Month: January 2024

Fights, Good and Bad…

by MyBaconPress

Wow, what a game. TWICE, now, the Niners have come out and started slow, to say the least. I doubt they’re intentionally spotting their opponents points but it sure looks like they’re spotting their opponents points. Can we please put the “Purdy is a pretender” talk to bed, now? The naysayers can still have “Purdy is less accurate in the rain.” That one, at least, seems to be true. But all the rest? You’re just being stubborn. He’s a very good player. That whole team is loaded but there’s no negative narrative going on about any of the other players. Just Purdy. So just stop, okay?

Detroit played very well. After all these years, it was nice to see Detroit enjoying a bit of success. Not so nice I wanted them to enjoy success over my Niners but still… That’s a team that has suffered for a long, long time. At this rate, I have little doubt they’ll make the leap, here, soon. They played some very good football. In truth, they, THEN played some not so good football but they deserve props. They’ve come a long way in a short time…

I’m not sure what happened to the Ravens. Well, yes, I know the Chiefs happened to the Ravens but the Ravens played badly, all on their own. They started flat, like the Niners did, but never managed to turn things around. Lamar Jackson is something else. This was a very good team, all season long. To fall apart like that in the Championship? There’s going to be some disappointment in the clubhouse for a while.

For the Chiefs it just seemed like business as usual, just another game to be played. Mahomes is still Mahomes, which means a very good football player. Andy Reid is still among the best coaches coaching, these days, and still a better bet than Belichick for GOAT. Of course, one can never overstate the contributions of the vaunted Taylor Swift, either. Normally, when a player on the field does something wonderful/amazing/glorious (or even bad/embarrassing/disastrous), the camera focuses on the player, who gets an extra moment of screen time. When poor Travis Kelce does something great, the camera pans straight to Taylor Swift, for her reaction shot. (Spoiler alert: she’s happy for her boyfriend.)

Hopefully, we’ll all get to see how Taylor looks when she’s sad because her boyfriend is about to lose the Stupor Bowl on February 11. The camera will absolutely grab that screenshot, just like they do when she’s celebrating. She has asked them to tone it down, a bit – they just don’t comply. Why would they? They get free celebrity endorsement from Swift every game and they don’t even have to pay her.

I expect a heck of a game. I HOPE the Niners win but I wouldn’t BET the Niners will win. These are two very good teams. Sadly, I think one of the most glaring problems for either team is the Niners Defensive Coordinator, Steve Wilkes. That guy just doesn’t understand the Niner defense. Last year the Niners defense was top-of-the-charts under DeMeco Ryans, as it was the year before that under Robert Saleh. They’re pretty porous with Wilkes at the helm. That could prove to be the difference in the big, dumb game this year…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Can somebody help me out, here, please? I’ve been looking for information about how HAMAS is fighting back against Israel. I can’t find anything. Whenever I go looking, all is get is references to the oh-so-stupid HAMAS attack on Oct 7. I DID see a story about how some HAMAS fighters used a rocket to kill three Israeli soldiers preparing to blow up a building but there’s precious little else.

Netanyahu says he isn’t stopping until all of HAMAS is wiped out. It’s hard to blame him for feeling that way, but he ALSO seems to think that every Palestinian is HAMAS. He also seems to be trying to expand the fight from just Gaza to the West Bank. To me? He seems to think this is his chance, once and for all, to get rid of the Palestinians. ALL of the Palestinians. The whole world has asked him to stand down. He just thumbs his nose.

I’ll tell you this: Netanyahu may not be saying ‘from the river to the sea’ but he sure seems to be doing ‘from the river to the sea.’

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There’s a guy running against Putin in the upcoming Russian “elections.” That’s some guts. He will either end up in some Russian prison (“Say ‘hello’ to Nalvany for me…”) or dead, having committed suicide by drinking poison, chopping off his own head, and then throwing his own body out one window and the head out another. And THIS is the system MAGA wants to see in America?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There’s a weird “analysis” of dissolving Donny’s businesses in AP, this morning. It takes the position that shutting down Donny’s fraudulent business will only empower the state to shut down other fraudulent businesses, and, after all, how fraudulent WAS Donny’s fraud? Oh, and he stopped some of his fraud – right after he got sued for providing fraudulent statements, so, what’s the problem? The “analysis” suggests that most of the time, when a business DID get shut down, the case was able to demonstrate who got hurt.

But THEN, it acknowledges that NY law doesn’t require showing damages, only an ongoing pattern of fraud. It acknowledges that not every business shut down showed damages. Despite the fact that the “analysis” seems to arguing against shutting down trump businesses, the article points out these things have been going on for at least eleven years and says, “Trump exaggerated the size of his Manhattan penthouse apartment by three times. He listed unfinished buildings as if they were complete, and apartments under rent-control as if they were free of such rules. He showed restricted funds as if they were liquid cash. And he portrayed Mar-a-Lago as if it could be converted to a residence even though that is prohibited in its deed.”

I’ll tell you this: When the “analysis” says, “Yeah he did all those things but we should just give the guy a break?” I suspect it was written by MAGA…

Risks and Rewards…

by MyBaconPress

When the guillotines come out, can we put the Sackler family at the front of the line? Just before the Kochs. The Sacklers knowingly and willingly killed hundreds of thousands of people. They reportedly made $11 billion dollars doing it. The settlement hasn’t been finalized but they’re being asked to contribute in the neighborhood of $6 billion. That leaves them with $11 billion. Yeah, I CAN do math. The $6 billion will be covered by investments and such and will be paid out over ten years. It won’t harm them. It will merely slow their income a bit – for a while. But even if it HAD come from their pockets, they’d STILL be $5 billion dollars to the good.

I hold that when a person or company commits a crime that makes them lots of money, the minimum penalty should be two times the amount they made. The Sackler murder spree netted the family $11 billion? The fine should be $22 billion. Because I’ll tell you this: nothing stops evil people from doing evil things when there’s a $5 billion dollar reward at the end…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’m a technology oriented guy. I’ve always been able to easily understand how technological improvements could benefit people’s lives. That’s the easy part, because it’s the part most techies want to see. It took me longer to understand how technology could be used for the wrong purposes, too. But I see it now and it’s one of those things in life that, once you learn to see it, you can’t UN see it.

So, when AI came around, I knew right away, there are many applications where this could make life better and easier. But I also saw risks right away. Especially in today’s conservative-driven, “a lie is as good as a truth” society. AI still isn’t all that good most of the time but it gets better every day and it’s already being deployed in politics. During the run-up to the New Hampshire primary, a deep-fake voice of Joe Biden was used to make a robo-call to people in NH, telling them to “save their vote for November,” as though voting in the primary would prevent them from voting in the general.

But there’s another side to it, too. A recording was recently unearthed of Roger Stone, one of Donny’s toadies, threatening the lives of sitting congressmen. He was talking to one of HIS toadies, Sal Greco. “It’s time to do it,” Stone told Greco. “Let’s go find Swalwell. It’s time to do it. Then we’ll see how brave the rest of them are. It’s time to do it. It’s either Swalwell or Nadler has to die before the election. They need to get the message. Let’s go find Swalwell and get this over with. I’m just not putting up with this sh*t anymore.”

Stone has dismissed the thing as an AI deep fake. And, hey, maybe it is! Then again, maybe it isn’t. How can we tell, so how can we know? Do we really have to wait until someone tries to kill Swalwell or Nadler to decide if the recording is true? Tools we once used in order to know something was real or not real are now going to be used against us – so we can’t know what’s real or not real.

Another, arguably worse abuse? Some slob made deep fake, sexually explicit photos of Taylor Swift and put them out on the web. She’s a VERY popular person. She has gobs of money. She already has a congress critter addressing the problem on her behalf. She has an ARMY of fans out there, ready to be her eyes and ears to get the photos taken down. But what about Debbie from down the street? Or Jill from English class? Or Brenda or Karen in the 7/11? These women don’t have the resources or the millions of eyes working on their behalf. They’re just…victims, with little to no recourse.

And men? Well, a lot of us are still in the animal stage. I can’t even imagine the kind of crap Karen will have to endure when she shows up for her shift because some dude thought she really did do those things she decidedly did NOT do. SHE gets to suffer because some cretin dumbass is able to paste her face on someone else’s body – even in video. I presume there are already members of the puke set cruising social media, looking for pretty faces they can attach to other people’s bodies doing, well, other people’s bodies.

Deep fake AI is going to instill a kind of sensory deprivation. Soon, we will no longer be able to distinguish between real and imagined. That’s fine in a movie in which our protagonist takes on some fantasy monster. That’s a nightmare pretty much everywhere else.

My favorite two books on dystopian futures are ‘Brave New World’ and ‘1984.’ Both seem to have hit the mark in one way or another but ‘1984’ is proving most accurate, as conservatives bring Big Brother to fruition.

I keep hearing George Orwell’s threat echoing in my head, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” For years, MAGAGOPCORP has been telling it’s base to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears and MAGA is happy to comply. But now? No one will have to tell us to reject evidence. We’ll do it for them, thinking we’re looking at AI. I’ll tell you this: that will be a cancer in our society I think we’ll never beat – and cancer kills…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I don’t think Crystal Hefner is coming off really well in her smear of Hugh and the lifestyle. She was 26 when she married 86 year old Hugh Hefner. Did ANYBODY believe it was true love? Was it supposed to be news that an 86 year old man relied on a blue pill to perform in bed? I thought everybody knew that what happened at the mansion was performative, done to maintain the illusion ‘Playboy’ sold.

What? Hugh Hefner was narcissistic? Say it ain’t so! How could she possibly have known? I mean, except for the fact that she started as his number three girlfriend and worked her way up. When the role you’re hired for is “Number Three Girlfriend,” are you NOT aware there’s a Number Two and a Number One? She was hired to do a job, play a role, and she did it. Coming out after the fact and saying, “I didn’t like the job and he was icky!” seems…disingenuous.

She left once. Out of the scene. She was gone for a year. Then she came back. Cause it sucked, I guess. She got paid to do a job. She did the job. That was the deal and, according to her, she knew it. She even got a bonus at the end, which is more than most of his “girlfriends” could say. I don’t find it convincing to spend years with a misogynist narcissist and then come out AFTER the fact pretending to be surprised that he was a misogynist narcissist…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Championship day. In the NFC, we have the Lions at the Forty-Niners in Santa Clara. In the AFC, we get the Chiefs at the Ravens. These are all good teams and should be very good football games. I often think the Championship games are FAR better football than the Stupor Bowl so it’s likely these will be the last two really good games of the season.  I think the Niners have the best balance, overall, and should do well. Detroit is up-an-coming but I think they need a few pieces still. I’m glad the Lions have finally decided to field a decent team rather than just using the franchise as a tax write-off. I’m happy for the players. Not happy enough to hope they beat my Niners, though. (If they do, I’ll be less happy about their recent success…)

The Chiefs and the Ravens are similar teams. BOTH of them rely heavily on the legs of the Quarterbacks. The Chiefs QB is older and maybe not quite as mobile but still…he’s fast. Both teams have been to and won the Stupor Bowl in recent years. In fact, both teams have beaten the Niners in the Stupor Bowl in recent years. Uh-oh. (The Niners are better than they were then.)

I think the Niners will beat the Lions because of experience and, really, the Niners are loaded everywhere. I think the Chiefs will beat the Ravens because of Andy Reid. I suspect Reid actually deserves the title of greatest Head Coach of all time. His team may be older but Reid has guile. Besides, the Chiefs have Taylor Swift and the NFL LIKES having her at the games. It’s good for ratings, you know…

The Defame Game…

by MyBaconPress

It’s always his mouth, isn’t it? Well, no. Apparently, sometimes it’s his fingers but MOST of the time, it’s his own, awful mouth that gets him in trouble. This one has a ‘coming-home-to-roost’ feel, though. In the NY fraud case in which Donny inflates and deflates values depending on how his answers affect him financially, one of the things that seems to bother him the most (weirdly, really) is that, officially, his Florida not-a-home-because-he-swore-it-wouldn’t-be is worth $18- to $21-million dollars. That’s in the record.

He is SO obsessed with that one point, it caused him to write one of his biggest hits, the classic, ‘Mar-a-Lago Worth A Lot!’ He does it at every show, without fail. Of course, like many of his standards, it’s an epic and wandering bit. By now, we all know the chorus:
  ’Mar-a-Lago, worth ten times!
  I be hassled by those Slimes!
  It sell fast, 1 point 8 billion!
  Who knows? Maybe more, a trillion?’

Yeah, catchy. The thing is, the value of Mar-a-Lago is set by the county assessor’s office based on, you know, an assessment… and, apparently, a bit of negotiation between the county and the property owner – Donny – who actually got the county to lower their original assessment. It lowered his property tax, you see. EXACTLY what he’s being charged with in New York. The point is, Mar-a-Lago is officially valued at $18 – $21 million dollars but he keeps insisting, based on his muse, I guess, that it’s worth $1.8 Billion, minimum.

But that’s not the story I wanted to tell you…

The story I wanted to tell you involves his OTHER New York civil trial, in which he’s already been found responsible for raping Ms. Carroll. THAT one inspired an entire concept album that gave us a string of hits, including ‘E. Jean is Not My Lover,’ ‘I Never Even Knew Her’, ‘Not My Type,’ and ‘Isn’t That Marla?’ Of course, ‘Isn’t That Marla?’ isn’t as well known outside certain circles. For MY money, though, it was the ‘B’ side, ‘Unfortunately…or Fortunately,’ that sold that record. But I digress.

As you no doubt recall, the ruling in the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial was made a long, long time ago. He was ordered to pay $5 million dollars in damages. His minions coughed that up in about 20 minutes, though, so he didn’t give two figs. ”Please support Trump. He needs your help to win back the White House. Stop Joe Biden! MAGA! (Please make your checks out to the New York State Unified Court System, Attn: E. Jean Carroll.”)

Of course, he ran right out and started in on her again. So, she sued him again. Now the court is trying to decide how much is enough to shut this guy’s vicious, flapping maw once and for all. Donny’s team tried to downplay the damages and pretend she wasn’t harmed, so everybody should just forget the whole thing and go home. E. Jean Carroll’s team made their case that this guy is worth a LOT so the disgorgement needed to be substantial or he won’t even feel it and, therefore, won’t stop. TO that end, they presented, to the jury, Donny’s claims that Mar-a-Lago is worth $1.8 billion dollars. This is for deciding punitive damages, the “punishment” part.

Frankly I enjoyed watching Carroll’s team use Donny’s own lying words against him. I enjoyed seeing his braggadocio come back to bite him, rather than impressing everyone with how rich he is. I once wrote in these pages that I would like to see the county assessor’s office send him a letter telling him they’ve decided to use HIS valuation so here is the new property tax amount along with the back taxes he owes for shortfalls in the past. Mine was just a fantasy. Carroll’s team made it real. I laughed out loud.

When all is said and done, Donny has been ordered to pay $83.3 million dollars in damages. No, that’s wrong. The minions need to cough up $83.3 million dollars. Donny can’t be expected to pay. He’s got a writer to defame…

Cognition…

by MyBaconPress

I read this in a Huffpost article called ‘Donald Trump Challenged Nikki Haley To An ‘Aptitude Test’ And You Know What Happened.’ Donny had this quote: “In fact, when I heard the word ‘cognitive,’ you know, I’ve taken two of them now,” Trump continued. “I took one with Doc Ronnie, who’s now a fantastic, you know, White House doctor and a fantastic congressman from Texas. Admiral. The White House doctor. Jackson. Ronny Jackson. And he’s now a great congressman from Texas. I took one then, and I took one recently. I think the result was announced and it was, I aced it twice. I aced it.”

Trump added, “But I would say that, you know, I’ve actually called for a cognitive test for anybody running for president because I actually think that’s a good idea. It’d be nice to have an intelligent person be president.”

The first paragraph shows Donny’s ‘wander around’ technique of managing words he can’t say or sometimes an idea he can’t quite connect. It happens in nearly every public speech I’ve ever heard him give. He gets to a word and, for whatever reason, he can’t say the word. He keeps talking, though. He kind of verbally wanders around the word he’s trying to say, all the while riffing, freestyle, on what he meant to say, until he gets the word down or finds a replacement word, then goes back to his speech like it never happened.

You can see it in that first paragraph as he tries to recollect who he took the test from and who that guy is. It’s one of those, “Whose that actor? He was in… It was a wolf thing… He did… Uh, Jackman, Hugh Jackman!” In Donny’s case, though, it was more like, “I took it from a doctor. Who’s that doctor? He was the White House Doctor, what’s his name? He’s an admiral. Oh, Jackson, that’s it! Ronnie Jackson.”

Coupla things. 1 – Someone in his inner circle needs to try to make him understand, one does not “ace” a cognitive test. It’s more pass/fail. 2 – The last line of the second quoted paragraph suggests that Donny thinks he’s taking an IQ test when he takes a cognitive test. Which means he thinks the fact that he can still identify an elephant makes him a genius. 3 – Finally, he might want to STOP bragging that, twice now, someone has felt the need to have him take a cognitive test. TWICE!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There’s a possibility that Alina Habba may have lied to a Federal judge. Nice, eh? One of the jurors in the E. Jean Carroll case wasn’t feeling well and there was some Covid concern. The judge, most likely, would have just replaced that member with an alternate and Donny would have been free to give his promised testimony the day before the New Hampshire primary.

But then Habba, Donny’s “lawyer,” said SHE wasn’t feeling well, either, and may have been exposed to Covid, so the trial was delayed. The thing is, she was later photographed out in public and at campaign events with Donny. She didn’t look sick at all.

Donny’s testimony, if he makes it at all, is most likely to be more of his current hit, “Oh, poor, poor me,” (assuming he can remember who he is long enough to get his self-pity into the record). I would GUESS it won’t amount to a hill of beans. It certainly is not going to off-set all the new evidence he keeps generating in the case. But here’s the thing; one does not get to “call in sick” as a “mental health day” when one is an attorney and a trial is happening. If she told the judge she was sick and she wasn’t? Federal judges tend to take ‘lying to a Federal judge’ seriously. Stay tuned…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Okay, here’s exactly how badly MAGAGOP wants to stop immigrants from coming to America. Cons in Congress have been negotiating with the Biden administration. They’re holding hostage the funding for Ukraine and Israel until a deal gets hammered out on the southern border. It was a pretty “asshole” move but I already indicated it’s MAGA. The “asshole” part is implied and expected.

But now? With Donny’s win in New Hampshire, MAGAGOP has decided he’s got a lock on the nomination (duh…) and – get this – Donny wants to use the immigration “issue” in his campaign. If the two sides reach an agreement, he has less he can say. So MAGAGOP is turning sour on the deal. Moscow Mitch “the bitch” McConnell cleverly said, out loud where people could hear, “We don’t want to do anything to undermine him.” Like…make an agreement on immigration policy?

So, when one can simply set aside their oh-so-urgent, absolutely imperative, gotta do it NOW, issue for a little while in order to boost their preferred candidate’s campaign? I’ll tell you this: I really had believed the immigration issue was important to them. Now that it, too, has been revealed to be nothing more than a campaign wedge issue, I’m not going to worry about it too much any more.

(Shakes head) Effin’ cons…

Races…

by MyBaconPress

Sometimes, I get tired of the charade. With DeSantis out, Nikki Haley is the only other candidate trying to give Donny a run for his money. I respect what she’s trying to do. That is, offer up someone – better. But the Republican Party is dominated by MAGA, not Republicans, and MAGA only has eyes for Donny. The media is pretending that if everything breaks just right, she might have maybe a chance to possibly show something that gets MAGAs attention in New Hampshire. After that? All Donny. Everyone knows it. This “race” has never been between Donny and DeSantis or Haley. It’s a race between Donny and Jack Smith. Sadly, with each passing day, Donny seems to be pulling ahead. (Remember, he doesn’t have to beat the charges. He has only to stall long enough for MAGA and Putin to put him back into the Oval…)

Meanwhile, on the left, who cares? We get Biden, like it or not. Well, in fairness, there is a guy named Dean Phillips running (Who? Yeah, that’s my point.) One can also choose Marianne Williamson if you prefer a love and Kumbaya platform. Hey, again, they’re offering up alternatives,which I like. But they’re not strong enough alternatives to be real alternatives so…what’s the point?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Right now, there is a flood of people coming up from south of the American border, trying to get into the United States because, ostensibly, the United States is still better than the place they’re running from. But if Donny DOES end up back in the Oval, I suspect that tide will slow, stop, and reverse as the Hispanics go back – and thinking Americans will be racing to go with them. MAGA has actually, almost succeeded in turning the United States of America into a country decent people flee…

Necesito practico mi español, ahora…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Every accusation is a confession. The right has been trying to paint Biden as cognitively impaired due to his age. As soon as we heard it, we should have known Donny is suffering from dementia. He gave a speech in which he questioned, several times, why Nikki Haley didn’t do more to protect the Capitol from his attack on J6. That’s his standard Nancy Pelosi riff. Nancy and Nikki don’t look, act, or sound alike. How could he get the two confused?

He has also said, more than once, that he ran against and beat Barack Obama. That one is even worse. I mean, Nancy and Nikki don’t look, act, or sound alike but Barack and Hillary REALLY don’t look, act, or sound alike. There are other examples that he’s losing it. Often, he can’t even manage the English language.

I think the pace of his faltering is picking up as the criminal charges pile up. Pressure, you know. Maybe senility will make him a better President. His handlers can, perhaps, convince him he DIDN’T say to kill all his enemies – or that the deed was done, for example.

It continues to boggle my mind that the specter of Donald Trump back in the White House is a real and present danger to the United States of America…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, that was a serious weekend of football. I’m okay with it because my Niners managed to pull out a victory at the end but props to Green Bay. They played very well and they nearly pulled off bumping the number one seed.

I’m a Niner fan but I also like other teams. The Bills, for instance. That poor team is very, very good but things just…go wrong for them for some reason. Decades ago, the Bills went on something of a tear. They went to four straight Stupor Bowls. They lost them all, but they’re STILL the only team to make it to the big game four straight years and that accomplishment commands respect. The FIRST one they lost, their kicker pulled a game-winning kick wide right for the miss. Yesterday, they were in a position to tie their playoff game and go into overtime. Their kicker pulled the game-tying kick wide right for the miss. Now they get to watch the rest of the post-season on TV…

It crossed my mind that the NFL might very well LIKE having Taylor Swift at their games and that in order to have Taylor at the games, TRAVIS has to play. THAT means, the Chiefs need to stay in. Yeah, I know. Conspiracy theory. People like to pretend that Bill Belichick is the greatest coach of all time. (There’s LOTS of hyperbole in football.) I’d say that honor actually belongs to Andy Reid, the coach of the Chiefs. I threw in that last part so you know I understand. The Chiefs are a VERY good team and don’t need the NFL to “help” them get in…

Corporations United, Citizens Disregarded…

by MyBaconPress

On January 21, 2010, the Roberts Supremely Kangaroo Court of the United States (SKCOTUS) issued their ill-fated Citizens United ruling. The court was bitterly divided, smart people vs conservatives. The thinking justices opposed the ruling. So, guess who was for it? Of course, it was the always-wrong cons – all the usual suspects. John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Samuel “pay to play” Alito, Clarence “give me money” Thomas, and Anthony Kennedy all ruled against America that day – and we, the people, have been paying the price ever since.

There used to be limits imposed on how much people could donate to politicians by the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) and, specifically, against corporations and unions from using their general treasuries to fund “electioneering communications” or radio, TV, or satellite broadcasts that refer to a candidate for federal office within 60 days before a general election and within 30 days of a primary election. (Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, or BCRA, Section 203) The thinking was that political donations should, properly, be viewed as political speech, but that some people can donate more than others, and if they donate enough, they can literally buy a candidate, so there was a cap. Everybody could donate if they wanted to, but nobody could donate over a certain amount. It leveled the donations playing field. It protected the little guy’s free speech.

Then a non-profit group of conservatives called Citizens United made a movie about Hillary Clinton. It was called ‘Hillary: the Movie.’ (You’ve got to keep it simple for a con.) It was a smear job on Hillary that basically said she was unqualified to be President. They wanted to show the movie just before the primaries in 2008 but the FEC said it violated Section 203 of the BCRA. Citizens United sued the FEC. They argued that Section 203 violated their First Amendment rights.

I never saw the movie. I doubt there was ever any intention of showing the movie or if anyone ever really cared. I suspect the movie was the vehicle necessary to get the case before the Kangaroo Court. ALL of the lower courts that heard the case had ruled against Citizens United. But the five aforementioned morons pretended that (they said this) independent spending cannot be corrupt and that said spending would be transparent. THAT, right there, is the danger to responding to one’s delusions instead of logic and reason. BOTH of those assumptions have proven (<–see? evidence!) false.

The very concerns the FEC had voiced about rich people buying politicians and elections have proven to be absolutely true and the delusional claims to the contrary have proven, not just false, but ridiculously, should-be-embarrassed stupid. They’re not, though. Embarrassed, that is. I suspect they knew they were lying when they dropped their “explanation.” They just had to offer some kind of cover story. The bribes had been paid, the ruling had to be made.

So, now, corporations have more “free speech” than I do…you know, being people as they obviously are not. In fact, corporations have SO much more “free speech” than I do, MY free speech simply cannot be heard over the din. (Yours, either.) So, do you know where the fraudulent “corporations are people” idea came from? It’s really irritating.

These days, Americans are all in a dither about whether a known traitor should be allowed to be President again. Is it possible to protect this once-great nation using the 14th Amendment, section 3? Well, it’s the self-same 14th Amendment that people point to in support of that stupid, stupid “corporations are people” idea. Well, not the 14th Amendment, itself. The 14th was just the law used to reinforce the idea that different people deserve equal protection.

The Equal Protection Clause has played a crucial role in major Supreme Court rulings involving interracial marriage (1967’s Loving v. Virginia), affirmative action (1978’s Regents of the University of California v. Bakke) and same-sex marriage (2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges). It was also the thinking behind Roe v Wade (1973), when the Court found that a woman’s right to an abortion fell within the zone of privacy protected under the 14th Amendment. (See? There WAS a time the high court worked to protect Americans…)

But it wasn’t really even the 14th! There was a case in 1886 called ‘Santa Clara County vs Southern Pacific Railroad.’ It was a tax assessment case (boring!) that has no real bearing on this subject, except that the final ruling was based on the 14th. BUT, the court reporter in that case added a hand-written headnote. It ostensibly quoted Chief Justice Morrison Waite as saying: “The Court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution which forbids a state to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does.”

So there it is, the thing that made corporations “people.” A hand-written headnote that MIGHT quote the Chief Justice but was never a formal part of the ruling. Oh, but it’s been TREATED as an official part of the verdict ever since and in 2010, the Roberts SKCOTUS used it – or misused it – to usurp individual American’s rights once and for all.

There have been plenty of people who tried to warn against the ‘people are corporations’ idea. Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote that corporations were “artificial” persons rather than “natural” persons, and that granting them the right to political expression could “pose special dangers in the political sphere.” He was right. Justice John Paul Stevens argued in his dissent to Citizens United that “Corporations…are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.” He was right.

Soon after the ruling, then-President Barack Obama said in his State of the Union address that the decision would “open the floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections.” He was right, too. Please note, no effort was ever made by Congress, among the recipients of this beautiful and endless bounty, to correct the “error.” Go figure…

I’m getting ready to post my revised Constitution for your perusal. (I’m having trouble with WordPress making the jump points back and forth work properly.) One of the changes I recommend is found in my moving the Ninth Amendment to a kind of umbrella statement at the beginning of the Bill of Rights. It says, “Section 1:  – The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people, nor shall they be construed to apply to any entity other than individuals.

One sentence. A clause, really. But I’ll tell you this: it fixes a problem that threatens the very existence of the United States as we know it. Or, rather, as it once was and could be again – but isn’t now. Corporations own the country now. And we, the people, are just an afterthought…

What A Loser…

by MyBaconPress

The more wrong they are, the louder they are. There’s not much of a better display of that than Donny and Alina in court. They’re very disruptive. He spends all of his time telling his boot-lickers that he’s innocent and can prove it but never proves it and instead, disrupts the process. SHE follows suit. Recently, at his E. Jean Carroll trial, Habba asked for a delay in the trial proceedings so Donny could attend his mother-in-law’s funeral. This is the second time she’s asked.

The first time, her request was denied. The judge explained that Donny doesn’t have to be at the trial. If he wants to go do something else, he can. As it stands, he goes out campaigning whenever he wants to and then drops back into the courtroom whenever he wants to, always without consequence. That pretty clearly indicates that the judge is correct. The judge, correctly, told her he would NOT delay the trial and that she can NOT ask again. So, of course, she started to argue with him about it.

Judge Kaplan interrupted her and told her he would not hear more argument about it. The matter is settled. When she started to argue more anyway, the judge told her to sit down. So SHE says to a sitting judge, in his courtroom, “I don’t like being spoken to that way, your honor.” Then started again. The judge cut her off. ”It’s denied. Sit down.”

Donny is very definitely receiving special treatment, just like he claims. The thing is, the special treatment he’s receiving is kid gloves. ANY other person in a courtroom would have been sanctioned and, likely, jailed for antics like that. The judge told Donny he knew that’s exactly what Donny wants, to be jailed. Donny agreed. ”I would love that.” The hope for Donny and the concern for everyone else is that jailing his criminal ass would be a literal trigger event.

I’ll tell you this: I’m sick and tired of watching him get away with this show. I’d like to see the judge throw his whiny ass in jail. Historically, decisions that get handed down (or don’t) in an effort to avoid a fight, rarely avoid the fight and often cause more problems. If MAGA wants to start murdering people over their delusional belief in a con-man, then let’s fight the fight. The United States of America is FAR more important than Donny’s shriveled and glass-like ego…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Can we explore this, just for a second? Donny says a President MUST have complete immunity to do whatever he wants, no matter what it is, AND that said immunity rightly applies to ALL presidents, not just him. Donny ALSO says Joe Biden will do anything to stop him, anything at all. DONNY has just made the case that Joe should just have Donny whacked – and that there’s nothing anybody could do to Biden. All that “complete immunity,” you know.

Fortunately for Donny, the President does NOT have complete immunity so Biden can’t just have him whacked. Unfortunately for Donny, the President does NOT have complete immunity so Donny gets to live but he may be living in prison…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’m not sure why the Republicans are going through with the charade of having primaries. In a sense, the entire game is rigged in Donny’s favor. It’s not really that they’ve done anything illegal, in this case. It’s just that ONLY registered Republicans are allowed to vote in their primaries. MAGA pushed rational Republicans out of the party and all there are left are MAGA. MAGA is all in on Donny, no matter what he does or to whom he does it. (They just deny all the bad stuff and make up a bunch of good stuff, as though the good stuff might actually have happened.)

The only positive I see is that the rest of us get to see, in real time and on a state by state basis, the people who hate America so much they would return a known traitor to the White House. I’ve put in a lot of effort to show how these folks are deceived and I stand by that. But at some point, a person MUST take responsibility for the fact that they choose to stay deceived. Correct information is available and most of us manage to distinguish truth from fiction, even with all of this noise. And when they don’t, they’re starting to sound dangerously stupid.

Let’s say they can really convince themselves that all of these trials, in all of these venues, over all of these very widespread legal matters are really just thousands of people conspiring together and keeping their perfect little secret in an effort to persecute MAGA’s precious. (They can’t. They know he’s guilty. They just don’t care.) How does one “spin” the fact that the GOP has been on a near-perfect losing streak since Donny’s anomalous win in 2016? He promised they’d win and win and win and they’d win so much they would get tired of winning. Instead, they lose and lose and lose and they lose so much, they must be tired of losing. If they can’t distinguish between what he says, “We’ll win,” and what happens – lose, lose, lose – they shouldn’t be allowed outside without supervision. It’s pretty basic stuff…

Four Things That Are Not Good…

by MyBaconPress

What a weird election we have coming up. The majority on the left are afraid their decent candidate might die before inauguration day and that the indecent opposition candidate might not. Meanwhile, said indecent candidate, the beloved of the anti-American right, is headed directly to either to the White House or to prison – and nobody knows which he’ll get to first! If he ends up in the White House, prison is off the table (except, maybe, in Georgia). But if he ends up in prison, MAGA will vote for him, anyway, and he could, theoretically, move from cell block ‘D’ to the Oval Office.

I’ll tell you this: It is NOT what you might call an inspiring race…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here’s a little piece that probably went unnoticed. I’m not even sure how it got published, since it throws wealth into the spotlight of evil once again. There are people out there (anti-poverty organization Oxfam International, to be exact) suggesting that the world will have it’s first trillionaire within ten years. Apparently, this trillionaire will likely be one of the five guys vying for “richest guy in the world” on an on-going basis.

Income inequality, it seems, has been put on steroids since the pandemic. The already gaping chasm between wealth and poverty started widening at an alarming rate. ”Oh, isn’t that great?” coo the supply-siders. ”That was our goal!” Yeah, it was. Oh, Oxfam ALSO noted that five BILLION people have been made poorer in the process, so far.

I’ll tell you this: I’m going to go out on a limb, here, and state flatly and for the record that a policy – any policy – that benefits five people while harming five billion people is probably a bad policy…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

MAN, these things irritate me. Word going around on the left is, ‘Donny isn’t going to be on the Primary ballot in Nevada.’ The reason? The GOP didn’t file the application! Wow, what a bunch of rubes, right? Well, no. As it happens, Donny isn’t the only con who isn’t on the ballot. In fact, only Nikki Haley IS on the primary ballot. What the Left left out, was that the GOP doesn’t like the primary system Nevada changed to. They used to use a caucus. Dems changed the rule after much “chaos” in the process in 2020. Cons are convinced (and of course they are) that the new system is some kind of trick, so they’re not participating in the Primary and, instead, holding their caucus anyway.

So the statement is technically true, Donny won’t be on the primary ballot. But the overall presentation is misleading to the point of becoming untrue. I expect that kind of misrepresentation from cons – it’s what they do. I do NOT want to see it on the left. We have all the facts, all the evidence, all the ‘correct’ on our side. We don’t HAVE to make up stories about them. I get really irritated by click-bait…

(This bit came from a podcast called ‘The David Pakman Show.’ Anybody can make a mistake but it was VERY easy for me to discover the details so I have to assume Mr. Pakman didn’t even bother to check. That makes him a rather untrustworthy source. Rely upon Mr. Pakman at your own peril…)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, it looks like I may have spoken too soon. Ole’ cheatin’ Bill Belichick has interviewed with the Atlanta Falcons about their head coaching job. I guess he started believing his own press. Ooh, what a genius. His cheating scheme has been fully exposed. He won’t be able to do it in Atlanta any more than he’s been able to do it in New England since 2007 and, as we’ve all seen, if he’s not cheating, he’s not winning. Maybe Atlanta is angling for a first round pick…

Chilling Effects…

by MyBaconPress

Climate change? Really?
Truth be told, I didn’t realize the cons were still out there pretending climate change isn’t happening. They fought the fight. Hell, they won, in the sense that they prevented any meaningful action for long enough to ensure we hit runaway heating. (Congratulations for bringing about our extinction?) We’re well on our way, now. But I guess it’s still a thing for people who refuse to think.

Lauren Boebert, in an effort to remain somehow relevant, posted a comment on brand X. She wrote: “You’ve got to appreciate the irony of climate protestors trudging through a foot of snow and -30 degree wind chills to yell about how the planet is warming.”

“They just don’t see it, do they?” she added.

It reminds me of when Jim Inhoff brought a snowball into Congress to “prove” global warming wasn’t happening. I might accept that they were, and are, posturing. I’d prefer to believe they know the difference between weather and climate. But I’ve got Maya Angelou ringing in my ears. ’When someone tells you who they are, believe them.’ These guys keep insisting they’re morons who don’t understand even the most basic of facts, evidence, and/or science – and I believe them…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Attack!
So, Donny is already out there, promising more violence if he doesn’t win. (This, at a time when he is simultaneously claiming he wasn’t responsible for J6. He didn’t bring THAT violence but he absolutely WILL bring this violence…) THIS time, there can be no question. THIS time, there can be no doubt. THIS guy WILL bring as much violence and “bedlam” as he can manage if he doesn’t get his whiny way. I guess the message is, ‘Vote for me so I don’t have to mess you up.’ The fact that he threatens to mess us up if he doesn’t win should, itself, be a disqualifier.

He has already destroyed our unbroken string of peaceful transfers of power for over 200 years. Now he’s threatening to start a new American tradition, whoever is the most violent gets the office? Look, Donny is clearly a damaged and disturbed individual. The thing that continues to blow my mind (and disappoint so very deeply) is the number of Americans who think his plan is awesome. ”Yeah! We can’t win on the issues so let’s win with violence!” They love him and, as we all know, love is blind.

The United States faced this once before, with the American Civil War. The south, to this day, largely continues to deny the war was about slavery or even that they lost. 159 years of self delusion and denial. Now, it seems, the weakest thinkers in this once-great nation are starting down yet another primrose path of preferred perceptions. ”Even when Donny loses, he should win!” No, he shouldn’t. And if it takes another Civil War to smack that evil down, so be it…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A little football stuff…
It’s going to be cold in Buffalo, NY. The game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Buffalo Bills was postponed by one day due to a blizzard. That says something about those folks who live there. One day? They can have the blizzard, clear the roads, and fill the stadium with just one extra day? And the people who want to attend the game…will! It’s going to be cold in Buffalo. Props to the people of Buffalo. They must be pretty tough to endure a football game for hours in temperatures starting around zero at game time. I’ll watch from the comfort of my living room – near the heater…

Jared Goff is the Quarterback of the Detroit Lions and he and they just won their first playoff game in something like 32 years and only the second in team history. There’s a reason. For years, the guy who owned the Lions used the team as a tax write-off and had no interest in building a winner. He’s gone now. It seems the team wants a winning season, after all. Goff was drafted into the league by the LA Rams, the team he beat yesterday. He took that team to the playoffs and all the way to the Super Bowl. Jared Goff has the distinction of being the first Quarterback to lose a Super Bowl to Bill Belichick’s cheat scheme…

Speaking of which, I’m glad Belichick is out of the league now. I don’t have to listen to how great he was anymore. The guy cheated, pure and simple. The league pretends otherwise – aggressively – because the owner of the Patriots is one of the most powerful owners in the game. In short, the guy cheated while the league turned a blind eye for as long as they could. Once they HAD to make him stop, he coasted on his reputation, attracting better players than he likely would have otherwise. Eventually, though, the “super-winner” reputation began to fade and he had to actually coach. The team has been on a steady decline ever since, getting worse and worse every year. Belichick was never a great coach. He was a great cheater…

I’m sorry to report it looks like Peacock’s stream of the Chiefs/Dolphins game set a streaming record. 23 million viewers. You just KNOW the NFL isn’t going to stop now. They tested the waters and found that people will pay extra for something they once got for free. There will be no fewer commercials, either. That’s another revenue stream the NFL simply will not surrender. Look for the NFL to start locking more and more games behind pay walls – because people wouldn’t skip even ONE game to protect their own interests…

Sports writers have to write something, right? They like these “What the teams have to do to win” columns and jot down a few things football teams try to do. Protect the ball. Get the ball into the hands of their play-makers. Keep the ball out of the hands of their opposition. Use the run to set up the pass or, alternately, use the pass to set up the run. It depends on the writer. I think I’m a bit too minimalist to do that job. The Niners will be hosting the Green Bay Packers this coming Saturday. Here’s my piece on the game.
What the Niners have to do to win: get the most points.
What the Packers have to do to win: get the most points.
It’s pretty simple, really…

More MAGA Mania…

by MyBaconPress

I’m hearing a lot of talk about how Donny is going to dominate the Republican primary process. It seems true, to me. Then again, it’s true because the Republican party has been, essentially, taken over by MAGA. Sane Republicans left the party. Not all of them, but lots of them. When the party started bending the knee to Stinky Don, many people saw the extremism and didn’t want to be associated with it. Of course, they didn’t become Democrats. They’re still conservatives. They’re just not “burn the country down” conservatives, like MAGA.

But the Republican party tends to let ONLY registered Republicans vote in their primaries, and THAT’S the problem with conservatives leaving the Republican party. Of COURSE Stinky Don is best-positioned to win the nomination. He’s not being supported by the majority of conservatives, only the MAGA wing, the only segment that can cast votes in the primaries.

To me, that’s the real question. Will the conservatives who left the party and, therefore, were not allowed to voice their preference for someone other than trump, come out and vote for him, anyway? If you’re not MAGA, even if you ARE conservative, you can see that Donny is a criminal, a traitor, and an incompetent. I know the cons like to say it about Biden, but Donny seems to losing command of his faculties. MAGA can’t (won’t) see that, either. Will not-so-MAGA conservatives vote to return him to the White House even after knowing his intention to not leave again, ever? I’m not so sure. I hope not.

But I’ll tell you this: having to rely on conservatives for sanity is an increasingly lengthening long-shot…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is really key: MAGA will not compromise. Pretty much everything they want to do, they want in a “my way or no way” approach. Case in point? MAGA Mike, the Speaker of the House that managed to sneak into the job after the ousting of Mike McCarthy for making a deal with the Democrats, is on the verge of making a deal with the Democrats – and MTG is publicly calling for his removal from the Speakership. Why? Well, the deal isn’t her perfect dream. (It, simply, does not harm enough people…)

The thing is, politics is the art of compromise. Sure, it’s frustrating. There’s always something I’d like to see that gets left on the table at the end of the bargaining. But that’s usually true for both sides. That’s a compromise. MAGA sees compromise as weakness. They’ve decided to take a stand.

MAGA ALWAYS decides to “take a stand” when Democrats are in power. When Stinky Don was infesting the Oval, conservatives increased the national debt by $8 TRILLION dollars. They didn’t even bat an eye. You can look this up. The Republican party raises the national debt the most, not the Dems. Going back to Reagan, it goes up record amounts under Republicans, almost always.

In fairness, there was Obama. Bush 43 had left him quite the economic mess, what with two wrong wars caused by conservative panic and a crashed economy caused by conservative deregulation. Bush 43 had raised the debt a LOT but he did it “off books,” trying to hide the increases. One of the first actions of the incoming Obama administration was to count all the money 43 had tried to hide and it sent the debt soaring. Then Obama had to stimulate the economy Bush 43 had crashed and that cost a lot, too.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? When Democrats raise the national debt, it tends to be because they’re trying to recover from the economic damage caused by Republicans. When Republicans raise the national debt, it’s almost always because of their precious tax cuts for the wealthy.

In THIS case, though, the cons just don’t want to fund the government because there’s not enough stuff in there to attack people coming in at the southern border. MAGA is perfectly happy to let Americans suffer (not themselves, of course) in an effort to make sure desperate people running for their lives suffer even more. And if “MAGA Mike” makes any kind of deal, any kind of compromise, with Democrats? He’ll go from being “MAGA Mike” to being a RINO in a heartbeat – and he’ll be out as Speaker. Lovely…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

MAGA reminds me of a LOT of things but I realized the other day, it’s NEVER anything good. Ever. Sometimes, they remind me of carnival hucksters. Sometimes, they remind me of Nazis. Sometimes, they remind me of whining little babies. Sometimes they grow up, but never more than, say, second grade. These people are paranoid, delusional, and LOUD. They remind me of the homeless guy walking down the street SHOUTING at his demons.

I’m often stunned at how deeply MAGA has penetrated our society. We wouldn’t (I hope) knowingly allow that homeless guy into the halls of Congress but he managed to get there anyway, in the form of MAGA. And there are several million people out there who want to be just like him. I really don’t get it…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As every rational person knows, abortion and the overturning of Roe has been a deal-killer for voters from sea to shining sea. Republicans have been trying to run campaigns without talking about it. ”Hey, let’s all pretend we didn’t do that, okay?” Um, no. Thinking Americans KNOW you did it. Trying to downplay it, isn’t going to work.

Especially with Stinky Don out there taking bows for it. “For 54 years they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I did it. And I’m proud to have done it.” Well, yes and no. Roe was one of those wedge issues politicians like to keep around but never solve. They’re great campaign tools but once they’re addressed and solved, what do they run on after? So they don’t. They just leave the issue out there. That’s why we have so many problems with obvious solutions that just never get resolved – candidates want to run on those “issues” again.. (I wrote a song about it. You can hear it, here…)

So, Republicans campaigned against Roe but never took the steps to actually remove it and Democrats campaigned in support of Roe but never took the steps to actually protect it. Until Donny. He just doesn’t understand subtlety. In his “culture war” he actually packed the High Court with enough ideologues to get the job done. They overturned Roe, and the cons have suffered ever since. People, even many conservative people, liked having the choice or, at the very least, understood the importance of access to medical care for such things. If you’ve been around the sun enough times, you remember, before Roe, the regular, heartbreaking news stories of so-called “back-alley” abortions – and the often horrifying consequences that came with them.

I think, Republicans haven’t won an election since (except where gerrymandering protects them, of course). So, the Republicans are all trying to ignore the abortion issue, acting like they don’t know HOW that happened, the overturning of Roe. Then comes Donny, ever the dumbass. ”I did it. I did it. Women across the country are going to suffer because of me for years to come. That was all me. I’m so proud of myself. Suffer, bitches…”

Yeah, Don, we know you did. We’ve been voting accordingly and I suspect we’re going to KEEP voting accordingly. So you just keep wagging your tongue on the subject. Do everything you can to remind people, it was Republicans who took rights from the American people, not the Democrats. Make sure they know you’d do it again and that you intend to strip MORE rights from Americans. Just keep talking…