This creating a religion thing is a cinch. I’m minting saints right and left. The miracles are happening daily.

As are the voices in my head that keep getting stronger and stronger.

Old age is a piece of cake.

[Editors Note: Reading this post will be enhanced immensely if you click here and listen to Mr. Pop as you enjoy the article.]

I’ve been called a bitch so many times during my lifetime I’ve actually developed many canine tendencies. I poop whenever I want, stick my snout in the anonymous crotches of passerbys, and spend the afternoons chasing the shiny hubcaps of speeding vehicles on Laguna Street. Sadly, I lost the ability to lick my own genitals decades ago.

For purposes of today’s post I’d like to concentrate on my preternatural ability to smell fear in humans. It’s all over Congressional Democrats.

They lack authenticity with voters because they are always working overtime to shun their past.

Republicans are proud to be xenophobic racists. Their swelling pride is directly proportionate to their bulging bank accounts. Cheating in their personal lives and illegally disenfranchising voters is all part of winning the election.

They love their bible, especially when it’s held upside down by their President the first time he ever touches one. And they get away with all this venal hypocrisy because, gawddamnit, they worship that fuckin’ flag.

On the other side of the aisle their pet Pekinese know to keep their place. If Democrats yip too much they’re smacked in the nose by Republican media moguls.

They’ve especially been trained not to own the issues of: Social Security; Worker’s Rights; Civil Rights; Medicare; Women’s Rights; Voting Rights; stopping the folly of Viet Nam; Tax Fairness; Gay Rights; or Income Equality. The mistakes of these extreme ideas that germinated in the leftist portion of their party must never be repeated.

I watched Senator Stabenow’s analysis of the congressional losses Democrats sustained this election. She blames the liberal moniker that the party just can’t shed.

It left me frothing at the mouth.

Chuck Schumer needs to grow a set and go all out in Georgia. Spend a billion dollars if he has to but win both seats.

That charming testicular challenge aside, the message to the color you peach and black, color me taken aback state is: Mitch is Trump. He places a partisan, personal agenda ahead of the people of this country. Which is a misstatement of sorts because it implies citizens come in second. They are nonexistent in the McConnell/Trump way of thinking.

Biden was elected to solve the Trump Virus pandemic. Mitch McConnell controls the Senate if he wins one of the two Georgia seats. It will make it infinitely more difficult for the President-Elect to succeed. Thousands will die in Mitch’s pursuit of turning Biden into a failure.

Democrats need look no further for strategy than the Trump/McConnell behavior since the election. They continue to act like rules don’t apply to them. They disregard civility, have a qualified love for the Constitution (only when it benefits them), and will do anything legal or illegal to win.

The President’s incomprehensible rants and raves only reinforce this message. With every appearance Trump makes, every tweet he tweeters, it’s consistent with what the Democratic ads should be saying. It’s free air time for the donkeys.

Schumer is a symbol of the Democrats’ failed tactics since Ronald Reagan. They were so shell shocked by that defeat they turned themselves into a Republican-Lite party. They remain apologists who are defined by their opposition.

Chuck is proud to be Mitch’s whipping boy, happy to have a Senate seat. McConnell’s agenda favors Wall Street which, conincidentally, happens to be Shumer’s constituency too. He just can’t acknowledge it. If the past is any guide, Schumer will do just enough to come in a close second in Georgia.

Since last week there has been this bogus story that Democrats lost seats in the House because of the progressive movement. Based on what? Skewed polling commissioned by the Committee Chairs?

The news has all the markings of an insider hit job: self-preservationist politicians feeding self-preservationist beltway journalists an approved line of thinking. Together they will repeat it over and over until it’s accepted as fact. It’s how they mislead the public, maintain the status quo and save their jobs.

When Congressman Yoho made his half-assed apology on the House floor, Majority Leader Hoyer papered over the incident by saying “accepted, let’s move on.” Way to phone it in, Stenny.  Ocasia-Cortez’s response was a wakeup call of quite a different sort.

Going forward Democrats have to decide whether it’s good enough to have leadership whose sole qualification is they’ve survived by mastering bureaucratic games their entire careers. Or if they’d prefer someone who. at the drop of a hat, is able to articulate intelligent ideas that inspire millions. Tough choice.

There are two party infrastructures that need to be revamped.

I drove the Chevy to Daniel Levy and found there was hope.

The racist, misogynistic, homophobic, anti-intellectual, larcenous, felonious, mendacious, duplicitous, traitor witch with debilitating bone spurs is dead.

Of course the good ol’ boys still baffle with choices like McConnell and Graham.. Who votes for these losers? Except for disgruntled state-paid hackers in Belarus.

Whenever the South controls power in this country it goes to hell in a hand basket. Those eras would be roughly the half centuries between the Revolutionary and Civil Wars and the one between Barry Goldwater and the Biden Liberation.  It’s not the heat down there it’s the stupidity.

The antique dealer in me (I’ve had a busy night) wants to tour the confederacy and pick up every discredited bronze statue I can find. I’ll lock them up in a warehouse for a couple of years and wait for their camp value to mature. Then I’ll have them painted neon pastels to decorate a hip new club called Picketts.

The club will be named, of course, for one of the most foolhardy charges in the history of warfare by the Confederates at Gettysburg. The ancestors today’s southern voters proudly call their own.

There’s a comfort in thinking of these former bronze icons to southern racism being turned into a meaningless, but colorful, backdrop for revelers seeking homosexual congress.

The dream shall never die.

If nothing else, 2020 has laid the foundation for a new religion. I’ve already identified two icons who are open to being beseeched. If this vote count goes on much longer I’m sure I can come up with a dozen more.

Who we’ll be praying to are feminized versions of superhero saints. So far I’ve got Faint Jaminina and Faint Rudinella (Jamie and Rudy for short). The imagery is there, still working on story lines, acts of penance, lists of followers, miracles, etc. In order to admit modern persona such as Rudy, the vow of poverty requirement has been dropped.

If any of my Jewish or Evangelical friends are reading this (I know I have the former, not so sure about the latter), I’m in desperate need of contacts in the Holy Land. Specifically, goat (or sheep) herders living in caves. I have some parchment scrolls I need planted.

Their acts are not likely to pay dividends in our lifetimes. But are bound to affect civilization for millennia to come.

 

 

of Perpetual Flaccidity

We may soon see 2020 as the year that one spooky day turned into a multi-day festival of fear.

Like events dependent on the lunar or Jewish calendars, Hallowection Days will develop a quirky coexistence with western logic. They will run from Halloween, incorporate All Saints Day then on to Election Day–the three scariest days of the year.

Because elections are the first Tuesday in November it means the holiday will vary from two to eight days depending on the calendar. The Vatican is working on a special new Electo-Mass 2000 for the rare years the election and All Saints coincide.

Democrats will argue that all days, no matter what the length of time, should be considered holidays. Republicans, with their one good ear on the graves of the founding fathers and their hands in the till, will strictly construct October 31st as the only day off. Justice Amy Conan-the-Barbarian may have the deciding vote on this one.

We are haunted by the ghost of Hillary’s inevitably. In 2016 when I lived in Palm Springs, election day was spent like all other days: in isolation with my air conditioning, my pool and no media. That evening I walked to the grocery store. The second I entered Ralph (I mean Ralphs) I sensed a stillness in the air laden with doom. Words were not necessary. 

Absent something astounding coming from the Great Silent Minority (i.e., Putin’s gaggle of hackers at Chernobyl A&M), there’s no way Biden can lose. Never has a deck been so completely stacked in someone’s favor.

If Biden does lose, it would mean we were not told the entire story. That’s hard to imagine with today’s skilled reporters.

Any vaudevillian (the profession formerly known as newscasters) will say don’t mess with a good story line. Infotainment experts from Anderson Cooper to Sean Hannity know to prop up the narrative when it’s needed to keep it going. Especially when Republicans are losing.

They report cries of “Fire Fauci!” in a crowd as a spontaneous outburst, the voices of the people striving to be heard. Not as the pre-paid sounds of political operatives planted to feed Agent Orange his cues. As Bob Woodward has taught us, save these nuggets for the best seller six months later.

Finally (thank god this thing is almost over so I can go back to writing about home decoration and how good I used to look), Cooper and Hannity will also point out there’s no ad revenue for their companies in races that don’t appear competitive. 

 

The Republican Party was a natural fit for the CIA. They share the same raison d’être: wealth preservation and expansion.

They also share the same aversion: the state should never play a role in the lives of individual citizens. Everyone must fend for themselves.

Unless, of course, you’re a citizen who has money. In that case the state will bend over backwards to help you make more money.

With that preamble, here is a brief survey of the American Presidency during the Circus Maximus era.

Graduated from the Naval Academy, served in Second World War, studied Nuclear Physics.

There was open hostility and distrust between Democrats in the Congress and the White House. Pursuing a coordinated agenda was impossible during the Carter Administration. This lack of cooperation between the opposite ends of Pennsylvania Avenue has been a problem for Democrats ever since.

Reagan graduated from Eureka College in Illinois. Not exactly Ivy League. Eureka belonged to the Myrtle Melange, a collection of sleepy, barely accredited former teachers or Christian colleges.

The 1980s saw the launch of the corporations uber alles era that we still live in today. And the bigger, more international the corporation the more likely they are to have dealings with the intelligence community.

His administration chipped away at antitrust and securities regulations as well as those pesky rules that “prevented companies from doing business.” Like consumer fraud protections. It’s so much easier to make money when you can just cheat the public.

The corporately owned news media was instrumental in helping change the national dialogue. Free market and trickle down were concepts that went basically unchallenged and became the new gospel. The media also worked overtime to make the word “liberal” sound as offensive as “child molestor.” The left has still not fully recovered.

Reagan often gave the appearance of not knowing which end was up. Which is all that was expected of him.

His biggest accomplishment was converting traditional Democrats to his party. With his “propaganda film stars are war heroes too” military service and his aw shucks regular Joe (but please pass the Chateau Margaux) demeanor, Reagan wrestled blue collar workers over to the Republican side. It would be left to his successor to consolidate the Mammy Yokum crowd.

Bush was a graduate of Yale as were his father and son. About as blue blood as you can get. His father was also a Senator from Connecticutt where the school is located.

With legacy credentials like that George was placed on Yale’s experimental Predicates Only Track. It left him with an inability to speak in complete sentences. Didn’t elaborate. No logical backup. Wouldn’t be prudent. Silver foot in his mouth.

His career was built on family connections and, in one four year period in the 1970’s, he moved from Ambassador to the UN to Chairman of the Republican Party to Special Emissary to China to Director of the CIA. A brilliant resume padder, he was never drug tested for meth.

To firm up and form a southern base into the new GOP voting bock, this east coast patrician turned on the charm for the in-bred good ol’ boys. He would talk barbecue and SEC football In his topsiders and seersucker suits. He also made a special effort to court the emerging Country Music scene.

One of the more perverse aspects of his musical courtship was Loretta Lynn. She bragged more than once she had direct dial access to George and his handsome wife Barbara. Loretta said she called them whenever she felt like it.

One can just see the look of horror on Bab’s face receiving an “important” call from Miss Lynn at 10:00 PM. Somehow it’s hard to reconcile Trouble on the Line with summers in Kennebunkport.

Graduated from Georgetown University, was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University for a year, then graduated from Yale Law. He was elected Governor of Arkansas and served for eleven years.

He had a little success working with Democrats in Congress. But it was nothing like the laser focus on party agenda that Republican White Houses and Congresses have achieved in the modern era.

The press never really acknowledged Clinton’s intelligence or his brilliant oratory. They were too consumed with Miss Monica saluting the Commander in Chief’s flagpole.

Yale graduate, barely. Achieved fame by being Dick Cheney’s lap dog for eight years. “I’ll be out on my bike if you need me for a photo op Uncle Dick!”

“Yeah, whatever.”

W’s Daddy oversaw the Iron Curtain’s demise. Communism had been the excuse for our military build-up but having nations as our enemies  was a drawback. What was needed was a less tangible adversary.

Enter Terrorism. It exists through a confusing network of shadowy state sponsorships and private wealth. With the exception of Borat, no one really understands the Middle East.

Terrorism is amorphous. How will we ever know we’ve stopped it if we can’t identify who it is? It’s the perfect bogey man to scare people. Which, in turn, becomes the foundation for selling more weapons.

At the end of their second term, Cheney-Bush invented a new way to transfer wealth: the panic payout. The financial crisis of 2008 was caused by the recklessness of the financial services and real estate industries. The immense losses threatened to drag every sector of the economy into a Depression. Congress approved a $500 billion bailout to prevent that. Those funds were supposedly all paid back. 

2008 was the prototype for this year’s much larger pandemic payday. Estimates of costs this time are between 3 and 6 trillion. As a bonus to the one percent, the payback requirement on this round is vague and may be nonexistent. Especially since records are lax on who received the payments and the amount they were given.

When you think about welfare cheats costing us $90 billion a year, thank god there was 6 trillion left over to save Wall Street.

 

Graduated from Columbia University and University of Chicago Law School.

On the day of his inauguration, Senator Feinstein chaired the hosting committee. She and her husband Richard Blum were like teenage kids at the mall.  Manned with cell phones throughout the ceremony, they were in everyone’s face on the podium. Their photo hound behavior lacked a certain decorum..

Feinstein was just as tacky months later when the health care debate began. A reporter broadly outlined Obama’s plan in an interview. She  responded with something like “I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing, he’s got to come through us first.” So blunt, so rude, so confrontational. Working with “friends” like her makes his accomplishment that much greater.

Another Democratic friend was Senator Evan Bayh. As the vote approached he remained undecided.

Chris Matthews spent a week on MSNBC analyzing his position. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were about his struggling conscience, the desire to appease moderates. Then on Thursday Matthews let slip that Bayh’s wife worked for the health care industry and was compensated with a couple of million dollars the previous few years.

Funny how a little tidbit like that can deflate the Hamlet thing.

 

Blah blah blah. Blather blather blather. What more could possibly be said here. I’ve been drained of all contempt.