Stay Afraid, Stay Angry, Stay Tuned

The national network evening news wrap up should be - 'Goodnight America and Remember - Stay Afraid and Stay Angry (and help our ratings).'

Last night on the evening network news, "Breaking news, there has been a sharp increase in severe shocks, even death by electrocution in our nations swimming pools" said the prime time news anchor with dramatic urgency and doom. I couldn't make this stuff up. After swimming in pools all my life, I am now supposed to be afraid, terrorized, by pools of water. They are out to get us these lethal pools and their electrical currents.

So now we can expect Donald Trump to propose building walls around every pool in the country, paid for by swimwear companies? The military will want to call in drone strikes? The landscaping firms - fill them all in? Ah but media outlet owners? - 'Call me back, I'm taking a dip in my private olympic sized pool' (don't tell).

Fear mongering for ratings, for market share, and for profit - this our modern news media. And their audience? Afraid of things that aren't there, filled with anger, with rage against imagined threat, polarized to the point of violence with a complete inability to talk to each other, the people of this country suffer horribly from this 24/7 media blitz.

It has led us to the extreme vitriol, hate, racism and fear that is the Donald Trump phenomenon. It has led us to a dysfunctional congress, to intolerance, seething hatred, terror, even war.

And yet we now live longer, are healthier, safer, and more well off, than we have ever been in the history of the human species.

The media cries wolf to make money and you keep falling for it - over and over again.

Sweet Tea, Grits, and Ignorance

Ok let me get this straight North Carolina. Men who have become women - who have gone through ridicule, psychological trauma, and considerable expense to become women and are for the most part attracted to men, are forbidden from female restrooms.
But lesbians who prefer women are welcome?
Hmmmm. Anything to protect our eight year old girls.

So here's the assumptions you make.
All transgender people are sexual deviants.
All sexual deviants are pedophiles.
So transgenders go through all this trouble and expense so as to prey on 8 year old girls in public restrooms? Hmmmm. Seems to me it would be a whole lot easier if you were a man looking to molest little girls to just put on a wig, a dress, and some makeup.
And aren't there individual stalls in female restrooms?
Hmmmm.

Meanwhile lesbians, who are also sexual deviants, according to you, and are attracted to women, and hence little girls, are welcome?
So where does that leave transgender lesbians?
This is all very confusing.
Except it's really not.

It's just the same old sort of hate you all are old hats at.
Maybe we should just go back to colored bathrooms, white hoods, and good ole out in the open hatred and prejudice.

Or maybe, just maybe Y'all could stop being such ignorant, hateful, fools - for once.

CIA to Obama - Stop Killing People

I once wrote in support of Obama's use of drones to fight terrorism. I did that thinking the alternative was massive military action on the ground - George Bush and Dick Cheney style.

The CIA is now telling us there is another choice, and that Obama is killing more people then he needs to be. This from the CIA no doubt!

Apparently we would be better off capturing more of them. We would garner more intelligence, while reducing 'collateral damage' (reducing the numbers of innocent bystanders we murder), and preventing future terrorist activity (saving even more innocent life).

This coming from an agency with a long history of illegal lethal activity (murder) to a man who has received the Noble Peace Price. So why isn't Obama listening?

So Much More

We are all just hazy clouds of condensed energy. Atoms, billions of years old, passing in, passing out, all of our lives. We're not of the same stuff birth to aged. Globs of probability - we cant even know our atoms exact positions or define with precision, the horizon between us and not us. Drifting through space-time for the briefest of moments, we who are so certain of so many things - illusions all.

A trillion, trillion ancient atoms grouped momentarily into 'us'.  We then are miracles - miracles wrapped in ignorance and the incredibly mundane. The stunning beauty, the power of what is possible in a billion years and all we can muster despite all the trouble, is money, power, god, 'success', and Donald Trump.

Our lives, linear, overly simplistic, illusions, amidst a multidimensional, technicolor show of stunning complexity, beauty, and immense time.

Tiny Hands, Big Buttons

The pundits and politicos keep making the same old mistake with Trump. They assume there is a rational person in there who is acting outrageously as a means to an election, as a means for attention, as a means to an end. But Donald Trump is not just a wreckless, egotistical fool. He is a true narcissist, with sociopathic traits.

According to Trump he is 'owed' the republican party. He has no interest in unifying it - he IS it. He 'won' it, it is 'his' - as it always should have been, and Paul Ryan and all the rest had just better fall in line behind him or be left behind.

And with the republican party in hand he is now 'owed' the presidency. And once obtained he will then be 'owed' greatness and grandeur  - an attitude, a mental illness, capable of destroying the world - economically, politically, ethically, if not literally, once he gets his tiny hands on the big buttons afforded him in the oval office.

Better stop worrying about unifying the republican party folks - it's the entire world and our very existence we ought to be worried about.

A Letter to a Clinton Supporter

I suppose I begin with an assumption that fundamental change is desperately needed. 

I do believe income inequality and the shrinking of the middle class is real and that it's due to a rigged system. Washington is paralyzed, ineffective, corrupt - primarily due to campaign finance law and structure, and special interest lobbying. Our government is the best money can buy - paid for almost entirely by less than 400 families that possess incredible wealth and power. 

And I do think we are dangerously close to corporatism - a form of fascism. At the least we do not have a system that can effectively deal with long range problems not centered on profit and consumerism - ie global warming.

For me Hilary Clinton offers nothing new - in a time that demands change - deep fundamental change. The only thing new is her gender and frankly that doesn't even register with me. I don't look at her as a female candidate - she's just a candidate. She will not evoke change for women. She will by example inspire girls - no small thing I admit - but not enough of a reason to elect her. 

I think we're in for another Trump surprise if he runs against Clinton. I think a lot of people - quiet up until now - feel as I do about her. 

I think Sanders can defeat Trump. Im not so sure about Clinton. 

Love

Charlie

Sent from my iPhone

Marketing Politics

Ted Wheeler's (candidate for major of Portland) clever cap to his campaign ads, 'No slogans, just solutions' - is a slogan. 

Can we please take at least some of the modern day campaign process away from the marketers, the most inflammatory, the most insulting, and just talk about real issues? Donald Trump would be finished. 

More importantly dignity, more honesty, and discussions of actual solutions to real problems could flourish, affording we the voters the chance to choose not the slickest, not the most clever, not the best media manipulators - but instead the best person for the job.

When You Believe You're Own Bullshit

If someone says 'this isnt about me' - it ALL about me.
'It isnt about the money' - yes it is, thats all its about.
'It's not just the sex' - well you get it.
My favorite ' Im a nice guy' - ( please ignore the forked red tail)

Anytime I want material along this line I just tune in the presidential candidates - this year especially so.

King of believing his own dribble - Ted Cruz.
I knew that guy in 5th grade. Sat in the front row, hand raised - me,me, me, me, tattling at every turn and the focus of violent daydreams by half the class.
What a putz.