I'm going to scare some people tonight

I'm going to dress up tonight as Bernie Sanders and scare the crap out of my conservative neighbors.

"For God's sake don't open the door, Sharon. It's a...a...SOCIALIST!

Happy Halloween!

The Republican's Benghazi Blunder

The political sites I visit online are all leading off with articles about Hillary Clinton extending her lead over Bernie Sanders in the polls. Gee, why the sudden surge in popularity for Hillary? Let me think….

Benghazi!

Benghazi!

Benghazi!

That’s right, folks. We have the walking brain-dead Republicans to thank for Clinton’s sudden rise in popularity. It apparently never occurred to any of them that a calm, articulate, intelligent woman being hounded for eleven hours by a rabid, redneck lynch mob might not play well with the public. So wrapped up in their delusional hatred of Clinton, Congressional Republicans gave full voice to their ignorance and ineptitude last week, and voters are responding accordingly.

The failure of the Benghazi witch hunt is just the latest example of how out of touch with reality Republicans have become. Just look at their presidential candidates. Their only concern right now is who can throw the largest chunk of red meat to their loony followers and, as of today, that honor goes to Ben Carson. I can hear Carson preparing for tonight’s Republican debate right now.

Carson: I don’t believe abortion is right under any circumstances.

Consultant: Crazier.

Carson: I don’t think abortion is right under any circumstances, and any woman who even thinks about it should be arrested.

Consultant: Give me more crazy, Ben.

Carson: I don’t think abortion is right under any circumstances, and all women should be jailed for the term of their pregnancy to prevent any abortions.

Consultant: Perfect.

No one, not even some Republicans, believed the Benghazi hearings were anything but a partisan hit job on Hillary. The fact that the pinhead Gowdy and his posse thought this public hearing would be a good thing for Republicans simply blows my mind. Lost in their delusional fog, Republicans continue to believe that they can bend reality to justify their ideology, but that never has and never will work.

The Chess Match - A New Scary Short Story

Chess is more than a game for Kevin Holt, as his deceitful wife discovers too late. Read The Chess Match and other short scary stories at They're Only Shadows.

More Iraq Lies Unearthed

A newly released memo shows that in 2002 then British Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged his support to the Bush Administration for an invasion of Iraq a full year before the attack took place. During that year, he lied continuously to the British people claiming that he was seeking peaceful means for dealing with Iraq, while he had actually committed himself to be part of an armed invasion of that country.

That’s bad enough, but it also strengthens the argument made by some that the Bush administration had been planning an attack on Iraq from day one. Depending on where you stand, 9/11 was the fortunate Pearl Harbor moment that allowed the administration an opening to invade Iraq, or was a government orchestrated event intended for just that purpose.

It has to make one wonder. We know Cheney and Bush wanted very badly to bring down Saddam Hussein, that they were loathe to leave the vast oil reserves in Iraq to an avowed enemy and (from the PNAC documents) wanted a strong military presence in the Middle East. So along comes 9/11, and in our moment of panic, the media and the American people gave the neocons in the administration a blank check to take away our Constitutional rights at home and kill hundreds of thousands of people in the Mideast. Doesn’t that strike you as an amazing coincidence?  On a September morning early in Bush’s first term, the physical manifestations of our economic and military might are attacked and thousands of Americans die, and this event allows him to do exactly what he and Cheney and the other administration necons want to do. 

For me, it is too much of a coincidence. From my reading and research, I am convinced 9/11 was an inside job, a false flag event, intended to gain support for an illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The Morning After

Perhaps even more interesting than the Democratic debate itself is the reaction of the mainstream press on this morning after. The media has quickly declared Hillary Clinton the winner, but polls taken after the debate (CNN among others) indicate those watching it felt that Bernie Sanders won. What’s going on?

Let’s start with the obvious. CNN is owned by TBS, aka Time Warner who is Hillary’s seventh largest donor. In addition, Anderson Cooper, the debate moderator, works for the Clinton Initiative. Only six or seven mega-corporations own virtually all of the media and entertainment in America, and they are, of course, run by the 1%. Do you think they want a democratic socialist to sit in the Oval Office? Of course not.

One glaring example I came across this morning was on Yahoo’s landing page. There were three featured stories on the debates. None of these teasers included a photo of Sanders or mentioned Sanders in their leads. They all focused exclusively on Clinton, with one dual image of Clinton and Joe Biden, who wasn’t even in the debate. The mainstream media’s agenda couldn’t be any clearer than that.

You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe this country’s elites are stacking the deck against Sanders, and today’s reaction to the debate is living proof. America’s wealthiest citizens fear a Sander’s win, and for good reason. The question I and others have is how far will they go to keep him out of the White House?

Why the Mainstream Media is Failing Us

I think Paul Kurgman is brilliant and agree with his positions most of the time, but his latest commentary, published in the New York Times today, comes off being a bit on the naïve side. In this piece, Krugman wonders why the media keeps allowing Republicans to say the most ridiculous things without any push back. The Benghazi hearings are a perfect example. It’s been clear from the start to anyone paying attention that the Congressional hearings were nothing more than an effort to score political points against Hillary Clinton, yet the mainstream media has treated this blatantly political circus as if it were a serious inquiry.

In his essay, Krugman writes:

"Sometimes I have the impression that many people in the media consider it uncouth to acknowledge, even to themselves, the fraudulence of much political posturing. The done thing, it seems, is to pretend that we’re having real debates about national security or economics even when it’s both obvious and easy to show that nothing of the kind is actually taking place."

He’s clearly right about the failings of the mainstream press, but neglects to mention the true motive behind the networks’ approach to politics in America: Money. In a capitalist society such as ours, profits are all that matter, and everything else needs to take a seat at the back of the bus. This includes morality and even truth. The reason why the media pretends “we’re having real debates about nation security and economics” is purely financial. The truth would alienate viewers, and no network wants to do anything that will cause their viewers to switch channels or cancel a subscription.

So we live in a fantasy world were the most outrageous lies can be said with a straight face and reported as fact. Instead of a government-controlled media we have a corporate controlled media that serves the interests of the one percent, which basically amounts to the same thing. It’s all propaganda dressed up as objective news.

How Does Your Ideological Team Stack Up?

Sports metaphors are used often in political commentary. “The race is neck and neck.” “Joe threw a hail Mary pass during the debate.” “Jane’s moved up to the big leagues in her new position at the White House.” What if we took the sports metaphor a step further and looked at the win/loss record for the two largest political factions in America — Liberals/Progressives and Conservatives. Just how have these two teams stacked up over say, the last 150 years of America history? Let's look at the record.

	Liberals/Progressives	Conservatives
Civil War	W	L
Child Labor Laws	W	L
Workplace Safety Regulations	W	L
Women’s Right to Vote	W	L
The New Deal	W	L
Ending Jim Crow	W	L
Civil Rights Legislation	W	L
Ending the Vietnam War	W	L
Watergate	W	L
Opposed Patriot Act that has led to the American Surveillance State	W	L
Long opposed to the War on Drugs that is now being recognized as a disaster	W	L
Knew starting wars in the Middle East was a terrible idea	W	L
Opposed austerity measures	W	L
Opposed privatizing Social Security	W	L

Wow, that’s quite a record. Over and over and over, conservatives have been on the wrong side of history. There are still major issues that the two sides are battling over right now, such as a woman’s right to an abortion, equal pay and rational gun control, but if the record is any indication, the outcome can be predicted.

My Personal Top Ten Lists

I like lists. Everyone likes lists. So I decided to create my own personal lists. These aren’t lists of what movies or books or TV shows I think are objectively the best, but the ones that I personally like the best. That’s the fun of it, to see if we agree or disagree on our faves. So here we go.

Top Ten Movies

The Godfather 1 & 2

Psycho

Silence of the Lambs

The Magnificent Seven

Crimes and Misdemeanors

Strangers on a Train

Fargo

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

The Exorcist

Top Ten TV Shows

The Dick Van Dyke Show

The Sopranos

The Twilight Zone

Chicago Blue

I love Lucy

M.A.S.H.

The Simpsons

Saturday Night Live (first ten years or so)

Mission Impossible

Star Trek

Top Ten Musical Groups/Musicians

The Beatles

The Rolling Stones

Jimi Hendrix

Led Zeppelin

James Brown

Cream

Neil Young

Stevie Ray Vaughn

Janice Joplin

Buddy Guy

Top Ten Books

The Catcher in the Rye

Skinny Legs and All

The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Huckleberry Finn

White Noise

The Divine Comedy

The Name of the Rose

Invisible Man

The stories of Edgar Allen Poe

Gone Girl

Top Ten Websites

Reddit

Salon

The Huffington Post

Youtube

Boing Boing

That’s Going Too Far!

Daily Kos

Buzzfeed

Facebook

Linkdin

The Corrupt, Dysfunctional Mess We Call the Federal Government

A Salon headline asks, “The Secret Service’s Mind-blowing Abuse of Power: Why do Government Agencies Keep Spying on Lawmakers?” The article focuses on a report from Homeland Security detailing how Secret Service employees hacked into private databases in an effort to find and leak intimidating and embarrassing information about a vocal critic of the agency, Chair of the House Oversight Committee Jason Chavetz.

The answer to Salon’s headline question is very simple, government agencies spy on lawmakers to intimidate them and keep the money pipeline flowing into their agencies’ coffers. It’s a form of blackmail, and it works extremely well. Despite the occasional outburst of indignation when the spooks get publically caught with their hand in the cookie jar, the system in place to keep elected officials quiet and generous runs smoothly. Heck, no one even knows exactly how much money Congress gives our surveillance agencies because it’s all top secret, you understand.

Everyone has skeletons in their closets and, if you’re a Congressperson, you are acutely aware that the NSA, CIA, Secret Service and other organizations have access to every detail of your past, and won’t be afraid to reveal it if necessary. So, when funding time rolls around, you’re more than happy to give our spies whatever they desire.

This is definitely not the type of check and balance our forefathers had in mind.  In fact, they would be appalled at what only nominally passes for a federal government in the United States. The Supreme Court is in the clutches of partisan ideologues beholden to the one percent, the executive branch (since George Bush) has given itself unprecedented powers to wage war any damn place it wants and murder anyone it pleases, and Congress is a dysfunctional mental asylum made up of half-wits and demagogues who are the property of America’s billionaires.

The “why” in the Salon headline is simple to answer, but the “how,” as in how do we fix the corrupt mess we call our government, is nearly impossible to answer without some very drastic changes.

The Dark Side of Contract to Hire

I don’t often blog about myself, I don’t want to drive away the few readers I have, but a recent experience of mine deserves some attention.

At the beginning of June I was hired by a small company as a senior copywriter. The latest trend in hiring, at least here in California, is to bring someone on under a contract lasting usually three or six months. During the contract period, you receive no benefits or regular employee privileges. You’re essentially a freelancer. I was hired on a three-month contract basis and was paid a straight hourly salary with the carrot that I could be hired as an employee once my contract was up.

From a company perspective, the line is that hiring a person under contract allows them to see if the employee is a good fit before investing money in that person through benefits. That sounds logical, but there’s a darker side to contract work.

The opportunity for companies to abuse this process is great and works only in the organization’s favor. When I was hired in June, the company was in the middle of redoing their website. For two-and-a-half months I worked daily on copy for their website then, when the majority of the site was finished, I was told there wasn’t enough work to keep me on.  Ironically, my boss told me she had gone through a similar experience of being hired on contract by a company, did a buttload of work for them, and was then let go before her contract was up.

Like my boss, I was brought on to do a particular task, then let go before any benefits were issued.  So I was essentially a fee-lancer, although under stricter control than I would be with that title. The problem is that the pretense was that I would probably be hired full-time at the end of the contract. Of course, I wasn’t.

The bottom line is that companies are exploiting talent at all levels of experience using the contract process to get work done without having to pay for benefits. In my opinion, this is one result of the weakening of unions over the past thirty years. Companies can and do get away with exploiting employees because we are powerless to do anything about it. It’s become an environment where the Koch Brothers and Walton’s have the upper hand, and workers are left holding the bag. 

Crazy, Creepy Cruz Wants to Arrest Obama

We certainly have to present Ted Cruz the “Republican-Presidential-Candidates-Saying-Stupid-Shit” award for this week.  Speaking to an equally vile crowd of cretins at something called the Values Voter Summit this morning, Cruz said Obama was “The world’s most powerful communist,” and called for the President’s arrest. And he didn’t stop there. He said that if he were elected President, he would tear the Iran Nuclear deal to shreds and would consider assassinating Iran’s leading ayatollah. And, of course, he got standing ovations.

Anyone who thinks Ted Cruz is presidential material (or any of the Republicans running for office) needs to be given a lobotomy and a box of crayons. They should under no circumstances be allowed to vote. They are not capable of reasoning or thinking rationally and are a true threat to what’s left of our democracy. Cruz is a crazy Christian tool of the elites who wants to help turn this country into Mordor for his masters’ sick enjoyment.

Where’s the mainstream media’s outrage at such traitorous talk? If the media is as liberal as people like Cruz claim it is, where’s the blistering take down of his mind-numbing stupidity? In reality, the media loves the traveling circus of Republican presidential candidates. Public figures making idiotic statements apparently has huge entertainment value in America, and the Republicans never disappoint.

Creepy Cruz is an ugly, hateful piece of work who apparently feels that the citizens of this country hate democracy and the Constitution as much as he does. The irony is that he yearns for the same type of theocracy that exists in Iran, where religious dogma overrules reason and freedom.

Jeb Tries to Re-write Family History During the Debate

I didn’t watch last night’s Republican debate, and if you did you have my condolences, but there are enough recaps floating around that the stomach-churning, mind-numbing, soul-killing essence of the event is fairly evident. The one statement from the debate that jumped out at me wasn’t from the Donald oddly enough, but from Jeb Bush. In response to a Trump jab about brother George’s disastrous presidency, Jeb huffed and puffed and told the billionaire huckster that his older sibling “kept America safe.”

George Bush kept America safe. Okay. On what planet is that true? Certainly not this one. As I remember, and let me know if I have this wrong, the worst terrorist attack in America’s history happened during George Bush’s watch. His administration ignored numerous warnings that an attack against us was likely, and then lied about that after the fact. He then used the attack as a pretext to set the Middle East on fire and attack a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. In addition to all of this, his lackadaisical response to hurricane Katrina was a disaster on top of a disaster.

Whether historians place GW at, or a name or two away from, the top of the “Worst American Presidents” list, no one other than immediate family will ever say or believe that George Bush kept this country safe. His wars in the Middle East greatly intensified anti-American feelings in that region and around the world, placing us at a much greater risk of another attack. His invasion of Iraq is considered an 8.0 on the Richter Scale of international policy blunders by virtually everyone on the planet except Dick Cheney and brother Jeb. Bush’s presidency was a disaster for America, and its ramifications – the creation of a totally unconstitutional police/surveillance state – live on like a monster that can’t be destroyed.

Let’s be honest, the problem isn’t just with George W. The entire Bush clan, from Prescott to George H. W. to GW to Jeb to the lesser known Marvin, have consistently pushed an undemocratic, elitist agenda that is in stark contrast to the democratic ideals on which this country was founded. Prescott Bush was a member of a group of elitists during the thirties who wanted to overthrow the government and institute a fascist state, and the Bush apples haven’t fallen very far from the tree.

Jeb can lie to himself about his brother if he wants, but the rest of us have to keep setting the record straight until the lie dies a quiet death.

Fourteen Years Without Justice

As we spend another 9/11 remembering the horrible death and destruction of that morning 14 years ago, it’s also important to call attention to the ever growing body of evidence that disputes the official narrative of that day’s events. I am more convinced than ever that 9/11 was carried out by a faction of neoconservatives inside and outside of Washington, D.C., headed by Dick Cheney, who needed a pretext to send the U.S. military into the Middle East to secure oil fields and facilities and dispose of Saddam Hussein.

For those of you who still find that assertion shocking, all I can do is urge you to study the evidence presented on various 9/11 Truth websites, especially Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth and Pilots for 9/11 Truth. There you will find experts in their respective fields presenting compelling, and in some cases, irrefutable evidence that the 9/11 Commission’s official report is deeply flawed and inaccurate. The report, you’ll learn, was a sham, conducted not to learn the truth, but to reinforce a pre-drawn conclusion supplied by Bush and Cheney. Its assertions were so spurious and contrived that even former members of the commission today admit it got a whole lot of things wrong.

The question that many people have about 9/11 is how could American’s do such a horrible thing to other Americans? How could they possibly live with themselves after murdering 3,000 innocent people? It’s not a mystery to me at all. They believed what they were doing was right and necessary. In their deluded worldview, expounded on in the 1997 report Rebuilding America’s Defenses, taking out unfriendly Middle East rulers and seizing their oil was a neocon (and Israeli) top priority, but they knew the American people would not support an unprovoked invasion, so they needed a new Pearl Harbor, and they created one. They had to create an incident so horrible, so stigmatizing that the Americans would demand military action. Killing thousands of Americans and attacking the Pentagon did the trick.

As we all know, the neocons who were so successful in starting a war had no idea what to do once we got there or how our actions would impact the larger region. Our occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan proved to be a disaster that Cheney and other criminals are now trying to blame on Obama. Instead of spending their life behind bars where they belong, Cheney and his cronies are being hosted on talk shows and treated like political wise men. 

The truth is, 9/11 was an inside job and the criminals who committed the crime of the new century are still at large. That’s what this day should be significant for.