I saw this tweet this morning. Rep. Omar is correct that we need to address the filibuster but I would go with “fix” rather than “abolish.” She doesn’t seem to understand the country she lives in. She’s still buying the facade. But there’s a pattern in this once-great nation. Republicans (really pseudo-republicans) take power and, put simply, destroy everything they can. People start to get angry. As the anger grows, the power base (read: hyper-rich people) gets…concerned. At some point, the Dems are allowed to take power and fix something – but only one thing. They get to do one thing to quell the masses. After that, you can guarantee Republican “wins”, one after another and each “win” destroys something else. My conservative friends would challenge this characterization but I put my faith into journalism, not opinions, so I have a better understanding of how things are playing out than they do. Not because they’re dumb but because they’re completely misinformed and have no clue about actual events.

We’re seeing this play out right now, with the so-called January 6th Commission. Biden got the “stimulus” package. He gets nothing else. As you likely recall (unless you’re one of those pseudo-Republicans) on January 6, 2021 the losing, out-going, so-called “president”, CheetoJesus, the Dumbass, called on his apparatchiks to attack Congress and stop democracy. Being the blindly loyal sheeple they are, they did. And? They failed. The contrarian media went into overdrive, working to convince the lackeys that they hadn’t done what they did. THEY hadn’t attacked Congress. It was someone else. But they were so proud of their “accomplishment” they couldn’t stop bragging so the story failed. WHEN it failed – even the dumbest among us couldn’t accept the idea that it was Antifa disguised as trumpsters – contrarian media went with “It was no ‘attack’ at all. These were just tourists on a peaceful, though unauthorized, visit to the Capitol.” All they had to do was forget the deaths and destruction. Easy.

Dems decided to settle the matter by “investigating” the circumstances of January 6th by creating a bi-partisan commission to look into events of the day. The GOP will have none of it and of course they won’t. The party leaders already KNOW what such a commission would determine. You’d have to be dumb as a trump to come to any other conclusion. So? The GOP stops it. How? Why, by declaring a filibuster.

There was a time when the filibuster was a physical event. One had to physically hold the floor of the Senate long enough to defeat a given bill. It worked sometimes but it was tough and it should be tough. Somewhere along the way on our current path from Republic to Shithole, a filibuster became a declared event. One needed only declare their intent to filibuster and it is treated as successful – whether it would have been or not. When Democrats came to power in 2020 (because the Dumbass was literally killing Americans by the HUNDRED THOUSANDS) they pretended they were going to address the problem of the filibuster. Of course, they took an untenable choice in the matter; leave the filibuster as is, or eliminate it completely. This was always a false option. The correct choice – not even mentioned by most Congress critters, was to return to the talking filibuster. Leave the filibuster in place but make them do the work, take away the lack-of-governance-by-fiat option. That would have worked to create a semi-functional government again. So, of course, the Democrats deferred.

It all looked very political, of course. Will they or won’t they? Can they get that DINO – Munchkin, I think his name is, to do the right thing? (What? Manchin? Joe Manchin is his name? Wait, didn’t he issue a scathing rebuttal about Republican obstruction of the January 6th commission? Okay, but they only got away with it because Manchin refused to correct the filibuster, right? That all looks pretty dog-and-pony to me…)

(As a sidebar, history shows Julius Caesar as some kind of genius mastermind, able to rise to the pinnacle of power and seize the Roman Republic for himself. It’s an image I’ve always accepted. It seemed to make sense. But none of us knew Caesar. Using our current downfall as a guide, Caesar might well have been a complete dumbass simply too stupid, too uncaring, FAR too selfish to understand the kind of damage he was doing. I mean, look at who’s leading the charge in the destruction of America. Donald “the Dumbass” Trump. The “man” has NO redeeming qualities. None. He’s the very definition of the Seven Deadly Sins. He’s pure, unadulterated stupid, and he’s bringing down the United States of America. Not single-handedly, to be sure. He’s got help in the form of other egomaniacal, pompous, self-serving blowhards and Caesar likely did, too. I wonder if Caesar was orange, too…)

Anyway, because Moscow Mitch is capable of uttering the magic word “filibuster” Dems need 60 votes to create the commission, not 51. McConnell has enough control over his simpering, whining, spineless members to prevent ANYTHING from reaching the 60 vote limit. Honestly? I think that’s the intent. It seems obvious to everybody but the willfully blinded that the goal of the Klepto-class is to create a formal aristocracy – a feudal system – with themselves at the top. I’ll tell you this: I suspect – I HOPE – they get a revolution, instead.

The Recall Scam
I recently wrote a piece questioning why the cons are so interested in wasting money on a recall campaign against Gavin Newsom. $400 Million dollars just to be able to say they had brought down another duly elected Democratic governor on false pretenses seems…excessive. I guess I should have thought about it longer because I’ve thought of at least one other thing – and it’s big. Dianne Feinstein. No, I don’t mean Dianne is big. She seems normal sized to me. But you know what else she is? Old. Like, WAY old.

Age, in and of itself, of course, is no indicator of incompetence. I know many people in their 80’s and 90’s who are doing quite well, thank you very much. But the reality is, age doesn’t impact all of us in the same ways and it seems to be taking a harsh toll on the senior Senator from California. There are many reports that she’s not tracking well. To be clear, she’s not Reagan-deep in Alzheimer’s but, according to reports, she’s showing signs of dementia.

So…ONE possible reason to have a Republican governor sitting in the Governor’s chair is that if Feinstein has to step down in the next year or so, a Republican Governor would replace her with a Republican Senator, thereby flipping the balance of power in the Senate and subjecting everyone to more Republican obstruction governance (best described as comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted). That might be worth $400 million dollars to Republicans. (Especially since they don’t have to pay it…)

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Accessory to Murder?
I’ve seen in the news that the people who were supposed to be guarding and monitoring Jeffery Epstein while he was in jail have now admitted that, well, they didn’t. They didn’t guard him. They didn’t protect him. They didn’t even monitor him. For a given period of time, they looked the other way. Then, they falsified the records. Now, the guards have reached a plea deal and they won’t be going to jail for their “failures.” That bothers me. It feels like just one more ‘that doesn’t track’ in a story that, well, just doesn’t track. These guys confess to taking a powder when their primary charge just coincidentally ends up dead and all they face is a slap on the wrist? The official claim is that Epstein hanged himself but there’s a lot of ‘doesn’t track’ around that story. Now, the fact that the jailers were intentionally looking away supports the suspicion that Epstein, perhaps, did not kill himself. That Epstein guy clearly threatened a LOT of very rich and very powerful people. That’s all we know for sure…

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B-sides and Deep Cuts
I write songs. No, nothing you’ve ever heard but I write ’em anyway. Sometimes, I write a song and think, “Well, maybe it’s a B-side.” The phrase is archaic. (Sadly, in many ways, so am I…) I recently purchased a new CD player. (Yes, really.) I popped in a disc (Why yes, I DO still have discs) and went about my business. I did NOT push the magic “shuffle” button. I was just listening to the collection of music put out by a given musician – the albums.

While I was listening, I had a realization. We have lost (or very nearly lost) something we didn’t even realize we were losing: B-sides and Deep Cuts. See, in the old days (dinosaurs pulling our Conestoga wagons while we listened to our 45’s) people bought music in, basically, one of two formats. Either you bought a full album (10 – 15 songs) or you bought the 45, a “single” track, the hit song. An artist (or group) would go out and record a collection of music. A team of professionals from the record company would pick and choose the “best” songs and put them in the collection AND pick which of the songs had the greatest “hit” potential. The song chosen by the “experts” would then be the radio song the record company put out to promote the album. It usually became the most well-known song on the album.

Commonly, though, it was NOT the BEST song. It was just the most commercial song, the song the company thought would make the most money. I can’t tell you how many times I discovered songs on an album that I liked FAR more than the “headline” song. (In fairness, some albums were pure crap but for the “hit”…) Vinyl discs back then were two-sided beasts. One would listen to one side, then physically turn the disc over and listen to the other side. The two were usually labeled ‘Side A’ and ‘Side B,’ see? Even if you bought only the 45, the song you wanted was the A-side but the format required a song on the other side, too. So, they’d slap on a song nobody expected to be a commercial success and sent the thing out.

The experts weren’t always right about the commercial successes. Elvis Presley’s version of ‘Hound Dog’ was originally a B-side of ‘Don’t Be Cruel.’ The Rolling Stones’ ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ was a B-side to ‘Honky Tonk Woman.’ Rod Stewart’s ‘Maggie May’ was a B-side to ‘Reason To Believe.’ The Beatles, it seems, never even tried for the knock-off B-side. They have several B-side songs that became famous. (‘I Saw Her Standing There’, ‘I Am The Walrus’, ‘Revolution’) I play rhythm guitar and sing in a band and we recently decided to learn a Led Zeppelin song called “Hey, Hey, What Can I Do?” I mentioned it to one of my known Led Zeppelin fan friends who didn’t even recognize the name. When I looked into why, it turned out the song was a B-side of a song Zep released in 1970 but only in the UK and it was never included on any album during the Led Zeppelin heyday. It was finally released in the US in the 1990’s in a boxed set.

And those are just the singles, the 45s. When one put on an entire album it was common to find songs buried in the collection that appealed more or were just plain better songs – if not more commercial songs. THOSE were called “Deep Cuts.” Some of my all-time favorite songs are Deep Cuts – songs few, if any, people would ever had heard in an environment of selling only the hits – the environment we live in today. By and large, people don’t listen to collections anymore. Heard a song you like? Log onto iTunes and download the hit. That’s it, that’s what you get. Not even a B-side.

There’s one more album phenomenon that has been lost – concept albums. From time to time, an artist would write a collection of songs that, together, told an entire story. Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ is one. The Who had one called ‘Tommy’ that actually became a movie and a play. One of my personal favorites is from Alice Cooper and is called ‘Alice Cooper Goes To Hell.’ It’s just a “then I woke up” story but it’s all done in a collection of songs, any one of which stands alone as an individual song. (That particular album produced ‘I’ll Never Cry,’ one of Cooper’s bigger hits.)

It leaves a guy like me wondering how much great music we’re missing out on because some record executive out there doesn’t see commercial potential…

I keep seeing stories saying Matthew McConaughey is going to run for governor of Texas. I have nothing against Mr. McConaughey. He seems like a smart, well-informed guy. But…he IS an actor. One would think, after the debacle that was the CheetoJesus, most Americans would be over the, “Hey, let’s elect someone who hasn’t got a clue!” trend. What other job do you hire for based on the notion that the prospective candidate has never done it – or anything LIKE it? On the job training as Governor of Texas seems like a risky ploy at best. In fairness, the last few governors of Texas have SEEMED like they had no clue about how to govern, either, so maybe Matthew’s lack of experience won’t matter.

Here in California, we have our own gubernatorial problems. No, despite what the cons say, the problem is not Newsom. In fact, I would say the problem IS the cons. They managed, in the conservative corners of the state, to get a recall on the ballot because the bar to initiate a recall is so low. As we already know, the conservatives KNOW they can’t win with ideas so they’ve turned to cheating in every way possible. Technically, initiating a recall isn’t cheating. It’s more of an attempted “work-around.” It’s also a waste of time and money.

Even if a con wins, he or she won’t have time to actually DO anything – particularly with a Democratic controlled legislature. It will be a less-than-one year posting. Then? A whole new election takes place. So I’m not sure I see the point beyond being able to claim they did it. They MAY be able to stop something here and there but even that’s not likely. Hell, they won’t even have time to engage in their favorite pastime, harming defenseless people.

Everyone assumes Gavin has his eye on the Oval Office. He has been a steady political climber going way back. (OMG, he has…experience? The horror!) THAT is probably the biggest reason to move forward with this waste of resources, the potential harm it might do to Gavin Newsom’s political future. (It won’t.) My prediction is that Gavin is going to survive the recall attempt. Rational people know that the Covid-19 response was a top-down fiasco. When CheetoJesus so completely mismanaged…well, the country, really, but the initial pandemic, most governors had to scramble and create programs as they went. There was some confusion. Things didn’t go as well as they should have, could have, or even did in the past. Most people recognize that as a breakdown of leadership from the Dumbass, not from Newsom.

Truthfully, I think the cons blew this one. EVERYONE was angry at Gavin’s French Laundry error. His own party might have voted him out, given the chance. But with the cons running around this once-great nation undermining elections and the process and doing everything they can to distort reality, people were forced to re-think their positions on Newsom. In truth, I think the cons did Newsom a great favor. The recall-without-basis effort put the French Laundry misstep into perspective. Yeah, sure, it was stupid – arrogant, even. Rich people being rich people. But when forced to confront the alternatives, maybe not so bad, after all. I wrote at the time that it was going to be an expensive mistake and now we’re looking at a possible 400 million dollar expenditure for a recall election to remove him one year early. (He CAN run again in the next, normal Gubernatorial race.) But I’m laying the wasted money at the feet of the cons. There was no need for this.

If YOU want to be governor and you’re an American citizen who has NOT completed two full terms as California Governor and who has never been convicted of offering or accepting bribes or embezzlement, all you have to do is pay the $3,916.12 filing fee and – voila! – you’re on the ballot. The tricky part will be getting the most votes. That part is up to you.

The field is still fleshing out but so far, the cons who want to get in the easy way consist of the former Mayor of San Diego, Kevin Faulconer – buddies with pseudo-GOP trumpster Kevin McCarthy. I’m sure the trump connection will serve him well in California.

Also on offer? Businessman John Cox, the guy Newsom beat (destroyed, really) in the last race. Conservatives still think a businessman (emphasis on “man”) is the best person for the job because both business and governing use the words “fiscal” and “budget” so, as far as conservatives are concerned, both jobs are exactly the same! Smart people know they are not the same. He has run for – and LOST – a LOT of offices both nationally and in California. THIS time around he’s using a caged or tethered live bear as a political prop. I MIGHT give him a sympathy vote if the bear attacks him. (No. Really, I’d applaud the bear…)

There’s also a businessman named Doug Ose running. He served in the House of Representatives during the Bush 43 maladministration so at least he has some political experience which, by definition, disqualifies him among the conservative base AND exposes him as a far-right con to everyone else.

Also able to pony up $4,000 – Caitlyn Jenner is running. No. Nobody asked her to. Caitlyn Jenner is a transsexual woman who has come out publicly AGAINST transsexual issues. She’s not likely to garner support from the transsexual crowd if she stands against them. She’s not likely to garner support from mainstream conservatives BECAUSE of her transsexual status, convinced as they are that she only did it so she could go into women’s restrooms, and she’s not likely to garner support from thinking Californians because we already know her to be a bat-shit crazy trumpster. On the up side, California has $4,000 dollars it didn’t have before…

I’ll be voting ‘no’ on the recall. But the second half of the ballot requires the voter to choose who should succeed Newsom should he be recalled. I hope you’ll join me in casting YOUR ballot for retired porn actress Mary Carey.

No, I’ve never seen her work. She last ran for Governor in 2003, when Gray Davis was being recalled. She apparently has a plan to address ALL of California’s “hot-button” issues. She wants to tax breast implants (which, presumably, would cost her a LOT of money) but make lap dances tax deductible. (I confess, I’m not clear on exactly WHO gets the deduction.) She wants to create a “porn-for-pistols” program in an effort to fight gun violence. She wants to let bars stay open until 4 am. She wants to make people receiving unemployment checks do jury duty for their “pay.” She also wants to stand up to John Ashcroft’s attacks on the porn industry AND she wants to address the AIDS epidemic. Yeah, it’s a little difficult getting up-to-the-minute details on some of her…um…positions.

I’ll tell you this: I don’t think she’s qualified and even SHE acknowledges the recall is a waste of time and resources but if Californians are going to get screwed in this thing at least it will be by someone who knows what she’s doing…

Like many people in this once-great nation, I’ve been watching the Liz Cheney debacle play out and wondering if the Republican party was going to be able to save itself. Then I remembered. Donald Trump destroys everything he touches. Everything. Donald Trump has very definitely touched the Republican Party. The Republican Party is doomed. But not to oblivion. There will still be a Republican Party. It will just have no more credibility than the Libertarian Party. Most people don’t even realize there IS a Libertarian Party. It will take awhile for the Republican Party to fall to that kind of obscurity but they’ll manage.

In the meantime, rational conservatives, once-Republicans, are saying they’ll start a new party. It won’t do any good. The Libertarians who infiltrated and brought down the Republican Party will just follow the “Rationals” to where ever they go and do the same damage there…

I have recently seen many stories about how Liz Cheney is in the crosshairs of the Republican party for supporting the impeachment of the orange moron, Cheetojesus. The left has come out with a “maybe we don’t like Liz because she’s a Cheney and, as such, has done bad things.” It’s a fair point. I don’t like or trust the Cheneys. But in this case, she did the right thing. Now she’s being pilloried by her own team – for doing the right thing – and the left is wondering if they should try to come to her defense – after she did the right thing. I think we should ALWAYS stand for the right thing, even if it comes from someone we don’t like. Correct information is correct information regardless of the source.

If someone is going to “get” Liz Cheney, let it be for some wrongdoing, not for standing up for the right thing…

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I suppose we owe Donnie Dumbass a thank-you. No, really. Putting it nicely, I’d say the Dumbass represents the far-right extreme of political philosophy, the Libertarians. Now, to be sure, he presented as a Republican. This is because the Libertarians infiltrated and usurped the Republican party. But the Dumbass represents the closest thing the Libertarians will ever have in the way of Presidents – and he was easily the worst President ever to pollute the Oval Office. He failed at everything he touched and destroyed everything he could. He showed the world there is no place for Libertarian politics in the real world. He proved that while Libertarianism can be made to look good on paper, there is no practical application. Old school Republicans – the rational conservatives – fled the party. People who continue to cling to the failed Libertarian philosophy are operating outside of rational reality. It’s a sort of fever-dream…

Having been exposed as a party of preferential thinking by their ongoing and dedicated support for Donnie Dumbass, the Libertarian RINOS who usurped the Republican Party have had increasing difficulty getting votes. (‘RINO’ is an acronym meaning ‘Republican In Name Only.’ There are DINOS, too – Democrats in Name Only. It’s meant to be derogatory but it effectively identifies people who operate as members of one party while doing the bidding of another party…) As pointed out, rational Republicans fled the party, leaving only the RINOS. So, the remainders (Hillary’s actual “deplorables”) have done what ethics-challenged, self-serving, intellectually incurious people ALWAYS do. They’ve decided to cheat. It’s kind of an expected step on their road back to obscurity. With all the new voter suppression laws the “Republicans” are passing across this once-great nation, it seems they’ve decided to drop all pretense at honesty and just cheat outright – all while pointing the finger of cheating at Dems, of course.

In one sense, it’s comforting. At least we don’t have to try to plow through the landscape of bullshit meant to present the fraudulent picture of “competing ideas.” This is just naked, partisan power grabbing, exposed by Trump and now available for all to see. That is to say, they’ve become more honest about their dishonesty. Somehow, I find that refreshing…

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Speaking of cons working to manipulate the system, the recall of Gavin Newsom has advanced to the ballot. This whole thing is being driven by cons. They think they see an opportunity. As we’ve already seen, they KNOW they can’t win on the strength of their ideas so they’re going to go with whatever is left. In this case, California has ridiculously low standards for recalling a governor. The rule is, the backers of a recall have to collect valid signatures from 12 percent of the voters in the last gubernatorial election. In this case, that number is about 1.5 million signatures. Now, the total population of California as of 2019 was 39.5 million people. If I’ve done my math correctly (and you really should check) 1.5 million signatures represents about 3.7 percent of California’s population. In my mind, the threshold number for a recall should represent at least 10 percent of the state – or about 3.95 million signatures. Even at THAT, the message is, “Oh, 90% of you are happy? Well, we’re not! Long live the tyranny of the minority!”

I think, particularly in this current environment where so many have succumbed to the misrepresentations of the conservative media, it would be EASY to find 1.5 million Californians disgruntled about, well, everything, really. And, as it happens, the signatures came from the most conservative regions of the state, with Amador county leading the way. Most of the signatures came from the pseudo-State of Jefferson – a region of Northern California SO conservative they think they’d do better on their own (they wouldn’t) so they created this “state” and yearn to live free in it, lucky they don’t have to.

A recent Public Policy Institute poll showed that 56% of Californians oppose the recall. But now ALL Californians are going to spend up to 400 million dollars for a recall only 4% of the people want! If they succeed, they remove the current governor for one year. One. Then we get to do it again next year. Worse, this is the sixth recall attempt against Newsom. Newsom opponents started almost the day he was inaugurated. Supporters of getting rid of Newsom have never come close to reaching the number they need to recall the governor until this attempt but even THIS attempt would have failed if an activist judge hadn’t stepped in and given the backers an extra four months to gather signatures. (I DID tell you Newsom’s French Laundry visit was going to be the most expensive meal in history, yes?)

It’s a waste of time and a waste of money. I’m not happy with everything Newsom has done – because he’s not perfect – but I don’t support a recall. Still, the Libertarian RINOS know this may be the only chance they have…