DEFEAT FASCISM

 Ya’ll, this isn’t the America I served, hoped for, and then lauded when it elected a person of color as its president. To me, she’s a mighty structure rotting from its roots. To wit:

There was a man who used his immense, and inherited, wealth to publicly demean, besmirch, dishonor—and spread lies about citizenship—a good and honest man. Yes good. He might not have shared your political views, but a good man with a good family. The creature who dishonored him? Ya’ll elected him president.

When another man won the presidency, this same fiend daily published personal smears against him, lying and besmirching him without pause. This lowlife? Ya’ll elected him president again.

Now Americans are losing their livelihoods for commenting on the quotes of a talk-show host.

I’m not worried so much about myself. What ya’ll gonna do, cut off my hair and you know what?

I worry about young folks growing up in a country that has gone from Mr. Rogers to anti-American talk-show hosts in less time than once imaginable.

That has gone from Jonas Salk to Robert Kennedy Jr.

That has gone from Thurgood Marshall to Clarence Thomas.

That has gone from the men who stormed shore at Normandy to ICE.

That, in one state, has gone from Winthrop Rockefeller to … well take a look.

Yes, and from your perspective, we’ve gone from:

Civil rights to political correctness,

Care for those with gender dysphoria to arbitrary gender selection,

Respect for science to abolition of unharmonious scientific findings, and

From Kumbaya to “Defund the Police."

I think something is dreadfully wrong. If you want to meet and talk about what might be done, I’m here.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 BRIBERY

Years ago, in an Arkansas far away, it was a well-established situation that a professional services firm wishing to do business—when the contract was governed by a specific state cabinet agency—would have first to make a “campaign contribution” to the constitutional head of that agency. It was a dirty but necessary cost of doing business, one deemed and declared to be legal. How the head of the agency turned the contribution to personal use was a process that led him to a prison sentence.

Too bad for him. If the people and process were in operation today, there is good news. The United States Supreme Court just ruled that it would be perfectly okay to pay the favor off openly, in cash, and without danger of indictment as long as the payment occurred after the work was done and not before.

Only Sam “The Flag” Alito and Clarence “Big Cigar” Thomas could have developed that logic stream.

There is one catch. That lies in the fact that the public official must have sufficient trust in the paying party that such emolument can be delayed until the proper and legal moment. Since the deal can’t be included in the contract, both sides must trust one another. It could be done with a nod and wink implying “I know as much on you as you know on me.” In botanical terms, the leaves must be as rotten as the roots.

In other words, there must be a level of trust not normally extant in such people.

It has taken awhile, but we are there.

Coda: Supposedly it would work like a "reverse tip." Now if only there were some way it could be made tax deductible.

Compassion

Early morning thoughts with my new good friend A. Vivaldi:

You know, when the United States Supreme Court eviscerates the Affordable Health Care Act, it won’t affect me or my family. I say “when,” not “if” for they would seem to have the votes. Four justices hate President of the United States Barack Obama so viciously that they would vote to depose him and replace him with Charles Manson if they had the chance. A fifth hates government itself badly enough to join in the disgrace.

No, it won’t affect me our mine.

It will affect the person I know who is alive today because the AHCA allowed a life-saving medical treatment that had previously been denied for lack of money, that person who forwarded a shameful cartoon not long ago comparing President of the United States Barack Obama to a gorilla.

It will affect the person I know who is healthy enough to work but instead exists totally on disability payments and medical care provided by us, the taxpayers, and who rarely completes a sentence without including a reference to “that n****r president.”

It will affect those who, physicians report, are receiving health care in record numbers for the first time in decades because of the AHCA, but who recently traded six years of shame for six seconds, at the voting booth, of revenge against the country for electing a person of color as President of the United States.

 

So all we can do is wait and hope for a "Beckett Moment" when justices may, in a flash, realize there is a higher mandate than a political directive. If it doesn't happen, we'll just watch the poor die and remember, like "Camelot," that there was once this brief shining moment in America.

Oh, and it won’t affect the health care of the Supreme Court justices or the members of congress who are egging them on. They have, and will continue to have, excellent care provided by us, the taxpayers.

So why, the followers of Ayn Rand would say, should they care since it won’t affect them and why should you since it won’t affect you?

I guess it is because I have a heart and because I agree with St. Luke.

St. Luke - I think he quoted a man
who said something about the
poor being blessed. Oh well, it's
an outdated concept.

See also www.wattensaw.presss.com