Author: momdude

The All-American game of summer – being played against Team Japan in the cold (60°F) and rain at Dodger Stadium.

At least I brought the Vuvuzela of Victory to sing her sweet, sweet song.

Go Team USA!

They’re “terrorists.” It’s not a term that was created in a vacuum.

What do they want? They want us to be frightened and scared – terrified.

How do they win? By making us change the way we live our lives because we’re frightened and scared all of the time – terrified.

We’ve spent billions of dollars a year on the TSA and Homeland Security, standing in line for hours every time we get on a plane. How many terrorists has that caught in fifteen and a half years?

Zero.

Now the “patriots” have taken control of the government and they’re going to get tough. They’re going to bring the terrorists to their knees. the Trumpencritter had a super double-secret plan that would do it in thirty days!

It’s now day fifty-six and what are we doing? We’re running. We’re cowering. We’re panicking. We’re overreacting. We’re freaking out.

Out of nowhere is coming that word that Homeland Security and the TSA have ordered that no one on any flight from thirteen Middle Eastern countries will be allowed to fly with any electronic device other than a cell phone or a required medical device.

No laptops. No Kindles. No handheld game consoles. No cameras. (Okay, that last one really hits home. I can’t remember the last time I got on a plane and didn’t fight for a window seat just so I could take pictures.)

Why are we doing this? They won’t say. It’s for security. It’s for our own protection. We need to trust them.

Bullshit.

We have turned into a country and a society that is so incredibly risk averse, so cowardly, so scared, so terrorized that we’ll go to any extreme at the drop of a hat and strip away privacy, rights, and all common sense in a blind panic to be safe at any cost. We jump at shadows, we see terrorist threats where there are none, and we overreact and panic first before not bothering to ask questions later.

The terrorists have won. As long as we choose to live in terror like this instead of growing a spine, sucking it up, and getting on with our lives, the terrorists will continue to win.

That’s the thing about terrorism. The terrorists don’t do it to us, they just give us an excuse to do it to ourselves. If we choose to tell them to fuck off, eat shit, and die while we get on with our lives, we win. If we jump at every made up boogie man and shadow and shred our society while doing it, they win.

The terrorists have won today.

Will we let them win again tomorrow?

There are more things to scream and rant and belittle than idiot politicians – so let’s talk about idiots who think some really stupid things are true because they don’t have the common sense god gave a snail.

Anti-vaxxers? Truly some of the world’s great fucking idiots and a danger to us all, but I’ll light into them some other time.

Moon landing hoaxers? You do NOT want me to get started on those fools unless we have a lot of time and alcohol. Another time, perhaps.

Chemtrails? Jesus, were you people dropped on your head repeatedly as babies? Did someone give you a lead pacifier to suck on?

No, today I would like to ask a couple of questions for that latest fad of pop culture – flat Earth believers.

Some NBA player went off on this a week or so ago and now there are more of them coming out of the woodwork. Today there was a big thing (supposedly) from Shaquille O’Neal where he jumped on the bandwagon.

I won’t ask about the dozens of simple experiments that even a second grader can do (ships over the horizon, shadow of the Earth during eclipses, etc) which disprove the flat Earth theory. I’ll let Neil deGrasse Tyson handle them. I just want to know a couple of things about this “obvious” viewpoint of yours.

1. How do you explain sunrise and sunset?
2. How do you explain the sun being at different points in the sky over locations spread west to east across the planet?
3. How do you explain night?
4. Why is it that the moon is round, the sun is round, even a tiny telescope can show that Mars is round, Venus is round, Jupiter is round, Saturn is round – but we’re flat?

Don’t bother getting into any bizarre and complex mental gymnastics to answer Neil’s challenges. We can debunk the more advanced bullshit that’s filled your head later. First, tackle those four questions.

Show your work. Cite repeatable experimental observations. Prepare to defend your answers.

“I can see it with my own eyes!” is not an answer.

Why? Because it’s so easily disproved, that’s why. For example, you can see yourself in the mirror and think you’re an intelligent, rational human being and that’s obviously not true!

I’m not an idiot. (*waits for comments from the peanut gallery to die down, no matter how accurate they might be*)

I understand that during a day in the company of two world leaders with dozens or hundreds if not thousands of pictures being taken every minute, someone can cherry pick a single frame that shows some facial expression or the other with diametrically opposite moods or public images being displayed.

Trump’s handlers can show him looking regal, Presidential, and imposing. The other 99.999999999% of us can find photos of him looking like a buffoon who’s being castigated and scoffed at by yet another prominent world leader.

Po-TAY-toe, po-taa-toe.

But really, with all of the various pictures of Angela Merkel’s expression of bemused disgust while looking at Trump or talking to him, do we really not think that the whole world is laughing at us? When even lifelong politicians, trained to maintain a poker face and never give away anything, when they can barely contain their disdain, how are we mere mortals expected to?

Did I not understand this correctly, or was the CEO of Exxon-Mobil Secretary of State of the United States not so subtly telling North Korea that nuking them is on the table?

So we put a bunch of inexperienced, ignorant, xenophobic, paranoid, psychotic fascists in charge of the government and the question becomes, “How long is it before our country is in a World War again – with EVERYONE against US cause we’re the bad guys?”

What’s the over/under on that in Vegas, and how fast is it dropping as our boy Rex takes his nuclear sword on an Asian tour?

As has been noted, even under a fascist regime (and no, we’re not there yet), life goes on. People still go to work, go out to dinner, go to sporting events.

Carry on without me tonight – it’s time for attack of a different kind.

What a bunch of clowns! I guess we should be grateful – as evil as these assholes are, if they actually knew what they were doing we could be in for some big trouble!

But they’re not.

So Trump’s “revised” Muslim ban was overturned by a court in Hawaii today. Good. Excellent.

Schadenfreude can be found in one of the reasons it got overturned. It’s usually very tough to prove the government’s intent in such a case. But after the first ban was put into place, Trump stooge and chief NYC sycophant Rudi Guliani went on television and told how Trump had asked him how to ban Muslims and make it look legal. Then this week another stooge went on television to say that the intent with the second ban was the same and they were expecting to achieve the same result.

Well – they did achieve the same result. Congratulations! Your xenophobic, racist, bigoted, hateful second ban got overturned exactly like your xenophobic, racist, bigoted, and hateful first ban did!

At least stupidity’s good for something in this case.

When the truth, the actual facts, the evidence is finally known – and it will be, these incompetent buffoons can’t run a conspiracy or a covert operation any better than they run the government – we will look back on today and say, “Of course they released the 2005 returns!”

This is speculation. It is not proven and I am not going to lie to you (like some government “leaders” will) about its veracity. But I still think that it’s a sucker bet.

Someday, hopefully someday soon, we’ll see how this Administration spent a great deal of time going through Trump’s tax returns for the last fifteen or twenty years and found the one where he paid the most taxes, where there is the least amount of evidence pointing at the treasonous wrongdoings. Then, instead of releasing the entire tax return, they released the first two pages.

They’ll be out there tomorrow, pounding themselves on the chest, puffed up and peacock proud, because they “released Trump’s tax returns.” Which is exactly as accurate and factual as their claims that they had the biggest inauguration crowd of all time.

Anyone who knows anything about tax returns knows that the devil’s in the details. The first two pages of a Form 1040 are basically the executive summary. The meat, the information we need to see – the schedules that show who Trump borrowed money from, who his investors are, which foreign nationals are his partners – that’s all in the schedules that follow.

None. Of. That. Was. Released.

Trump is a con man. This is his latest attempt to distract, bullshit, and bamboozle.

Someday there will be a courtroom with a whole stack of Trump’s tax returns. All of them. All of the schedules. And if there’s any justice in the world, Trump will be in handcuffs at the defendant’s table, along with Bannon, McConnell, Spicer, Ryan, and the rest of this fascist cabal.

And we’ll know that the first two pages of Trump’s 2005 tax return were the only two pages the whole stack of documents that wasn’t world-class toxic.

Sucker bet.

We’ve all seen it, the White House Press Room. It’s not that big and it’s cramped as hell and you’ve got as many reporters and photographers as you can squeeze in there.

Sean Spicer’s up at the podium, practically drowning in the contempt radiating from everyone in the room except for the other Trump toadies and sycophants hovering in the doorways. (Yes, even the Secret Service dudes.)

Sean there pedaling like crazy on his loom, like some mad Rumpelstiltskin trying to spin gold from bullshit. He calls for the next question.

A noted reporter from one of the major networks stand and says, clearly and succinctly, “Sean, why don’t you just admit that you’re lying through your teeth, wouldn’t know an actual fact if one bit you in the ass, and you work for a raving lunatic who isn’t even in the same area code with reality?”

The room breaks into applause, Sean starts to sputter, turn red, points at the reporter,

and the Secret Service drags the offender out.

As the room calms, Sean pulls himself together, points at a reporter and says, “Next question?”

The next reporter stands and says, “Sean, you cowardly lying sack of shit, are you going to answer that last question?”

In case you haven’t seen it:

That would be Steve King, US Representative from the great state of Iowa, 4th District. And yes, that would be industrial grade white supremacist bile, hatred, bigotry, and bullshit that he put on his Twitter feed this morning.

He must be standing by that sentiment – after a significant storm of criticism today he’s still got the Tweet up there. It hasn’t been deleted. So either he’s sticking to his guns, he’s too stupid to know how to delete a tweet, or he’s too out of touch to even know that he’s in a shit storm.

Or all of the above.

For the record, the tweet he’s referring to is from @V_of_Europe, the “Voice of Europe,” which is a front for an ultra-right wing, nationalistic group which is full of hate, anti-Muslim propaganda, anti-EU propaganda, and lots of other stuff that will make you want to take a shower in that disinfectant they used in “The Andromeda Strain” after you’re done reading it.

“Wilders” is Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician who is the head of the “Party For Freedom.” This particular group of slimeballs makes the Ku Klux Klan look like amateurs. Wilders has been prosecuted, but not convicted, for hate speech and denigrating Islam after he compared the Quran to Mein Kampf.

My parents and family come from the southeast corner of South Dakota, just across the Missouri River from King’s district in Iowa. The towns where my parents were born are maybe twenty-five miles from Sioux City, the largest city in King’s district.

While the majority of my family is on the conservative side of the spectrum, middle-American farmers from European immigrants a dozen generations ago, and they have strong religious roots, they’re also for the most part pretty decent folks. Average Americans. The kind of folks who built crossed through the Cumberland Gap (literally), built the West, fought two World Wars, and so on.

I’m guessing the folks in Iowa on the other side of the Missouri are pretty similar.

So how in hell do they keep sending this racist, disgusting, white supremacist piece of shit to Congress every two years?