The Manchurian Candidate

Just in case you imagined for half a moment that Trump wasn't really under Vladimir Putin's powerful sway, or perhaps that Trump is not really quite as incurious, uninformed and just plain stupid as he sounds when he attempts to do presidential...

This happens.  Well, after all, why would Putin lie to his buddy, Donnie-baby?  "He said that I'm a genius!"  "I pressed him three times about meddling in the election.  He denied it vehemently every time.  You already know my position."

Putin and I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking & many other negative things will be guarded. [sic]

Just wow.  Much stranger than fiction.

Damn straight!  2016 is going to be the last time ever that Crooked Hillary and Obama collude with the California Registrar of Voters to allow three million undocumented brown people to corrupt what should have been a fair and honest count of the votes.  Go Putin!  BFF!  #MAGA!

It's probably not his fault.  He may actually have been hypnotized when he thought he was just having a good time with the pretty blond hookers in Moscow.  Post-hypnotic suggestion.  Brainwashing.  Apparently it is still practiced.  And apparently, it still works.

Two good men

You don't generalize from small samples as anyone should be willing to confirm -- but not everyone does. Our president, for instance loves to make it look like our biggest crime problem is the presence of undocumented Hispanics, although it isn't. It only takes a handful of examples to make us think "typical" A handful of examples and a lie.

But we're not going to see that at work today in the case of the Christian killer in Portland:  Christian in faith, Christian in name. As you know when two good men stood up and attempted to intervene with Mr. Christian who was assaulting an apparently Muslim woman, they had their throats slit. According to a witness, one was black and the other apparently Muslim. Both were young. Both make me proud.

Should I say "typical Christian" and blame all murderers on Christians? After all, they commit most of them in the US. 

It isn't Islam or Christianity or knives or guns, it's hate. Hate is a religion and it's preached everywhere radio, TV, the Internet and yes, sometimes the pulpit are available. We even have governors of states  suggesting reporters who ask questions be killed.  Will the real Americans please stand up, speak up, act up.  Lady Liberty wants you!

He's a Big Boy Now

"I did it and I'm glad," a high school friend used to say as an act of high school bravado against the unsympathetic faculty attitude toward our antics.  We long since grew up and perhaps are no longer so proud of certain deeds of what we saw as the resistance.  Our "business man" in chief seems to be similarly proud not only of his flaunting of  prior norms and practices, but of his ability to get away with things otherwise criminal because of  his Presidential status.

Donald Trump is 70 and not 17 and his pranks don't involve eggs or rolls of toilet paper or even detergent in the town fountain, but Armies and rockets and nuclear weapons.  Loose lips sink ships and so do loose cannons. Loose commitments to truth brag about sending armadas North and order them to steam South: they brag about reducing debt while borrowing trillions and about achieving greatness for us while achieving immense wealth for himself.  Loose lips screech and rant about leaks and secrets and serve them up with Beluga on toast and vodka on ice to our enemies.

Trump used to tell us the world was laughing at us under Obama, who had much respect around the world and doesn't seem to know or acknowledge that they've now stopped laughing at him and started building fallout shelters. The most chilling laughs I've seen were those of the Russian spymasters  mocking the US reporters as they and Tass film crews entered the closed door meeting with the swaggering, boasting buffoon. Lavrov's smile was the Russian Bear remembering a hundred years of pent up frustration and hate and anticipating long-awaited revenge.

I did it and I can get away with it, thinks Trump. Look at me, I'm the president now.

Last Laugh

I can't remember who said it on MSNBC this morning, but it's been bothering me all day. To paraphrase:  "The entertainment value of Donald Trump's Circus is as dangerous as the policies we laugh at."  Yes, I confess I delight in his gaffes and his outrageous tweets, jaw-dropping deeds and pronouncements, to the point where I look forward to my morning laugh of outrage as much as my morning coffee. I'm not alone, and of course laughing at someone feels good. It means we're smarter, better informed and rational and someone else is not. That's the cheapest form of humor, of course, akin to vaudevillian slapstick and plain old mockery.

Why is this dangerous? I think it creates a demand for more. It's a demand that nature and the Trump organization doesn't always fill. When demand exceeds supply, the market will provide. Are we the market? The Networks, the Newspapers, the late night comedians? Are we addicted to outrage?

Case in point:  after Trump or his daughter or some equally unqualified person ordered a missile strike on the Syrian airbase we were unconsciously waiting for the drummer to give us the rim shot a burlesque comedian punctuates his one liners with. Trump didn't give us one so when the Pentagon and Army Gen. John "Mick" Nicholson commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan who took office under Barack Obama a year ago called in an airstrike to end a growing problem with the recrudescence of terrorist fighters in striking distance of Kabul, we jumped on it. It must have been Trump. It must have been a distraction because without it our outrage balloon deflates and we have nothing to laugh or scold or be outraged about.

Remember when Bill Clinton's cruise missile attacks on Al Qaeda were laughed away as a distraction? An outrage? Remember the accusations of Monica Missiles? We found it disgusting, stupid, irresponsible and the denials that there was anything like Al Qaeda downright dangerous. Change the names and the joke is on us.

The Big Bomb likely saved lives - American and Afghani. The attack created no collateral damage and no American casualties. In a time when terrorists are gaining ground in this 15 year old theater of operations, when Afghani forces are taking huge casualties and civilians are being killed and the pathway to victory seems invisible,  why are we making a joke out of a rare success? ISIS may not affect us here at home, but in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Syria and elsewhere they are already apocalyptic and huge numbers of people have been killed horribly. There are now 100 fewer of them and their fortress is rubble no one will use again for a while.

Not long ago I watched a video of a soldier being slowly burned alive by ISIS. I listened to him cry like a child while trying to brush the flames out of his eyes with his burning hands. It will play over and over in my mind until I die. They are not imaginary. They are not a joke. We have no option but to destroy ISIS utterly in any way possible and anything our government does to further this preempts my desire to see Trump make an ass of himself.

Pants on Fire

It was ages ago, during the Gore Vs Bush contest that Al Gore quoted some figure - lets say it was 4.5%. After the debate the Bush people sprang up to tell us "Gore Lied! He Lied" the figure was closer to 4.6% apparently. Such is the joy in finding error in an opponent, all sense of proportion evaporates along with the ability to see how ridiculous you are. In politics degree doesn't matter. A mistaken prediction of insurance cost is right there with selling missiles to Iran and conducting a secret illegal war and training death squads to kill nuns. All that matters is Who, not what.

This joy sings loudest in the hearts of liars. Barack Obama once said there were more black males in prison than in university. Not quite true, but didn't the headlines howl with outrage. It's happening now that Obama has left the building. It's important to portray him as the purveyor of frequent and grievous lies. Books and articles are appearing to distract from Trumps Treasons and felonies, rapes, thefts and frauds by telling you Obama is a liar. He's just as bad so don't criticize Trump

It's hard for me to understand that people think they're not being clowns by comparing the insignificant with the felonious, that Obama saying he thought you could keep your doctor makes him the same kind of liar as saying Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons ready to land on us in 45 minutes. The lives of millions and the expense of trillions are equal to  having your insurance force you to see a different doctor.

But that's how people think: political people that is. We hate to be wrong, foolishly wrong so much we will twist time and space to make it seem like we were really right all along. Endless articles have been written showing just how much of a liar Obama is and it's memorized by Obamahaters all over America to be taken out and waved in your face.

Johnson, Nixon, Clinton and Reagan to begin with - they were caught in lies of some sort. Some changed the world and cost many lives. But Gore lied too. He was 0.1% off in some meaningless figure. Gore lied.

It's only my opinion but we may at the moment have the most profound liar in our history in the oval office. If you don't realize that you're not worth talking to, and I'm not wasting words on you, but the worse he gets, the more felonies, conflicts of interest, secret illegal deals add up the more that's true. You're hopeless in fact. Please realize that I consider you a mortal enemy of everything I hold dear and will act accordingly.

So Whether we find bank records of illegal deals, illegal transactions, tax fraud or pictures of Trump with underage girls and piss whores or signed contracts to yield sovereignty to Putin and invite attacks, you're going to tell me all about crooked Hillary and lying Obama and if you're lucky you might get away unscathed. I'm nowhere near as fast as I used to be you know.

UNNERVING INNERVATIONS

Here is a variation of the knee reflex test. Called the "hammer strikes thumb" test (self-explanatory), its purpose is to measure the time it takes for a pain signal to reach the brain and elicit an "ouch" response. As a measure of the bullshit threshold, some people wince faster than others. Wham!

Among normal people, the pain reflex is instantaneous.  For Trumpsters, however, the pain response can take weeks, months, years ... or never. Personally, I prefer people who can feel pain in real-time. Otherwise, those numb and dumb Trumpster types drive me bonkers and bring out my sadistic streak. Wham! 

RussiaGate? Wham!!!  Falsehoods and fraud?  Wham!!!  Wiretap rap?  Wham!!!  Feel anything yet?

Page Views by Country

Here are page view statistics for the Swash Zone, March 6 through 10, 2017:

United States 1,634

Russia 1,611

Croatia 441

United Kingdom 16

South Korea 14

China 11

Germany 11

Why are page views from Russia almost on a par with those in the USA?  What can possibly interest them?  Have they never seen a talking (O)CT(O)PUS before?

In the Beginning

In the beginning was the lie and the lie became Trump.

'verum est falsum' will replace e pluribus unum on the new coinage of Great Again America. What's true is false. And no one does it better than our new ruling party. Am I joking? Being facetious or is it true? emails, Benghazi and Clinton one told a lie both sides are just as bad, it's all illusion.

Notice how pointed questions of why it isn't perjury to lie under oath begin to pixillate and blur within moments as the center drifts to discussions of how many people talk to ambassadors every day and after all when he said no, yes is almost the same thing because it was a conversation about something else and wasn't that Obama from Kenya after all?

A reporter's question about why we need to investigate something for which there is no evidence or even a suggestion of it, becomes a discussion of FISA courts and the lying press and all the things Obama did that Republicans found threatening.

Enough of this dastardly distraction and diversion and doubletalk. Sessions lied under oath twice and unequivocally and it's perjury and it's a felony not an innocent mistake. There is no evidence that President Obama in anyway instigated a wiretap of Candidate Trump's telephones and those who would absolutely know if he did are denying it. Making such accusations without evidence should be actionable and is not presidential and if it's unpatriotic and "Liberal" to question the president (pace Mr. Miller) it's revolution time. It's throw the bastards out *today time, tar, feathers and all.

Apparently any evidence against Trump & Co. from money laundering for Russian Crooks and Iranian Mullahs to rape and assault and fraud and enough civil liabilities to fill a thousand courtrooms is written in smoke and it dissipates as you watch. What is never was, and what never was will always be, blessed be the lie et in saecula saeculorum amen.

Hope Springs Infernal

 Certum est, quia impossibile.

Tertullian - De Carne Christi

It's been too easy to hope, too tempting to giggle as the President makes a bloody fool of himself with tantrums and childish lies like the spoiled brat he is who just can't understand why things don't automatically go his way.  I still look forward to enjoying his further humiliations and embarrassments even if all we'll be able to get from him is increasingly irrational accusations of  the WTF kind.  But it's not about Trump really, any more that it's the Flying Lady hood ornament that makes a Rolls what it is.

The gates to hell don't say "abandon all hope" they tell you to keep the faith. That way the disappointment will be eternal. 

Total, absolute and utterly conclusive proof that there was no wiretapping by Obama or Alexander Graham Bell for that matter will not do one thing to tarnish the myth that it did happen, just as Obama always will have been born in Kenya or Malaysia or both even with a birth certificate notarized by 9 Supreme Court Justices and filmed in wide screen Technicolor.

Absurdity is traditionally a cornerstone and a buttress for belief, not an argument against it.  We're dealing with a religion in the Trump movement, a bit of a new religion. It has its own prophets and preachers and all the other trappings.  I can't give it a name but it constitutes legions and it's growing.  Its sacraments are phrased in hate and anger and scorn and numberless acts of denial. Denial of science, technology, mathematics and the more absurd the denial, the more tenaciously held.  What you see isn't true and what doesn't exist is dogma and everything that argues against us is proof of this.

Many of us, our culture being as compartmentalized as it is today aren't aware  of the disciples, the writers of gospels. By now we know about Limbaugh and the Sons of Fox, but Alex Jones, Mark Levin, Steve Bannon and Breitbart are all deeply immersed in fantastical Armageddons and mystical transformations as well as the end times for the Administrative State and the structures of the Republic. It all needs to wither away or be destroyed and don't ask why or how. It's a mystery,  and just as no major religion and few minor ones ever are defeated by being disproved or by being reduced to absurdity, this one won't either.  Denial denies all.

Economic recovery is collapse. Dramatic reductions in crime are "carnage" Crime is caused by Immigrants and we are in more danger from all things than we ever have been. The lizard people are everywhere and they're all Jewish and the Illuminati and the Elders of Zion are all in charge of the invisible "deep state" which is "leftist" with it's contradictory Leninist capitalism and fake news.  Come inside friend. No matter how ignorant, stupid or degraded you may be.  We will make you feel smart. We will make you important and powerful and give you the tools to bring it all down.

Species don't evolve but the truth does. In time Obama will truly have staged some silent invisible coup and started a police state with marshal law and sharia law and armed gangs dressed like Pancho Villa will have been dumping megatons of drugs and raping millions and putting millions out of work.  In time Hillary will have murdered more than any serial killer, her husband will have bankrupted the economy and she will have made ten billion dollars in some mysterious fashion by being "in" with Wall Street, whatever that means. The giggling masses will believe and even when the story changes, it will always have been true.

We don't stand a chance and it will all be ushered in by the nicest people who will turn you in to the inquisition without hesitation for saying the wrong thing and god bless the troops for protecting our freedoms.

The Enigma of Arrival

They jump up, they sit down. They jump up again, blank expressions on their face as though listening intensely to instructions or some inaudible tune. Marionettes in dark suits, they jump up, they sit down.

The mind recalls scenes from Korea, the dark clad people grovelling in tears at the loss of a leader who owns their lives and their families and who must be impressed with their devotion lest he kill them on the spot. In the big room the Republicans jump up, they sit down. The other half slump in their seats, dark rags not able really to sit. Not reacting, looking at their hands: failed men in a homeless shelter, waiting. Refugees and a packed train station, waiting; cattle in the chutes. All people caught up in a huge drama and no longer the people we knew only moments ago with motives, and positions and goals and explanations and narratives. They all jump up, they all sit down.

He inherited, lies the man at the podium, a chaotic mess. He's the last US president since James Madison to wear a wig, although it's died and not powdered. He lies outright about it, making up figures, contradicting himself when he mentions a recovery albeit slow, he says, neglecting to mention that it was a recovery from the biggest recession in nearly 90 years and caused by policies he again proposes. We've had a rarely equaled economic expansion, rarely achieved employment levels and wage growth is accelerating, but that's fake news. The real news is bad. He needs it to be.  The real news comes from me and none else. And you will believe.

It wouldn't be appropriate to comment as a reporter or columnist. We have to pretend not to be "fake." No, let's just watch. Just stand here like refugees in shabby clothes and our things in cheap suitcases waiting in a public place for the trains.

"As we speak," says the big ugly man who looks so much like an ugly little man on camera:

"as we speak, they're rounding up bad guys."

I can picture men and women and children running through dark alleys, sneaking out of back doors, hiding in culverts and under abandoned cars in the uncaring conservative night, the wind of American hate blowing like a stink from a slaughterhouse. In the big room, they jump up, they sit down and we watch, stunned.