Month: November 2017

The End of Time…

by MyBaconPress

It’s quite common for my left-leaning brethren to wonder aloud how members of the current maladministration can just say whatever they want to say without regard to the fact that video and audio recordings exist of the same people saying the opposite in some other setting.  As it happens, the answer is simple: they aren’t talking to you.

When our national embarrassment steps up and claims he’s signed more bills into law than any other president in history, he may or may not know that isn’t true.  There’s no telling what he actually knows.  Thinking people know it’s not true.  It’s what is known as a demonstrable fact.  That is, it can be proven using evidence.  The thing is, he doesn’t care.  All he’s doing is providing fodder for the conservative bubble – and those people will believe anything.

Now, I know that, say, Breitbart doesn’t need any actual language from the White House in order to make up a story any more than the Weekly World News has to catch an actual alien to pretend they’re invading.  But it does help.  If they can run a little carefully edited video along with their story it gives the story “credibility.”

If you’re paying attention, you know that Trump watches a LOT of television – but claims otherwise.  Trump plays a LOT of golf – but claims otherwise.  Trump may be the laziest President ever to afflict the oval office but his base doesn’t know it.  They don’t even really care.  So long as what he’s doing irritates liberals, they’re happy.  (Presumably, their carefully cultivated ignorance will somehow protect them from the ravages of the conservative fever dream…)

Now conservatives are coming for Time Magazine.  Yes, the very self-same Time Magazine that Trump thinks he’s been on the cover of more than anyone else.  (He hasn’t.)  That’s sad, really, although I don’t think Time has been exactly…relevant in years.  There was a time when Time was a quality news magazine.  It was a staple of the house I grew up in and, for years, in my own house, too.  But, like so many print publications in the US, Time fell victim to our culture wars and tried to please the pseudo-outraged right.  Much of the hard news fell by the wayside – at least in the US versions.  (Overseas, Time still prints actual news.  Here, in the US, we get cover stories of celebrities…)

I think it will mark the end of Time Magazine.  Conservatives have been conditioned to believe that Time is a “liberal rag” and they won’t want it.  People who used to trust Time will know that it’s been infected and degraded by conservative dogma and THEY’LL stop buying it, as well.  But – perhaps because Time was a staple of my childhood home – it is a bit of a sad metaphor for me.

Huge swaths of this once-great nation have fallen victim to the conservative bubble.  In large part, it was voluntary.  One had to actually turn on Fox “News” to get all the misinformation fit to rot one’s brain.  But conservative media has been spreading like cancer.  (Not just in the US, either.  They’re using their techniques overseas with increasing effectiveness.)  Fox owns affiliates all over the country.  Since most of the country won’t tune in to Fox “News”, Fox just inserts it’s propaganda into local programs.  Sinclair Broadcast Group has added their conservative voice to radio and television as well.  Now this Meredith Group seeks to destroy Time Magazine with a little help from the Koch Bros.

It was a good plan and it worked.  If one can’t win with facts, simply strangle the life out of journalism by buying as many outlets as possible – and these are billionaires – and replace actual facts with preferred “alternative facts.”  Lincoln said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”  It’s a good quote – inspirational, even.

But I’ll tell you this: if you can fool enough of the people enough of the time, you can destroy a country…

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Mass Murderers…

by MyBaconPress

Well, Manson’s dead.  Good.  That will save the state some money in the future.  Manson was blamed for the deaths of nine people, though he wasn’t actually present for all of the killings.  He bravely convinced other people to do his actual dirty work.  His final conviction count was nine, total, but it was seven for which he was most infamous.  Those came to be known as the Tate-LaBianca killings.

California would have killed him back but the death penalty was temporarily halted and his sentence was commuted to nine life terms.  (I guess he won’t be serving the next eight…)  Manson claimed he was attempting to “start a race war.”  More likely, he was just a psychopathic narcissist, seeking revenge on people he thought had “wronged” him somehow.  Truthfully, the only time I regret not being part of an organized religion is when I’d like to take comfort that some evil scumbag is rotting in hell…

Manson was a scary sumbitch.  Crazy.  I think prison was the perfect place for him.  But nine?  He didn’t even kill them all and he gets nine life sentences?  I think it’s because, for many of us, Manson was our “first.”  We remember him differently than the others.  It seemed more…intense.  Manson introduced many of us to thoughts and feelings we had never felt or even considered.

Society was horrified, outraged.  People struggled to comprehend what the murders meant both in the moment and for the long term future of the country.  We locked those people up and threw away the key, confident that the heavy hand of the law would stop things like that from ever happening again.

But, as usual, time and experience have shown us that our original perceptions were based, mostly, on our own innocence.  I’ll tell you this: these days, I find myself wishing that nine was the highest body count in a mass killing…

A Failed Tax Strategy…Again…

by MyBaconPress

Conservatives really hate this country.  Oh, sure, they love the flag.  They love the National Anthem.  But they hate the actual country.  Not the landscape.  They like that, too.  It’s the Constitution they hate…except for the Second Amendment, of course.  Conservatives have hated the Constitution of the United States going all the way back to Jefferson.  As a result, conservatives have worked to undermine the Constitution…going all the way back to Jefferson.  Lying and casting unfounded aspersions became the norm for them and has remained that way going all the way back to Jefferson.

They didn’t have much luck in the beginning.  Talk is cheap and too many people continued to put their faith in facts.  Between 1789 and the 1920’s, conservatives managed to keep the vast majority of the country desperately poor but they couldn’t do much damage to the actual institutions of government.  The “Roaring Twenties” showed the folly of putting one’s faith in finance and the 1930’s saw conservatives dealt a huge blow in their goal of undermining the country when FDR introduced the “New Deal.”

America blossomed.  Controlled Capitalism and high taxes on the wealthy created the greatest economy the world had ever known.  It was a tough time for conservatives – being forced to live in a successful economy that shouldn’t have worked if their economic hypotheses were correct.  (They weren’t.  They still aren’t.)

Then came Vietnam.

It happened that the population of the United States, as a group, had become so powerful, economically, they refused to go fight wars that have nothing to do with protecting America.  The people at the top of the economic food chain – those who profit from such little military adventures – determined at that moment that the New Deal had to go.  Enter Ronald Reagan.

St. Reagan led an entirely new assault on the country.  Prior to Reagan, we had two parties.  Whichever party was out of power was known, generally, as the “loyal opposition.”  Yes, conservatives hate the Constitution but they were loyal to the country.  Reagan taught them to be disloyal.  Reagan taught them to speak openly about how much they hate and mistrust the government.  But Reagan was just the foot in the door.

In 1996, the US was first subjected to Fox “News”, the mouthpiece of conservative thought.  The two biggest investors were an Australian and a Saudi prince.  They clearly had no loyalty to the United States and Fox “News” has never been reticent to dirt-talk the country.  To this day, Fox “News” shapes the thoughts of conservative across the land.  An entire conservative media machine has been built – each piece seemingly trying to outdo the last when it comes to hating America.

It’s a tough time for thinking people – being forced to struggle in a failing economy that doesn’t work because it’s based on conservative economic hypotheses.  Worse, though, when conservatives decided to attack with an all-out assault, they swept aside whatever honor they may have once had.  Gerrymandering, rigged “elections”, obstructionism, and outright contempt became the order of the day.

Today, conservatives are closer than they’ve ever been to destroying this once-great nation permanently.  They’ve corrupted the voting process.  They’ve undermined institutions, programs, and operations that benefit the vast majority.  This new “tax reform” bill threatens to be the death-blow.  They must be so happy…

Reagan’s first “tax reform” slashed rates on the top incomes and the economy immediately suffered.  Reagan was forced to raise taxes but this time, the tax rate was raised on the middle class.  This process has been repeated every few years.  Conservatives like to come in and shift the tax burden from people who can pay and won’t suffer for paying to people who suffer mightily to pay.  Each time they do it, the overall economy suffers.

Clinton and Obama actually raised taxes on the wealthy and in each case the result was a stronger economy.  Conservatives STILL choose tax cuts for the wealthy.  The process has never worked anywhere on the planet any time in history?  Oh, well, maybe THIS time will be the magic moment…

I can’t remember a time when the GOP has been so blatant in their determination to comfort the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted.  I’ll tell you this: I think it’s absolutely vital to stop them.  We’ve moved beyond politics.  Now we need to fight for the very survival of this once-great nation…

 

Secrets of ‘Big Hammer’?

by MyBaconPress

GunVsHammer

I saw this on the internet.  I have to tell you, I’m convinced.  But it got me to wondering: who would have an interest in squelching such important and relevant information?  At first, I thought it might be ‘Big Hammer’ but, no.  If revealed, information like this would spur hammer sales so, if anything, Big Hammer would want this information out there, spread as far and wide as possible so…no, not Big Hammer…

When it hit, it hit HARD: it must be the Government, right?  I mean, who else?  Imagine the hue and cry if people were to realize the fraud, waste, and abuse that went into this particular government choice.  Consider: some…moron (what other word can be used) armed our Marines with guns – when they could have just as easily acquired the far more deadly hammers!  GUNS!  Can you believe it?  Guns sometimes jam and require a regular and constant infusion of cash in the form of ammunition.  Imagine the egg on their face…

But then I got to thinking; it’s bigger than just covering up an error.  It’s a matter of social control!  Imagine if word got around about how much more lethal hammers are than guns.  That Vegas shooter actually had a hammer with him, did you know that?  The fool only used it to break out the windows in his hotel room.  Then, he put the hammer down and opted, instead, for the clearly less effective modified semi-automatic weapons.  Can you imagine the difference in the body count if he had thrown HAMMERS from his thirty-second floor window at the concert-goers?  I can only guess but, clearly, based on the above meme, it would have been vastly different…

THEN, my mind being what it is, I realized that the revelation contained in this meme is a tremendous recommendation for removing guns from our society completely.  Who, after all, would want to rely on a stupid old gun when you could grab a hammer?

And…hammers are everywhere, man!

Imagine waking up late at night to the sound of breaking glass.  You grab your Glock 19 and quietly make your way to the living room.  As you move around the corner you realize – TOO LATE – your mistake: the burglar…brought a hammer.  You’re stuck with a Glock.  OMG!  You brought a gun to a hammer fight!

Dummy…

So I’m glad the truth has finally been revealed.  Which should be banned?!?  Well, it would have to be that impractical, nearly useless gun, right?  Clearly we, the people want to keep the most effective self-protection option available and, statistically (according to the meme), that option is the hammer!

Thanks, Dems…

by MyBaconPress

Well, that’s that, then.  I’ve been listening to Democratic loyalists deride supporters of Bernie Sanders for…quite awhile, now.  The 2016 Democratic primary, they insist, was the purist, most perfectly fair electoral process that has ever occurred in the history of electoral processes and so-called “Bernie Bros” were just sore losers.  I’ve felt all along that the narrative is false but the argument has been limited to the speculations of loyalists versus the speculations of Progressives.

But then, Donna Brazile put out her book, ‘Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House,’ and confirms that the DNC was, in fact, working FOR Hillary and against Bernie.  Berners, of course, seized on the revelation and claimed vindication.  As it happens, Progressives were right.  The loyalists were wrong.

Of course, the Democratic Party issued a bit of push-back against the charges, sending out their talking heads to opine that the deal that gave Clinton control of the DNC only applied to the general “election.”  The push-back only lasted about a day, though, as it was revealed that the agreement was signed in August, 2015 – nearly a full year before she became the nominee.

…and then, in Willie Brown’s Chronicle column dated November 4, 2017, he wrote this:

Former Democratic Party Chair Donna Brazile told the truth about how Hillary Clinton’s operation took over the Democratic National Committee and used it to help her beat Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential primaries.

And guess what? There was nothing wrong with that.  Nothing corrupt or dishonest.

Like it or not, political parties are private businesses.  The DNC was broke, and Clinton bailed it out.  And like any investor in a business being saved from bankruptcy, Clinton had the right to do what she wanted to do with the operation. After all, she was paying the bills.

She not only took over the operation, she turned it into an extension of her campaign-fundraising machine, through which millions of dollars could be collected over and above the usual limits on presidential candidates.  That was smart – and legal.

She did what Barack Obama should have done a long time ago – try to put the Democratic Party in a position to be of assistance to the top candidate.

Yes, Bernie Sanders was the loser in the play, so now his followers are screaming. But Bernie is only nominally a Democrat. He’s always held himself apart from the party operation, and the party owed him nothing.

The real loser in the Clinton party takeover was then-Vice President Joe Biden, who realized too late that the game was tilted and decided not to get into the race.

It’s too bad for Joe, but he was asleep at the switch.

The fact that the Democratic Party was almost bankrupt was common knowledge in the Obama camp.  the fact that they didn’t do anything about it was also common knowledge.

Clinton offered to do something about it – and as a result, she got something out of it.

That’s politics.

True, that.  But why let someone run in the Democratic primaries if you’re not really going to simply facilitate a fair process?  I imagine the Democrats thought Bernie would come and go – flash in the pan kind of thing.  Then it turned out HE was the more popular candidate – SO popular the DNC had to resort to…machinations to get Hillary the nomination for which she had already paid.

Party loyalty.  SO loyal, in fact, that by the time Hillary fainted with Pneumonia in September of 2016, Brazile feared the Clinton campaign had taken on “the odor of failure.”  Brazile considered trying to replace Clinton as the nominee.  She writes that she considered Joe Biden.  Party first, you see.  She set her sights on a party guy – not even a candidate – not the actual candidate she’d had to cheat to beat.

I like Biden but he hadn’t participated in the primary process.  I’m glad they didn’t do that.  Leapfrogging Biden over Sanders would have caused the Berners to actually throw the actual chairs the loyalists pretended had been thrown.  Anyway, we know now that Brazile couldn’t have made the switch.  Clinton had already bought the nomination…

It seems to me that all of this confusion on the left happened because we ALL bought into the advertising of a private company.  When the DNC said they were going to facilitate a fair primary process it was just an advertising slogan but everybody, Democrats and Progressives alike, foolishly thought we’d be getting a fair and honest process.  The DNC, however, never had any intention of doing any such thing.  Card-carrying politicians only need apply.  The DNC’s job is to elect a Democrat and, apparently, if they can’t get a card-carrying Democrat into the Oval Office, they’re okay with a card-carrying Republican…even if it’s Trump…
The irony, here, is that Trump wasn’t elected because Progressives refused to align themselves with the group that had just so thoroughly screwed them (right along with the rest of the country) as the loyalists charge.  The ACTUAL problem was that the Democrats refused to align themselves with an independent who had always worked with the Dems but wasn’t a “party man.”
So…thanks to the Democrats – the official arm of the party along with the willfully blinded, lock-step loyalists, Trump is President.  None of these revelations will change that.  But I’ll tell you this: I’m glad I don’t have to listen to them pretend it was Bernie’s fault anymore…