not sure the US realises how damaging the affair has been as far as how the outside world perceives it.  It leads to a loss of respect.

It's enough to give anyone 'the sadz'.

 

Speculationalism... which is what journamalism is ALL about...

General Petraeus of the US stepped down two days ago.  The FBI had investigated him and it turned out he was having an affair.  Which, in the military is prohibited.  Which is all we know and what he said.

What BURNS me is the non-stop speculation.  Or speculationalism in journamalistic terms.  Oooooooo...  something to BITE on.

Well, the 24 hour news cycle got on it, and whoa!  Now there's shirtless photos of FBI agents running about, and some sort of triangle, and gaaaawwwwd knows what else.

Well, aren't we all now tittilated and DISTRACTED.

Especially since even the cadaverous asshole Eric Cantor supposedly knew about it before the elections but didn't use it, because, well, ya know, it wasn't verified at that point...  and Petraeus is a right leaning person, after all.

So if we are to believe the press, two socialites, very rich ones, got in a tangle over one guy, and some harassing e-mails flew, and one of them upped the game, got an amorous non-shirted fed on the trail, and things took off from there.  ooooo... how scintillating.

Except, the lady who helped launched it was sex-texting another four star general.  Maybe...

Heady stuff, for sure.

I fuckin' hate the press in the US and the cycle.  I had journalism in high school as a subject and aced it.  You write only when you get the confirmation of at least three parties, and only after you have ALL the facts.  If you are reporting as supposed facts come in, you are blurring the issue.

It's just another damned spectacle, if you ask me.  And people there don't know how damaging this spectacle is to how they are perceived in the rest of the world, which angers me even more. 

Today's news reported on it...   with the comment that it was something out of a SOAP OPERA.  Sort of schadenfreude in tone.

Whelp, I can concur. 

This rant was brought to you by 'Morning Joe' Scarborough  on the tee-vee.  Which is one of the most misogynistic shows on MSNBC.  Lots of white male conservatives who are so disrespectful to women it defies description, and the co-anchor is the daughter of a former Nixon diplomat who can only shine when 'Daddy' is on.  Supposedly liberal, but hey, lives in New York and otherwise in the south of France.   Tja...  no influence.  Is there to cluck and shake her head, is constantly interrupted by male bloviators. 

WHY this is on a supposedly liberal network is beyond my comprehension.

Certainly, there are questions about this whole thing.  But I ended up LAUGHING when Joe Scarbourogh had his head exploding and demanding intervention from the ACLU.  That is so rich and ironic... 

For many many reasons...   if it had been a democratic leaning person, for instance.  He'd have demanded him to be put in stocks at the very least.  And he's concerned with protection of rights?  I seem to remember when he was screaming for them to be taken away after 9/11.  Oh yeah, put 'em in stocks.  It's a trauma 'Murka never recovered from.  Because they were told they were superheros and invincible. 

In all such stories, there were chinks in the armour, I guess, and 
things go very wrong.

What Scarborough does is bloviate.  He can bray, and his laugh sounds like a jackass and in my opinion he is.  But today, he outdid himself on breaking every journalistic rule, and spinning, and speculating, and being rude, which is just who he is and what he does.  Try to torture yourself and watch it through, and maybe you'll see what I mean..  It's here.

 

Am looking for crazy eyes, but no news yet

Wanna know how La Bachman fared in her run for the House. 

She's such a piece of work. 

And why, WHY....  did she and her husband get 23, count em, twenty three foster children, what with their being on the go and involved in politics?  Where did they find the time to nurture them?  Or even raise them? 

This has been a mystery to me for a long time.  Was it the money?  Every time I heard about it, Charles Dickens scenarios popped into my feeble mind.

And after having seen a video clip of her dancing with 'hubby', who is so 'fey' looking that you could choke on a cookie if the milk weren't there, have always had horror visions of what that fambly must be like, and understand that some of them didn't come out to be the fine upstanding ranting raving kooks who raised them. 

I do hope she lost her job.  From her pandering to the most awesome conspiracy theories to her idiocy in trying to raise up witch hunts and compromising national sneakurity in so doing... 

I so wish she lost her job.

So Bronco's team pulled it off....

Was up from two a.m. watching live feed on the internets, and at 7 a.m. our time, the live stream on the front page of the NY Times had Mittens' concession speech.  So no rancorous recounts.  Good. 

The once and future President just spoke on the live feed from NY Times.  Uplifting, accomplished, moving.

But I predict:  there will be days of the media playing the blame game, there will be jockeying for position and attempts to block anything good that will be proposed, and the bloviators will be either elated or have their heads explode live and in color in the national media. 

From a vantage point far removed from the continental US, am relieved, in that there will be no neo-con cabal surrounding a lame president champing at the bit to send people to die in Iran.  And anticipate a leadership which might restore some of the respect for America that had been lost over a decades' worth of those same people being bullies.

What I hope?  That the once and future president grows a pair and doesn't let himself be railroaded into buckling to the throwback neanderthalers who would restrict progress at the cost of hurting the people they purport to serve, but in actuality are serving global enterprises. 

Am not so certain that will happen as thoroughly as I wish, but am certain that there will at least be an effort to hinder it.

I'm not an optimist.  But one thing is certain.  The health care system that was achieved in the first term will become a fixed reality for a majority of the people there, and that is a very good thing indeed. 

The president's re-election will later be considered historic, I believe.  And that is a very good thing indeed.

And for the oligarchy who threw six billion dollars into ads...  well how many jobs could they have created with that amount of money, I ask you.  Just goes to show that spending so profigately on negative ads didn't get them the bang for the buck that they thought it would.  I will wipe away a crocodile tear for them, and suspect they will be able to write it off anyway.

The other point I would make is that a campaign lasting two years is intolerable, and stupid, and wastes time.  Someone ought to grapple with that problem as well.

If you don't vote...

Chris Mathhews will never talk to you again, and boy does he need his insulin....  wow.  To be seen here.  Tweety has his spleen out.

When a country becomes a banana republic...it

preaches that they and only they have the recipe for true democracy in the world and want to cram their version of it down everyone's throat.....

has a governorship in swing states to repress the opportunity for minorities and the poor, and the afflicted to cast a ballot by creating less polling places and eight hour waiting lines...

When a country has the audacity to preach democracy and call up a non-existent problem about voter fraud and make an identitiy card so difficult to get, especially among the poor, the afflicted and minorities.....

When a part of the country closes voting place doors before hundreds wanting to cast their ballots so that they have to supplicate and shout 'Let us vote' as happened in Miami Dade county Fla. yesterday ....

And those people are mostly minority, and in a more liberal county and aren't getting to what should be a 'walk in, cross your circles and drop it in the box'  sort of thing...  without all the electronic rigamarole, and funnily labeled levers to pull on a machine made for monkeys...   but people who have made decisions in making up their minds for how they want their country to advance for the next legislative period.....

And when the ruling class puts up billboards to scare the poor, the minorities and the afflicted from voting, as seen in the central states of the US...  always in the poorest... speak minority centers of cities.

One can only come to the conclusion that that country is a plutocracy, and if it were in the southern hemisphere....  it would be known as a banana republic. 

An agressive one, which wants to say to the rest of the world...  'our way is the only way'. 

Well their way is instructive...  but I don't think I would want to follow it.  Money isn't everything.

Having followed presidential campaigns for over forty years...  this was the most corrupt and disgusting, and was due to a pour-in of corporate money. 

Obama didn't dirty his hands.  Romey lied from morning to night, and the media, they astonish me.

'He misspoke.
 
It was a gaffe,

He didn't understand the question,' 

Instead of just saying it outright:  'he LIED'.

Why is the word tabu of a sudden?

Romney lies all the time.  It's probably why I like Lawrence O 'Donnell'  He'll tell the truth or if you call him out on it, invite you to box and duke it out.  But am old, and understand his concept of 'honour'. 

In the end, what the country has is a choice between going on a sorta journey where the destination isn't exactly clear but sort of heads to a rosy sky, or a vision where you are in England and would never think of going out without an umbrella...  or being lucky in having someone to wheel you out to vote if you were infirm, or old, or disabled....

today is the day, duckies.-....  gird yourselves, pack up the folding chair for the wait to ...  oh lurd,... cast your vote, and exercise a right that should have actually taken up ten minutes of your time, not eight hours.  

And take a folding chair, sit in it in line, and reflect on, if you were to be questioned by the ever circling press of journamalists, why you would think that your case represented the best system in the world, and why you would recommend it be force-fed to the rest of it as the  main course. 

Others never subject themselves to the process.  So much the sadder.

But rest assured, you HAVE reached the status of a banana republic, and have no reason to contend you are of another status. 

Unless everyone actually votes.

Have fun today. 

In my country, I only need ten minutes.

That's the different, as Peter would say, would love to speak with him, but my telephone isn't back on, which means... if it doesn't happen tomorrow, I have to run about town.  Which I hate.

We all have our distractions.

But will not retract.  Banana Republic.
 

Gay icons trash talk...

Sadly, they're right.

Oh my, potty- mouthed seniors.....

I saw this on Joe.My.God and choked on my daily rice ration.    It's not safe for work or to be played with children present.

You go, seniors!  and yeah, I thought if was funny.

Having seen and heard the onslaught of tee-vee and radio punditry this season

And having grown up in a state where the first presidential primaries were held, I can sympathise with how overwhelming the media can get.  But This year, in swing states, of which my former home is one, it's obviously become unbearable. 

We didn't have robocalls, or 22 minute blocks of ads assaulting our sensibilities every two minutes with trash and mostly lies.

Having followed the campaign, which has lasted two lonnnng years, I can really empathise with little Abigail.  Oh, I liked watching all the twists and turns of it, but really, two years?  Our election shit lasts about six weeks, and even that is more than enough.

I see the US mode as a new sort of art form, and when the Citizens United judgement was handed down...  which freaked me out, the idea that corporations are people was amazing to me.

And was insulted, as I assume many people must be.  Because it assumes that people are sheep, and if you hammer lies at them day in and out, well, they'll believe them.  The average citizen is smarter than that, and in swing states, they develop strategies to avoid being harassed out of their minds.

Like leaving all calls go to the answering machine and screening them.  If they don't recognise the number, they don't pick up.  It doesn't eliminate the 22 minute blocks of ads they get on the tee-vee, but some things can be seen on the internets, and thus avoided.

I feel confident that after this extravaganza of profligate spending, they will find that their efforts won't have made much difference in how people voted, and 2 billion dollars which could have effected much help elsewhere will have gone down the proverbial toilet.

But at this point, just days before the election, I have the sneaking suspicion that the people in the swing states are feeling like little 4 year old Abigail in the video.  'Make it stoooooppppppp.'   

So my heart goes out to those who live in the swing states, with the cheer-leading sentence:  'hang in there, it's only a couple of days now...'

That the little girl thinks the president's name is Bronco Bama is priceless.

Just vote.  It's your civic duty. 

Sandy and Rachel Maddow's modest proposal

Which is what I've been whining about for years now.  But oh yeah...  she lived in England on a scholarship to Oxford, I think it was. 

Our power lines are underground.  We haven't had massive power outages since I can't remember when.  And then they were local, or because lightning hit a power plant locally, and I 'think' the last time it happened...  we were down for almost an hour. 

I have asked this question repeatedly, and one of the more interesting answers I received was:  'well, our town discussed it, but a lot of people didn't want the lines running underneath their property.' 

This was one of the most amazing rationales for not doing what is obviously sensible and so goes back to some sort of selfishness and greed, it left me spitless. 

So...  you get increasingly frequent freak storms, and people lose their electricity for over a week at a time, and what happens?  They put up the lines above ground again thinking that some tree won't fall on them in a storm. 

 The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. 

I was relieved to find that I'm not the crazy one.  Rachel seems to agree with me.  You can find it here beginning at about the five minute mark. 

But then again...  some people think she's crazy.  Time will tell, but the practice here has shown she is right.