Wordsmiths of Convenient Denial

 

(As the photo suggests, Jihad among both sub-aquatic bottom feeders and Islamic extremists is never pretty.)

 

Yes, even as I commit these words to some digital phantom world,  I'm more than aware that the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure is taking place in Washington, D.C. this week, and I beg your sympathy and understanding as I hide under a desk until the affair ends.  Despite one's best intentions, when I see these unofficial little UFO-related soirees occurring in D.C., only one word comes to mind:  Greer.  The name which may, but need not be, present to win amongst the gems and the clutter.  But best wishes and good luck to all. Enjoy.

Anyway, some members of the mainstream press assigned to cover the week's proceedings were surely present at the White House Correspondents dinner this weekend, hee-hawing over zingers and guffaws barely two weeks after a little boy's murder by terrorist explosives in Boston.  Barely two weeks after three adults were sliced to death while body parts of survivors were torn asunder due to instantaneous traumatic disarticulation.

Barely two weeks after our society was again put on heightened alert from coast to coast. 

But no matter.  Glitter counts, and decades after its inception, The Big Dinner in D.C. attempted to outdo itself.  A star-studded gala, indeed, populated by members and embers of the Washington press corps and associates, both Democrat and Republican notables and, not to be forgotten -- many of Hollywood's familiar faces, be they actors, directors, producers or other denizens of the celebrity realm.  Yes, the movers and shakers of the country, those who make the news of irrelevance and those who report the news as if the irrelevant were relevant for the rest of us.

Take a good, long look, America -- in that room were some of the folk who dictate public policy and plan our daily lives.  A mainstream media enveloped by and intertwined with a profoundly corrupt political system, Hollywood, money, excess, power and control -- and the rest of us don't matter a damn except as pawns.  Unfortunately, many pawns willingly accept the role.

Jokes flew like airborne virus droplets as the crowd roared, and an eight-year-old American boy and others, intent only upon watching a marathon of runners in Boston, remained dead, gone and forgotten by laughing and grinning human masks attending the exclusive press dinner, and whom, after belching, wiping their mouths with luxury napkins and probably exuding a fart or two, would return to their lairs to execute a continuing barrage of articles focused compassionately upon two young men and their gutter-trash family.

Yet, even as Boston's mayhem loomed fresh and the correspondents' dinner "progressed," President Obama still couldn't use the words, Islam extremists, nor radical Muslims.  Nor will government agencies, having been instructed to tone down the truth.  Boston's tragedy, like Fort Hood’s little incident, might ultimately require an official designation of workplace violence, to avoid hurting the feelings of groups who sympathize with the perpetrators.

Obama doesn't get it?  No, Obama does get it, but he refuses to publicly detail that connection between Muslims who live in peace -- and the rest of them.  He can only do that with the proper words, and when one witnesses an Administration which, until a few days ago, couldn't even excavate the word, terrorism and certainly won't semantically implement that old chestnut, war on terror, particularly when the Islamic element must be implicated, there's a problem.  How can our intelligence agencies function effectively, when real terror and its practitioners are downgraded to bogeyman status?  Instructions and manuals used by government intelligence agencies are said to have experienced extracted references combining Islam with terror threats, as if by word surgeons.

So yet we wait. 

Maybe we wait until before or after the next correspondents’ dinner, or maybe nobody will notice because some drug-infested Hollywood starlet will break a fingernail and head off for pampering and rehab -- but no matter, it will happen.  More terrorism in the USA.  It won't be the Tea Party, nor a gang of organized psycho-Christians. Whatever the format, it will occur on behalf of radical Islam.  Again, the press will meow and swoon, political leaders will insist upon more control over us all and, after the usual routine of tearful speeches by government representatives who won't dare utter the words, extremist Islam, we'll bury our dead and return to a willing embrace of short and long-term memory loss.  What a society -- influential media wordsmiths and a president who refuse to accurately use the valuable cache of dictionary tools arranged conveniently before them, so all the rest of us can do is continue whistling in the dark, all the while building coffins in sizes big and small.

You say Syria, I say Shariah, it’s all the same to me, and the almost incoherent whisperings, the thought of putting American boots on the ground, is abhorrent.  If the Syrian government falls, the story will be the same.  Radical Islam will take over and the United States will be hated more than ever.  With the kind assistance of President Obama’s foreign policy, whatever that is, extremists have claimed one Middle Eastern country after another as our military people sacrifice life and limb.  There is no winning here, and while I’m not keen on saying a good word about Russia – which isn’t about to watch its Syrian government allies fall – we do need to back off and back out.  Obama’s non-existent Islamic terror is the only other potential winner in the region.  By the way, if O hadn’t shot off his big clueless mouth and promised consequences if chemical weapons were used, and now finds himself dumbfounded and probably as anxious as a child who just urinated in her party dress, forging ahead may have been a bit easier.

And it appears that several government people who know the truth about Benghazi may testify, even after claims of threats by the Obama Administration regarding their careers.  All I can say is, don’t forget to invite Hillary Clinton, far from loquacious on this matter – Hillary, whose legacy as Secretary of State will historically be regarded as dead in the water, to put it mildly.  Word is, those who testify will assert that an attempt to save our people could have been made, perhaps successfully.  

 

Danger lurks from within.  May we be comforted by three little words of hope, though bordering on impossible because the Equal Justice Railway apparently lost its glow once the far spiffier Social Justice Express breezed into town:  Impeach, impeach, impeach.

Kissing the Dung Beetles of Islam

Seems as though the American melting pot isn't melting its contents so well anymore.  Oh yeah, it's plenty hot in here, but some of the human components aren't impressed with those rare American flames of individual freedom.  Or, some would say, with what remains of freedom.  Whose fantasy stories?  Whose truth?  We've gone from vampires to hell fires, from werewolves in dens to lone wolves with friends.  Two brothers and a Saudi man with burned hands, an order for deportation and then a cancellation, and so much more.  Heads spin.

Last week, Boston.  This week, Al Qaeda’s foiled plans to wreck a train on a very high bridge between New York and Toronto, orchestrated by Iran.  And who would have guessed that two non-citizen Canadian residents with Middle East-sounding names, the intended perpetrators, were arrested after being watched for some time by the authorities, as they conducted their deadly planning in Montreal and Toronto?

Does anybody understand?  We’re at war, and the enemy is crawling up your leg.  This isn’t a 3-D movie, it’s reality.  They’re here.

Have ours and other nations not been warned repeatedly about the dangers of multiculturalism?  Assimilation isn't, um, exactly defined by what just occurred in Boston.  The religious interfaith thing isn't doing too well, either, unless you don't mind inviting in people intent upon converting you by force or, failing that, killing you.  There is no room for negotiations in radical Islam.

And I would like to take this opportunity to "thank" religious organizations, perhaps especially the Catholics, who assist all sorts of interesting "refugees" and various global detritus in entering the USA.  Even people so valuable to this country that they need lessons in how to use a toilet.  At this time in our history, we need brains and talent imported, not simply the huddled masses -- of which there are no end, by the way.  Some of those huddles contain enemies, willing to be fed, clothed and housed by kind people and nations whom they would sooner kill and destroy.  Then they have kids whom are schooled with a certain extreme agenda.  Good intentions and the road to hell, and we pay for the paving with money, life and limb. 

How ingrained is Islamic terror?  Bad enough for Russia's Putin to converse with President Obama and promise assistance.  Russia knows Islamic terror, and most of that comes from the area of Chechnya.  I remember when Chechnyans invaded a Russian movie theater and started killing children and adults -- and Russia barricaded the doors and gassed everybody inside, even the innocent, because they knew none would survive the well-armed Islamic men and women inside anyway.  Then there was the school invasion by Islamists who killed, tortured and mutilated a school full of Russian kids, barely tall enough to look into the eyes of the radical strangers who determined their fate.

Yet, the USA overflows with hearts of human kindness and those whom, even after Boston, will not see the damned nearly invisible war in which we are engulfed right here on our shores and within the heartland.  Nor is our government telling us what we need to know.  When I posted for readers my Halloween story, "More Than Anything," a few months back, I had thought particularly of Chechnya while conceiving identities for the mysterious two.  Strangely, Boston encountered a mysterious two as well.  Two who were palpable, at any rate.

News reports indicate the younger brother ran his vehicle over his wounded sibling, thus killing him off.  Did he do so to keep his bro from talking?  Did they have an agreement that one would end the other as a mercy killing before detainment and questions could occur?  Did the younger brother snap and have some realization that the radical poop his brother was feeding him was nonsense?  Or did he just hate his brother for orchestrating him into this mess?  Most likely, he was just frantic to escape, no less guilty and no less cunningly radical than the other.

Dunno, maybe I just need to undergo government sensitivity training today, because I'm not doing very well putting up with the Islamic fascist thing, what with Islamic terrorists, radical mosques in my country, the Wahabi sect, the wars and brutality of jihad, Chechnya, radical Muslims, Saudi Arabia's death grip in the USA, C.A.I.R., the determined quest at any cost for a world Caliphate, the freakin' Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, the ongoing murders of Coptic Christians in Egypt indirectly supported by our tax money -- and, you know, here in the USA we sure have a lot of weeding out to do, because the influence of the religion of anything but peace has even, according to some, infected our government and military, top to bottom.  Regrettably, political correctness and compassion have allowed it to happen.  Isn't it just about time to cure this nuisance infestation, starting with the political rats who encourage its existence? 

The late radio talk show host Larry Glick offered a great evening program on Boston's WBZ years ago.  I remember listening in October of 1978 when young Australian pilot Frederick Valentich disappeared somewhere over the ocean in the dark, after expressing puzzlement that he apparently wasn't alone out there, and the last thing air traffic controllers heard was a metallic scraping sound.  Glick delved right into this, a still bitterly unresolved UFO mystery, phoning an Australian journalist for the latest details.  Larry Glick was a real treasure for WBZ, always willing to dial up a competent UFO sighting witness, and he treated his guests and callers fairly.  Away from the studio, he entertained and amazed Bostonians with his other talent -- as a hypnotist.

I wonder what he would have thought about Boston's mayhem?  No doubt, he would have inspired Bostonians to look beyond the chaos to capture the perpetrators, and he may well have encountered callers who knew all about the whom and the what.

Boston's annual marathon holds no interest for me.  All I see are throngs of people clamoring to become first in line for artificial knee replacements, sooner rather than later, and each and every one would say that's overplayed -- but I can only go by what I've seen.  We're not made for such joint abuse  If we did more thinking and less running, we might benefit.  If God had wanted us to engage in frenzied runs, we'd have been born with horse legs.  But I shouldn't complain -- prosthetic knee manufacturing creates jobs. 

So the carnage and terror are over in Massachusetts.  For now, at least. Did terrorism win in Boston?  That requires a yes-and-no answer, and I'll leave it to the faithful to continue arguing the "no" side.  I think "yes" because terror successfully shut Boston down for hours, and it could have been longer.  Additionally, though we may not have noticed, freedom became instantly less free and spying on all levels will become even more ingrained, both in personal terms and technologically.  Two brothers, two bastard brothers did it.  And not alone, not by a long shot, whether via travel or by Internet.  Even the darkest parts of our world have eyes capable of a panoramic view.

Meanwhile, President Obama and his merry bunch prefer to concentrate upon the Second Amendment and all the reasons they can concoct on why Americans should find it increasingly difficult to get guns.  Yes, far better to worry about folks who crave guns for their own safety than to fret over Muslim radicals with bigger ideas.

And, again meanwhile, not a word from the Obama Administration about the long, long delay in the trial of the mass-murdering, jihad-crazed Major Hasan at Fort Hood. 

I'm not sure what we need more right now -- bomb-sniffing dogs, or Obama Admin-sniffing dogs?

Boston.  I'll put my confidence in the good citizens, the cops, firemen and instant-response medical personnel who saved what was left of that horrible day.  Then (groan...) there was the case of the mainstream media who got things wrong over and over non-stop during the dog-eat-dog quest to be first (Twitter is said to be the hands-down information hero of social media during the event). . .and then the "national security" talking heads showing up on TV, who congratulated each other for being on the job after the grim reaper of death and mayhem achieved success and wrote its own history accurately. 

Media giants and government representatives who work for us.  Things they know but won’t tell.  Shameless.  Criminal.  Iran wants nukes, we hear it over and over -- but not a word about Saudi Arabia injecting our society with toxic beliefs and poison people.  Must keep the Saudis happy, and universities sure love the money imported with the thousands of Saudi students who come to the USA, both to learn. . .and to engage in other activities as well.  If they look upon us as morons, it's because we are morons.

Shadows of Benghazi flitted unnoticed across the land just hours after a blustering President Obama threw a nationally publicized tantrum because he didn't get his politically motivated wish to control guns and control us.  Background checks?  Who can predict the future based upon the past?  Who can know everything?  I'm betting there's a ton of highly liberal Bostonians ponying up the money to buy firearms as we write this -- people who never entertained a single thought of A Gun In The House.  That's the variety of gun "common sense" the president should have referenced, not his hysterical milk sop plea as he, with the same vocal cords, refuses to utter the words, Islamic terrorists or radical Muslims.

The FBI screwed up on tracking the older brother?  No, it didn't.  It merely followed instructions from the top, where the Obama bunch has done everything it can to make sure our intelligence agency capabilities are watered down while he praises Islam and would have us all waving and kissing mosques as we pass by.

President Obama needs to be impeached.  Janet Napolitano and Eric Holder?  Persons of interest.  The mainstream media, the Republicans and the Democrats have screwed us to the moon.  The bankers are cozy with the Saudis?  What's up with Glenn Beck and The Blaze (see link) now possessing iron-clad documentation -- along with members of Congress who might care, rather than  C.A.I.R. -- about others involved or at least present during the Boston events AND the (no surprise) Saudi Arabian link to damned nearly everything radical in this country?

We need to find out who did this, promised Obama.  We need to find out why they did it, promised Obama.  Except everybody knew who did it, and why, though maybe Obama himself was truly incapable.  He's into Islamic peace and love and a world which cooperates for the common good.  Meantime, there's a crop of former Muslims out there who know otherwise, and they have written books (such as They Must Be Stopped) to warn the infidels that there is no escape from the Caliphate.  You convert or you die.  The instruments of Caliphate are here and all over the world to see it through.

Boston is cooked and done and liberally progressive, do or die.  Who's next?  We're all next, and next time the perpetrators might know better than to appear like bait before public cameras, and pressure cookers may well be so-o-o-o-o old hat as they proceed with cunning and caution. 

 

While we anxiously await a follow-up to a lengthy list of foul-ups, the boneheaded immigration bill -- worse than we knew -- makes its way through Congress, and the point is made that we need to know who is here in the country before we grant citizenship.  Well, Boston taught us that we know who's here, and even then we're in danger.  It didn't matter. 

What's it going to take, a nuke?  Bio-terror?  Well, staring those events in the face, at least we can make sure our pals, the Saudis, leave the country safely, as George Bush did after 9/11. 

So now there are calls to ban or limit gunpowder availability, and of course this comes from the usual congressional and gubernatorial mouthpieces wishing and willing to deprive us of personal protection and rights.  Perhaps increasingly unpopular NY governor Andrew Cuomo and NY City mayor Michael Bloomberg will consider banning boats, obviously the convenient temporary lair for terrorist brother number two and potentially for all future terrorists.

A major question is, how long can law enforcement agencies at all levels -- staffed by people with far more integrity than anybody running things at the top -- continue to tolerate instructions to cover up things Americans should be informed about?  The corruption must be dripping from the ceilings by now.  How is it that Administration officials reportedly tell members of Congress, face to face, that they won't provide answers to important questions?  Who balances the balance of power anymore?  Like wet insulation in the ceiling, there's rot at the top, suffused with a few pages from the Koran, and both House and Senate members need to get off their well-powdered asses and start ripping out the toxins.  Yes, elections do have consequences.  So does the self-perpetuating game of Islamic musical chairs involving the Muslim Brotherhood, C.A.I.R. and who knows what else, and we don’t want to play that game anymore.

Dead Kids and White House Plowshares

 

[THE BOSTON MURDERTHON:  The title way up above for this entry applies to the next section, but the Boston mayhem occurred after I assumed everything was ready to go.  There's not much to say, except I'm willing to be crude enough to ask whether the government would classify this disaster as "workplace violence," as it did the Fort Hood radical Islamic jihad massacre.  No, we don't know who is responsible in Boston as I write this, and of course we offer our deepest sympathies to the people and families involved in Boston.  But I can't help thinking -- this week we experienced the horror of bombs (again) in the USA, and just a few days ago a bonkers college student slashed and sliced numerous people within an inch of their lives on a campus, using a simple knife.  Yet, President Obama and willing state government mockingbirds have a strange preference for turning millions of law-abiding citizens with guns into a new untrustworthy class.  In the meantime, Mr. President, maybe you'd better take less expensive vacations and spend a little less time at the golf course -- and maybe pass up a couple of those elaborate White House concert sessions that sooth your Hollywood friends and other members of the big money crowd who supported your extravagancies -- and actually try to be a leader, instead of an orator spouting blissful dreams saddled with crushing debt.  Prez dude couldn't even use the word, terrorism, during his brief initial speech, instantly urinating off everybody in Boston who knew better, instantaneously, though by the next day his handlers made certain to include the forbidden word -- forbidden since we were informed there was no longer a war on terrorism per se.  Oopsie.  You know, it's not merely that the president is an empty suit when it comes to speeches.  The problem is that the emperor has no clothes.  Period.

The thing is, this Administration has failed us again, gambling away American lives within our borders, and now we all may as well live in Benghazi.  Danger runs rampant while all those billions spent on "homeland security" in the U.S. promise nothing except lots of spying on the innocent.  In no way should you surrender your guns, and I say that as somebody who has no particular interest in guns -- but I demand the unencumbered, established right to have them if I wish.  Unfortunately, this country currently displays publicly a number of political thugs who pounced upon just the right moment to emerge from their cockroach eggs to show us what they're made of, and it's not a pretty sight.

Everything which follows was written well in advance of the comments I made above, and obviously some of this now seems watered down considerably:]

 ___

 

One thing the Obama White House bunch deals out nearly to perfection is the sympathy card, in lieu of reason and common sense, and when it comes to gaining control over our lives they are absolutely shameless in their attempts, making crucial decisions out of the public eye before prettying or crying them up for a public willingly gripped by hysteria.  This time, or I should say once again, cute little children's faces have been thrust upon the TV news shows and other forms of mass media like chicken feed.  But this time there's a difference, something new, something Newtown, because kids' faces are those of the dead.  And because just enough is hardly ever just enough, parental grief is being trumpeted by this Administration to the max, all in hopes of a colossal government power grab masked by more useless feel-good gun legislation.  Never, ever let a good crisis go to waste.  Why aren't the White House compassionistas shuttling the one (at least one) very vocal pro Second Amendment Newtown father around the country on Air Force One to explain his point of view?  I guess he won't be allowed speaking privileges before the Saturday morning presidential message microphone, though had the Republicans let him speak to counter the White House's April 13 Newtown mother's emotional plea, that would have offered some balance.

 Obama's gang of progressive tear-jerker public relations engineers are just cowardly enough to weave the fibers of dead children into the American flag, their version of the flag, and to use tattered parents like survivors of a poster child massacre.   If utter and honest compassion was involved here, I would feel differently, but I think many of us already know this bunch for its self-perpetuating maneuvers.  Why not invite all the mothers and fathers of military personnel cut down in the Middle East under White House auspices and let them speak about Why Guns Were Important and Essential to Their Kids?  Why not invite mayor Rahm E. of Chicago -- whom they know well -- to explain why over 500 people were murdered there last year despite iron-clad gun laws?  Why not ban automobiles, annually the killer weapons of distinction in the USA? 

 But let's get real -- it's not the murders and it's not the guns.  It's the power grab, and if some very dirty publicity people collaborating with an Administration ridden with more agendas than fleas on a dog can convince the nation that merely a little nip and tuck regarding our basic rights will make us all safer, kiss goodbye to yet another piece of freedom.  In the meantime, hear me well and take heed, because this will portray me badly, but it needs to be said:  If we continue making legislation and changing every little thing in our lives "for the children" (oh, if we can save just one. . .), we'll end up as prisoners in our own homes, afraid to move or speak, lest we offend somebody, or violate some new law we don't even know about.  Or that doesn't exist.  In short, far more dangerous things than guns lurk in the shadows.

But the electronic mainstream media continues to enjoy the firearm and murdered children hoopla, and so it might because TV news ratings and TV viewing in general maintain a steady decline.  We can no longer put our trust in the evening news, and because all major news media in the USA now reportedly suffer and plod on under the thumb of less than a dozen owners, the choices are almost universally bad because they are universally manipulated. 

Tents at the New York State Fair concealed more than freak shows in the sixties (see previous blog entry), and as a kid I also liked to spend some time in the elephant tent with a bag of peanuts, watching majestic trunks descend to grasp a favorite treat.  I've not attended a fair in years, but, like the "freak shows" which disappeared with the times, I doubt that elephant exhibits are as carefree and open as they once were, for the only thing between visitors and elephants then was a "fence" composed of a waist-high rope running horizontally and attached every few feet to little posts.  Yes, the elephants were chained at the ankles, so I suppose safety was somewhat assured.

Yet, I felt sorry for them, confined as they were on a concrete floor padded only with a little straw or sawdust, and the inability to engage in typical elephant activities must have been agonizing, because their boredom was obvious, demonstrated by their constant side-to-side rocking motion where they stood.  What else could they do, besides watch people gawk and feed them peanuts? 

And now nearly 50 years have passed, but the image of elephants has returned -- a terrifying image, as reported by King Broadcasting Co. and other sources last month.  Mass elephant slaughters for tusks of ivory is nothing new, tragically, but this time the International Fund for Animal Welfare disclosed that poachers in Chad killed 86, including pregnant females, in less than a week, merely to take their ivory -- destined, as usual, mostly for wealthy and influential Chinese bastards.  Criminal enterprises in both Asia and Africa have grown and expanded the ivory "industry," and various nations -- particularly China -- have been warned that decisive action must be taken to end the brutality and attractive profit motive involved.  As if they care or ever did.

Which brings me to talk show host and author Michael Savage.  Some of you may know him only from your friends or relatives whose politics get in the way, causing them to tell you he's a monster, a madman, or a bully, steeped in the tradition of talkers Joe Pyne or Morton Downey, Jr.  Actually, that's what I expected, too, when I first encountered him a few years ago on talk radio.  However, if you hang in there with him for a few days or weeks, you begin to realize that, despite all of his sarcasm, anger and tendency to be rude or short with callers, this is a man with both a brain and a heart.  Currently broadcasting evenings Monday through Friday from San Francisco, Savage is no ignorant lightweight.  Indeed, he grew up on the mean streets of New York City -- about which he tells some great stories and has written of them in his books -- and, despite the odds, managed to rack up a Ph.D and two master's degrees.

Savage is a strict conservative, with perhaps just a trace of libertarianism poking through, espousing, to say the least, no love for either the Republicans or the Democrats.  What particularly impresses me, though, is his love of animals.  He and his poodle, Teddy, are shown above.  What one may not anticipate about Savage, however, is his deep love for the world's elephants -- and his marked hatred for the poachers, whom he believes should be shot dead where they stand.

Michael Savage, big ol' brute Savage -- did you know he donates thousands of dollars to protect elephants and pay for intercepting poachers before they have a chance to slowly and agonizingly murder the world's pachyderms?   Yet, despite such good deeds, he was banned from England because they apparently don't like his politics (though Great Britain seems to have no problems allowing radical Islamism into the country).  He's also contributed monetarily, and apparently handsomely, to help defray legal expenses for U.S. military personnel who served in the Middle East, now either facing or already residing in prison because our government put them there.  Which doesn't necessarily mean one belongs there.

Having just published his second spy novel, Savage was already the author of numerous books about the sciences, based upon his education and experiences internationally.  Love him or hate him, Michael sugarcoats nothing and lays his often brash opinions on the line during his show, "The Savage Nation."  And, yep -- he loves the critters, so don't be put off by what frequently seems a harsh exterior.  I suspect that this friend to animals is really a pussycat in disguise.*

When one hand neglects to wash the other, what happens?  The number of people with autism, dementia and Alzheimer's is reportedly rising, creating a real problem as years go by -- in no small part because there may not be enough younger folk to care for them.  So we wonder, if this is what it all comes down to, will the Alzheimer's sufferers care for the autistic, or the autistic for the Alzheimer's patients?  Or will dispassionate robots be in charge before a crisis occurs?  What about those radio commercials selling food that lasts for 25 years in case of a disaster?  In 25 years, neither the dementia-ridden, Alzheimer's-afflicted or autistic may have the ability even to know there's food in those pouches, let alone know how to open the packages.  That's the real disaster, I should think.

CLINTON, BUSH, CLINTON, BUSH, CLINTON, BUSH:  Um, for one thing, Hillary already tried to run for prez, and that didn't work out at all well.  Then there's her history as secretary of state -- solidified during the Benghazi catastrophe and her remarkable failure in trying to solve the world's ills as secretary.  Not to be obvious, but isn't there anybody in America who could run with a fresh face and not be named Clinton or Bush or Kennedy?  Enough already.

Remember the Alamo?  Well, don't bother.  By virtue of immigration "reform" being constructed by the "Gang of 8," because your opinion doesn't matter anymore, history books will need a rewrite.  Clearly, a substantial portion of Mexico's border jumpers will "inherit" a considerable amount of American real estate -- and American taxpayers will continue to foot a rather hefty bill.  The Alamo?  Took a long time, but Mexico apparently won that war after all.  Secure the borders?  That's a funny one.

May I be so foolish as to suggest the creation of a new political party?  Everybody's heard of the GOP, but how about the creation of a new political party,  the GOPP -- the Grand Old :Prison Party?   Prisons, of course, have been around forever, but so have lots and lots of politicians and banker buddies who should be confined within prison walls but, strangely, never quite make it that far because of power, influence and big money.  That needs to change.  Vote for the GOPP.

SUBSCRIPTION RENEWAL REMINDER:   Readers, your annual renewals to this blog are now due, and you may send your payments to. . .wait a minute. . .!!!. . .Well!  Now I know why I'm not making any money off this thing!  Oh, never mind.  Obviously, sometimes literary brilliance comes free of charge. . .

WHAT DRIVES ME NUTS:  Lots of things, but recently I've become even more upset with now as opposed to then.  Time was, you could actually write a letter -- that's a paper thingie with writing on it, like from a pen -- to your member of Congress and get a personal reply.  Now, it's mostly form letters, fraudulently signed by auto-pens, disguised as something Just For You.  And then there's the online nightmare where you can't leave a note until you choose a category -- and then you generally have to narrow the category down.  THEN, if you decide to write a member of Congress who doesn't represent your district, you're out of luck, unless you pony (express) up for postage and return to the days of old where you send. . . a letter.  Nevertheless, I've been known to write those strange and foreign U.S. members of Congress with my views by lying my ass off in the name and address section on the Web so my extremely self-important messages would not be rejected.  I often wonder, though, what happens if some miscellaneous congressional staffer actually responds with a reply mailed to constituent Mr. Chuck Wagonn at 666 Beware St., Cornershadows LA 66666? Well, that's not my problem, is it?

(* Photo from "The Savage Nation" Web site -- see link to Michael Savage)

Let's Go to the Fair!

 

1964:  As a teenager, there were, particularly, two things among many things I didn't know.  First, I didn't know that one could be in the presence of celebrity and fail to realize it -- and second, I didn't know that a summertime experience at the NY State Fair would hardly provide my only encounter with remarkable examples of human deformity, because just four years later I would be working with patients in Air Force hospitals while the Vietnam Era continued to unfold tragically.

I'm sure the term has mostly died off with the passage of politically correct years, but there was a time when just about every circus or fair passing through any town in America prominently featured a freak show, basically a sideshow, a cavalcade of weirdness hidden behind closed tents, and for a nominal price folks could enter and travel from one display to another.  In one place you could see a scantily-clad woman or man cavorting with snakes in a pit, while in another you could gaze in astonishment at a fat lady (who didn’t sing).  There were also half man / half beast creatures, helped along with a little makeup and costume applications.  Tiny people, tall people, people with alligator-like skin, human pin cushions -- all sorts of people sat, stood, moved about or just posed for those brave enough to plunk down the price of admission and enter the tents. The very idea of freaks, you may recall, provided fodder for Tod Browning’s old movie of the same name.

Some of the "exhibits" included people born with genuine physical deformities, and during that era a fair share were societal outcasts, sometimes shunned by their own families, sadly.  However, one thing was sure -- for many of these folks, the "freak show" atmosphere in which a curious public actually paid to see what it viewed as abnormal meant jobs for the otherwise unfortunate, steady employment from town to town -- and comfort plus companionship among those of a similar lot at least resulted in something of a cohesive existence. 

Recently, I happened to find the two photos posted here (and for those of you new to either the computer or this blog, remember that you can always enlarge the visuals by putting your cursor over them and left-clicking with your mouse).  I discovered them, as usual, in a Dreaded Box of Things, of which I'm cursed with an abundance.

I hadn't thought about the photos for years, but remember well meeting the "attractions" pictured in each during that 1964 NY State Fair visit, while the James E. Strates show was in town.  I don't recall how much I paid, maybe a dollar or two per picture.  But -- oh, what I did not know, and after all these years I was amazed to discover during a casual Internet search that both Williams Durks and Sylvia Porter were indeed celebrities.  Merely by putting their names into a search engine, I found elaborate Web sites devoted to freak shows, lovingly committed to humanizing and telling impressive stories about many people whom most of us only saw as objects of fascination

William Durks, for instance, was born in Alabama with frontonasal dysplasia, preventing both sides of his face to merge together.  Following many hard years as a sharecropper, a carnival discovered him in his forties and offered him a job as an attraction.  Reportedly blind in one eye, he even painted a third eye on his face (visible here in the middle) to become even more marketable.  Durks was truly a celebrity among his fellows, and on the reverse side of my photo he merely signed his name because I was probably too amazed to ask for any particular words.

Sylvia Porter apparently enjoyed autographing her photos, based upon those I saw on the Web.  On mine, she thoughtfully included the year, 1964.  Porter, like Durks, hailed from Alabama, was very kind to her admirers and happily entertained questions about how she became "the woman with the biggest feet in the world," and she was more generally known as "The Elephant Girl."  Her enormous feet, victim to abnormal fluid accumulation (lymphedema), prevented her from wearing shoes.  Reportedly, Sylvia bemoaned the approaching end of freak shows, concerned about her future role in a changing country showing, no longer, an appetite for the word, freak.  Additionally, one might expect that advances in medical science and surgical procedures served to correct disabilities and deformities formerly suited to travels with circuses and fairs.

The disappearance of freak shows may have appeased the politically correct, but I've a feeling it resulted in a great deal of unemployment and further heartache for those who otherwise had no comforting relationship with "normal" society, which separated them from their friends and livelihood in the name of misguided empathy. 

So, thanks for those precious and fleeting moments, William and Sylvia, and may you and all the other departed stars of -- once upon a time -- the greatest “freak shows” on earth rest in peace.  If there's a human soul, you folks embraced it.

My Country 'tis of They

Welcome to New York State, poised to be the new fascist capitol of the United States, and just determined in a national survey to be the least "free" state in the country.  While NY City's mayor Michael Bloomberg prostitutes a significant and steady share of his wealth and power in attempts to ban or modify a laundry list of Things He Doesn't Think You Should Decide About As A Formerly Free American, the state's governor Andrew Cuomo laughs off concerned gun owners as extremists while he and fellow usurpers of common sense and the public good forge ahead with the strictest and likely most unconstitutional firearm legislation in the U.S.  No doubt about it, the masks are off now and the charade is over.  Bloomberg even spends his fortune to influence elections out of state.  And Cuomo?  Funny what depths some folks will plumb to become president, even turning against one's own people with the stroke of a pen to facilitate a self-journey to official Washington Oz and its elite.  May the nation know him for what he is, long before the 2016 elections.  Megalomania is never pretty.

It's little wonder that guns have become all the buzz among members of the nation's political class, already beholden to an agenda of control.  They don't take kindly or comfortably to a Second Amendment intended to sort out protections for those who serve, and for those who are served, from those who merely rule and dominate.

Meanwhile, as all the special interests attired in sheeps' clothing are out there, blaming and condemning law-abiding Americans because they can't get their hands on so much as the ghosts of Adam Lanza, Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold and a host of others who checked out after completion of their grizzly actions,  yet another series of homicides is about to take place within the classrooms of schools all over the country -- murders of the mind.  Common Core, See-Scope and other "teaching tools" approved by members of  both political parties hover in readiness to invade schools and the learning process.  The dangers of  this New School are said to include technological monitoring (with high-tech equipment literally spying on young brains) and data mining of students and their families, and the choices -- the real choices -- will no longer be decided at the parent-teacher level.  Almost before children can do math -- and it is our understanding that "math" will hardly be the same again -- an electronic file springs into existence, damned nearly noting their every everything, and a digital identity will conceivably track them indefinitely, providing enough data to determine an educational and employment fate over which they may have no control.  This is not the U.S.  This is China.  This is Russia.  Is it not?  Critics say this wild curricula might be stopped, but the time is short.  This year.  School PTAs and state and local legislators at every level must heed these potential changes with extreme caution because, according to some, this is the situation that will determine how free our country will remain evermore.

And the battle over guns?  The cart-before-the-horse crowd, even as polls show the public has become bored with the whole affair, continues to focus upon firearms, seemingly caring barely a whit about why, why, why society grows increasingly violent, crazed and disconnected from what used to be a sense of reality one could almost touch and feel.  No more.  Thanks a lot for laughs from the other side, digital world.  The worst may be yet to come, for the young.

We were advised years ago, not that many, never to fear the computer. Instead,  we were to embrace its marvels and be set free from our cares.  That was then.  Now, we wake up every morning with a fair amount of dread, or should.  Who will hack our computers today?  Who will shut down our electrical or water supplies?  Who will steal our identities today?  Who will track our every move today and take photos with tiny objects too diminutive to see?  How many hundreds or thousands of dollars will it cost to repair a digital catastrophe in the automobile?  How do we know our digital votes at election time aren't being hijacked and changed?  Why is it that personal information authorities promised would be impossible to steal is stolen on a regular basis?  Who can we trust?  Who should trust us?  Maybe your heroes include Gates, Zuckerberg, Google (yes, which owns and carries this very blog) and all the other familiar names, but they are not my heroes.  What they are is inventors and inventions, but perhaps more for the moment than the future, and that's a good thing -- but when inventions morph into structures to be feared, fostering the emergence of supremely technical people with more knowledge and influence than our own governments or societies can contend with on something equivalent to an equal footing, that's worrisome.  Some may prefer technocratic rule over the votes of a congressman from some farming district, but therein lies the danger.  How can common people share in and drive the destiny guaranteed to them within a government when computers intrude, fail to enable freedom and instead enslave those who dwell far outside of the digital kingdom whose hardware ultimately prefers obedience and sameness over ingenuity of the individual who desires a computer-less existence?  Nonetheless, not even computer technology may survive the next wave of uniquity splashing over an horizon of chaos.

IN THE NEWS -- WET NO MORE:   I think most of us can agree that the term, wetbacks, a vulgar term applied primarily to Mexicans who enter the USA illegally, is rude, crude and unfathomable in today's society, so I, too, was appalled at the government representative who used a word he grew up with without giving its utterance a second thought.  Indeed, people of any culture and any nation who come into the country against our laws, as already written, should more accurately be referenced as illegal border-jumping criminal aliens.  That sort of encompasses everybody, don't you think?

GAY MARRIAGE:  Hey youse, when I jumped up and called for gay folk the privilege of serving in the military, no way did I see the marriage thing on the track.  Are you crazy?  Keep this up and I may well address the courts for my right to marry a dog -- though I reluctantly confess I've never known a dog that would have me.  Then again, loose tongues admit that there's nothing like a nice bouquet of dog biscuits, rabbit scent, road kill fragments and Ken-L-Ration to attract the very best.  Trouble is, I don't think they make Ken-L-Ration anymore.

FORT HOOD:  Please, somebody get Major Hasan's court-martial and trial on course.  Anybody who thinks his religion doesn't have a bearing on a nearly four-year delay -- I have a bridge high over the deep crystal blue waters of Saudi Arabia I'd like to sell you.  13 dead, dozens injured, and none were allowed the carry a firearm in that "gun free" zone on an Army base that day.  Are you kidding?  And why is Obama's Justice Department in on this mess?  So goes the JD, so goes the Administration, and thus the roadblocks in awarding The Purple Heart to the victims.  Any moron knows these folks were shot because of a jihad-headed Islamic terrorist wearing a U.S. military uniform, not something relating to "workplace violence."  Hasan will be found guilty for all that is "alleged," and he should receive the deadliest of death penalties for it (too bad a little water-boarding can't be administered first, just for old times' sake), IF anybody still has the courage to do the right thing in this increasingly wussie-fied country.