And Now, A Few Words About William Barr

William Barr was, is, and always will be a Republican hack.

I refer you all to Iran-Contra, Iraqgate, and the pardons George H. W. Bush issued to everyone who ignored the Constitution to do whatever they wanted in the Middle East and Latin America--including shipping drugs into the U.S.--just as an earlier Special Counsel, Lawrence Walsh, was closing in.

Guess who urged Bush the Elder to issue the pardons?

His Attorney General, William Barr.

The preservation of the cesspool that is the GOP is the prime directive of Republican hacks everywhere.

So, of course, Barr says there was no collusion by Trump. Nothing to see here, move along.

The Party must be preserved, even if the President is a traitor, even if countless Republican Senators and Representatives have been bought by the Russians, too.

The Party must be preserved at all costs.

Not the country. Not the Constitution. The Party.

See, It Really Isn't That Hard

So there's a mass shooting in New Zealand. Naturally, it was carried out by an angry, scared, Islamophobic white male, with a nod and a wink to our own little Tinpot in Chief.

(Gee, the world does get more and more like the good old U.S. every day, don't it?)

And less than a week later, New Zealand bans assault rifles.

Don't those silly Kiwis know that the proper response to a mass shooting is earnest, heartfelt "thoughts and prayers" followed by complete inaction?

Well, not complete inaction. The maggots on Fox News will rant about a possible infringement on our God given Second Amendment rights to any and all handheld weapons. The MAGAts will put on their little red hats, get out their own sacred, beloved hardware and parade around looking all menacing, and pretending to be really, really tough. The cretins on twitter will argue about what is and isn't an automatic weapon. And the Republicans in Congress, the courts, and elsewhere will ignore the wishes of the majority of Americans for some kind of sane gun control.

That's the kind of action we like.

Apparently, that's the only kind of action we are capable of at this point.

What a pathetic country we've become.

Without Firing A Shot

Time was when the chief strategic problem that we worried about in Europe was what would happen if the Soviet Union sent several tank battalions rushing through the Fulda Gap in Germany.

NATO would respond in force, all hell would break loose, there would be chaos throughout Western Europe, and given the amount of tactical nuclear weapons on the ground, possibly the beginning of the end of life on earth.

Of course, this never happened, except perhaps in the fever dreams of Tom Clancy.

Instead, using a more sophisticated method involving lots of money, women, blackmail, and the latest techniques in media manipulation, the Soviets, now going by the less threatening name "Russia", have managed to unleash chaos throughout the West without firing a shot.

Brexit, and all the other right wing "populist" movements in France, Hungary, and elsewhere that dot the continent like the pox, have been funded completely or in large part by the kleptocracy, founded by an old KGB agent, known as Putin Inc.

And let's not forget Putin's prime lapdog stooge, our own Traitor in Chief, whose empire was kept afloat all of these years by laundered Russian money, his election to the White House helped immeasurably by Russian bots, Russian hackers, even more Russian loot, and a handful of elected Republicans who consider treason a reasonable means to an end.

Turns out this was our Fulda Gap--amoral people who would literally do anything, including selling out their country, to win an election.

Without firing a shot.

And Now, A Few Words About Taxes

Living in Phoenix, as I do, my daily newspaper is the, sigh, Arizona Republic, which, honestly, we subscribe to mostly for the obituaries. Morbid, I know.

I also, being somewhat masochistic, I guess, read the letters to the editor.

Mostly these are word for word rehashes of whatever garbage the writer heard most recently on Fox News. You can almost hear the spittle flying. It is sad. But it is true.

The other day, though, the Republic printed one from a fellow from Sun City, one of the myriad of bland, beige, boring, retirement camps--uh--I mean adult communities--which ring Phoenix like some breed of suffocating albino snake.

This guy was upset that the crazy socialists would tax away all the rich people. They would be forced to flee America if we tried to raise their taxes. And then where would we be without our rich people? He really meant it, too! He wasn't specific about where all those rich people would go. Couldn't be western Europe. Their taxes are higher than ours. Hmmm. Somalia? Venezuela? Russia?

Being a Sun City-ite, this guy must be of a certain age. Surely he remembers, fondly I'd guess, the 1950's. You know, that Trumpian paradise where blacks, browns, gays, women and students kept their mouths shut. Yeah. That place. The place that conservatives hunger to go back to with a passion that makes one blush. Blush, and then vomit.

Anyway, the top marginal tax rate, the rate the richest Americans theoretically pay,  in the 1950's, the Eisenhower years, was 91 or 92%. That's right.

How about the Kennedy years? Same rate.

LBJ? Took a deep plunge to 75%.

Under I Am Not A Crook it was still at 70%. Yeah, that raving socialist Richard M. Nixon was president of a country with a 70% top marginal rate!

The top marginal rate for 2019 is 37%. You could double it, and still be below LBJ's rate, let alone JFK and Eisenhower's.

If things were so much better back then...maybe we should go back to those rates, just for nostalgia's sake. Just to make some people happy again...

Genetics

We are what we are, and rare is the person who rises above.

For instance, let's say your dad was a mobbed up, crooked, racist piece of shit. Let's call him, oh, I don't know, Fred.

Chances are, unless you inherited absolutely zero traits from him, you, too, would end up being a mobbed up, crooked, racist piece of shit.

And there's a distinct possibility that you might even be a bigger mobbed up, crooked, racist piece of shit. What with the completely unwarranted sense of privilege that might come from such an upbringing.

Now, say you have kids.

Let's call them, oh, I don't know, Junior, Princess, and the Other One.

Here again, unless they inherited absolutely zero traits from you (and honestly, what are the odds of that?), they too would probably be mobbed up, crooked, racist pieces of shit.

Because you are a delusional narcissist as well, you might have even been able to convince yourself that you have "superior genes".

(Sound of uproarious laughter)

And that's genetics.

And Now, A Few Words About Stupid People

The key thing about stupid people is that they seldom understand how truly stupid they are.

And, unfortunately, there really is nothing that we can do about that.

It just is. Like the sun rising and setting. Like the tides. Like gravity.

Trust me. I've been dealing with this shit almost all of my life. Since I was a wee lad.

You can pretend that they're like us. But they're not.

They're stupid.

Will they ever change?

No. They're stupid for life. Forever.

There is a difference between stupid and ignorant.  Ignorant people can sometimes be educated.
Sometimes.

But there is no practical difference between willfully ignorant and stupid.

Of course, not all stupid people are Republicans.

But, at this point, all Republicans are stupid people.

Stupid to ignore silly things like facts and evidence. Stupid to continue to support that traitor, sullying the White House and disgracing our nation on a second by second basis.

They say Judas got 30 pieces of silver...these folks got a tax cut that doesn't benefit 99% of them and a never ending campaign of hatred and fear and stupidity.

Stupid. Blind. Bigoted. Hate filled.

It's a toxic blend.