dizzy with success

let's review...

former prosecutor...current what? senator? okay...whore politician in the pay of the oligarchs...which oligarchs one wonders...

oh yeah...she pursued those connections...and we know who she is beholden to...

while the n y times is spinning me for all they are worth...admittedly we are all more comples than we seem on the surface...self-contradictory...uncertain...muddled and forgetful at times...still..all i can go on is her public face...i don't know what she's like when the company has gone home...and that public face is not engendering much "trust"...no matter how the times tries to sell it to me...i voted eleven days ago..and yet again it was a negative choice...the lesser ( one hopes ) of two readily discerned evils...i am not a fan of any politician...donny...joe...kammy...barry...mitch...lindsey...chuck...nancy...alexandira...mike...they can all slide off into the lake of fire as quickly as they can...scorpions and ebola are too good for them...

and where's her fucking mask? in her hand.

tuphos

the puking buddha and i were hashing over the vagaries of life and current events this morning...as this miserable campaign, coming on top of a miserable presidency, grinds on we were asking ourselves what is actually going on...looking to wend our way through the hired bullshit and get at some facts ( as opposed to "truth" which is just someone's interpretation of facts...subjective and relativist )...and, frankly, with all the partisan wailing and misinformation and threats of ruskie interfence and bogus appeals to law and order from the supporters of the criminal element in the white house, the facts are buried deeply in an abyss of smoke and mirrors...joe and kammy are ahead in the polls and, from what i read but am uncertain of, have a lot more cash on hand to spend in the "final days"...the trumpist cadres are distancing themselves and donny has floated the idea of leaving the country...( look to milania to bail before things turn ugly )...all fine and good except the garbage this clown had unleashed isn't going anywhere even if he flees to putinland ( if his attempts to steal the elction in courts he has packed with crypto-fascist judges fails )...it will take decades to recover from it if recovery is even possible...this place is as divided as it ever was in the 60s and 70s...so the effects of four years of disinformation are in the political dialectic and will take considerable time to work out...what changes if joe and kammy win? well..the rhetoric eamnating from the presidency may soften a bit and the tantrums may die down...however the institutions are not going to change one iota...the inherent bias towards wealth deep in the constitution and the way politics works here isn't going anywhere and since money talks in whoretown there won't be anything but superficial movement on subsatntive issues ( say climate change ) because if those issues are acted on wealth and power satnd to lose...well...wealth and power and they are not going to go quietly...since joe hasn't said anything substantive that i am aware of i have no clue where he stands on anything...kammy is from califonia and is in bed with big tech which bodes ill in my estimation since she is likely to be president if they win and actually take office...a former prosecutor as well..that has rule crazy control freak written all over it...and this is where the tuphos lies...there will be change either way...but it won't be anything but cosmetic...the system is resilient and deeply resistant to change...read the federalist papers...read john locke...vote for whomever...but don't come whining to me about BAU

another fortnight of propaganda...then the machinations begin

the numbers are looking grim for the trumpists...the cadre has started to distance itself...the cabinet is desperately changing rules as the window to do so begins to close...donny has floated the idea that he might leave the country ( one supppses to putinland to bunk with snowden ) which would be necessary if he doesn't want to land in a new york penitentiary and the signs are a majority has had enough of the jesse ventura mold of presidential behaviors...

the new york times spent sunday calling him a liar, cheat, dimwit, and thug...

and today in one breath they are saying he has one foot out of 1600...

and in the next that consevative judges and the ruskies are going to make decisions and hack voting machines in an efort to upend the poll numbers...well...i would not expect this to end in two weeks...a defeat at the polls isn't a guarantee near as i can see ( let us recall 2000's "hanging chads" and a second presidential election that was stoloen in florida...see rutherfraud b. hayes for details on the first ) of being denied office...the lawyers are staying up late these days looking for precedents and reading up on the sophists as their moment approaches...yes, there could be an anti-climax...it is possible that donny is giving up although his capacity for actually dealing with reality is suspect...they have a lot to lose here and while there may be a negative note sounding they are also desperate...and desperate people do weird things...we will see what happens in fifteen days.

exercised the franchise

"the people should have as little to do as may be about the government. they want information and are consatntly liable to be misled." roger sheman connecticut delegate to the constitutional convention.

and two hundred and thirty-three years later vestiges of that sentiment are still active and they are disenfranchising probably something like half of the population in every presidential election...i have heard a lot of rumblings about doing away with the electoral college and pursuing direct preisdential elections...i have to say that in the eleven presidential elections i have voted in i can count on one hand the number of times my vote was not voided by the "winner take all" system of allocating electoral votes..i checked my voter registration satus the other day ( i am "active" ) and since early voting is in effect here until the end of the month i took advantage of a day off and spent half an hour of my life exercising the franchise...my inclination is to think it really doesn't matter in terms of who gets the electoral votes from this state...it is not "battleground" or a "swing state" ( although i did get a spam call from the sitting president the other day )...it is decided well before the third of next month...if electoral votes were allocated proportionately it might be a very different story and minority ( read donny...although there were four others incluiding john quincey adams ) presidents could be gone for good and all...not this year...and probably not any year...the elctoral college is there to insure that no one inimical to the interests of wealth can becomne president...the curent president is many things...however, with the possible exception of new york, he is not inimical to the interests of wealth...wealth is getting wealthier and they like it that way...john locke is the putative philosophical father of the current system designed in 1787 and john locke was all about not "erecting too numerous a democracy"...he would balk at who can vote now...appalled...apoplectic...he was convinced that only those of visible wealth were capable of governing the rabble ( one presumes he had a classical education and read that mouthpiece of wealth cicero closely )...still a system that can produce a minority president cannot be all that responsive to the wishes of the polity and that is the point...a system that looks democratic ( or, actually, republican ) but rests on oligarchy and its prerogatives...i voted...i voted because they do not like it whan a substantial number of the polity vote...it could mean they might actually have to address issues that are not in the interests of wealth...and they want to avoid that like the plague...these are interesting times and interesting hasn't really even begun just yet...that will come after the third of november...still...abstaining won't make that any better so, while i am not about to advise you which whore politican ( and they are all whores to an individual...a human universal )to vote for i would suggest registering ( if you have not ) and voting...if for no ther reason than to make the bastards uncomfortable

augmented

bought some stuff...( macrame plant hangers at someone's behest...seems some house plants that have spent the summer outdoors are moving in for the winter...thinking insect denizens as well...we will see )...bought it from amazon

( death to "brick and mortar" retail )...it was delivered with alacrity yesterday...two days! customer service! "no personal interaction"...the heighth of covid-19 social responsibility...for whatever reason the purchase came in a box ( perhaps they were out of the correct size mailers...happens ) and the box was an object lesson in "augmented" reality and just one line of evidence as to why i do not have a smart phone and keep a faraday bag in my vehicle when i want my obsolescent flip phone to disappear from the electo-magnetic spectrum...

seriously the box promised me a trip into "augmented reality" ( as opposed to the "alternate" political/social reality we seem to be inhabiting at the moment...perhaps surreality would be more concise a definition ) because this was #more than a box...all i need do to enter this altered state was draw a face ( what face they obligingly left to my discretion ) on the pumpkin provided on the box...

and scan the magic square from "AmazonAR.app/Halloween" and seemingly the face would somehow, through the wizardry of the interweb, come to life...and, if my surmise is correct, inject a sophisticated tracking program into my phone...these vile cretins steal enough information without having to resort to this sort of duplicity...smart phones do many things...they do many things i can do without and amazon and google and facebook all already have voluminous dossiers on my on-line, purchasing, and, probably, personal habits garnered from extensive profiling without me being connected to the goddamned interweb 24/7 and have every move, economic, political, and physical tracked by some algorithm...so no "augmented reality' form me thanks...i have my hands full with the plain old one.

seriously?

while we were squirreling vital consumer goods away in a stockroom at a major retailer today a coworker opined that donny's faking a case of covid-19 to shore up his poll numbers and gain symapthy...one can suppose this is a fairly common opinion...and certainly the adminstration and, seemingly, the media are doing their part in the confusion...after yesterday's "get well soon" card from the n y times they had this to say...

need? truth? misled? i am incredulous...what did they expect? and not just from the current adminstration ( although expectations of a straight answer about anything from them seems hopelessly optimistic )...all politicians lie and by extension so do all presidents...whether campaigning or in office...the history of the presidency is full of howlers on both sides of the office...from william henry harrison's " log cabin and hard cider" campaign to reagan lying about lying...true in the past they may not have lied about eisenhower's health...however they all lied through their teeth about guatemala in 1954...kennedy lied about the bay of pigs...nixon lied because he was adept at it...or at least thought he was...carter lied about iran...i have mentioned reagan...clinton lied about inhaling ( and that woman )...dubya lied about weapons of mass distruction...obama lied about health care being affordable...and donny can't seem to do anything else...so what the fuck does the n y times expect? what do you expect? if it's "the truth" the first problem you have is it is subjective and no damn body agrees what it might be...at least not in any form of unanimity...so...if he survives this donny will be more arogant and convinced he is a diety than ever ( if such a thing is possible ) and if he doesn't it will be a qanon "doctor's plot" engendered by the "deep state"...either way "the truth" may be something unattainable..and even if you find it will anyone believe it? it would be of interest to hear what the doctor might have to say about all this..orwell even more so.

hypocrisy is a comon weapon of power

i am no fan of donny trump...this should be obvious...it should be obvious that i am no fan of politicians as a class ( h.l. mencken said " the only way for a journalist to look at a politician is down"...i would widen that to include the entire polity )...it should be equally obvious that i am no fan of "the media" either...they exacerbate the behvioral sump we find ourselves in for profit and that is unconscionable...after literally years of trump bashing and harsh criticism today the n y times comes up with this...

here's a thought...decide what you're going to be and be that.

irony and the arsonist

i have been waiting for donny to light the updated version of the reichstag fire and use the attendant "national emergency" to assume the "president for life" status he clearly lusts after...the "black lives matter " ( yes they do...no doubt...we all know my stance on "identity politics" however...it is a much deeper issue than the one facet ) protests and the violence, looting, and reaction didn't do it...the fascist nonsense in portland wasn't the catalyst ( perhaps it was hoped for but has not materialized just yet )...and lately i have begun to think that either i am deeply mistaken or i have been looking in the worng place in the chronology of current events...i am more than capable of being mistaken...although, given donny's temperment, i canot see an attempt at "setting aside" any negative elction results as being anything but the plan...

all of which points to the election and the approach to it as the fire...time is short and if there is going to be an atempt to light a fire the election would seem the last, best hope ( unless it was the plan all along )...a serious glitch would seem to be developing...

life is chock full of irony and this is, at least in any normal human, a hubris leveling event...one presumes this would not be the case in relaton to donny...clearly his arrogance is boundless...still...the greeks knew what they were talking about...this could have a broad impact both on public opinion and donny's stamina...the times grow more interesting...what's next?