Living Large in Carson City: What’s a Liberal to Do?

Posted on by technoscribe50: Gary Brady-Herndon

“Misinformation is a virus unto itself.”
― Brianna Keilar

In 2015 the arrival of Donald Trump on the political landscape seemed like a gift from the journalism gods. Here was a man with few filters and many delightfully bizarre and disturbing incidents in his past. The prospect of lampooning him grew like a festering boil on the pan head of every liberal/progressive who could string three sentences together in anything resembling a coherent thought. And did he deliver.

Trump’s win in 2016 gave America an unprepared, under educated, and amoral president with little or no interest in improving the lives of average Americans. Indeed, his modus operandi was antithetical to actions of most who served before him. From the beginning, Trump was a hot mess spread on a thin veneer of questionable success based mainly on his own statements highlighting his shady real estate career, success as a television reality show host, and by the support of those who willfully sold their souls to him for their own personal self-aggrandizement. From the time he took office to the time he left the White House shrouded in a grifter’s stew of lies, falsehoods, and shady dealings behind the scenes, he proved to be a flimflam artist on every level. He is and was a shameful man child with little recognition of anything that approximated the qualities of a competent leader or the truth.  

Those heady days are gone along with America’s collective shock of what Trump and his associates really had in store for the country. As much as he was a bumbling, inept clown, his actions will have reverberations that last far longer than the memory of his criminality, or the surprise of just how much damage he sought to cause in his persistent attempts to hang on to the nation’s highest office. Yet, the die is cast, and the country has to come to grips with how to deal with it all.

As Americans saw recently with the actions of the Supreme Court, Trump crafted an extreme right-wing majority of likeminded justices that are wasting no time implementing their white, evangelical nationalism on the rest of the populace. With the overruling of Roe vs Wade, the court demonstrated how the conservative Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett are willing to steer the nation against the will of the American people. In the days following the demise of Roe vs Wade, the Court issued rulings that struck down a gun control law in New York state, and weakened the wall between church and state by sanctioning prayer on school grounds. Restricting the EPA’s ability to monitor and fight climate change was simply icing on the cake. And this is just the beginning.

It is hard to believe that the emotionally and intellectually challenged former president even understood the effect his actions would produce. It is even harder to believe that he cared. Appointing three radical personalities to the high court is a politically expedient act meant to throw red meat to his crazed followers to shore up their support. Still, while expected, the sweeping rulings by the court and the breadth of their impact on American society caught many off guard.

As bad as these early rulings are, they portend even more egregious decisions in the offing. Gay rights, gay marriage, eliminating contraceptive rights, immigration restrictions, race in college admissions, voting rights, and of course, free speech are all in the crosshairs in next year’s Supreme Court docket. To use a crass overstatement, the court has become the ultra-right’s lurid wet dream. The possibilities are far reaching and frightening. The next year will be crucial to the continuance of our democracy.

Why the urgency? Americans have to awaken to the fact that the Republican Party no longer supports the will of the people. They are the party of big business, the one percent, and are rapidly becoming the party of white nationalists, rabid evangelicals, and power-hungry insurrectionists willing to sell the nation out to fulfill their unpatriotic agenda. It is necessary to point out that the few sane Republicans left in the party’s ranks have been duped into believing that America is not great, and Trump has the answer to the ills facing the nation. He doesn’t, and therein lies the rub.

A steady diet of Fox News, slanted conservative talking points, and a fear of becoming irrelevant in the face of growing numbers of brown skinned people has the MAGA crowd peeing their pants and closing their ears to the truth. The Republican Party has been playing the long game from at least the point when the Supreme Court gave George W. Bush the presidency despite Al Gore winning the popular vote. The decision highlighted the need to scrap the Electoral College in lieu of using the popular vote as a barometer of where the nation’s consensus lay. Despite Barack Obama’s eight years in office, Congress skewed right setting the stage for Mitch Mc Connell’s crusade to pack the court with conservative judges to set up the current state of affairs America finds itself in today.

This is why the next year will be so crucial. Given the Court’s actions over the past month, Americans can expect more of their rights trampled upon and severely restricted. Conservatives know the actions of the court will bring on an onslaught of dissention among liberals and moderates. Still, expect the court to act in flagrant disregard of the will of the people. They believe that if they can pass crippling voting rights restrictions, shore up the states’ abilities to question election results, and marginalize entire blocs of voters, they will have gained control of the government despite the Democrats being in charge of both chambers of Congress.

Yet, conservatives understand their playbook is little more than a governmental game of chicken; a game they have to win next year. Conservatives know they are walking a slippery slope. The justices have one shot at reconstructing America’s democratic process. A half-hearted attempt in 2023 to legislate by judicial decree would place them in an untenable position. Liberals and moderates would rise up and punish them at the ballot box in 2024. Republicans are playing for all the marbles in this game, and they are playing to win. Anything less than a tumultuous year of judicial decrees further cementing them into power would be unthinkable. Expect the fireworks to begin on October 3 of this year when the 2023 Supreme Court begins their deliberations in reshaping America in their image. It will be interesting if not pretty.

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Living Large in Carson City:

Posted on by technoscribe50: Gary Brady-Herndon

Note: This was an unfinished blog post that was trite and out of date before I finished it.

“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.” Daniel Patrick Moynihan

One has to wonder just what Trump hopes to achieve with his comical assault on the American judicial system, and his onslaught of court filings to invalidate the 2020 presidential electoral process. At this point in early December with a 1 and 39 record of wins to losses, not even he can hold out hope for a turnaround. Yet, his clown posse of lawyers led by Rudy Giuliani continue to file away hoping against hope that something sticks, and the golden path to the Supreme Court suddenly appears as a shining yellow brick road to a successful appeal, any appeal, that will change the outcome.   

It won’t. He knows it. America knows it. We should never forget that Trump is the Energizer Bunny of the  Grift, and nothing is at it seems. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the bogus court cases brought by the hyper rabid lawyers like Giuliani and Sidney “Release the Kraken” Powell are little more than smoke screen builders in a much larger game plan. They have been entrusted with whipping the masses into the proverbial frenzy to keep alive the malignant virus of Trumpism as the president and his minions layout an even more devious plot behind the scenes. 

When the final disputed state election was certified this week, giving Biden and insurmountable win, common sense would dictate even the most fervent forever Trump Republican would stand down and accept the inevitable. Yet, the opposite appears more likely than the one based on common sense. Republicans are reluctant to stand up and openly condemn the president’s actions, possibly fearing some twist of fate that might actually allow him to stay in office. The party leadership shows no signs of changing course as evidenced by their will to keep the status quo. It seems obvious that Phase I of Trump’s plan to subvert democracy is quickly coming to an end with an even darker game plan about to be put into effect. 

Let’s play the Pardon Game. This past week Trump did what many thought was inevitable when he pardoned serial liar Michael Flynn. Flynn not only lied, but admitted he lied before taking back his confession, and Attorney General William Barr withdrew charges against him. Flynn not only lied but worked with Russian operatives to subvert the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. It is obvious at this point that Flynn was taking the rap for Trump and his administration to keep the president’s name and character out of the headlines. Last week’s pardon was simply payback on the president’s part to a loyal foot soldier who did his job and now wants to come in from the cold. 

Yet, as many things in the Universe of Trump, normal rules don’t apply. Most people staring into years of incarceration in Leavenworth, but who had dodged the bullet of lying to the FBI and playing footsies with the Russians, would fold their tents and scuttle off into the darkness never to be heard of again. However, these are not “normal” times, and these are not patriots of the Republic. Today, Flynn tweeted a press release that became a full page advertisement in the Washington Times from the  Ohio-based “We The People Convention” calling for Trump to declare limited martial law and hold a new election under the scrutiny of the U.S. military. He joins other military personnel like retired Air Force three-star general Thomas McInerney who  also recently called for martial law. Troubling, no?

Additionally, like any good Greek tragedy chorus, there are the voices that linger beyond the din and supply their own measure of heinous opportunism.

Living Large In Carson City:

Posted on by technoscribe50: Gary Brady-Herndon

Note: This was an unfinished blog post that was trite and out of date before I finished it.

Democracy is four wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Ambrose Bierce

I am returning after a brief hiatus and recovery from the 2020 fall semester which, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, turned what was a normal semester into a genuine nightmare of epic proportions. Suffice it to say, it was not a pretty time for anybody – students or professors. 

Today is Tuesday, January 5, 2021 – election day in the Georgia runoff that will decide the fate of our democracy for at least the next two years if not for decades to come. Tomorrow, at least 11 Senators and 100 to 140 Representatives (the numbers keep changing) will vote not to approve Joe Biden’s certification as president elect in an election that by any measure (other than Trump and his basket of deplorables) is seen as a landslide by rational observers. Biden won the Electoral College by 306-232, and his certification should be a pro forma event under normal circumstances. “Normal circumstances” refers to all the years before 2016 before Trump took possession of the presidency and systematically began dismantling democracy as we know it. 

I won’t attempt to write anything about the circumstances we face over the next two days. If you are alive and breathing, intubated or not, and are of moderate intelligence and awareness, all you have heard over ever facet of the media since November 3 deals with this problem ad nauseum. Trump is flopping around in his own little world of denial while his supporters in Congress are like moneys trying to climb a flag pole. The higher they get; the more of their asses they show to the nation. Is this really what Trump meant when he coined the phrase “Make America Great Again?”

The question on many people’s minds is will Trump and the wayward Congress women and men and his rabid following be held responsible for their actions against the government and America in general. Sedition and insurrection can be looked at as synonymous in this case. A free legal dictionary on online defines sedition as “sedition is the crime of revolting or inciting revolt against government. However, because of the broad protection of free speech under the First Amendment, prosecutions for sedition are rare.” The same website defines insurrection as “insurrection (as) a rising or rebellion of citizens against their government, usually manifested by acts of violence. Under federal law, it is a crime to incite, assist, or engage in such conduct against the United States. West’s Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2.” One has to wonder if any of Trump’s followers or supporters understand the fine line they are walking with lengthy jail sentences lapping at their backsides. 

———-  Thursday January7

Living Large In Carson City:

Posted on by technoscribe50: Gary Brady-Herndon

Note: This was an unfinished blog post that was trite and out of date before I finished it.

“Every time a stupid politician says something stupid, you don’t have to reply to him, because it is nonsense to shoo every barking dog away!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

The Free Dictionary defines “dog and pony show” as a display, demonstration, or exhibition of something one is selling. (As a circus act where trained dogs leap onto and off trained ponies.)” America was offered up one of the most egregious displays of this idiom when the Republicans held their convention to nominate Donald Trump for a second term for the presidency. Breathtaking in its skew of reality, presentation of endless lies, totally devoid of understanding irony (Ivanka Trump: “I recognize that my father’s communication style is not to everyone’s taste, but the results speak for themselves) and so much more there isn’t space to catalog it all.

I’ve been doing some serious thinking about what all this means to America. The one question I keep asking myself is “How did America sink so low to support a grifter and con man for president of the United States?” Regardless of the answer, I would bet there are a lot of lifelong Republicans who voted the party line in 2016 who are having second thoughts today. With America recording its six millionth case of Covid-19, and many, many deaths to come, how can anyone still support Trump. It boggles the mind. CNN broadcast this little piece of wisdom about Trump’s acceptance speech in the White House Rose Garden as reported by Crooks and Liars:

WOLF BLITZER: Jim Acosta, first to you. What do you hear about the lack of social distancing. 2,000 people sitting very close and most of them were not wearing masks.

JIM ACOSTA: That’s right, wolf. We heard a lot of gaslighting and we experienced maybe some super-spreading. I talked about all these people, hundreds of people sitting side by side in the audience, not wearing masks and a Senior White House official brushed off concerns about lack of social distancing.

This quote might blow you away. “Everybody is going to catch this thing eventually.” C&L (my emphasis)

Well, yeah, but do we have to? If this quote is the official White House stance one the pandemic, a lot of things are understandable, not sane, but understandable. It makes sense really. Trump’s lack of initiative on getting out ahead of the pandemic, his refusal to advocate and take personal measures to protect himself and others can be explained away through the quote above. Again, the only word I can come up with to explain it is mind boggling.

The only comic relief in all of this is how Trump seems to sliding off the deep end and the results would be hilarious if the stakes weren’t so high. Recently, he opined how a plane headed for Washington was populated with men in black headed to the nation’s capital to do nefarious deeds. He later changed his story saying the men were leaving Washington headed to parts unknown. It’s hard to say if these shadowy thugs completed their mission in D.C. before they left or not.

Honestly, I can’t figure Trump out. He continues to do the thing that is least likely to give him even a chance to win reelection. In the last few days, actually since the thugs on a plane conspiracy, he has racked up some real doozies. His disdain and lack of support for our men and women in the armed services has gone viral. He continues to push for the opening of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling companies. His campaign has unleashed an attack on Joe Biden for going to church and visiting the gravesite of his son. Hilariously, he said he never attacked John McCain and called him a loser for being captured in Vietnam despite video tapes showing him doing so. His administration is pushing for an untested vaccine for the Covid virus despite warning from the professionals who should know better. He . . . oh why bother. The man is a walking contradiction without a rudder or a cognitive scintilla of brainpower to make right decisions.

Yet, he continues to shaft the country by raking in untold amounts of cash to his Trump properties at the expense of the American public. His golf trips alone could keep a small third world dictator in power for years. This Forbes article spells out just how much Trump’s golfing cost us as of 2019, and the projected cost of four more years if he is reelected.

While all of Trump’s properties have benefitted from his presidency, no place has benefitted more than Trump’s International Hotel in Washington, DC . In an exhaustive article on the swill and the swine that belly up to the hotel’s many bars, Mother Jones revealed that for someone who claims to be a financial genius his common sense and business acumen were certainly lacking considering the deal he signed onto with the General Services Administration (GSA).

When the GSA solicited bids for the property in 2011, Trump offered the agency a higher rent payment than any of his rivals, according to one of those competitors. And his company pledged $200 million to renovate the Old Post Office, $170 million of which was lent by the good folks at Deutsche Bank. . .

Trump committed to pay the GSA $250,000 a month over a 60-year lease, with possible rent increases pegged to the Consumer Price Index. And if undisclosed revenue thresholds were met, the GSA would receive additional payments from Trump, starting at 3 percent of the profits for the first 10 years of the lease and increasing by 0.5 percentage points for five decades thereafter.

The GSA has said the projected room rate for all bidders on the project averaged $626 a night. But to recoup its massive investment, the Trump Organization needed to charge at least $750 a night on average, industry experts calculated, according to the Washington Post.

Mother Jones

After signing the deal, industry consensus was that the hotel could not turn a profit because of the high rental price of the rooms.

The problem Trump faced in October of 2016 (a month before the election) was that he had six loans totalling $479 million coming due over the next four years.

Living Large In Carson City: It’s A New Day Edition

Posted on by technoscribe50: Gary Brady-Herndon

“You cannot change what you are, only what you do.”― Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

As most of you who read my blog know, I’ve been absent from the blogshere for sometime now. My last post was Nov. 2 just before the election. Over the past year, I had an increasingly hard time keeping up with events that seemed to flood the air waves as Donald Trump and his minions continuously changed the public narrative daily. At the time I would start writing a submission which would normally take two to three days to complete given my teaching schedule. Time after time, I would begin a blog only to find it irrelevant or outdated by the time I finished. During those last days of the Trump debacle, every day would bring a new revelation or a more scandalous event that trumped what I began to write only a few days before. I was deleting more posts to the trash can than I was posting.

While current events have slowed marginally, but with nut jobs like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kevin McCarthy, and yes, even Trump, not by much. My older posts ran between 1100 and 1300 words, really not that much, but to try to identify a theme and write about it was nigh unto impossible with the rapidly changing narratives that was part and parcel of Trump’s insanity. It seems futile at best and downright presumptuous of me to think I was in any way relevant. Consider what happened after Nov. 2. Trump lost the election, but refused to concede and flew into a idiotic fit of bile and rage as he and his faithful followers filed law suits, cited the Kraken, pushed Georgia election officials to the brink of distraction, and generally spread mayhem and discord among his followers. This all came to a head with the Jan. 6 insurrection when his followers goaded on by Rudy, Trump, Jr., Michael Flynn, and the great Orange One himself rallied hundreds of supporters to storm the U. S. Capitol as a certification vote was being cast for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ election as president and vice president of the nation.

Now, we have the spectacle of the Republicans eating their own as they have attempted to oust Liz Cheney from her role as the third highest ranking member of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives. As the days unfolded, half of the Republican representatives gave Marjorie Taylor Green a standing ovation for acts like denying school shootings, calling for the assassination leading Democrats in Congress, and your general nut job beliefs about 911, Jews with lasers, and so much more. I refuse to chronicle Ron Johnson (R Wis) and his off the wall made up lies and falsehoods. There are simply too many, and honestly, I don’t think he is worth the time or effort.

So, I’ve decided to change the way present my blog in light of the ever-changing news landscape. Rather than try to cover everything under the face of the sun, I am thinking of coming up with three or four categories that will repeat. I always liked the Wackodoodle of the Week category. Let’s face it; if I can make it lighter, we will all feel better. I suppose Scandal of the Week would be a good category. I would like to avoid using the word Trump ever again, but it appears he will be around for a while until he is convicted and sentenced to a long prison term. Of course, Don, Jr., Eric, Ivanka and Jared will either fall under the Wackodoodle or Scandal categories. I don’t know why I revel in the German custom of schadenfreude, but with the above mentioned yokels, how can I help myself. I will be working on coming up with a couple of more. Suggestions are welcomed.

I really want to thank everyone that has read my posts in the past. We have to stick together in this shit storm that Donald made along with the Covid disaster. More coming soon . . .

Living Large In Carson City: Democracy on the Line Edition

Posted on by technoscribe50: Gary Brady-Herndon

“My life before him was so simple and decided, now after him…It’s just…After.” ― Anna Todd

I ran across the quote above and got to thinking: What was it like not having Donald Trump plastered across the media world when life was simpler and more rational and sane. The first time I really paid attention to Trump was when he made that long escalator ride down with Melania in Trump Tower to announce his presidential candidacy. They were still holding hands back then, and Americans had never heard her utter, “Give me a fucking break.” Five years later, things have changed.

I can barely remember the feeling of knowing Barrack Obama was sitting in the White House, and all was relatively well in the country. Where did those times go? Now, all I have are memories of those days. After five years of scandals, pandemic, lies, distortions, Bill Barr, and the corrupt Republican Party even those memories seem surreal. Merle Haggard sang a song with this line, “Let’s stop rolling down hill like a snowball headed for hell” which seems fitting in the age of Trump and his wild grifting philosophy.

Frankly, I am frightened. Frightened because Trump might win. Frightened Trump might lose but disavow the election results. Frightened because there is an element of American society that is so butt fuck stupid that they support this monster, even unto taking up arms against the Constitution, our American way of life, and all that entails. Frightened of the prospect of innocent people being killed in the streets because of their belief that we do in deed live in a free and democratic society. Frightened that if the election is contested in the courts and it winds up in the Supreme Court, conservatives will once again steal the election regardless of the impact it has on our society.

I want to believe that I’m just being foolish and believe it couldn’t happen in our country. I thought something like that when Bush vs Gore went to the Court. I remember the night of November 3, 2016 when the results came in and Trump was declared the winner early on in the evening. It never occurred to me that as bad as we knew Trump was in the beginning that he would progressively become worse and worse until our country no longer resembles the country we lived in under Barrack Obama.

I am ashamed, dishearten, and sickened by the fact that America, once the mightiest and most revered country on the planet, is now little more than a laughingstock on the world stage. It breaks my heart that because of Trump’s mismanagement of the Covid-19 virus that 226,500 Americans are dead with just under nine million cases confirmed in the United States. I am depressed that an equal number of deaths are on the horizon.

Most of all, I feel helpless. Helpless that there isn’t anything tangible that I can do about it other than vote. I despair that my vote and the vote of those who feel and believe the way I do might not be enough to stop the madness before the nation is consumed. I feel helpless I like so many others have lost hope in this time when hope is so badly needed. I want to believe that the evening of November 3 will return a favorable decision for the freedom and sustainability of our Republic. Yet, the abyss of shame I feel for not believing in the good of the American people and the centuries old process might not be enough.

I know that many of you will tell me to buck up, think positively, and keep the faith. I wish I could tell you I do. Yet, looking back over the past four years, it hard to lift my thoughts up to combat the constant stream of lies, abuse, and general disregard of basic decency that this administration seems to embrace as normal. Maybe, we should have seen this coming. Maybe, but honestly, if someone had told me that we would be in this position two nights before and election that could be the end of the America we’ve known all of our lives, I would have laughed in their face. Such is the nature of evil.

The type of world we live in on November 4 (or when ever we find out the outcome of the election) depends so much on the whims of fate. What we will have to live with regardless of who wins is going to be a new day for America. If it’s Trump, well, I will let you fill in your own vision of the future. If it is Joe Biden, we will have to come to grips that there is so much wrong with our America. Things we’ve too long swept under the rug. The fact that I am writing this, and I know you know the feeling, means that our democracy is in peril. How to heal the rift between Republicans, conservatives in general, Evangelicals, and a laundry list of repressive factions who thought it wise to align themselves with a fascist dictator wanna’ be will be daunting.

The clock is ticking. Today is Monday, November 2, less than twenty hours before the vote begins. So many questions are on the table with so many answers on the horizon. It’s hard to put on my happy face and look the future in the eye. Yet, deep down inside me, I want to believe the madness is coming to an end that Biden and Harris will overcome the flood of lies and adversities to prevail. Yet, something in me knows that Donald Trump is still playing his long game, still grifting, still looking for the big score. A score, I fear, America can’t afford.

Living Large In Carson City: The OMG What Just Happened Edition

Posted on by technoscribe50: Gary Brady-Herndon


“I truly believe I am not afraid of death. What I shrink from, I believe, is the shame of dying as stupid and befuddled as I am.”
― J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians

Okay, here is an informal poll for undecided voters in the upcoming presidential election who watched the first debate Tuesday night September 29:

Question 1:

What part of crazy did Donald J. Trump not exhibit in the first debate September 29?

a. Public masturbation

b. Screeching like a wild banshee

C. Lying in an apoplectic manner

d. Committing repeated acts of boorish behavior and acting like an ass

Caveat: If you said a you are correct although we don’t know what those tiny hands were doing behind the lectern.

Question 2:

Donald J. Trump came off as

a. Sick puppy

b. Yellowish green slimy slug

c. An angry puffer fish

d. All the above

Question 3:

As an undecided voter, Trump’s performance prompted them to

a. Blow chunks of their dinner across the living room

b. Run screaming to the Biden camp

c. Look around with a quizzical look on their faces wondering if they had

wandered into the Coney Island Fun House rather than the debate venue

d. Go violently berserk and start grabbing pussies with abandon

Question 4:

What hidden talent did Trump reveal over the course of the debate?

a. His ability to hold a one-man debate while others looked on

b. A penchant for stomping on little Chris Wallace like a bug scuttling across the stage

c. The truly amazing talent of protruding his lower lip well beyond the length of his beak like nose

d. Alternating snorting and puffing out his cheeks like a puffer fish (see question 2 above)

Question 5:

What one word sums up Trump’s performance Tuesday evening?

a. Bizzare

b. Putinish

c. Buttholerly

d. Skanky

What major lesson did the world take away from the debate?

a. America is a land of racist twits not worthy to lick the bootheels of the other industrialized nations

b. Republicans are jerks and assholes

c. No head of state should be extending invitations for visitations in their home country or in the United States

d. There is a very special kind of craziness at 1400 Pennsylvania Ave in Washington, D.C.

After you finish, please delete this message and put on your seatbelts, there are two more debates to go. May the Flying Spaghetti Monster protect us. We are fucked.

Living Large In Carson City: The Long Play Edition

Posted on by technoscribe50: Gary Brady-Herndon

“We will bury you!”

Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev 1956

For the past two weeks, I have experienced writer’s block like no other time in my writing career. My first attempt was about Trump’s abysmal response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and his increasingly bizarre reaction (or non-reaction) to the disease that has  killed 170,000 plus American citizens. After that, I tried to write about his, again, abysmal reaction (or non-reaction) to the controversy over protests across the nation calling for deep changes in the way America views race, hate, and politics. He has dropped all pretense that he is not a racist son of a bitch and is not worthy to comment on a movement that he is ill equipped to handle or understand.

Next, up popped his dunderhead denials of the New York Times revelations of Russia paying bounties for Afghan fighters to kill American soldiers. Now, if today’s headlines are true, so has Iran.  Always angry, always mean spirited, always divisive, the man is literally a walking advertisement for everything that is not America. Now, it’s an all out assault on the Post Office. Sadly, he can’t even lie that he is actually doing something to help America. No, he openly admits his actions are meant to help sway the election in November in his favor by crippling mail in voting by states.

When Trump first came up with the slogan, Make America Great Again, many Americans scoffed thinking America was great already. No need to make it great – again. Three and a half years later how things have changed. Under Mad King Donnie the once greatness of the nation has slipped and spun into near oblivion. Who knew he was speaking prophetically? He fans the flames of racial prejudice, ignorance, white power, hatred, and more. Trump has done only one thing perfectly. He expanded, nurtured, and embraced the swamp he promised to drain.

But back to Americans. When in our history have we ever been more divided. The Civil War, maybe, but has all that much changed. White Americans seem not to know the meaning of irony. Everyday a new revelation of white people acting badly spouting racial slurs, committing acts of white privilege, and holding ideas that make normal white people wish they had been born anywhere but here. Maybe in this age of über news coverage,  both real and fake, white people haven’t caught on to the fact when they say something ill advised chances are someone has a phone pointed at them and is recording their indelicate moment for all the world to see.

There is a lot of speculation out there about just what is Trump trying to do in his insane rants, bizarre stances, and unorthodox approach to the campaign, especially with his own base. One theory is he is trying to sabotage his own election chances.  The less than reliable Tucker Carlson said as much on the air recently. His theory, and that of others, states that Trump can see the writing on the wall, and rather than come up a loser, he can make things look so bad for himself, he will throw up his hands and call the election twisted and corrupt and walk away a “winner” (or whiner). Longtime New Yorker, Donnie Deutsch, has known Trump for decades. He agrees with Carlson that as schizoid as it sounds that Trump will walk away to keep from being seen as a loser. Or he continues to alienate voters from both parties while hanging onto his basket of deplorables, some of whom, are violent, white nationalist and racist who will rise up and declare Trump the true authoritarian he aspires to be.

Then there are the scary neo-Nazi anarchists who actively seek the destruction of our democratic society. Groups like  the Base and Atomwaffen Division are not simply wanna’ be bad boys, but active groups that are recruiting mostly young white men to prepare for a race war they wholeheartedly embrace. There is no evidence these ultra whack jobs support Trump, but it is not beyond believable that they would welcome a break down in societal rules to step into the breach and exacerbate any conflict Trump’s whack jobs might promulgate at the behest of the Mad King Donald. Regardless, as Black Lives Matter demonstrators continue to show up at white supremacists rallies where the supremacists are armed to the teeth, one has to wonder when the day will come when some hot headed knuckle dragger simply draws down and starts blasting away at the other side. And, sorrowfully, it will happen.

Now, Joe Biden has made his choice for vice president, Kamala Harris, and the world is in a tizzy. Democrats are ecstatic, gushing with pride and an excessive abundance of hope and expectations of great things to come. For all of his craziness and vile personality traits, either Trump has some very smart people in his campaign headquarters or is, himself, a master politician. Overnight, he came up with plans to counter the online Democratic convention with barnstorming tours  across the nation to coincide with the Democrats and their machinations of the nominating process. Those tour stops have done little to stymie the Democrats to date, but you have to give him credit for making the effort.

With seventy odds days to the election, Trump has pulled out all of the stops. His latest ploy is, as mentioned above, is attempting to dismantle the United States Postal Service in the name of cuts to neuter one of the most important tools of our democracy. The Trump administration knows if mail-in ballots were to be cast and counted on time that his days of wrecking our democracy are over. The acting Postmaster General just yesterday claimed that no cuts to the agency will be put into effect until January next year after the election is over and counted. Yet, in reality, no one believes that Republicans will sit still and let the post office do its job. There is too much at stake like the death of the administration, and hopefully, a slew of Trump supporting Republicans losing their jobs.

The 500 pound gorilla in the closet is Russia. This week the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee released its findings on the depth of Russia interference and collusion of the Trump administration then campaign 2016. Their damning conclusions were that, yes, Russia and members of Trump’s team routinely shared information with Russian contacts (and vice versa) to help Trump win the 2016 election. And it hasn’t stopped. New information indicates that Russia is doing all they can to ensure Biden is defeated and Trump remains in office.

I vividly remember back in 1956 watching the evening news and seeing Nikita Khrushchev bellowing from a podium in Moscow as he addressed Western diplomats saying “We will bury you.” Actually, his quote was much more telling. What he said was, “whether you like it or not, history is on our side, we dig you in.” With Trump in office acting like the quintessential Manchurian Candidate, who knows, maybe Old Nikita’s words were not just a bombastic threat, but a long term play that is now coming to fruition.

Living Large In Carson City: When America Faces The Present Edition

Posted on by technoscribe50: Gary Brady-Herndon

“Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools,

and those who dare not, are slaves.” Lord Byron

Well, it’s finally happened. America has gone to hell in a handbasket. Seriously, Trump has had to briefly retreat behind the wall he finally built – but around the White House. He continually skulks about like a demented little dwarf king whose most important task is to stamp his tiny feet and wail at his underlings and perceived enemies. The military is denouncing the president as unhinged and incapable of ruling America. He falters down a ramp and needs to hold a glass with two hands to drink water. Americans have taken to the streets to protest the murder of a black man whose most salient crime was being black in America. Even staunch Republicans are beginning to see that their support of Mad King Donald is about to bite them in the ass come November. Some are desperately looking for any way out of the web they spun and now find themselves mired in up to their eyeballs. And, of course, the Pandemic moves on behind the scenes at open beaches, restaurants. protest marches, and thurches across the nation.

One could argue that those mentioned above would inevitably turn on Trump simply out of self preservation. The military brass know that to follow illegal orders from the president would still be following illegal orders, making them complicit in any aftermath that would arise. Treason is not out of the realm of possibility if Trump demands something outside Constitutional parameters like using the military against American protestors. Republicans have to see that their chance of governing on any meaningful level is slowly being eroded as Trump’s poll numbers sink, and their reputations, suchs as they are, along with sagging numbers are at risk. These people exist on a plateau that the common American have no understanding of other than the fact we live in a double-standard universe where power is everything and not having it makes one irrelevant.

The crazy times we live in cannot be totally laid at the foot of the fence surrounding 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Average Americans are turning up in droves spouting racial epithets, supporting well-known racist dog whistles, and the police have gone bat shit crazy as they try to control peaceful protests with tactics that are anything but peaceful. Old white women seem to have a special propensity toward outright outlandish behavior. It is as if a Trump rally has metastasized and spilled out thousands of rabid, froth spewing demonoids onto the public landscape with marching order to make complete fools of themselves. I am not naive. I’ve lived in the deep south and East Texas. But really, where are these people coming from, and what reason do they have to live?

The thing that really startles me is the audacity that people exhibit when they make rude racists statements to people who are actually filming them. They know they are being filmed. They must know on some level that their faces and actions will soon be burning up the internet as their bigotry goes viral. Yet, not a day goes by that a legion of offenses are pasted across the news cycle of dumb-ass crackers acting, well, like dumb-ass crackers. It is more than a little disgusting and somewhat frightening to see these incidents play out in real time. What are they thinking?

But, therein lies the rub, they aren’t thinking. They simply feel emboldened to be who they always were under the cover of their white neighborhoods, churches, and fraternal police organizations. Of course, much of their new found freedom to proudly fly their freak flags can be traced back to Trump and his own racism, hatred, and white privilege. America can no longer laugh at Trump’s narcissistic acts of exclusion. Sure, we have all had a fine old time pointing out Mad King Donald’s lack of filters when it comes to dealing with issues of importance. It was funny for a couple of weeks, but here’s the thing. Three and a half years in, Trump is pushing his agenda of divisive hatred and racism more and more each day he sits in the chair of the presidency. He’s only getting started.

Okay, people can be obtuse and do ignorant things without thinking. Your average non-thinking American, especially white Americans with a sense of privilege, simply believe it is their right to lord their “specialness” over people of color or those less fortunate. But it is not just non-thinking Americans, more and more we see police officers doing much the same thing with the added threat that they are armed and prone to violence. Seeing the protestors subjected to mindless vicious attacks by the people who are supposed to be protecting them is simply unconscionable. Yet, America sees it over and over again on cable television as if this is a new normal we all have to accept or be drawn in to the violence and are condemned for standing up for what is right.

Does anyone really care what Meghan McCain says on The Voice? Does it matter that Tucker Carlson, a known provocateur, spouts idiocy and lies nightly on Fox News? Who wants to watch another second of Kellyanne Conway sniping away at Chris Cuomo on CNN? Or god forbid, anyone having to sit through another dreadful press conference by White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany. The worst case scenario is seeing Trump seated at a long conference table with Mike Pence peeing his pants as he fawns over the supreme leader telling him what a great job he is doing for Christian values and white bigoted racists from bumfuck middle America and beyond.

And so it goes. Where it will stop, literally, no one knows. While Trump’s poll numbers are in the tank, there is no guarantee that he will not pull some crazy shit like, oh I don’t know, allowing Russia to steal the election for him. He’s done it before. Why stop now? This is the state of America as it stands today. Come November, there is no guarantee he will willing vacate the White House if he loses without calling on his goon squads, white supremacists, crazy old white women, and let’s not forget, the indubitably  rancorous basket of deplorables to take up arms and secure the government for him. He is that batshit crazy.

No place is immune in the country from the lunacy spreading across the nation. I live in a relatively small city in Nevada. Normally, Carson City is a happy, energetic place where the dregs of the old west makes reality a little bit bigger than life. There is an online chat group called something like Neighbors where people can post notes like Stray Dog Seen Running Free on Sierra Drive!!!. Or Firewood Available contact Earl. For the most part, it is a Mayberryesque existence were the only real excitement is when a herd of female deer and fawns happen to run into a band of young bucks on the backstreets of the neighborhoods. The excitement is breath-taking, but no real controversy.

Earlier this week, someone posted something to the effect of why is the only thing covered on the news shows about racism? The poster was tired of having to watch protestors making a commotion about racism. Of course, it devolved into a two-sided argument. On one side, there are the “neighbors” who have lived here all their lives and never saw a racist act. One person even said, I swear, that (and I paraphrase) there were 20 black families according to county records in Carson and they live, worship and gamble in our midst and never cause a problem. What scares me is in their postulating on racism, they are tone deaf to the fact that their comments are – racist. The rest of us who have lived elsewhere and have different life experiences can only shake our heads and wonder when will it ever stop.

Wackadoodle of the Week

Really?

Megachurch pastor tries to rebrand ‘white privilege’ as ‘white blessing’ gifted from slavery

 

Living Large In Carson City: It’s My Party/ I’ll Lie If I Want To Edition

Posted on by technoscribe50: Gary Brady-Herndon

“The narcissist devours people, consumes their output, and casts the empty, writhing shells aside.”—Sam Vaknin

It must be difficult being Donald J. Trump. Gifted a life of leisure and privilege, at the age of eight, he along with his four siblings and three of his father’s grandchildren were the recipients of a one million dollar trust fund which in today’s currency rate would equal four times the original bequest. Puffed up, proud beyond mere mortal’s imaginations, it is safe to say life has come easy to the Mad Don.

Yet, at the pinnacle of what most normal human beings would think the accomplishment of a lifetime, he sees only insults, threats, and effrontery at every turn. The man is not capable of normal human reaction to anything that the rest of us demonstrate as second nature.

A case in point is Twitter’s reaction to his well-known tendency to stretch the truth, if not outright prevaricate, by taking the unprecedented step of adding a Fact Check label to the president’s Tweets. Readers can now see the truth behind the lies he sends hurtling through the social media atmosphere. Not unexpected, his reaction was swift and unhinged as usual and totally beyond his limited power as president of the United States. What part of the Constitution does he think gives him the right to shut down private sector businesses because they want to offer the public the truth. It baffles the mind.

His response to the public’s reaction to his administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic is even more telling. Gabe Sherman in his column for Vanity Fair pulls off what little clothes the emperor had left on his body when he reported about Trump’s outrage at the effect the coronavirus has had on (wait for it) . . . him.

As he headed into Memorial Day weekend, Donald Trump complained that he was COVID-19’s biggest victim. “He was just in a fucking rage,” said a person who spoke with Trump late last week. “He was saying, ‘This is so unfair to me! Everything was going great. We were cruising to reelection!” Even as the death toll neared 100,000 and unemployment ranks swelled to over 38 million, Trump couldn’t see the pandemic as anything other than something that had happened to him. Vanity Fair

Forget the 100, 000 dead Americans. Forget the deep dive depression that the country is almost comically slipping into day by day. Forget any semblance of probity or self-awareness. Forget all of that because under this president fragile ego, it is all about him. Screw the rest of the world.

For Trump it is all about someone else that he can harangue and blame for his own shortcomings. He accused the Obama administration of leaving the country in the lurch by not preparing his administration with a pandemic game plan. Of course, he overlooked the sixty-nine page Obama Pandemic Playbook the former administration left behind. Not to be bogged down with the truth, in recent days he has focused his ridicule on among others like Joe Biden for wearing a mask to protect those who he comes in contact with while out in public. Something, Trump feels would somehow diminish his own manliness if his basket of deplorables saw him out about the country sporting a lifesaving mask.

A particularly attractive target recently has been MSNBC morning talk show host, Joe Scarborough. Mad Dog Donald has seized upon a tragic occurrence that happened nineteen years ago when a young woman, who worked in Scarborough’s Fort Walton Beach office when he was a congressman, fell after suffering a medical emergency and died when she passed out and hit her head on a desk in Scarborough’s office. Trump has repeatedly called for the “cold case” to be reopened and Scarborough’s involvement in the death be investigated. CNN explains it this way,

None of this is, of course, true. Trump is referring to the death of a woman named Lori Klausutis 19 years ago. As The Washington Post reported back in 2017 (when Trump first started making these unfounded allegations against Scarborough):

“Authorities determined 16 years ago that she died after losing consciousness from an abnormal heart rhythm and collapsed, striking her head. She was discovered in Scarborough’s office in Fort Walton Beach, lying on her back with her head near a desk, according to a 2001 police report.” CNN

While Scarborough is a player on the political front and can take what is thrown at him, Trump hasn’t given a second thought to the Klausutis family or the painful memories he dredges up every time he brings up the subject. This is typical Trump’s insensitivity on display once again as America has come to expect. It is savage fake ploy to attempt to turn the nation’s attention away from his failed presidency, and most recently, his dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.

These are only a few of a swarm of recent examples that could be pointed out that define Donald Trump as a consummate liar, bully, grifter, and a small minded thug whose only goal in life is to uplift his own personae at the expense of others. As his poll numbers continue to slide, there is no guarantee that he will alter his ways in the hope that turning over a new leaf will make him look more desirable. This is a concept that has no relevance to Mad Donny. Why should he change? In his mind he is, to borrow a phrase from the Matrix movies, “THE ONE”. This is the only constant that he has taught America over the last three and a half years. Not that he is the one, but that he bleieves it.

It must be difficult to be Donald J. Trump. As he sees the love and respect he has for himself being tarnished at the hands of scientists, the legitimate news media, scholars, historians, and legal minds across the nation, his zone of comfort has to be shrinking every day. His claim of being “a most stable genius” has to be taking some serious shots to both his ego and his belief in himself. Why doesn’t America not love him for the superman that he is? Why do so many in the country work to tear him down and question his honesty? Why can’t the average American see the brilliance of his presence at the helm of our democracy even when he does everything he can do to bring it down at the aggrandizement of his own twisted myth he believes about himself?

At this point, any attempt to understand the president is a moot point. The only thing that matters is the election coming up in November. An election that in no way is decided at this point. With Russian interference, his basket of gun totting followers, the pandemic, his attack on mail in voting, and a packed judicial branch he and Mitch McConnell have constructed, all bets are off.

Wackodoodle of the Week

This week there was no doubt:

Woman with a hammer