We'll be back! or Are You Syrias?

So the current uproar is over the proposed removal of US troops from Syria and perhaps Afghanistan too. Both sides are all a tither about it and the Liarberterians are all "WAHOO!!! GOOD START!" Whereas I personally lean towards that attitude myself, I am greatly amused by all the hullabaloo over it? Why, do you ask? (Doesn't matter if you actually asked because I am gonna tell you anyway. I am kind of mean that way.) Simple, because even if we pull out every single trooper/trooperette from everywhere in the ME, it won't last.

Anyone who actually believes that we have massive amounts of troops and materials stationed in Sand Central Station (see what I did there?) out of some sense of helping keep peace in the globe (Or disk depending on your personal beliefs) or out of some grand fear that these small nations (Seriously, most of the ME could fit inside of Texas and still have room left over for England.) might someday overwhelm us with their massive forces prolly owns at least one bridge in either Brooklyn or California. We have continuously invaded, bombed, shot and hockey pucked the ME for as long as we have for one reason, resources.

Whether its oil or rare metals or Wodan knows what else, we have been “intervening” in the Middle East for a very long time. We have installed more puppets than Jim Henson and could finance Universal Health care for...well the Universe with all of the money we have spent on these wasted wars. We have invaded, “liberated” and pulled out over and over again but after occasional and very brief periods, we just rushed back in and did it all over again. Really doesn't matter who has been in charge or which party was running things, somehow we always find an excuse to go back. I mean, look at Obama. He was hailed as a peaceful man and promised to get us out of the ME conflicts, but he continued and increased old W's drone strike program and kept troops on the ground.

The problem the “Get our troops out of there” groups are facing is simple. The ME has something we want and even if we don't need that something right now, we MIGHT need it in sometime in the future, so our troops WILL be going back prolly sooner than later in the latest Enduring Liberating Free Somethingornother. (ELFS in military lingo.) So IF Trump does pull troops out and bring them home, enjoy the respite, but don't really count on it lasting longer than a Big Mac on his desk.

Child Prostitution by any other name...or Sauce for gooses

So I have seen no less than 5 of my "friends" here posting pieces about an 11 or 12-year-old Drag Queen who "stripped for pedophiles at a Gay club for money." (Taken verbatim from one of the "news stories" posted.) The wording of the best of the pieces was so ridiculously biased that it hurt my headparts just to read it and the worst offender (which the quote is taken from) was about as anti-LGBT as you can get.

Now don't get me wrong, I am a little disturbed by a child performing burlesque in front of adults, but you folks are just frothing at the mouth disturbed. But, believe it or not, your posting of inaccurate and in two cases outright lies (Chaz Carsten, you don't count. Your history of trying to honk people off and make the yell precedes you.) is not why I am writing this little missive. No dear reader, I am writing this because of the SHEER HYPOCRISY of some of you.

The lady who posted the article that the quote is from is my perfect example. If you go to her page and scroll far enough, you will find lots and lots of posts featuring clips from such shows as "Toddlers and Tiaras" and "Dance Moms" where "loving parents" essentially prostitute out their underage children in hopes of fame and fortune. If you check YouTube, you can find loads of videoes showing little girls ranging from ages 4 to 12 parading around in brief outfits and acting in a very sexualized way towards judges and cameras. Hells the one of the 6-year-old dressed up as Madonna "singing" Like a Virgin made ME blush.

The hypocrisy in this is mind-blowing. Not only is this sort of child prostitution accepted as normal, but it is actually encouraged. So if you are okay with a 6-year-old little girl prancing around the stage in a tiny two-piece bumping and grinding for the judges but you are offended when an 11-year-old does the same thing for other adults, then congratulations, you are a hypocrite. Now eagerly await all of the people trying to explain how its "different" and how I am "wrong."

End of Rant

Us against Them only benefits Those people or This blog will prolly bomb.

Whenever a crime or atrocity occurs, the knee-jerk reaction of all sides is almost always to blame everyone who fits into the same group as the person committing the crime. A madman who also happens to be a Liberal walks into a school and kills kids and immediately Conservatives scream about how evil all Liberals are. A Nutjob who happens to be a Conservative shoots up a Planned Parenthood or attacks a pizza place and POOF Liberals are all over how bad Conservatives are. Any time someone does something bad, people will do this. It is like there is this almost pathological mindset that forces these people into blaming the whole for the actions of the one. Conversely though, when one of their own does the same thing, they immediately state that all of them aren't like that.

See, here is the thing. (No I won't put it away. It's my thing and I can wave it around if I want to. See? WAVE! WAVE!) As a general rule (There are a few exceptions historically speaking) “People” don't commit crimes. All of the Liberals in the country didn't snatch up a gun and walk into the school to shoot people. All of the Conservatives didn't try to shoot up a pizza joint because they believed it was the headquarters of a Pedophile ring. In the majority of these cases, it was a person with a tenuous grip on reality who committed these crimes and THEY are the only ones who should be blamed for them.

Take the most recent instance of this sort of thing. Bombs are being mailed to various Democratic/Liberal figures. So far none of them have done any harm but at least a half dozen have been found so far. Immediately, both sides are pointing fingers at the other and saying it is some sort of conspiracy to make the opposing side look bad. Damnocrats are saying this is a deliberate attack by the Cantservatives to try and frighten them before the elections. Cantservatives are saying this is a conspiracy by Damnocrats to make them look bad and sway people away before the election.

Now I have no idea which side is right. This might well be an attempt to make the Republican party look bad to hurt them during the election. It might also be an attempt to scare off Democratic voters and supporters for the same reason. Heck, it might just be Bomb Season and no one mentioned it. The only thing I am moderately certain of is that if and when the actual identities of the bomber/s comes out, they won't be part of some grand, nationwide conspiracy funded by George Soros or the Penis brothers. (I am sorry but ever since I heard how their name is pronounced, I have neither been able to type or say it with a straight face. Of course, I still giggle when someone pronounces Uranus.) If the truth comes out, I bet all of Ben Baker's best jerky and any donuts that John McDuffie has that he/she/it are more than a little disturbed with few friends and possibly living in their parent's basement. (Unless they are actually from Florida as some reports are suggesting. Not a lot of basements down there.)

What we need to do is stop blaming the Whole for the actions of the few and start focusing on the people actually committing these crimes. The fact that a school shooter might have been a Liberal Democrat is just one small factor into why they commit the crime. The fact that some old White dude that shot up Planned Parenthood happened to be a Conservative Republican is much less important than exactly what mental illness drove him to do it. Once we stop trying to blame everyone we dislike for the actions of individuals, we might just make progress into being a better nation.

End of Rant

Crunch time, People or "It's the End of the World and We know it."

So I have really been losing pretty much all hope for this country for well over a decade. Illegal wars disguised as righteous fury in multiple countries ground down my hopes. Terrorism in the form of drone strikes and bombs that killed 1000s of innocent civilians dashed my dreams on the rocks of reality. Blatant and poorly disguised racism and hatred suddenly becoming the norm set fire to the bloody corpse. Nothing I saw really gave me much hope for the future of America. I have pretty much reached the point where I am ready for it all to go to Hell, burn down so maybe it can be rebuilt again with fewer mistakes. I have pretty much decided that this mid term election will be the tipping point where I either reserve some blind and foolish hope that people actually care or just say EFF it and break out the marshmallows.

“Why this mid term election,” my earnest reader may ask (HI STAN!)? Why no the upcoming 2020 election? The answer is simple. See right now EVERYONE is pissed off. The Right is pissed off at the Left, The Left is pissed off at the Right. Moderates are pissed off at everyone. Damnocrats are screaming, “IF WE DON'T RETAKE THE HOUSE AND SENATE, WE'RE ALL DOOMED!” Reboobicans are screaming, “IF THE DAMNOCRATS RETAKE THE HOUSE AND SENATE, WE ARE ALL DOOMED!” Moderates are...well Moderates are worried if someone doesn't refill their coffee they are doomed. The important thing to take from this is that both sides are absolutely convinced that if “The Good Guys” don't get up off their asses and vote in November, then “The Bad Guys” will gain/keep absolute power and totally destroy the country.

So if EVERYONE on both sides is convinced and riled up about their precious MERRICA! Being destroyed by “those people,” then come that happy day in November everyone in the US capable of voting (Don't worry the dead folks have people voting for them.) should get up off their plastic covered couches and take the hour or so needed to cast their votes. I mean, if y'all are really convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that this might well be the end of “your” way of life, it only makes sense that (Loving America the way you do) you'd do your civic duty (Heh I said civic) and try to stop it from happening.

When the Great Orange Dope got elected, Damnocrats spent months screaming that he would destroy America and that he had to be stopped. Reboobicans spent months screaming that he was the only hope America had. (I spent months screaming for fresh jerky, but that is another story.) Still, when election day came, voter turn out was truly abysmal. Admittedly there was a moderately higher turnout in the Angry and Unreasonable Old White People bracket (AUOWP for short), but for the most part what should have been a monumental turnout was more like the turnout for Donnie Dumpsterfire's Inauguration Day. (Sorry couldn't resist.) People proved that, despite all of the rage and screaming, they really just didn't give a fugg.

So now, we have had twoish years of Hair Furrer and his cronies being in charge. Some people think he is destroying the country and dragging us all down with him. Others think that he is the second coming of Anita Bryant (What? She REALLY liked Orange stuff!) and will save the world. We have had two years of both sides stoking the fires of hate and volumes of unreasoning diatribe preaching doomsday if THEY aren't defeated in the Mid Terms. If you believe Social Media and other sources, the whole country is riled up and ready to do something. (Cannot believe I just said “believe Social Media” with a straight face. Meh, blame the drugs.)

So if it is true that the Dims and the Boobs are both honked off and ready to do something, then that means the voter turnout this November should be truly EPIC. It means that we won't see voter participation levels since Tennessee voted to make Whiskey the national bird. If all of y'all are truly worried about the fate of the nation, then that means we should see 60%, 70% or even 80% voter participation and mean on all sides Damnocrat, Reboobican, Liarbertarian, Mooderate, Martian. If, however, all I see are the same pathetic numbers we have seen in the past, then it will tell me all I need to know and will pretty much drain the life out of any real hope I have for America.

It is simple. No matter what your political beliefs are, vote. No matter what direction you think the country should be headed, vote. Even if you don't like the candidates, vote. (Write in your own, vote for the Green Party, make some name up, hell vote for Mickey Mouse) Voting is both a right and a privilege that a lot of good people laid down their lives for you to have. It is your (albeit limited) chance to have some say in just how the government is going to screw you over and whether or not they will use lotion when they do it. Prove to me that the outrage is real and not something for show. I will vote this November just like I have voted in every Local, State and National election that has happened ever since I turned 18.   

If you ain't voting, then stop whining or Wow people are still paying me for doing this.

Before I begin this little rant, let me give you some brief history about myself. I am an author with 4 books to my credit. I am also a wee bit of an asshole. (Seriously, if the name of the blog didn't tell you that then reading that sentence prolly didn't help.) I am a Moderate Independent when it comes to politics with admittedly Liberal tendencies. (Dungeons and Dragons reference, get your grandparents to explain it to you.) I have been writing professionally since I was 16 years old. My first paid piece was a short OP-ED piece in the GRIT (Yes it was an actual thing.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grit_(newspaper)) entitled “If you don't vote don't complain.” It earned me the grand total of $35.00 which was a hefty amount to a 16 year old kid in Rural Alabama. Finding out that people would actually pay me for the weird thoughts that rampaged through my headparts pretty much sealed my fate and I have been writing ever since. Anyways, enough history. Onward and Downwards!

So I am seeing a whole lot of “VOTE RED!” and “VOTE BLUE!” and “VOTE THOSE LOSERS OUT!” More so than any other time that I can remember. (Keep in mind, I am currently on narcotics so my long term memory is kind of shot.) Everyone and their aardvark are screaming at the top of their lungs for THIER side to get out and kick the other side out of the government. Each side is doing their best to make the other side seem like the second coming of Lucifer D. Devil and their own side to be one step away from God. The general cry is “If THEY are allowed to Keep/Seize power then we are all DOOMED!”

Like I mentioned earlier, I am a Moderate and an Independent. In the past I have voted both Republican and Democrat for local, state and national elections. I tend to focus on which candidates are right for the job not which party they belong to. The best thing about this is that it pretty much gives me free reign to smack down both sides whenever I feel like it which I often do. Readers of my blog and followers on Twitter have seen me rage against Damnocrats and Reboobicans over and over. So as a Moderate Independent Uncommon Tater, let me say this. Forget “Vote Blue!” Forget “Vote Red!” Just get EFF out there and freaking VOTE!

Here is my thoughtifying on that rather loud sentence. I am kind of easy and prolly a little bit gullible so I believe that no matter what happens that everything will work out in the end. Sure, things may suck for awhile. Sure we may need to rebuild afterwards, but no matter who is in charge we will survive. So, having said that, GET OUT THERE AND VOTE! Vote Damnocrat, vote Reboobican, Vote Liarberterain! (Still working on a good insult for that one. Any ideas? Suggestions?) Vote Red! Vote Blue! Vote Plaid! Vote Rainbow! Just get the EFF out of your chairs and vote!

We are a Democracy (Ok yeah technically we aren't, but moving on...) which means ideally that the governments we elect are representative of the wishes of the people. If the “People” want to elect a Trans-Species One eyed one horned flying purple people eater (You have heard that song, right? If no, SHAME!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx47qrH1GRs) I am a pretty easy going dude so I will survive no matter what. (Being straight White and Christian doesn't hurt my chances either.) I am okay with a Conservative Government or a Liberal one or a combination thereof as long as it is voted in by a majority of Americans because (at least in theory) if say 89% of all eligible Americans vote, then the type of government you get is the one that almost everyone approves of.

Come November and come 2020, get out and vote. Vote for whomever you feel will be least likely to EFF us over. (Come on, they're politicians, no one can really expect them to actually represent us.) I am sick and tired of everyone whining and kvetching about how bad our government is or how evil the party running it is because the majority of y'all don't even bother to get up off your lazy butts and vote. Like my long ago first paid piece said, “If you don't vote. Don't complain.”

Tating while impaired or Gee golly, those pink lizards in tap shoes are so CUTE!

So before I start this little tate, I feel I should fill in all of my readers who don't follow me on Facebook. (If you don't actually follow me then SHAME ON YOU!!!!) If I don't, what follows will prolly make even less sense than most of my blogs.

So yesterday morning, I was awakened from my slumber by a twenty foot tall lumberjack pounding the left side of my face with a fifty pound sledgehammer. (Don't ask why a Lumberjack was using a hammer instead of an ax, you'll just confuse me.) Like any true red blooded macho American male, I cried like a little baby and called my wife for help. Somehow, even though she was literally in another state (Wait, does DC count as another state? That one always confused me.) she manages, at 0800 hours, to find me a dentist that will see me immediately AND even manages to arrange payment over the phone since I had no funds.

When I get to the dentist (Ever tried riding a motorcycle with a blinding toothache? It is not nearly as much fun as it sounds.) they check me out and determine that I have a MASSIVE infection in one of my teeth and it had spread to two other teeth that had shattered long long ago when they first came in. (Both were wisdom teeth btw. More on that in a second.) So these wonderful people (They are now our new dentists because they are so awesome!), arrange for me to see an oral surgeon immediately (Keep in mind it is still like 0830 hours). Thanks to my amazing wife and Mother in law, we manage to find the funds to pay for the surgery and less than half an hour later and more local anesthetic (I actually spelled that word right the first time. I am shocked.) than most people see in a lifetime, the full tooth and two shattered wisdom teeth were gone.

(Okay as promised, a quick aside. When my wisdom teeth came in, two came in perfectly with no need to see a dentist like many people suffer through. The other two, one of the left top and one on the left bottom) came in hollow for some reason and shattered immediately afterwards. This was when I was like 19 or 20. The shattered remnants never gave me any trouble so I never even thought about them much after that. That is until they became ravaged by a nasty infection. Boy did I notice them then. Anyho moving on.)

Now that we have established prezactly why I am running around the house looped on very strong narcotics. (The surgeon prescribed both a narcotic painkiller and the usual 800mg Motrin with Codeine because he cheerfully informed me that because two of the removed teeth were wisdom teeth the pain I would be feeling the first week would be more than the 800mg Motrin could handle. Day 2 and I can assure you that he was RIGHT!) As a little bit more background to myself and addictive substances, let me also tell you that I have never been the least bit attracted to mind altering substances. My only real experience with such stuff was my senior year in high school when I decided that I should get drunk at least once, just to see what the fuss was about. I got knee walking, commode hugging blind as a blind bat drunk on graduation night and woke up two days later. My friends informed me that I had attempted to swim the Conecuh River...lengthwise. I decided on that day that I did enough truly and monumentally stupid stuff (If you ask nicely, I'll do a blog with a listing of the top ten.) when I was sober and unimpaired so if I wanted to live a nice long life, I should avoid intoxication.

Okay enough background filler crap, on to the actual blog!

Ok so day two of some serious narcotic painkiller after having three infected teeth remove or SSNPKAHTITR for short. (Doesn't it just roll of the tongue?) First observation I have is simply a reinforcement of my lack of understanding of why being stoned or drunk is such an attraction to some people. Whereas I am mostly lucid, I can tell how impaired I am when I walk, talk and especially type. It takes much longer than usual for lucid thoughts to form and even longer for me to expresss them. (My friends and family may now make any appropriate or inappropriate jibes they want about me and lucidity.) I just fail to see how this sort of existence could be an attraction to anyone. Of course, while my life has been hard more often then not, I have suffered few real traumas (Besides seeing Ben nekkid that is. SHUDDER) so it may be just that I have much less to escape from.

Observation the second is more of a technical nature. Anyone who has known me for more than say 30 seconds will tell you that I am not exactly the most graceful of creatures. I am the guy who can and has tripped over someone else's shadow...from a mile away. If I had a dollar for everytime I have fallen down the stairs, I'd could afford Starbucks. The only thing that I can do fairly well and quickly is type. So imagine a schmuck who has zero balance and zero dexterity suddenly trying to go through life with a drug that completely EFFS with your body. Coming down the stairs suddenly goes from a slow process because of bad knees to a “Ok, the stairs are currently rotating clockwise at a speed of 5mph and the house is rotating counterclockwise at a speed of 9.5 km, so my upper body should lean left and my lower body should lean right for the first five steps, then reverse for the next ten process. (Spoiler, I survived coming down the stairs this morning.) Don't even ask about getting from the bottom of the stairs to my office.)

So really all this experience has done is reinforce my dislike of mind altering substances and my extreme love of my wonderful wife. I make no disparaging remarks about people who enjoy their MAS (Waves at Ben Baker) and certainly mean no ill words against anyone who is suffering from addictions to said MAS. Who knows, since I will be on the narcotics for three more days, I may come to see the attraction, but I doubt it. Still, I will continue to blog about the Tales of a Stoned Tater as I see fit and hopefully y'all will be entertained. Till tomorrow, PEACE OUT!

SNACK TIME or This rant is not about what you may think it is about.

 So let me tell you some of the things that I enjoy eating. I love hot dogs, sausages, hamburgers, steaks, chicken, turkey, fish of all kinds and various other seafoods. Most of you nodded for a few of those and some of you nodded for most if not all of them. Now let me tell you some of the foods I enjoy that you will probably NOT nod so much for. Hog jowls, pigs ears, pigs feet, chitlins (Yeah I know they are actually called Chitterlings, but nobody called them that when I was growing up and I grew up pretty much in Chitlins central.), Possum, Squirrel, snake, and Armadillo. There are more, but those are the ones you've at least had a chance of knowing. Now while I enjoy the mental image of a lot of you looking queasy and thinking about losing your lunch, I can also hear the desperate question of “WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU EAT THAT CRAP?” Whelp, the answer is both simple and mildly complicated.

Yessee, my family was so poor when I was born, church mice took up collections for us. The first house I remember living in had no running water and no electricity. Our “toilet” was a three-hole outhouse about 200 feet from the back door and our “Faucet” was a well about a hundred feet away on the opposite side of the house. Heating was accomplished by a very large fireplace in the front room of the three-room house and cooling was done by opening up the five or six windows. Even though we had a garden and Daddy worked on Mr. Lawrence's farm, food was never plentiful and the meat was especially scarce. Unless you fished, hunted or raised it yourself, you didn't have access to a lot of meat sources.

So I grew up (Well age 5ish to say 13ish) where you ate whatever the good lord or Daddy's gun provided and you didn't waste anything that was edible. If Daddy brought back a couple of possums or groundhogs, Momma skinned them, cleaned them and cooked them up for supper. If we got lucky and had a pig to slaughter, pretty much every danged part of that animal was used. Heck Momma even boiled the bones done for broth.

About the time I hit 14, Daddy got a job with the County Road Crew and actually owned and operated a small general store for a few years. (Well Momma actually ran it since he worked from 6am till about 5:30 pm 5 days a week.) So about this time, we moved to a house that actually had indoor plumbing and electricity and was able to make regular trips to the grocery store in Luverne, Alabama. A lot of the more esoteric forms of meat slowly vanished from our diet except for the rare squirrel or possum that Daddy or my brother would bring in if they went hunting on the weekends. While we were still poor, we were no longer so desperately poor that we had to eat literally anything we could get our hands on.

Ok, so that deals with why I started eating things that most people would rather starve than eat. No, I hear you, the possibly non-existent reader asking, “Why the hell are you STILL eating those nasty things?” I haven't been even remotely poor or desperate in well over half the 55 years of my life so why eat things like Jowls, Feet, and Chitterlings? (There I spelled it right, are you happy?) A wonderful lady once told me, “We ain't poor no more. We don't have to eat things like that anymore” and she is right. I don't HAVE to eat it anymore. I want to. I enjoy it. I think they are yummy.

A lot of what I hear from naysayers is a kind of negative association. They associate these foods with being poor and ridiculed. They associate it with the helpless, almost overwhelming desperation that is an almost daily part of being truly poor. They feel like if people have managed to elevate themselves out of that deep dark pit, then they should never lower themselves to eating the “trash” foods that helped sustain them.

I do understand that mentality. Growing up dirt poor can be a horribly demeaning time. Everyone, even those only marginally above you in social rank, look down on you. They see the one suit of clothes you have for school or the fact your shoes are hand me downs from your brother and need a balled up sock in the toe to stay on. Everything about you is a target for derision and hate. So why, when you finally manage to escape that, do you do anything to remind people of what you once were?

Well, in the case of the aforementioned foods, the answer is very simple. THEY TASTE FREAKING GREAT! Well, IMNSHO anyways. I like the way they taste. Sure, they are not healthy. Sure (especially up North) they can be hard to get. Yeah, people definitely look at you crazy when you are chowing down on a pickled pig's foot (feet? Foots?), but if it tastes good why give a flick what other people think? As for the not healthy part, I can promise you that a heck of a lot of you eat things that are truly unhealthy for you, but you eat/drink them anyway because you like them. Hells some of the concoctions I see whipped up at Starbucks makes hog jowls seem downright Vegan.

Let's put this in another light. Say you have spent most of your life as a solid Middle-Class family. You have enjoyed snacking on hot dogs, hamburgers and all of the staples of MC life. Suddenly, magical fairy dust is sprinkled and you are now an Upper-Class family with a nice house in the Hamptons and more money than Midas. Keeping in mind that you LOVE all of those foods from your MC life, are you suddenly going to stop eating them. Is your diet going to consist of only the finest steaks, the bestest lobsters? Are you going to stop eating the things you have loved for decades just because people are going to look at you funny?

(As a side note here, I would like to say that there is indeed a sizable slice of people who would indeed stop doing/eating all the things they love because suddenly people would condemn them and mock them, but that is the subject of another rant. Moving on...)

There are many foods from the early days that I no longer eat with turnips and collards being numbers one and two on the list. However, I no longer eat them because I despise them. There was many a moon where the only thing sitting on the kitchen table to eat were turnips and collard greens. You ate them because you didn't want to go hungry, but years and years of eating them over and over again has left me unable to even think about eating them. Hells, I am not even sure I could stomach eating that if my life literally depended on it.

However, I enjoy eating a lot of different things that I don't HAVE to eat anymore. I don't care what people think. I don't care what they say. I will continue to eat jowls, feet (foots?), chitterlings and yes even possum if I ever get a chance. My concern over your disapproval ranks right up there with my deep seated worry over meteorite strikes. Unlike when I lived pretty much at the bottom of the poverty ladder, I have to freedom to eat anything I want AND I refuse to let the views and attitudes of others tell me what I CANNOT do.

End of Rant   

Just the facts, Ma'am or "Do you kiss your Mama with that mouth?"

I'm not an Expert on....well pretty much anything. I have a whole bunch of random, mostly unimportant and trivial information stored away in the dusty processor that I call my brain. Even before the advent of the Interwebz, I would always try and find some evidence, no matter how slim of the truth of what I was saying because I was rarely 100% sure that I was right.
So, last night I was in a fairly reasonable and mostly polite comment chain about "That." (What that is is unimportant and would take too long to explain here, just accept "that" and move on, people.) I happen to know quite a bit about "That" due to my profession of choice and very politely corrected someone when they made an inaccurate claim about "That" and that is where all politeness and civility went right down the crapper.
The woman I corrected immediately called me a liar and said that she KNEW that I was wrong and that she was right. So, given the fact that I am not an Expert, I went to the Interwebz and visited the sites of actual experts...you know the ones who get paid for it...and supplied her with multiple links to both .gov and business websites. She called me a liar again and another person on the chain chipped in and said those weren't real sources.
So I, being in a somewhat reasonable mood, politely asked these two marvelous ladies to supply me with "proof" from "real sources." The second lady continued to call me names (Just as a matter of note, unless your biology is radically different than mine, it is pretty unreasonable to expect me to fit my laptop in THERE especially unfolded.) and the first lady spent five more posts accusing me of posting "fake news" before she posted her Coo Dee Grassy in the form of a blog written by a visual arts student in Idaho of all places. (Needless to say, the subject we were discussing had absolutely nothing to do with art, visual or otherwise.
Now, folks and folkettes, I can grasp if someone questions my sources. Hells, most days I question them (also my sanity but that is another story entirely) and I welcome anyone posting a rebuttal to anything I post/say/claim/mambo. However, and this may be hard for some people to understand, posting a blog from someone who is not even connected to the subject at hand is not "Proof." It does not automatically invalidate your argument but it doesn't prove you right. However, this lady proudly posted that blog and laid it down like it was the word of God handed down from on high. She then called me several more colorful names (Pretty sure rats don't have the physical capacity for that AND it sounds nasty). I shrugged mentally and moved on. A few hours later, I checked back because I got the usual "X has responded to your comment" and found that all of her comments and insults had been removed and that the site had posted a "Please review our guidelines when it comes to appropriate posts and language." The other lady commentator accused me of getting the first one banned because she had proven me wrong. I politely suggested that she got banned because of her unfortunate though colorful choices of wordage. There have been no further responses.
I don't care of you disagree with me. I don't care if you insult me. If the insults are particularly creative I may even compliment you. If they are actually ones that I have never heard before, I will gleefully steel them. I really don't even care if what you are saying is true or if you can prove it. I do care when I post at least somewhat viable evidence of what I am saying and you post pure B.S. Winning a battle of wits with me isn't that hard. Most people who know me will tell you that I wander through life mostly unarmed for such combat. However, your B.S. does not trump my possible facts and your insults definitely do not win the argument.

End of Rant.

You keep using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean or WTF?!!!!

     So all of the country and even parts of the world are arguing and yelling about the current bid for Supreme Court Justice.  Allegations of rape and sexual assault have appeared and both sides are in full damage control mode.  The Left is in full support of the accuser and defending everything she says while mocking the accused.  The Right is cheering on the accused while making the accuser out to be nothing but a lying paid shill of Georgie Soros and the Democrats.  The extremists on either side (which in all honesty is the only ones the press is giving face time to) have already judged the other side and condemned them as EVIL.  Honestly, IMNSHO, actual hard evidence could come forward tomorrow (Tape of Kavanaugh actually doing what he was accused of/Recording of Soros and Ford having tea and cackling maniacally at their evil plan) and the opposing side would refuse to believe it.  Don't believe me?  Think Republicans and Birth Certificate.
     However, this little rant isn't about that or even directly against the He did it/She did it thing going on right now.  This rant is aimed at some of the people who point out exactly why we have a Rape Culture in the US today and why victims of sexual assault both male and female will often wait for long periods of time before reporting it.  So the following clips are from the FaceBook page of one of my "friends."  (Honestly, I am not really sure when we became friends or how.)  She (note the feminine pronoun) is a Conservative and avid Trump supporter, but for the most part, has always seemed fairly reasonable.  However earlier this week, I saw a post on her page talking about the current SCOTUS debacle and it showed me exactly what the fugg is wrong with America today.  The following are direct quotes.  I removed the names, but the words are all theirs.  

"All of the allegations sicken me, it was rape, it was a touch, all of us women have touched and even groped a 100+ times in our lives, it's not something to report and fill the courts with simple human behavior"

"A victim is someone that's actually been subjected to unlawful sexual advances, not someone who has been groped."

     The first thing to keep in mind that both people posting are women.  (Well I have never met them in person, but I am making a wild guess based off of names and profile pics.)  So you have the first woman explaining how being groped or touched without permission is "simple human behavior" and how it is not something to report.  The second comes right out and states that someone groping them is not "unlawful sexual advances."  So lets focus on those two ideas for a second.
     So, I am in my fifties (None of your business how old I actually am) and have been acutely aware of women and how much I appreciate them since I was about 9.  In all of that time, I can state with 100% certainty that I have not groped anyone without their express permission.  As a guy with lots of guy friends I can also state that the overwhelming majority of them have never groped an unwilling woman (Or man for that matter).  So, despite what the first woman says and what a whole lot of Right Wingnuts seem to think, I'd say the majority of men really don't go around groping unwilling women.  So no, groping IE sexual assault is not "simple human behavior."
     To me, the response is even more disturbing and seems to be shared by a whole lot of people.  I am gonna keep this short and simple since I know a lot of you have short attention spans.  If someone is being groped against their will or fondled or rubbed up against without consent, They ARE being subjected to "Unlawful Sexual Advances."  It is really that simple.  If I have to explain it any further than that to you, then you are probably to stupid to grasp it anyway.
     Everywhere I look, I see Conservatives trying to explain away sexual assault.  I hear, "Well boys will be boys" and "it is just something you have to expect."  I see people trying to claim the woman brings it on herself by the way she acts or dresses.  Even when men are actually convicted and proven guilty of heinous sexual crimes like Brock Turner, you'll see people defending him and spreading lies about the actual victim.  I even had one "friend" say, "Women shouldn't even be allowed to accuse men of sexual assault without having concrete proof.  If they only have their word, they need to keep quiet."  Reread that sentence and think about it.
     Unlike so many people tating on this whole Kavanaugh debacle, I have actually made no judgments one way or the other.  I have given him the benefit of the doubt with a presumption of innocence until proven otherwise, but I have also listened to her with an open mind.  Unfortunately, with the circus in DC, I know that any investigation into his guilt or innocence is a joke.  I also know that Republicans will probably move forward with his confirmation even it was revealed that he sexually assaulted the Virgin Mary AND was the second shooter on the grassy knoll.  Kavanaugh may be well and truly innocent of the charged levied against him, but Trump and his Trumpettes will actually make sure that we may actually never know.  

End of Rant.

And I play my TRUMP card or Just WTF were y'all thinking?

Okie dokie, as promised in the previous blog I present to you my blog on why Donald Trump, ie the Toupee that walks like a man has done more to shake people up and make even the most secure OWD (Old White Dude/Dudette) shake in their mud stained work boots. Now before I go any further, I feel I should inform those of you who have been living in a cave or under a rock for the past few years that I am not really very fond of Donnie Dumpsterfire. One might even say, that I totally loathe the man and feel that his joke of a presidency has made the US a laughingstock and has done so much damage that it will take decades to repair it all. I feel that the whole world would be better off if we locked him up in Trump Towers China and bricked in the entire building. He is one the lowest form of disgusting, perverted life on the planet, second only perhaps to Bill Clinton or maybe that weird guy down the street that collects butterflies and wears speedos. That disclaimer out of the way, let us move forward with happy, uplifting thoughts.

Now, to me, Trump is a mental conundrum. On the surface, he would seem to be the perfect icon of the Republican party. He's old, semi-white (orangish) and wealthier than Midas before the whole golden touch thing went sour. Like a huge majority of the Republican leaders and Heartthrobs (Gingrich, Limbaugh, Jones etc) he has commited multiple counts of adultery and has actually managed to cheat on every single one of his wives with the replacement wife at least once. (If you believe his bragging in his books, it's a WHOLE LOT MORE, but we can leave that at bragging and go with the confirmed ones.) He is obnoxious, Anti-LGBT and like most Republicans, he pretends to be a good Christian. So, why you may ask (and don't worry if you didn't ask because I asked for you.) isn't he the beloved poster child of the GOP?

Wait, you the possibly fictitious reader might ask again! Didn't he run on the Republican ticket? Wasn't he elected the Republican President of the US? Doesn't he have a lot of supporters who are Republican? To which I would reply with a sad shaking of my head at the lack of understanding of these invisible speakers (I take meds, I promise!) that whereas Trump does have a fairly decent level of support, especially among the “common man,” he also has a YUGE level of opposition among the higher ranking and more powerful Republicans. Powerhouses like the Koch brothers (or as I like to call them, the Penis Brothers because of how their name sounds and the fact they are real Dic...errheads.) and other wealthy powerful GOP members directly oppose him and even though his Party controls all aspects of the government, many of his own party members either directly or indirectly oppose him. So why oh why does this seemingly perfect specimen of the Decrepit Old Party scare the crap out of the?

Well, the answer is kind of simple. Despite what both the DNC and the GOP would have you believe, both sides depend on keeping the status quo as...ermm Statusy as possible. Both sides preach that the other side is evil and that only THIER ways and beliefs can possibly save the US from the evils of whatever the other side is preaching. Both sides make all sorts of wonderful noises to attract the shy and timid voters into the voting booths, but when all is said and done, neither side really wants anything to change. Because if it changed, they'd pretty much be out of jobs and possibly homeless washing windshields on the streets to pay for their divorces. Whatever numerous faults Trump has and God knows they are more numerous than grains of sand on the beach, he has done a lot to shake up that centuries old pattern.

How, you may ask? Simple, I might reply. Donald Trump is a brash, obnoxious asshole who has no pause button between what his brain thinks and what comes out of his mouth. He speaks like a 5^th grade dropout from Brooklyn walking the streets like a punk. Diplomacy is a word as foreign to him as good hairpieces and his lies are worse than the toddler telling you he didn't eat the cookies while holding a cookie in each hand and with chocolate smeared all over his face. The most common compliment I hear about Trump is “He tells it like it is.” I can agree with that statement to some degree if telling it like it is means “Lying badly in public and then lying even more badly later on to cover it up.”

Trump is pretty much the exact opposite of what a “politician” should be and it not only upsets the proverbial apple cart, but mugs the apple cart, steals all of the apples, makes pies from the apples and sells the pies back to the guy who owned the cart. He regularly gives the rank and file of both sides major headaches because he simply cannot be directed or controlled. In the world of political firearms, Trump is a blunderbuss. You can't really aim it so all you can do is point it in a very general direction and pray it doesn't explode on you before hitting your target. Good or bad, right or wrong, cake or cookie, this is why Trump has pretty much wrecked the GOP and driven the DNC nuts.

An online friend said after my last blog (Waves at John McDuffie) that the only way things would get better is if we manage to elect a legit OWD (Old White Dude) in 2020. He imagines that only a return to the status quo of the past will fix things. I personally feel we need the exact opposite. Electing a Black Dude shook things up. Electing a Black Dude again really shook things up. Electing a OWD that doesn't follow the OWD rules kept things shaking. That is why I feel like we should really shake things up in 2020. So I am seeking a Openly Transsexual Lesbian Asian Muslim Polygamist to run for the Utilitarian Party in 2020. Lets make America weird again!

Change Change this form of man Or Yup, that's scary

I have been labeled a Liberal and a Conservative by different people over the years. I've also been called a Troll and an Anarchist. In truth, people keep trying to slap some label on me to make me fit into their world but really when it all comes down to it I'm just an asshole. I say what I think and what I feel with very few buffers between where my brain starts and my mouth finishes. This tends to really honk a lot of people off and amuse an even larger number of people. I am perfectly okay with either outcome.

So ever since the Toupee that walks like a man was elected to be POTUS, I have seen a lot of “Never before in the history of history has a President and his family been subjected to (Insert your favorite horror here).” Having lived through the 8 years of Obama's regime, I personally find that statement extremely amusing and often wonder if people are stupid or simply suffering from some serious Dementia that effects their memories. However, the cries of outrage from Trumpservatives does have some minor echoes of reality in them, just not in the way they like to think. Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for about 10 years ago, please.

Now, in America's long and somewhat checkered history, one thing has pretty much remained a constant. No matter who was elected to be POTUS, they all had a couple of things in common. That's right, in the 45 different regime changes America has undergone, with two exceptions (Maybe three, just because I have a degree in history doesn't mean I actually know anything about it) these folks were all A. White and 2. Old. Okay, old is a relative term. They were well on their way to middle age even if they hadn't made it there yet.

So imagine it, in almost 250 years of existence, Americans almost always had an Old White Dude running things. One time, we had a young White Catholic dude running things and that upset some folks so much, he got killed. Still, even with the YWCD in charge, things were usually kind of civil. Sure we got snarky at times and even ugly a few more times, but for the most part, things went kind of smoothly. We almost never saw the level of hatred and vitriol that we have seen over the past 10 years. So what happened to change this?

Simple, the Status Quo got destroyed. Not just a little, but utterly and completely to the point of instilling mass panic, people hiding under beds and dogs sleeping with cats. (Well okay, maybe not the last one.) Note, what I am about to say it not meant to imply racism or even intolerance. It is just meant to show my point. The one true indicator that to most people's minds kept this country on a somewhat straight path was destroyed in one fell swoop. We elected a Black Man.

Ahh, I can hear the cries of outrage now. One side is saying, “We aren't racist! We didn't care if he was Black! He was just the Anti-Christ who invaded from Africa to make us all Gay Muslims!” The other side is saying, “Electing a Black Man was the first real sign that this country was moving away from the Dark Ages and into the Utopian Socialist Paradise that it was meant to be!” Well just calm down! This little rant has ZERO to do with racism and more to the fact that Americans are sticks in the mud who despise change. (That's better than being racist...right?)

So here is what happened. Election #1 occurs and a somewhat youngish Liberalish Black...ish man runs for the presidency! After over two centuries of Old White Dudes running (Ok Jesse Jackson did run that one time, but no one took him seriously), suddenly SOMETHING NEW happens. People on both sides get shook up and that is when the panic starts. Then HE ACTUALLY MANAGES TO GET ELECTED! That is when pretty much everyone hits DefCon1. Supporters of this radical new norm pull out all the stops defending him and opponents pretty much do the same thing.

So for the 4 years of the first round, all hell breaks loose because all of the “rules” both Liberals and Conservatives have lived by since the beginning are rendered null and void. Lies, insult, and threats previously considered improper and wrong are flung over and over again. Defensive lies and a laundry list of excuses are fired back. Suddenly our nice quiet lives were in the midst of an all-out battle of B.S. and quite simply, the majority of Americans didn't know how to deal with it so they just monkey piled on the side that seemed closest to the way they felt and hung on for dear life.

Towards the last half of the 1^st 4 years, things had actually started to quiet down a bit. The Right was steady in it's belief that soon another Old White Dude would be elected and things would return to the way they should be. Most of them weren't even concerned by which side won at this point, just that some OWD would win. The Left was mellowed out for pretty much the same reason. Either the Black Dude would win or another OWD would win so really they faced a Win/Win situation. Then, the unimaginable happens, at least from the viewpoint of the majority of Americans. The Youngish Black Dude wins again!

Again, keep in mind this really has almost nothing to do with BlackGOOD/ BlackBAD. Nothing to do with Racism...well okay almost nothing to do with racism. It is just that the nice simple worldview that pretty much all Americans had was once again busted into tiny little bits and tossed to hungry wolves so they could devour it completely. Our brains had been programmed by centuries of “well that is just the way things are” and once again we were shown that things could change. So the vitriol and lies that had faded were brought back with a vengeance.

During the second 4 years, we saw a level of rage and Meme making that hadn't ever been seen before in the history of Memes or Rage. People on both sides pulled out all of the stops and bombarded the entire world with Tweets, Twits, Snaps and...well pretty much everything else. Oh, the world trembled under the social media onslaught as everyone cried out in terror.

Now, you'd think that after the “norm” was returned that this would all die down. After all, we had two centuries of being fairly courteous and not going ape poop over whoever was elected to be the current American dictator. I mean if we could be somewhat human during Carter and Ford, then we should be able to return to that after the Scary Black Dude was gone, right? Well, there are to obstacles to that. One I will cover here and one I will cover in the next rant. The one I will cover here is a simple one.

Once the cat is out of the bag and the horse is out of the barn, it is practically impossible to get them back in again. (especially the cat, those suckers hate bags) Eight years was all it took for both sides to forget civility and the rules of engagement. Suddenly our lizard brains realized that we didn't actually HAVE to play nice. We realized that we could say or do whatever the hell we want no matter how horrible and cruel it was and nothing bad would happen. So yeah, an Old White (Orange?) Dude was elected President. Even better the OWD beat a WOMAN, (Not meant as sexist. Goes back to the 200+ years of OWD mentality.) but the rules of engagement had changed and there was no going back.

People hate change. Change scares people because they aren't sure how to deal with it. The longer things remain the same, the more scary change is. Even people who claim to want things to change often just want more of the same with just a different face. When Obama was elected, the way things always have been was destroyed and everyone is still just trying to find out where to go from here. No matter how much people may want things to go back to the way they were, it will never happen. Donald Trump is actually proof of that in his own way. (More on that in the next rant.)

America is changing. For the good or for the worse only time will tell. I won't even make a guess, but in my mind, any change is good in the long run. The change means chances at progress. Not changing means the doom of stagnation. Sure, shaking things up can be scary and perhaps even destructive, but forest fires are sometimes needed to clear out the old and useless deadwood and allow new growth to start.

The Blame Game or "We has met the enemy and he is us."

So we have had a horrific shooting where several journalists were shot and killed. A terrible event that underscores how violent and evil people can be. At this point, I am unsure which side of our so-called political spectrum I hate more. The extreme Left is screaming that this is all Trump's fault because Hair Furrer is constantly calling the press "Evil and The Enemy." The Extreme Right is screaming how the press brought this on themselves for spreading "fake news" and of course is shouting the usual "It musta been a Liberal or a Mooslem (Their spelling not mine) that done it."

So, here is my thoughtifying on the matter. Let's just say, for the sake of arguifying that Donnie Dumpsterfire's mindless rantings and badly articulated thoughts did indeed fuel the fires that led to this shooting. On the flip side, let's also pretend that the EVIL press type people (Waves at Ben Baker) pushed all the wrong buttons and goaded this shooter into acting to try and save the world. So, assuming that all of these things happened, where does the responsibility for the shooting lay. Hells, where does the responsibility for any of the shootings that occur way to often in the US lay...lie...laid? (Darn it!)

I can answer that badly garbled question fairly easy. Where does the responsibility...erm get dumped? Is it the POTUS and those darned Republicans fault? Is it the darned Liberals and Obama's fault? Nope, the fault lies in just one simple place that is easily found. The fault, dear friend, lies not with the Damnoobubitarians but with the shooter. (Bet no one gets that completely deranged literary reference!) That's right, Buttercups! The responsibility for these horrendous acts is the sole responsibility of the guy/guys pulling the triggers.

Yeah yeah, I know! It is a totally radical concept, this personal responsibility thing and most people really can't grasp it. I mean, the idea that someone could decide to do something, plot it out and undertake it all by themselves is mind-blowing. It is so much easier to believe that they were tricked into murdering a bunch of people by evil outside forces than to think they acted on their own. Actually thinking about it causes most people's headparts to go KABOOM!

Now, before anyone whines, I am not saying that outside forces cannot influence a person's decision to commit these acts. Unless you live in a magic vacuum world where you never interact with the outside world, you WILL be influenced. BUT (my god what a big but), influencing is not the same thing as forcing. See unless you are being controlled by Infrapink Baked Potato Rays (Or IBPR in the business) by the Pistachio (Cannot believe I spelled that right on the first try) Illuminati Triumvirate (or The Pits as we say in the business) and are nothing more than a mindless automaton following the orders of your Nutty Masters, you are responsible for your own actions. No one else, just you.

So yeah, the News/Pollytickans/Invisible Moonbeams from planet Q might have pushed you to commit a horrible crime (Like wearing pink stripes with blue polka dots. Brr, worst day of my life) However, in the end, each person is solely responsible for their own sins. Hypocritical name calling and finger pointing serves no purpose (Well except for giving me something to write about) and only serves to distract from the real problems. No good is served by marching in the blame parade and only helps those who have no interest in solving these problems stay in power.

In the future, instead of trying to figure out a way to blame “THOSE PEOPLE” we should work side by side (Yeah like that is going to happen) and try to fix the real problems. By fighting among ourselves, we are only allowing “THEM” to keep dividing us and maintaining control over us.

I (Awkwardly) SALUTE YOU! or "OMFG WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO HERE!"

So Liberals are in an uproar over

Trump saluting an Enemy Officer during his NK visit. Screaming "treason!" and "SEE SEE! He likes enemies more than Americans!" The majority of them post the still photo that apparently shows him smartly saluting the (Ok I have to admit, I do like the guys uniform) officer. My problem isn't with Donnie saluting the dude. If you watch the actual video, you'll see that when the moment comes, Hair Furrer is completely and utterly confused at what to do. The dude salutes while Trump holds out his hand and Trump awkwardly salutes him back. It was obviously an "Oh crap what do I do" moment on the Toupee that walks like a man's part. If you watch the video, it was less of a "saluting the enemy' than it was "I have no idea what I doing" thing.

No, my problem is the hypocrisy of

the Right over the moment. They have already demonstrated it quite well by praising Trump's efforts in NK while forgetting how they completely eviscerated Obama over and over again when he even suggested that it should be done. Now, we have the salute. When Obama bowed to one of our ALLIES!!!, he was demonized over and over again by the RIght Wingnuts as being weak and betraying America by showing subservience. Faux News ran with that for months after the event. Now Hair Furrer is seen saluting an Enemy Officer and all of the Trumpublicans are defending him and coming up with exquisitely delusional reasons why this is COMPLETELY different from Obama bowing.

John McDuffie provided the most

perfect example of doublespeak on the matter. (In his defense, he was not aware of the actual event yet and was speaking in a more general nature, but his well-worded explanation pretty much mirrors all of the BS being spewed by others who actually knew what was going on. WTG John!)

Politics is filled with BS.

Politics is filled with hypocrisy. It is an occupational requirement. The very idea of a politician is a contradiction. A Politician MUST keep his vast numbers of supporters happy by making them insane promises that he has no real ability to keep and a Politician MUST do whatever he has to to keep his job even if that means screwing over the very people that elected him. It is only when people understand this simple fact that they realize that broadly defending one group while destroying the other groups is pointless and only serves to make things worse.

Every political group is guilty of this. None of them are innocent. The only way any of this will change is if we stop this insane partisan blind support of "Our" side and realize that we are all in this badly damaged boat rapidly sinking in a sea of manure together and start patching the holes and draining the crap. To quote a director that I never really liked, "WAKE UP!" Because if you don't wake up soon, you're going to need to learn how to breath bull poop.

Birthday 55 countdown 363 or Don't just stand there! THEY'RE GOING TO WIN!

 For the most part I have stayed out of the circus that is the current hullabaloo over the recent school shooting and the uproar that has erupted since then. Instead I have simply sat back and watched as the (mostly) Conservative and Libertarian friends on Facebook made complete and utter fools out of themselves and proved their hypocrisy (waves at John McDuffie and Chaz Carsten) and the smaller number who have proven that they are completely ignorant and more than a little bit bigoted. (No names here, this is a family piece) The reasons for this are two fold. I don't usually make commentary either here or on social media unless 1. I actually have ideas about how to solve the problem, 2. I have something in the form of semi-clever or snarky comments to make about the subject and 3. I have actually been in just too good a mood to even bother. (Wait....1...2...3? Meh sue me, math was never my strong suit. In reality, the only strong commentary I made was right after the shooting when the student protests were first starting to get fired up. It was a simple one and I thought it was very clever. I will share it with you here so that you too can appreciate my cleverness....or mock me in hopefully clever ways.

As I have stated before, I don't have an answer to the horrors going on with mass shootings. I am not in the fairly small sub groups of A. TAKE ALL GUNS AWAY or 2. WE NEED TO GIVE GUNS TO EVERYONE! ESPECIALLY BABIES! Like most things in life (except for coffee of course) I believe that if there is an answer, it has to be in moderation. It must exist somewhere in the middle between the two loud groups which you see going on and on on TV and social media. But here is the kicker to me at least as far as getting people to support your idea. It is two simple words that will make you the hero of the hour in the eyes of the world. Ready? It is gonna blow your mind! Here it is. DO SOMETHING! Huh, what do I mean? It's not self explanatory? Okay, onwards with explainifying things then!

People, especially Americans are a fairly simple people. Easily distracted and easily tricked. I mean, come on! They elected Donald “Dumpsterfire” Trump to be POTUS for gosh's sake! He ran on a fairly empty and air headed platform with about as much substance as ghost poop. Anyone with any common sense can see he is woefully inadequate for the job. He was elected because he was loud and outspoken and at least pretended to want to make things different for America. People elected him because he pretended to want to fix everything that they thought was wrong with the country. All flash and no substance, but he convinced people that he would change things. Right now, people are angry. People are scared. People are...well kind of creepy, but that is beside the point. The Right is convinced that the Left is coming to take away their fully automatic, triple barreled machine flame throwers and the Left is convinced that the Right is planning on staging an armed rebellion against any state that doesn't serve Sweet Tea on buffets. “News” on both sides are sitting back and fanning the flames and politicians are tap dancing on the fence waiting to see which side to jump on.

So here is my suggestion and it is really not complicated. Do something. If your group is convinced that requiring DNA testing and an oath signed in blood in front of Elvis is the only way people should be allowed to own a gun and that the government should place secret alien tracking micro chips (That is tracking micro chips of alien design, not tracking chips designed to track aliens. That is a whole nother rant) in each bullet, then GO FOR IT! Rick Scott (Didn't see that one coming) and Florida of all places have passed stronger gun regulations and have earned accolades from the Left for taking steps to better regulate guns. More states and more politicians need to be convinced that this is the way to go if you think that guns are the problem.

Now if you feel that laws are for sissies and that regulations are the work of the devil, then go for it. If you think that the answer is to put .50 caliber anti aircraft guns at the doors to every school and to give all the teachers hand grenades, then start passing laws on state and Federal levels that will do exactly that. Heck have heavily armed flying drones orbiting every school in America just to make sure.

Whenever these horrible shootings occur events follow a fairly simple pattern. For a few weeks after the event, one side screams for stronger gun laws and more restrictions and the other screams about making schools safer by putting armed guards in them or arming the teachers. And up until now, once the uproar is over, nothing ever happens. EVER. The Right's cries for armed guards and such simply evaporate away because no one actually wants to spend any money on the solutioon. The Left's outrage vanishes like Trump facing a porn star because, in the end, no one in power really wants to be seen as pushing for restrictions on the 2^nd Amendment. So the talk dies out and people forget until the next mass shooting and then the dance starts up all over again.

 This time, the signs are there that things might just get done. Now whether these things are a good thing or a bad thing is beyond my fairly limited ability to predict, but it seems like a crucial point may have been reached where people are just too sick and tired to let talking be all that happens. So, if you really don't want THEM to win, then you and our so called leaders had better get up off their butts and do something. No more noise, no more smoke and mirrors. It is time for actions. If y'all don't act, then it is entirely possible that THEY (Ominous music inserted here) will win and that will mean the END of your way of life (Picturing a deep organ sound here like someone laid down on the keys really heavy.) It is time to put up or be shut out. Better get to work!

CLINTON SUCKS!

No real blog here, just conducting a little social experiment.

TRUMP SUCKS!

No real blog here, just conducting a little social experiment. 

Ain't it funny? Ain't it strange? Ain't it HYPOCRITICAL?!

So a lot of people are posting "Walk up not Walk Out" memes and comments and going on and on ad nauseam about "We need to fight school bullying and that'll stop school shootings." They post articles about the horrible bullying and abuse going on in schools and scream at the top of their lungs about how this is the real problem and how THOSE PEOPLE are ignoring the real problem to push THEIR agenda at the expense of REAL Americans.
Now don't get me wrong, I am a strong Anti-Bullying supporter and have been for a very long time, but this sudden and quite frankly underwhelming influx of individuals crying out against School Bullying is more than a teensy bit hypocritical and sadly it's not even a new hypocrisy. Pick any subject that rankles people's cankles and you'll see the same thing happening. Back it up a few years to the big "Refugee" debate. When it was suggested that maybe the US should actually take in some of the refugees that we created by waging continuous war in the Middle East for 20 years, the Conservatives were all, "WE SHOULDN'T HELP ONE SINGLE REFUGEE AS LONG AS THERE ARE HOMELESS AMERICANS LIVING ON THE STREETS!"
This sentiment is, at least on the surface, a noble one. We should feed, clothe and find homes for ALL of our homeless before helping others. I totally support and cheer the idea. However, and here is where the hypocrisy lies (lays? Darn it!). When all the hullabaloo was going on and these noble souls were crying out their love for our poor, you could (and I did) check their FB pages or other social media sites and you would see a very different picture of how they felt about the poor and homeless. You'd see posts and memes calling the Homeless "leeches" or "worthless" and articles from "news sources" talking about how stricter laws were needed to force the homeless from whatever shelter they had. So, you see that the fight wasn't so much (at all?) about helping our own before helping others and more about just not helping people we didn't like.
Now fast forward to today. Teenagers and Adults are fighting back against being kids being murdered by nutjobs with guns and people are listening. New laws are being passed and companies are voluntarily taking steps to combat the problem and this is not sitting too well with a large chunk of people. So suddenly, people who truly never even thought about school bullying or even cared about it are suddenly all over it. This would be an awesome step forward if it wasn't questionable at best. Of the far too many "friends" and followers I have on Facebook, I can point to at least 4 (Used to be 5, but one blocked me. HEY TC!) who haven't exactly been supportive of Anti-Bullying in the past. Matter of fact, two of those 3 have posted memes that pretty much said "Well, bullying always happens so that sucks for you. Man up and quit being babies." Also posted articles that opposed stronger anti-bullying laws and stricter punishments for kids found guilty of being bullies. So you see how the sudden "Quit being bullies" sentiment might seem a tad...BS?
Now don't get me wrong, if you are now fighting against bullying, I am all over supporting you. Hells, I really don't even care what your reasons are. But, if your support for the bullied children vanishes as quickly as your support for the homeless did after the Refugee uproar died off, then you are a hypocrite.
Now I don't have any real answers. Hells most days I can't even figure out the questions. In a sense, all of y'all are right. It is a Mental Illness Problem. It is a Bullying Problem. It is a Gun Problem. It is an Awareness Problem. It is all of the above and prolly other things we haven't even thought of yet problem. It is a Problem, but this problem will never be solved as long as everyone does nothing. Say what you want about the Gun Control groups, but right now they are actually accomplishing something. Only time will tell if it is effective (Affective? Darn it!) or worthwhile, but they are speaking and polticians and businesses are listening.
if you feel like this is the wrong direction, then do something about it. Quit whinging and crying and insulting the other side and put forth your own actions. If you truly feel it is a mental health issue, push for better access to health care. If you think it is rightfully a bullying issue, push for stronger anti-bullying laws and stricter punishments for bullies. The time for talk and finger pointing (Well except me, finger pointing is kind of my thing) is over. People are tired of all talk and no actions and they will support and cheer on any people who are even perceived as actually doing something. So it is time to step up to the plate, grab a bat and swing for the fences instead of sitting on the sidelines.
End of Rant