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.