Home on the Range with Rush

I hate to sound like one of those people who see patterns where there aren't any, but I've noticed that a battle of bullshit seems to be developing between Rush and Donald J.  Donny is raving away at the Crooked Clinton Foundation this morning, but Rush is just dying to get some attention by telling us that

'' The US Department of Agriculture is holding summits to promote the role of lesbian farmers as a part of its 'Rural Pride' campaign."

After they put all the conservative farmers in those FEMA camps, those vast areas of "real" America will be taken over by Lesbians and the second amendment will die.  I'm not making this up. Millions of Americans listen to this and believe it, just as millions of Americans listen to Donald tinyfingers scream about the Clinton Foundation and don't bother to ask why there's no Trump foundation. Mr. Gigabucks apparently gives less to charity than I do, is prone to keep the money he raises for others, like veterans and when pressed by the Governor of Louisiana to contribute something for storm relief, he gives money to a gay-bashing pesudochurch.

Is there any coming back from this level of insanity, or should we just give up and embrace the horror?  Any country that tolerates these men has no future.

STANDING TALL AT CANNON BALL

Right now there is an organized protest happening in Cannon Ball, ND. The indigenous people of Standing Rock Reservation

began a small protest against the installation of a part of the Dakota Access Pipeline under the Missouri River upstream of the reservation.

This is one of the poorest communities in the US and they depend heavily on the water from the Missouri for drinking, fishing and irrigation.

They have since been joined by other tribes wishing to show solidarity and their ranks have swelled to 1200 or more protesters. They have established a second camp, Sacred Stone Camp about 1 1/2 miles from the construction site. 

Despite claims by law enforcement that they have been shooting guns and that the protesters have pipe bombs, no evidence has been produced to back these claims and organizers insist that they are staging a peaceful protest and that their security team is doing everything possible to ensure that.

The Standing Rock community delivered a petition with 150,000 signatures to the Army Corp of Engineers in July which, in typical Washington tradition was completely ignored and the Corps signed the pipeline permits on July 25th. The permits were obtained by Dakota Access LLC, a subsidiary of the industry giant, Energy Transfer Partners who have their fingers in many pipeline projects and are also in partnership with Sunoco Logistics. All told, there are over a dozen pipelines and projects currently in their possession.

The Sioux tribe of Standing Rock have sued the pipeline company and are scheduled to be heard in federal court on Aug 24th. So, for now, construction on the pipeline has halted. There is also separate lawsuits being filed by ranchers along the pipeline route questioning the legality of taking their property by eminent domain by ETP. And, as it turns out there is a long history of ETP strong-arming reluctant landowners into either accepting any "fair" offer they deem to make or facing seizure of their lands by eminent domain once FERC permits are obtained.  Which is how they treated landowners along the Commanche Trail Pipeline, Rover Pipeline and Trans-Pecos Pipeline as well as along others 

they operate.

And what of the threat to the lives and natural resources along the pipeline? There is a list HERE of pipeline spills, leaks and explosions and associated incidents. Already in 2016 there have been 15 incidents across the country, including the creek spill at Rozet, Wyoming. And THIS incident along the Eastern Panhandle Pipeline, another ETP owned pipeline.

In 2015, there were 41 incidents. The most frequent cause is decaying pipes and joints and deficient maintenance. Not too surprisingly, Koch Industries which has a pipeline division, settled a huge lawsuit in 2000 where it was determined that there were multiple leaks and that there was thousands of miles of pipe in disrepair from lack of maintenance.

For the folks at Standing Rock, an incident like any of these would be catastrophic. And how much more damage can these folks along the Dakota Access pipeline expect when the company that ultimately owns the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, owned and operated by GOP megadonor, Kelcy Warren (who also has strong ties to former TX Gov Rick Perry), is in financial trouble and being touted as NOT a good investment risk (HERE). If they fold, who will maintain the pipeline and equally conversely, if they don't fold, how capable will they be to ensure safety along the pipeline? Shouldn't these questions been asked and answered BEFORE Dakota Access LLC received federal permits?

These issues are designed to be localized just the way the big oil companies want it. If it is not happening in our own backyard,

we tend to be removed from the events which only encourages these companies to take even greater liberties in destroying the democratic fabric of our country. Sooner or later we all pay for corporate greed and government mismanagement as evidenced by the ongoing battles in my own state of North Carolina over the dangerous coal ash dump sites owned by Duke Energy, puppetmasters of the current governor who has a long history with Duke Energy. 

My personal opinions aside in regards to pipelines and what we really should be doing, like researching viable alternative energies, 

shouldn't we, at the very least, expect our government to ensure that fair and equitable negotiations are afforded to affected landowners

and surrounding communities and that regular inspections are conducted and effective plans in place to deal with accidents AND a fund set up for compensating individuals and communities if disaster strikes? And shouldn't there be transparency and better communication with the people? These pipeline companies are using land that isn't theirs and getting incentives and other provisions from the federal government that is paid for by our tax dollars. Should we not have assurances that OUR fellow citizens and OUR natural resources are being rigorously protected?

To those who wish to participate, a petition has been started HERE.

 I stand with the community of Standing Rock Reservation and North Carolina communities and all the other people within our borders being unfairly treated and illegally put upon by our government and the mega corporations that take advantage of such controversial devices as eminent domain to further their own agendas without regard for human and animal denizens or their environment. 

This land is your land, this land is my land but only for as long as we keep raising our voices and taking measures to protect it and preserve it.

No Bottom

Obama's Policies. Is that the most often used couple of words in the American idiom in the last 8 years? Of course I've yet to see that enumerated or described beyond that phrase. It's just Obama's Policies which now suddenly as the need has arisen have segued into "Hillary's Policy's."

Donald Trump has been telling African Americans that "Hillary's Policies" are to blame for their problems. 

"No group in America has been more harmed by Hillary Clinton's policies than African-Americans No group. No group. If Hillary Clinton's goal was to inflict pain to the African-American community, she could not have done a better job. It is a disgrace."

You'd think that such a disgrace could be pinned down to specifics, but since a Secretary of State doesn't make policy at all, and particularly not as concerns bad schools, lack of economic opportunity and the long list of other disadvantages minorities are exposed to, an explanation might be in order, but of course with Trump Disciples, their minds fill in the blanks with whatever Trump suggests.. 

Of course when he cites "Democratic control" as the cause for the Katrina fiasco, he neglects to mention that the Republican president literally danced while New Orleans drowned and Brownie did his "excellent job"and that the GOP has been trying to disband FEMA ever since. Their minds fill in the memory gaps with lies.

Trump is moving forth from empty accusations of  dishonesty, crookedness and mental diseases to make her the origin of racism in America: the universal scapegoat. Apparently he retains some vestigial doubt that African Americans are going to buy that one and has offered the "what the hell, you've got nothing to lose" argument as additional bait. Is this the lowest, sleaziest and most desperate political ploy in our history?

It remains to be seen because our agonizing political fiasco has weeks and weeks to go and there's no bottom in sight.

The Fourth Estate: R.I.P.

There are reasons why journalists are scrutinizing Trump’s candidacy, reasons embodied in this Twitter message:

Donald Trump (August 14): “It is not ‘freedom of the press’ when newspapers and others are allowed to say and write whatever they want even if it is completely false!”

Trump’s message is clear: Lies are in the eyes of the beholder and First Amendment freedoms will be at risk. As candidate, Trump has spun falsehoods with impunity, bullied reporters, and threatened to prosecute and prosecute anyone opposing him.

In campaign statements since last year, Trump wants to:

• Make it easier to stifle media criticism;
• ‘Open up libel laws’ and sue journalists;
• Abuse his regulatory authority for political purposes;
• Damage the interests of investors in media companies that criticize him;
• Maintain a blacklist of reporters and media outlets;
• Subject the press to a censorship regime.

Trump is NOT A NORMAL CANDIDATE. As president, Don the Con, the consummate flimflam man, will abuse the powers of office to bully and retaliate against any critics. Are your taxes really in order? Will a surveillance state controlled by Trump tap your phones and watch your emails? Or worse?

This is why a good many Republicans, as well as Democrats, are alarmed. Trump represents an existential threat to democracy as we have known it.

Back in the USSA

Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out
They leave the West behind
And Moscow girls make me sing and shout
That Georgia's always on my mind

-The Beatles-

OK, let me get this right: Russia is in league with Iran against ISIS and Iran is letting Russia use their air bases.  Trump wants to abandon NATO to Russian aggression and to  assist Russian aggression  in the Middle East. Russia is in favor of supporting Al Assad against the Rebels we've been trying to support. That would make us not only an ally of Russia, but of Iran and of Bashar Hafez al-Assad, the bloody tyrant.  Yep, the man sure can make deals! As he said, he knows more about it than the Generals.

That would make us an enemy of NATO, whom Trump wants to abandon and put us in violation of our long standing treaties, which are, as I should remind the Trumptsters, the law. Yep, break the law, abandon Europe to the Russians, and get in bed with Iran and Syria.  Should we mention that Trump wants more nukes in the hands of Middle Eastern countries?  And why not? Anything to make America great again and defeat Crooked Hillary who want's like Obama, to "trash the constitution"

So we have a "conservative" candidate that wan't to be allies with Russia and has asked for (and received) help from Russia in trashing his opponents.  A man whose campaign manager is under investigation by the Ukrainian anti-corruption commission for accepting money from Russia and who has been a registered agent for Russia in the US as confirmed by a former US Ambassador to Russia ---- and Americans want to vote for him!

I guess the Red scare is over and America would be great if only we became part of a new recrudescence of the Soviet Union, an empirial Plutocracy run by a dictator and a mob of multi-bilionaire mobsters who ship their Rubles abroad to be laundered by Donald J. Trump. This can't be the planet I was born on or the country I was born in. Maybe we should just call it Soviet Dumfukistan and be honest about it.

Here Comes Rudy!

You used to have to try to portray our current political civil war as the comic opera it is.  You used to need some comedic talent, but like one of those Tesla or Google cars, it's all on autopilot now. All those political cynicism shows on late night TV can go on hiatus.

I don't need to talk about Donald, wind him up and he spews twisted comedy without any help from writers and in fact he winds himself up, But listen to Rudy Giuliani, who seems to have completely lost touch with reality, screeching like he's had a Meth overdose:

 "Under those eight years, before Obama came along, we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the United States. They all started when Clinton and Obama got into office,"

 Of course not and if you like I'll forget the career you've made out of having been in town when the World Trade Center was blown up.  If we can't blame your memory loss on some neurodegenerative disease perhaps we can ask you to tattoo LIAR on your forehead like the mark of Caine or to hang a sign around your neck so we can see you coming and cover our ears.

What Goes Around

Breaking News!  Trump to give news conference stating that there is no flood in Louisiana.

OK, just joking, but it's hardly a haha joke in light of today's headlines about D.J.s campaign manager being on Putin's payroll - just as many of us, Republican and Democrat have suspected in light of his refusal to show his tax returns.

I'm guessing that like other big time criminals, Trump isolates himself from his deeds by using intermediaries and perhaps he'll avoid taking the fall for taking money from hostile foreign governments, but I'm damned sure that accepting money and perhaps accepting help from Russian hackers could make up a good case for treason.  Interesting isn't it, that Trump favors military tribunals in Guantanamo for US citizens accused of treason, isn't it?

Hillary Clinton and the press

The press has an interesting complaint about Hillary Clinton: not that she doesn't talk to them - she does. She gives hundreds of interviews, she has about one press gaggle every two weeks, she literally talks to everyone who comes near. But just like Trump, she hasn't set up a press pool. And more importantly to them, she hasn't held a formal press conference since last year, and this makes them pissy.

Now, let's be clear on this. They want to spin those last two points into "she doesn't talk to the press!" But that's obviously a lie. Their problem isn't that she's not talking to the press, but that she isn't doing it like they want her to do it. She doesn't duct-tape reporters to her ass and drag them behind her in a mewling mass. She doesn't charter a plane for them, serve them meals and charge their phones when their batteries are getting low.

Really, this is more of a reflection on the state of our media than Hillary Clinton. They're lazy; they just want to be handed entire stories that they can file without doing any actual work. And Hillary Clinton doesn't do their jobs for them, and this makes them unhappy.

At last estimate, in May, she had given 300 interviews, so it's clear that she's obviously not avoiding the press. So what's their problem?

Really, there are three factors at play here. First, the press is in an abusive relationship with Donald Trump: he holds "press conferences" where he openly lies to them, and they report it without question. Admittedly, there's a good reason for that: anytime they point out the actual facts, he insults them, calls them dishonest, or actually bans them from events. (Admittedly, by banning the Washington Post, they've started to do actual reporting, and point out what a lying bag of ass the cheddar-colored fuckweasel actually is.)

Second, there's a little bit of a history between the Clintons and the press. There is a well-documented right-wing movement to try to paint the Clintons in the worst light possible, and the media has been complicit in this conspiracy in their refusal to actually do their jobs: they'll unquestioningly reprint press releases, and always accept the sordid insinuation over actual consideration of facts, if the insinuation will get noticed.

News, after all, is a business: it's long been a maxim that "if it bleeds, it leads." The stories that sell papers (or that more people will click on) have to have priority if they want to make any money. They don't have time for nuanced reflection on complex topics: they have to appeal to the base instincts of an audience with an eighth-grade education at best. The business isn't journalism any more; it's more accurate to call it scandalism. And the anti-Clinton forces have cheerfully used that preference for the sordid and the shocking over actual facts for the last 35 years. There are conspiracy theories about the Clintons murdering hundreds of people, or that no woman is safe near Bill Clinton.

(Quick side note: Bill Clinton did, in fact, have sex with Monica Lewinsky. A consensual affair with an adult woman. He also faced impeachment over that affair, which was pressed by several Congressmen who were worse sexual predators than Bill Clinton ever was. And, although the Right hates to admit it, Bill Clinton was also acquitted, but only after months of intense scrutiny, and press coverage that focused on Bill Clinton's penis. Or as it came to be called, the Clenis.)

Oddly, despite years of allegations of rape, murder and thievery, not a single one of these despicable acts has ever been been proven to have actually happened (which, of course, the right wing spins to mean that they're obviously all true).

So perhaps it's understandable that Hillary Clinton isn't a huge fan of the media.

But finally, there's a third aspect to Hillary Clinton's actions that really need to be considered: the best advocate for a Clinton presidency these days is Donald Trump himself. His rolling dumpster-fire of a campaign is proving that the only possible worse choice for president than Donald Trump would be Charles Manson on crack, or possibly a rabid badger with a flamethrower.

Her résumé and accomplishments are already a matter of public record. In the bigger picture, why should she do anything but stand back and let us all watch him implode?

We're ba-a-ack...

It's been about 8 months since I posted anything here, and with the election coming, it's damned well time I got back into it. I discovered Twitter a while back, and I'm fairly active there, but some thoughts deserve more consideration than 140 characters. So let's do this.

I can't promise anything on a regular basis, but let's see what happens.

Which of These Things is Not Like the Other?

A large problem with activist groups is the resistance to information that's not part of the group's canon, coming from outside the group or that which casts doubt on its inerrancy. Maintenance of the group and its authority requires it and the integrity of the group often replaces the mission around which it formed. In the wider universe of people who would like to reform gun control laws in the interest of public safety there are sub-groups who push one reform over others, or one perceived kind of firearm over others and who often will brook no questions or challenges and will dismiss information or statistics or definitions by responding with hyperbolic accusations, maledictions and excommunications.

Suggest that a semi-automatic pistol can have the same firepower as a civilian version of a military assault rifle and you will be perceived and dismissed as a heretic, and no discussion of concealability will be permitted.  I say this from personal experience. Indeed one can carry two pistols with 30 round magazines and exceed the firepower of one bulky rifle.  Of course if you intend to shoot up a room, either weapon will do the same job, but you're either a handgun opponent of an "assault rifle" hater and so you can't cooperate and you won't learn and you can't discuss it. How many causes fail for lack of cooperation between similar or even identical interests?

I've worn myself out offering irrefutable evidence that that military looking thing you can buy at Walmart is not military and doesn't work like the military version, but if your group says it's a machine gun, they will go on arguing -- insisting that it is one no matter what. The important metric is not veracity, but the propagation of rage and fear, the success of the group and its leaders.

Gas or recoil operated machine guns for all practical intents are illegal for the general public.  Gatling guns are not.  Coming from the Civil War era, the Gatling gun, with its rotating barrels is a design still very much used by the military in airborne applications.  Unlike an autoloader or a double action revolver which goes bang for every trigger pull and unlike a true machine gun that keeps firing as long as you keep the trigger pulled, the rotary barrel Gatling gun fires thousands of rounds per minute.  It literally screams.  They are legal and yet the noise of people lying about "assault rifles" and their extra deadly "bullets" drowns out the muttering about motorized rotary barrel Megadeath machines.

There already is a two barreled, crank operated weapon available although I've yet to see one, but the XM556 motorized, handheld Gatling gun is a nightmare. It can be chain fed, giving it almost limitless firepower and versions can put out something like 2000, to 4000 rounds per minute.  30 or more rounds IN ONE SECOND!  You're not going to be hearing about it and why? because the more fervent the anti-gun activist the less informed and the more resistant to learning anything. "We already know it all so go away"


Yes, the XM556 needs an outside source of power, but hate finds a way. How soon before it finds a way to a venue near you?