I’m sorry to report the passing of Tommy Smothers. He was a funny man and made me laugh whenever I caught one of his performances. What higher compliment can there be for a comedian?

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Ha, ha, Lauren Boebert is leaving Colorado’s 3rd district to try a run in Colorado’s 4th district. Does she think the good people of Colorado haven’t been following her antics outside of the 3rd? She knows she doesn’t have much of a shot in the 3rd. Apparently, the hand job in the theater full of kids didn’t go over too well with her constituents. They didn’t mind the fascism or hateful, anti-American rhetoric, but the handy was a bridge too far. Maybe the cons in the 4th district will be more forgiving. I hope not…

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Stinky Don? I’m hearing it a LOT these days. A lot of people are saying it. Smart people, very fine people. A lot of people have been coming up to me, big people, brave people, with tears in their eyes and saying “That guy stinks” or “Can you believe the smell coming from that guy?” It’s no wonder there are tears in their eyes. Some say it’s just a disgusting body odor he tries to cover up with colognes. Some say he wears diapers because he just craps where he is – and then wanders around with a full diaper.

It’s been said that Donny eats McDonald’s so much because he’s afraid he might get poisoned. He is known to prefer the little, single-serving bottles of ketchup, likely for the same reason. Maybe the guy doesn’t shower because he’s afraid somebody can do something to harm him while he’s in there. It also seems likely that a guy with a diet of Big Macs (or whatever) over the course of 70+ years is just going to stink, sweatin’ out that lard. (Donny, have a salad.)

There’s a guy who put out a TikTok video that claimed he saw Donny get kicked out of a restaurant in the 1980’s because he stank so badly. He said the people at the tables closest to Donny just couldn’t stand the smell and complained, so the manager had no choice but to ask Donny to leave. That suggests the stench has been following him around for 40 years or so. Yuck!

A former staffer on ‘The Apprentice,’ Noel Casler, said Donny has lost all bowel control from doing too much speed, Adderall, and cocaine through the years. He said they had a guy on set who had the horrifying job of helping clean Donald up whenever he soiled himself, which happened often. Often enough, in fact, they nicknamed that poor staffer, “Wet Wipes.”

There’s a video out there, somewhere, of people smiling at Donny until he turns away, then rushing away from him or holding their noses or otherwise registering their disgust. The Republican Lincoln Project has a new ad out called “Limburger” that plays up the whole Stinky Donald angle. It’s said that Henry VIII of England smelled so badly one could know the king was on his way even before they saw him because the smell preceded him. Maybe Stinky Donald is trying to out-do Henry VIII. (He does keep churning wives, too…)

To me, the funniest part of the whole kerfuffle is that Donny’s team felt the need to respond to the charge. I mean, it could be that the whole thing is just the left having a little fun at Donny’s personal hygiene expense but old dependable just couldn’t let it go. He’s VERY thin-skinned. He had to respond. The thing is, in his response, nobody tried to deny that he stinks. It was more of a “Donny’s not the only person who smells” response. Classic Donny because it was a pathetically stupid move.

#TrumpSmells

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Amazon Prime is going to start including “limited advertisements” in it’s video service unless you pay an additional fee. According to MY mind and way of thinking, if I pay for a subscription service, it should NOT have ads. That’s what the subscription is for. If I have to put up with ads, why pay for the subscription? Bezos is double-dipping. Do you suppose he’s short on money? Nah, just greedy…

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I’ll tell you what, I like Brock Purdy, now, more than I did before the Monday night debacle. No, not the interceptions. I like the after-game attitude. He came out to the inevitable after-game press conference and said, “I have to look myself in the mirror and ask myself why or how that happened and why I made those decisions. And so, our team came ready to play, and for me to make some decisions like that, it pains me, and it’s not fair to these guys. So I have to realize that and understand that, and I have to get better for my team.”

That’s what he’s supposed to say, but sometimes, guys don’t. And he certainly didn’t have to. Purdy gets saddled with five interceptions in that game. Five. But OF the five, there was exactly ONE that was a bad throw from the Quarterback to a defender. On three of those plays, Purdy hit the receiver he meant to hit right where he meant to hit him, only to see the ball fall from their hands. Normally, the ball just falls to the turf, the refs pick it up, and they get back to the game. There were a couple of those, too. But the picks? The missed pass didn’t fall down, it bounced up. Defenses love that. They learn to try to capitalize on it. They practice it. The Ravens are a very good team that does capitalize on opponent’s errors. And so they did. But a popped up pass that hit the correct receiver – who failed to catch it – isn’t the QB’s fault in my book.

The last interception? Someone hit Purdy’s arm as he threw the ball, causing the pass to go somewhere other than where it had been intended. Not Purdy’s fault. But Purdy didn’t point fingers. He just said he has to do better. Classy guy. STILL a very good Quarterback.

I suspect these two teams will meet again. I suspect the game will be different. I don’t know the outcome, of course, but the Niners are a better team than they showed on Christmas and these collapses don’t happen to good teams often. Niners lost their cushion in the race for the first seed but other than that, their position remains the same. Let’s go, Niners!

We celebrate this, the day Jesus was definitely NOT born, and we call it Christmas. I’d like to ask, if the day Jesus was NOT born is ‘Christmas,’ isn’t every day but one, Christmas? I mean, if we’re going to pick a random day for recognition, let’s pick one in Spring, say, April 30th. We declare THAT the day Jesus was born, and for that ONE day only, everyone would put away their Christmas decorations and hide the gifts and keep the wishes of the season to themselves. Then, the next day, we put it all back up again for the next 364 days! Year-round Christmas, each day recognizing the day Jesus wasn’t born. What a lovely tradition it could be…

This is fascinating. I’m a person who believes history repeats in roughly 80 year cycles. That’s a VERY abstract statement. History doesn’t ‘repeat’ in a detailed sense. But large events often do. It’s also important to note that it’s not a perfect 80, either. That’s an average. It could be 70, it could be 90, but it averages to 80 and sometimes, it hits right on. Let’s look at some world-changing events, shall we?

The American Revolution started in 1776. THAT, in and of itself, was NOT a world-changing event. Nations rising up against oppressive occupation by the world’s greatest super-power, the United Kingdom, was kind of common. The efforts usually failed. For decades, the sun never set on the British empire. So I look to 1781.

1781 is the year the Americans defeated the British and won their independence. Now THAT was a world-changing event. We had beaten the greatest power on Earth. It took awhile but we managed to unleash a NEW, even greater power, the United States of America, and that certainly, for better or worse, changed the world. So, watch this: 1781+80. Hey, that’s 1861.

1861 was the start of the American Civil War. Yeah, it took four years to play out but the start of the war, in an effort to put an end to slavery throughout the colonies, was unprecedented, a world-changing event. Nobody knew who was going to win but, either way, the world as it had been in 1860 was no more. Either slavery would be enshrined in the Confederacy or eliminated entirely, affecting – even harming – huge swaths of the economy. (I have no tears for the “harmed” slave trade or the plantation owners…) But let’s continue. 1861+80. OMG, 1941.

December 7, 1941 is the date the United States was drawn into World War II in response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. This one might be a bit myopic since the war in Europe had been raging for several years by then and my focus is on the US entering. But I think the US entrance to the war was a deciding factor in how the war played out. The events in Germany with the Nazis and the war that finally put them down absolutely, undeniably changed the world. That one, too, took about four years to play out, after we got in. It created the American hegemony. We became the most powerful force on Earth and, for a time, we handled that responsibility well. Sadly, it’s only a short step from hegemon to empire and it wasn’t long before we were “protecting American interests” all over the newly and completely transformed world. So we continue. 1941+80. Holy gods, that’s 2021.

I don’t think I’m out too far out on a limb to suggest that January 6th, 2021 was a world-changing day. For the first time in the history of our once-great nation, a sitting President refused the results of a fair and honest election and orchestrated a coup attempt that included a physical attack on the Capitol building, ridiculous legal challenges (sans evidence), and illegal pressure on election officials to count pretend votes. Whatever respect the United States still retained in the eyes of the world was just…tossed into the waste bin by one narcissistic megalomaniac. Millions of Americans suddenly started insisting true was false and false was true – and then getting furious if you didn’t play along.

In ONE DAY, America was transformed from the most stable democracy on the planet to something of a banana republic in which an insane (or at least very stupid) wanna-be dictator tried to seize power based on a lie. TWO centuries of peaceful transfers of power just…tossed aside casually by people too self-absorbed, too stupid, to understand the damage they were doing. And still, this one plays out.

The birth of our nation took about 8 years to unfold. (The war ended in 1781. Washington was first inaugurated to the Presidency on April 30, 1789. See? There’s ALWAYS something special about April 30…) At the time, the emergence of the United States on the world was a good thing so, while it took awhile to get going, the world-changing upheaval was for the better.

The American Civil War played out over the course of four years. Yes, many in the south have remained whiny, little bitches about their loss ever since but despite their whinging, the American Civil War ended well for the nation and the world. It was a great move forward for humanity, a world-changing event that changed the world for the better.

World War II is harder to define. The American participation lasted, again, a little over four years. (Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, but the Japanese fought on until August.) On the up side, we smacked fascism down hard. We didn’t eliminate Nazis but we left them cowering in the darkest corners, where they belong. Germany became a great nation, a force for good in the world. It can hardly be disputed, the good guys won. The world benefited from that win for decades to come.

The American Revolution took place because a bad guy, a despot, wanted to maintain control over “his” colonies – but the good guys won. The American Civil War started because greedy, evil people wanted to maintain “ownership” of human beings for profit – but the good guys won. WWII started because evil fascists wanted to control the world and impose their authoritarian new world order – but the good guys won. On average, it took about 5 years for these horrific, world-changing events to play out.

Now we get Trump’s 2021 coup attempt. It’s still playing out. (January 6th, 2024 will be three years in.) No one knows how it will end. The insurrection did so much damage to the reputation of the United States in the eyes of the world, it has already been a world-changing event. There is a strong force pushing the wrong side. But the battle, this one legal more than bloody so far, continues. If history is any indicator, the good guys will win. But not without great cost and great sacrifice.

80 years. I hope any survivors of climate change are ready for 2101…

On that happy note (hey, the good guys win) MyBaconPress would like to wish each and every one of you (okay, you) a wonderful, happy, very merry Christmas. (Or Saturnalia, if that’s what you’re into…)

There’s a conservative columnist at the New York Times named Ross Douthat. He’s trying to convince someone that what happened on January 6th, 2021 was a nothing burger, blown out of all proportion by reactionary liberals who just hate Trump. He suggested it’s anti-democratic to use the 14th Amendment to prevent a known traitor from returning to power because what Trump did was different from what the Confederacy tried to do. Douthat’s opinion depends heavily on this paragraph he referred to in his own column:

‘The term “insurrection,” New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait wrote on Wednesday, is “a defensible shorthand for Jan. 6.” But it’s not “the most precise” term, because while “Trump attempted to secure an unelected second term in office,” he “was not trying to seize and hold the Capitol nor declare a breakaway republic.”’

MAN, that’s some fine parsing. He acknowledges that “insurrection” is a “defensible shorthand.” I read “defensible shorthand” as “a position that is readily supported.” Mr. Chait might just as well have written, “While insurrection is a correct term…” Cons don’t like it, anyway, because while “Trump attempted to secure an unelected second term…” Okay, I’ve got to stop you right there. You’re going to attempt to ‘yadda-yadda’ an attempt to “secure an unelected second term?” I THINK Mr Chait meant to write, while “Trump illegally tried to stay in power for his own purposes after losing a fair and honest election…”

Trying to stay in power after losing an election is okay with them because he “was not trying to seize and hold the Capitol nor declare a breakaway republic.” Uh-huh. That’s true, I guess. He was trying to seize and hold the White House, a whole different building! Still, I think Mr. Chait might well have intended to write that Trump wasn’t trying to hold the Capitol BUILDING, because he sure as hell was trying to “secure and hold” the Capitol of the nation. As to the rest, why would trump NEED to declare a breakaway republic after he had successfully betrayed and destroyed the existing republic?

It’s some very weak thinking (aka, classic conservatism). These guys just pick a story, insist they believe it, and then try to insist that everybody else believe it, too. They’re very, very frustrated nobody outside their delusional little circle will accept their preferred reality. Their main excuse for not blaming Trump, though, is that January 6th never happened and besides, it was Antifa, no, liberals, no BLM, and it was just an out of control mob out for a casual walk, a spontaneous event that grew, organically, from Trump’s inspirational speech.

Trump wasn’t giving a speech. He was rallying the troops before battle. He was rallying the troops HE had called out. As to “spontaneous?” These guys showed up dressed for the occasion.

The insets show the detail of the shirts those men are wearing AT the Capitol attack ON January 6th, 2021. Either these guys found a t-shirt printing shop that worked really, really fast on January 6th, 2021, stopped in, and had some casual, souvenir shirts made for the casual and peaceful stroll down to the Capitol, or they had inside information and had the shirts made beforehand.
Every con in the country: “PHOTOSHOP!”
If it is, take it up with ABC News, where the photo came from. I don’t think it is, though.

I think MOST of the people who went were just sheeple following along, likely caught up in the excitement. But I think there were a few who knew their part of the plan well before January 6th. They had at least enough time to have shirts made. Now all the cons have to do is explain all the rioters who showed up for the “casual event” with weapons and defensive tools, like gas masks, or garbage can lids to be used as shields.

Nice try, cons. Next, you need to explain away Trump’s phone call in which he asked someone to “find” him 11,780 votes and make clear how that was “just ensuring election integrity.” Oh, and the OTHER phone call in which he told a couple of people NOT to certify the vote and promised to get them attorneys. If you’re just doing your job, for what reason might you need attorneys?

I’ll tell you this: Cons are destroying this country because they can’t tell a lie from the truth. What I want from Santa this year is a sudden infusion of intelligence into certain conservative segments of this once-great nation.

What a beautiful day! The wind is whipping. The sun is completely obscured by rain clouds, leaving the light dull and dreary. The rain is soaking everything. Everything feels wet. But the Colorado State Supreme Court has ruled the criminal Donald Trump ineligible for the Colorado ballot, and that makes the day beautiful.

I get to enjoy the fact that some sanity, some where, remains in what’s left of this once-great nation, at least for a short moment. The ruling was stayed, meaning it won’t go into affect until a certain point in the future. That allows Donny time to file an appeal to the Robert’s Supremely Kangaroo Court (SKCOTUS) and those guys are just…unpredictable.

They’re well known for ruling based on their religious beliefs and their “feels.” A couple of them (Thomas and Alito) have also established a hard and fast reputation for ruling however their “friends” pay them to rule. Occasionally, though, they seem to rule according to the law so we’ll just have to wait and see if they’re going with “feels,” bribes, or law.

Sadly, Chief Kangaroo Roberts is already on record as saying he doesn’t think the President is an officer of the United States, a position that defies all logic. Perhaps one of his smarter fellows on the court (one of the liberals, I mean) can help him understand. It’ll be tough, though. MAGA sheds facts like a duck’s back sheds water. So…now we wait for the ruling.

I have noticed that the stronger the challenges to Donny’s delusions and his ability to convince people he might actually be something he totally is not, the more tenuous his grip on reality. He’s losing track of where he is and whom he’s running against. His normal word salads are even less intelligible. He’s SO focused on his legal woes, his speeches sound like an old vinyl record with a skip, just repeati…repeati…repeati…repeati…repeati…repeati…repeati…

The Colorado ruling may not stand, but the next few days are likely to take a heavy toll on old Donny the Delusional. Making it back to the Oval is the ONLY chance he has to stay out of jail and he is one desperate dude. Colorado removing him from the ballot eliminates even the possibility he could get back and that could prove to be such a serious threat to him that his psyche just…snaps! (You’ll have to watch closely. It will be hard to see any difference. The dude DOES, after all, think he’s still the effing President running (for a third term?) against Barack Obama!) Insanity, thy name is MAGA…

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I don’t normally write on Wednesdays but because of the big news about the little man, I thought a special edition was in order. THEN, I open the paper (technically, I click on a link) and there’s another headline I never thought I’d see. ‘Judge Orders Release of Over 150 Names of People Mentioned in Jeffery Epstein Lawsuit Documents.’

I’m glad to know someone is still out there, hammering away, trying to get the information public about which rich and powerful men like to have sex with underage women. Authorities know, you know. Epstein (you won’t be surprised to learn) was NOT a good man. He kept book on who was doing what with whom. He had DVD’s all carefully labeled “Rich Guy + (victim), such and such a date.” It’s a piece of the story that made the papers, then just quietly disappeared around the time Epstein definitely did NOT kill himself.

No, I don’t think we’re going to see the names of THOSE guys yet. They’re names like ‘Clinton,’ ‘Gates,’ ‘Trump,’ and even ‘Prince Andrew.’ There are other big names in there, too. Rich, powerful, (perverted) men who have a great deal of control over their own press. But these lower level names can lead to the identities of some of these rich perps and I STILL want to know who they are…

I’ve lost faith in my fellow Americans. I had never realized how completely, abjectly stupid we are, as a people. Through the years, and over the course of three different blogs, I’ve been trying to warn about the threats I’ve seen rising. Mostly, people have laughed me off. Oh, I’m paranoid, a conspiracy theorist. Fast forward from the start to today, I’ll split the difference with you. I was never paranoid, but there’s very definitely a conspiracy. (Read ‘Dark Money’ by Jane Mayer. It lays the whole thing out…)

To the former, my concerns have not all played out exactly in keeping with some predictions or details, but the general trend has been mostly correct – and our once-great nation has suffered for it. To the latter, the conspiracy comes from the One Percent, not the cons, not MAGA. MAGA is just the natural result of the efforts of the One Percent. The cons were – and are – just useful idiots.

When Reagan introduced ‘Supply Side Economics,’ I couldn’t believe when people started parroting it’s tenets, as though there was any legitimacy to the story whatsoever. I mean, WTF? The basic position of Supply Side – give all the money to the rich people and watch all the good they do with it (43 years and still waiting…) – was just outright stupid. Always has been, always will be. (Outside of entertainers, rich people GET rich by being incomprehensibly selfish.) But a huge swath of Americans thought, “Wow, that sounds like a great idea!” and Supply Side Economics became a major, over-arching struggle for most Americans every day since. The reality is, and always has been, that high taxes on the wealthy cause them to actually do that which they keep saying low taxes might someday encourage them to do.

I’ve argued against the “government bad, business good” malarkey since it’s inception. Yes, government makes mistakes. Surprise! So do businesses. Any sufficiently large organization is going to experience some errors. It’s inevitable. But how many Americans do YOU know who actually believe that business “can’t afford” to make mistakes, so they don’t? It’s also important to understand that there are three “partners” in a national economy, not two. We should have producers, consumers, and referees. One of the government’s proper roles is as the referee. It’s a proper job of government to ensure level playing fields for the best outcomes. Governments are supposed to block or control the worst impulses of business. They used to. Then we got deregulation.

Deregulation has not been a boon to the population. Instead, it has helped a very small number of very selfish people and directly harmed thousands, millions of others. Regulations mostly exist because of previous misbehavior by private companies. Deregulation only served to put that bad behavior on steroids. But again, millions of people started repeating the mantra that deregulation would be good for business. Removing laws against armed robbery would be “good for business” for armed robbers, as well. That does NOT mean it would be better for everyone.

When Clinton destroyed independent media, I pointed it out, over and over, every time some large corporation bought up smaller news outlets, reducing competition, all the while exhorting the benefits of “more competition.” Now we’re stuck, mostly, with ‘infotainment’ on the left and ‘angertainment’ on the right. In truth, it isn’t that difficult to discern the truth from the non-truths, these days, but millions of Americans can’t seem to understand things like verifiable facts, logic, or critical thinking. They actually believe “some say…” is a legitimate source! This level of comprehension does not bode well for humanity, let alone a nation.

The Patriot Act was the least patriotic thing Americans have done since interring Japanese Americans at the start of WWII, maybe since the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams. It was the result of one of the dumbest thing Americans have ever done (and we’ve had some doozies), Bush 43’s Middle East wars. That’s when America switched from “innocent until proven guilty” to “torturer to get the answers you prefer.” (We’re STILL holding human beings in prison who have never been charged with a crime…) Nearly my entire second blog, ‘Doc Harmony.com’ was dedicated to arguing against the moronic reasoning behind America’s invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq II. But 9/11 had shaken too many people’s reason and America went to war against a noun.

Allowing private companies to buy single family homes was an act so destructive, it should be considered criminal. A small number of people get rich. Everyone else suffers. Society collapses. This is not a guess. It’s history. It’s happened before, it’s happening again. 

These are just examples I could think of in the moment. There are more. The thing they have in common? They all benefit the wealthy and they were all supported by cons under the umbrella of deregulation.

It has been a smoke and mirror operation that has gone on, relentlessly, for something like 40+ years – and it has been stunningly successful. (Emphasis on “stunned.”) I can’t believe We, the people, became so complacent, we just allowed the One Percent to run roughshod over us, our constitution and our nation, while we argued about whether or not to drink Bud fucking Lite.

It was never a “culture war.” It was – and is – a class war. From the looks of things, the One Percent are in mop-up operations. They have enough loyalists in Congress to keep anything helpful to the masses from happening and, instead, focusing only on how to comfort the comfortable. They have enough loyalists in the courts – all over the courts, in fact – people can no longer depend on the rule of law to guide us. They own the news. It’s very difficult to know the truth when the “news” is so focused on obfuscation.

Today? We’re actually arguing over whether or not a criminal, sexual predator, charity-thief, con-man, bank-fraud and tax-cheat traitor currently facing something like 98 serious criminal indictments in multiple different jurisdictions should be, could be, the next President of the United States. And something like 110 MILLION Americans think, “Ooh, I hope so…”

I’ll tell you this: I’d bet this is NOT what the founders had hoped for when they were setting this whole thing up. Ben Franklin’s words, “…if you can keep it,” turned out to be prophetic. And it ain’t looking good…