Day: November 9, 2018

Closing Thought–09Nov18

By now we all know that Our Dear Supreme Leader has fired AG Jeff Sessions after belittling him for almost a year he waited to the results were in of the Midterms and he felt he had to act to cover his ass (the “HE” here is in reference to Trump….so there is NO confusion)…..

News has come out the Sessions is so depressed about losing his cushy gig that he has attempted suicide……

Following months of bruising criticism from Democrats and President Trump alike, an inconsolable Jeff Sessions was reportedly trying to commit suicide Thursday by smoking a joint. “I swore I’d never take the coward’s way out, but what choice do I have?” said a teary-eyed Sessions, carefully laying a sealed envelope containing his farewell note on a tool bench in his garage as he raised a lighter to the marijuana cigarette with trembling hands. “This is it. I’ve taken four puffs to make sure there’s no chance of survival. It should only be a matter of minutes now. Oh, what a wretched, ignominious ending. Goodbye, cruel world, I’m sorry I’ve failed you so.” At press time, Sessions reportedly realized he had died after being overcome by a euphoric, floating feeling.

Before you go off and pass on the info…please read closely…..this is a satirical piece from The Onion

Everyone knows the Jeff Sessions hates marijuana……

It is Friday and I leave you, my reader, with this small attempt at humor……I start my weekend as soon as I sign off for the week……enjoy yourself….be well, be safe…..chuq

“Making America Great Again”–Part 13

The series turns from warfare to the country’s fledgling problems……the War of 1812 has ended and now the country needs to move beyond a war footing and do what is necessary to keep the country together…..this is the era of revolutions…..

Maj. Sjursen continues to inform and educate with his series……..and now onto Part 13…..

Part 13 of “American History for Truthdiggers.”

It was a time of great change. And, as always, a picture—or in this case a painting—is worth a thousand words. In the portrait above, Patrick Lyon of Philadelphia is depicted as a blacksmith hard at work at the forge. He wears an apron and a shirt that shows his muscular forearms. This portrait was commissioned by Lyon himself, and it depicts a man proud of his labor, toil and strength. Here was a working man—blue-collar chic!

This is stranger than it may appear to modern eyes. After all, in the 18th and early 19th centuries, men who could afford to commission such paintings usually preferred to be portrayed in formal dress, adorned in powdered wig and leggings and surrounded by the expensive objects that implied an aristocratic status. Something had changed.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/american-history-for-truthdiggers-birth-of-an-era-of-revolutions/

The series is approaching the time when almost everything changes…..the Jacksonian Era…..

Learn Stuff!

Class Dismissed!

A World War One ‘What If’

100 hundred years ago this month, 11th day of the 11th month at the 11th hour……hostilities ceased…..World War One was over.

Come Sunday we will celebrate the 100 year anniversary of the end of hostilities…..after millions of deaths the conflict came to an end.

From time to time I enjoy a historical ‘what if’……and I found one that sez ‘what if’ Germany had won World War One…..

In a way, this is a more interesting hypothesis than the more commonly asked question about what the world would be like if the Germans had won World War II. Several historians have noted that both world wars should really be considered a single conflict with a long armistice in the middle. If this viewpoint is valid, then the official outcome of the first phase of this conflict may have been important for reasons other than those usually cited.

As a preliminary matter, we should note that the actual outcome of the First World War was a near thing, a far nearer thing than was the outcome of World War II after 1941.  While it is true that the United States entered the war on the allied side in 1917, thus providing vast new potential sources of men and material, it is also true that Germany had knocked Russia out of the war at about the same time.  This gave the Germans access to the resources of Eastern Europe and freed their troops for deployment to the West.  The German Spring Offensive of 1918 actually succeeded in rupturing the Allied line at a point where the Allies had no significant reserves.  (At about this time, British Prime Minister Lloyd George was heard to remark, “We are going to lose this war.” He began to create a record which would shift the blame to others.)
This war turned many things around….for one it made the US a world power for the first time since its inception in the 18th century.
History is fun….especially when you try to imagine a different outcome than the one you have been taught.
Learn Stuff!
Turn The Page!

Where’s That Middle Class?

I would post on that diabolical “caravan” but it seems to have vanished off the news…..go figure……

Now that the Midterms are over and we have a new Democratic House…..there is one question I want to ask them……”whatcha ya gonna do” for the Middle Class?

How many times have you heard a reference to the “Middle Class” by your politicians?

The Middle Class use to be the poster child for capitalism and for the US.  The Middle Class expands and the economic society is healthy and progressing….

Sad to say that the Middle Class nowadays is nothing but a slogan in the same vane as “patriotism, veterans, etc”….a campaign slogan that few believe any longer…..

Like or not the “bourgeois is getting recast as the proletariat”…..interesting concept right?

The American Conservative has a view on the Middle Class that every American should read……

Everyone loves the middle class. Everyone claims to be middle-class—some to put a gloss on their sketchy escutcheons, others to dodge chastisement for their awkward riches. But in fact both the socioeconomic reality and the concept of the middle class have been turned on their heads and, at the same time, trivialized into a mere lifestyle choice.

Economically, the middle classes were once proprietors, self-employed owners of property and their own labor. Morally, they were the equivalent of “solid citizens”: decent, hard-working, law-abiding, temperate, proper, staid, virtuous, and—well, moral. The qualifications for being middle class have gotten a whole lot looser, to say the least.

The European term “middle classes” originally served to describe merchants, tradesmen, investors, and skilled craftsmen. The habitat of these classes was the walled city—the burg, bourg, or borough—hence their appellation, les bourgeois. The bourgeoisie occupied a middle ground between the nobility and the lower classes of peasants and servants.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/what-middle-class/

Wages flat….not what Trump wants the “Middle Class” to believe…..we are now divided into two distinct classes…..wealthy and worker…..as long as the corruption continues the chances of a reset are looking better and better…..

Things are changing……

“Out of the frying pan, into the fire” is an apt description of our current place in history. No matter what you think of globalization, I believe we’ll soon discover that capitalism without it is much, much worse.

No one needs to convince establishment economists, politicians and pundits that the absence of globalization and growth spells trouble. They’ve pushed globalization as the Viagra of economic growth for years. But globalization has never been popular with everyone. Capitalism’s critics recognize that it generates tremendous wealth and power for a tiny fraction of the Earth’s seven billion people, makes room for some in the middle class, but keeps most of humanity destitute and desperate, while trashing the planet and jeopardizing human survival for generations to come.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/01/catabolism-capitalisms-frightening-future/

The Middle Class is disappearing……what will the new “House” do to change that?

A Mass Shooting–Again!

Yes Irene we have had yet another mass shooting in less than a week…..I did not write about it as it was happening because I wanted to see the news reports…..BTW a mass shooting has 4 or more victims (so far there have been over 300 mass shootings in the US in 2018)…….

This time the shooting was in California…….

At least 13 people are dead after a gunman opened fire inside a crowded dance bar in Thousand Oaks, California, Wednesday night, says Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean, per the AP. The fatalities include one deputy; the gunman also is among the dead. A witness tells the Los Angeles Times that at least 30 shots were fired after a gunman entered the Borderline Bar & Grill, a country-themed bar that was holding a college night, around 11:20pm. Ventura County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Garo Kuredjian told reporters that the gunman was still firing when police arrived at the bar.

Witnesses say the gunman fired shots from a handgun after entering the crowded bar, threw some smoke grenades, then started firing again. Witness John Hedge says he saw a security guard get shot. “The gunman was throwing smoke grenades all over the place,” he tells KABC. “I saw him point to the back of the cash register … and he just kept firing. I ran out the front door,” he says. The Los Angeles Times reports that friends of those who were inside the venue say the crowd included survivors of last year’s Las Vegas mass shooting. (Read more mass shootings stories.)

Okay we have had the traditional “thoughts and prayers”….all of which is a fart in the wind.

Of course I heard another mental midget say that if there were good guys with guns this would not have happened……to that traditional line I can call bullshit in the first order.

Why?  Like so many other shootings a policeman was shot and killed…..if a pro got killed I do not think a bunch of goddamn amateurs with guns were gonna make a difference other than killing more innocent people.

Yet another sad chapter in the book of violent deaths in the US….the ever expanding book.

This situation use to bring horror to the souls of Americans….now we shrug it off as just another event in the news….No Big Deal!

This is sad on so many levels….sad that we keep experiencing these types of attacks…..sad that the society just shrugs and moves on to the next “tragedy”…….and sad that our law makers are impotent to keep the population safe…..and sad that this nation cares not.

Like I said…..SAD!

Where Oh Where Did Russia-Gate Go?

I do enjoy international relations and it has been sadly missing while people thumped their chest about the vote….and now before the conversation turns to 2020 I would like to talk about other “stuff”…….

The election is over and a distant story has been replaced with who voted for who and why….does anyone out there remember the whole Russia-gate thingy?

Well to make a bunch of Trump supporters happy it has been all but forgotten…..

After all the screaming headlines and hysterical talk of “treason,” the Russia-gate hoax was almost entirely absent from the midterms. One would think that the other party being in the hands of a ruthless foreign dictator who has it in for America would be a major campaign issue – that is, if the Democrats actually believed their own propaganda. However, we’ve seen neither hide nor hair of Putin in all those campaign ads, or at least hardly a glance: that’s because Russia-gate has always been a fraud, a setup, and really a criminal conspiracy to take down a sitting US President on the basis of a gigantic lie.

As the promulgators of that lie are exposed – the Deep State amalgam that includes foreign intelligence agencies as well as Trump’s domestic opponents – Democrats are backing away from what has suddenly become, for them, a very messy narrative. For what has happened is that the narrative has turned on them, and now implicates them in a massive scheme to embroil the Trump campaign in a web of foreign influencers.

https://original.antiwar.com/justin/2018/11/04/whatever-happened-to-the-russia-gate-scandal/

Now that the election has been decided will the Russia thingy come around again?

I’m guessing yes it will….especially since Our Dear Supreme Leader has fired Sessions…..