I'm A Virgo

 Boots Riley is a genius.

And Charles Mudede at The Stranger agrees.

The bullhorn

 

"United"

I disagree with this Op/Ed from May 2020. This isn't years away.

Mango Mussolini wants it right now.

Hear that sound? That's Putin clapping. His fomenting of divisiveness via his Useful Idiot has exceeded his wildest dreams. That other sound is the Right's Saint Reagan spinning in his grave.

The Rules Don't Apply to Him

Congratulations America, you did it. Once again, you proved to the rest of the world you are the functionally retarded kid sitting in the back of the class ... eating paste.

In January of 2003, when I was in the UK, I had to answer the same question over and over: "No I did not vote for him (George W. Bush)." Usually followed by "Yes, he IS a complete idiot, isn't he?"

Again, in late 2003 when I was in Australia for four months, I had to field all sorts of snide remarks about the Rodeo Clown and his burning need to impress his Daddy and Uncle Dick by invading a country that never attacked us (Iraq) and bombing it into a social stone age. The awful division between the Kurds, the Sunnis and the Shiites is worse now than it ever was under CIA-backed, petty dictator Saddam Hussein.

I had to confirm for baffled Brits (there are a lot Down Under) and perplexed Aussies that "Yes, 'Murika really is THAT dumb!" Dumb enough to believe whatever lies the Republican party and FAUX News shit out every day.

Interesting side note: FAUX News, the LA Times, and I forget how many dozens of other Fourth Estate participants, are all owned by a white Australian billionaire who has publicly admitted his goal is to push politics as far right as possible to instigate some sort of global fascism so he can be the new Fuhrer's Joseph Goebbels. Anything to defeat the fake boogeyman of communism/socialism and any sort of labor organization. He bought nearly every newspaper in Australia and New Zealand decades ago. Ditto the UK. Guess what? All those gun-owning, Harley-riding, he-man Aussies -- none of them read the paper. They're too smart for FAUX News. As one said to me in Perth while pointing at the newspaper stand: "That's all bloody Murdock's crap. We don't bother with it."

Once again, conservative America's unexplainable phobia for women in pants suits, gay marriage and articulate black people has pushed the dumbest of us to elect an Orange Troll Doll and military school dropout who shamelessly dodged the Vietnam draft five times. A preening narcissist who refers to himself in the royal "we", has had every single opportunity handed to him on a silver platter, including the opportunity to not pay most of the construction contractors and service employees who have worked for him over the years. He's burned so many millionaire investors and Russian mobsters I won't be surprised when they finally come for his knee caps. Don the Con is a fat old man who has slobbered over so many wanna-be Miss America contestants and mail-order brides he makes Jabba the Hutt look classy. I would not want to be a female employee in the White House mail room come January.

The greatest tragedy to befall conservative America is the fact 90% of you are too poor and dumb to have ever traveled overseas, especially to another democracy. Too bad because you can't hear the roaring laughter coming from places like Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Canada, Japan, Spain, and yes, the UK, where 49% of their citizens allowed the other 51% mostly geriatrics to vote in favor of Brexit, a referendum that will surely be repealed in the next couple of years or England will face social and economic chaos. Just like we're facing now.

America: the only democracy in the world where stupidity is celebrated via millions of re-tweeted racist cartoons. America: where intelligence is viewed with scorn and suspicion and blustery 14-year-old bullies are elected to the most powerful position on earth. The Orange Troll Doll's sweaty tiny hand will soon be holding the "football", the brief case every president has held since the Cold War. The one that allows him to order a global nuclear missile launch.

The Donald embodies what our society has told white male heterosexuals for decades: that the rules don't apply to them. Rules are for broads, brown people, the handicapped or crippled, queers and other whiners.

If you think you've got it bad now, conservative America, what with the Affordable Care Act finally forcing your insurance provider to pay for your chemo, banks having to adhere to at least some vague regulations and the fact that the employees at your neighborhood WalMart are getting EBT cards so the Walton heirs don't have to pay a living wage and the employees won't starve, wait till we're all standing in a pile of radioactive rubble and neither Canada or Mexico will come to our aid. Because in the end, all you can do with the stubbornly stupid is leave them alone until they die out.

All this over health care?

Anybody who thinks the faux protests going on in this country are over health care is asleep.

The last time we heard the phrase 'state's rights' was right before the South seceded from the Union and started the Civil War.

Sorry, teabaggers, states don't have sovereignty, only nations do. Where would Arkansas be without all those FEDERAL farm subsidies? Where would Texas be without endless FEDERAL corporate subsidies to its oil refineries? Where would North Carolina be without all those FEDERAL military bases? How about Florida without FEDERAL GOVERNMENT subsidies to its massive corporate orange growers?

George Carlin was right. Let's put all the Right-wing wackos in a big fenced-in lot and once a month we'll toss a few tons of raw meat and more gun ammo over the fence.

You can't secede from the American government, you dumb asses. You don't have the money and you clearly don't have the brains.

Best memoir about adolescence and racism EVER!

I grabbed a copy of "Jesus Land: A Memoir" on Friday out of a one dollar bin at a bookstore. I just finished it tonight.

I seem to always be just behind the curve of cultural phenomenons, and vaguely remember reading a review of this book in 2005 when it hit the literature circuit and Julia Scheeres' searing novel started picking up awards right and left.



"Jesus Land" is Julia's recollection of her childhood and adolescents growing up in a family run by fanatically strict fundamentalist Christian parents. But really it's about her adopted brother, David, who was African American and brought home by the author's parents when he was three where he became, in her words, 'my twin.'

Gentle, nerdy David's encounters with violent bigots become Julia's and the racism starts early. Part way through the book, Julia recounts the first time white kids try and beat them up ... they are just 8 years old.

In their teens, their parents relocate to rural Indiana, the upper domain of the Bible Belt where the locals treat David, and Julia by association, with anything but Christian kindness.

When Julia's other adopted brother, Jerome (the opposite of David in every way except his skin color), gets sent to prison, their parents ship David and then Julia to a fundamentalist Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic to "turn them around".

Julia Scheeres' description of life in Escuela Caribe doesn't read like a typical teen's recollection of boarding school or even a stint in juvenile detention. It's more like a Vietnamese POW camp. There's sleep deprivation, beatings, endless psychological torture and even typhoid.

If you only read one non-fiction book all this year, read this one.