Republican Wife Wars

Republican candidates declared war on each others' wives this week in a sorry spectacle of smallness despite Donald Trump's claim of penile tremendousness. After a Cruz superpac ran a scantily clad photo of Mrs. Trump, Donald Trump countered by running an unflattering photo of Mrs. Cruz. Ted Cruz responded and called Trump a "sniveling coward" but avoided saying that he would not support Trump if Trump were nominated. I really hate to be fair to Ted Cruz, but he says it wasn't his campaign that published the photo of Mrs. Trump. Glenn Beck later weighed in calling Mrs. Trump a lesbian porn star. Such is the level of the debate on the Republican side. A strong contender for dumbest thing said this week by Donald Trump: Mr. Trump said he was the person he listens to most on foreign policy. “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.” A google search on "narcissist personality disorder" is illuminating, btw. * * * * * * * * An attack in Brussels led Donald Trump to muse that he just might nuke ISIS which could prove difficult in that ISIS groups are about as amorphous as fog. * * * * * * * * Ted Cruz says America should "patrol and secure" American Muslim neighborhoods. Hard to tell exactly what he means by that, but it is likely impossible, unconstitutional, terrifying, counterproductive, immoral, and stupid. It is frightening how tenous Cruz' connection to constitutional government appears to be. Donald Trump may claim the largest wanger, but Ted Cruz is in the lead for being the biggest asshole. * * * * * * * * Terror attacks in foreign countries make Americans say crazy stuff: Michelle Bachmann said God allowed the attack in Brussels in order to embarrass President Obama in Cuba. The twisted theology of that informs many on the Republican self-righteous religious wing of crazy land. Speaking of self-righteous crazy land, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory signed a bill which prevents any North Carolina city or government subdivision from protecting the rights of LBTQs. Meanwhile, self-righteous religious crazy land family values Governor Bentley of Alabama confessed to a weird sex scandal which led to the dissolution of his 50 year marriage and charges of a coverup. * * * * * * * * Sarah Palin has apparently landed a future gig as a television "reality" show as Judge Sarah prompting Donald Trump to say he'd consider her as a future US Supreme Court appointment. "She look hot in those robes," Trump said. One of my very conservative cousins messaged me that he at first believed this remark on my facebook page. When the line between absurdity and reality is so tenuous, we are all in trouble. * * * * * * * * *

I ran across a great line from Oscar Wilde: "If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you." Not sure how relevant that is in my life, but I like the quote. * * * * * * * * * In Nebraska news, we had a Winter Weather Advisory, a Blizzard Warning, and a Tornado Watch at the same time this week. And in other Nebraska news, a new Nebraska license plate was revealed to immediate and widespread criticism as being too plain and boring (and even sexually suggestive). So I am submitting the picture at the top of this blog instead. * * * * * * * * Have a great Easter.

Donald Trump University and the Yellow Shower Cap

Here's an Andy Rooney question for you: Why is it that Donald Trump, who says his word will be enough to make other nations cower at his feet, sound unable to stop his followers from rioting if he doesn't get the nomination even if he doesn't get the required number of delegates? * * * * * * * * * Repubs on Repubs - from a Wall Street Journal conservative opinion writer -"The candidacy of Donald Trump is the open sewer of American conservatism…" * * * * * * * * Rubio on Trump after dropping out of the race: "I don’t understand what people see in him. He's a lunatic." Regarding the violence that regularly accompanies a Donald Trump rally, Ted Cruz, yes Ted Cruz said something I agree with. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree with something he said: Ted Cruz - “I think a campaign bears responsibility for creating an environment. When a candidate urges supporters to engage in physical violence, to punch people in the face, the predictable consequence of that is that it escalates, and today is unlikely to be the last such instance.” I did take note that Donald Trump, after egging on violence at his rallies and saying he would pay his supporters' legal fees for beating up on protesters, now denies he ever said he would pay the legal fees of his supporters for beating up protesters.* * * * * * * * * Donald Trump University currently is being sued by New York's Attorney General for fraud as well as facing a California class-action suit. So I was talking with a friend of mine this week about what courses one could take at Trump University: Demagoguery 101, Eminent Domain for Private Gain - a Personal History (How I Took an Old Woman's House for a Casino Parking Lot), History of Fascism in America I and II, Wife Flipping I, II, and III, Advanced Bankruptcy for Fun and Profit, Introduction on How to Inherit $100 million ............some of my Facebook readers added: Inciting to Riot 202, Rhetoric I - Using Superlatives While Saying Nothing; Rhetoric II - Inflaming Destructive Passions in Others. These last two are more informally referred to as Trumpspeak I and II. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Many Republicans are unhappy with Donald Trump not because he is a fascist, racist, demagogue, but because they think he is too liberal. Swirl that around in your head for a bit. * * * * * * * In my opinion, Trump is the candidate most likely to bumble/bluster the country into a war; Sanders is the least likely to go to war. Clinton is more calculating and deliberate and I'd put her at about the midpoint of the other two. Kasich may be close to Clinton on that. Ted Cruz would go to war in a heartbeat to bring about the apocalypse/rapture craziness.......* * * * * * * * Enough about the DTs. * * * * * * * * If Republican Governors (their motto seems to be Destroying America One State at a Time) hadn't done such a crappy job governing their states (Kansas, Louisiana, Wisconsin, New Jersey, etc, etc, etc.), there might have been a different cast of candidates on the Repub side..........The one surviving Repub Governor is Kasich and he did the unthinkable in expanding Medicaid..... The least worst Governor on the Repub side is the only governor left..........and he's in last place. * * * * * * * In other news, President Obama nominated an eminently qualified and respected jurist to the Supreme Court; outraged Republicans immediately vowed to fight. And here's a thought for Republicans who think earthquakes and floods and other natural disasters are messages from God: Perhaps God took Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia so President Obama could appoint a replacement. Ever think of that? * * * * * * * * * So this week I was on the phone with my mother to get her grocery list Sunday and she said she needed a plastic shower cap, but not green or yellow. I asked her what possible difference in the whole world the color could possibly make. She laughed and said, well, green would be okay, but not yellow.I told her that I would not be driving to more than one store to find a shower cap and that if they had nothing but yellow, I'd bring her a plastic bag and a rubber band. She laughed.

Hey, Mom, want to see an amazing trick?

So when I was a kid, maybe 7 or so, living in Sheridan, Wyoming in the mid 1950s, I ordered a magician kit for $1.00. I found an ad like the one at the left at the back of a comic book, Superman, or Batman, or Spiderman, I don't really remember that part. You may have seen these ads: you could mail-order a Daisy BB rifle for $3.98, and the X-ray specs for a dollar were a tantalizing choice allowing you to see through clothing, but for that one I couldn't count on getting to the mail before my mother did so that was always thought to be too risky, or the Put on 50 lbs. of Muscle ad for $3.98, or the special Hypno-Coin you could get for sending $1 to a New York post office box number and hypnotize your friends. There were usually money back guarantees. The magic ad in question was something like "How to Be a Magician and Amaze your Friends." I cobbled together $1.00 somehow, from my lunch money, or chore earnings, or snatching coins from the top of Dad's dresser which, by the way, I always found to be a good source of income. One way or another, I came up with the amount and put the coins in an envelope, and mailed it to the address. Eventually, I received a few mimeographed sheets of paper describing a few magic tricks: the amazing ketchup trick, a card trick or two, and some others I don't remember involving sleight-of-hand, and the one I am writing about: the Amazing Disappearing Nickel Trick. The Amazing Disappearing Nickel Trick involves placing a nickel in your palm after holding it up and letting a viewer verify that it is, indeed, an actual nickel. Take your other hand and place it over the nickel cupping both hands so that the middle is hollow. Carefully manipulate the nickel so that it is held inside by your two thumbs which you then bring up to your mouth. And now the trick part. You pretend to blow through your thumbs into your cupped hands and, magically, the nickel disappears, you open your hands and the nickel is gone. The trick part is that prior to blowing on your hands you do a big dramatic inhale during which you suck the nickel into your mouth. Now, there's a trick to this trick, and the trick is to not inhale the nickel too much so that it goes down your windpipe, closes off your breathing, you pass out, and then you die. It does seem that my siblings and I narrowly averted deathly disaster on more than one occasion. Me and the nickel, me and the hospital stay after the bicycle crash, my brother and his bicycle crash into the car, and my other brother and the "I wonder what gasoline tastes like" afternoon, my one sister and the stone-lined rapidly moving water irrigation ditch into which she fell and into which the Girl Scout leader also jumped and snatched her out. My youngest sister seems to have avoided such incidents that I know of. So back to the Amazing Disappearing Nickel Trick. As I was only seven or so, completely unaware of my own mortality, not very cognizant of what could possibly go wrong with any particular action or activity in which I took part, an example being jumping from some unhealthy height out of the back yard tree with mother's umbrella to use as a parachute. That did not work very well and ruined my mother's umbrella.

Anyway, I vigorously inhaled that nickel which sucked right into my windpipe, blocking my breathing. Fortunately, I was doing this trick for the first time for my mother in the kitchen of the church parsonage, a small bungalow on tree-lined Coffeen Avenue. My mother apparently noted right away as I grabbed my throat, flailed, and presumably started to turn blue. I'm thinking it was my mother who grabbed my ankles, inverted me upside down, and tried to shake that nickel out of my throat. But it could have been my dad. Mother thinks it was my dad. I can still see the linoleum floor rising and falling in front of my upside-down-turned face. My memory says the floor was green with yellow flecks, but I could be wrong about that. The rest of that story is lost to my memory, but eventually, in the kitchen, or a doctor's office, or the hospital, that nickel made its way or was forced down because it couldn't be retrieved, passed down into my stomach, through my digestive tract, and finally out. For the next several days or weeks, we were instructed to search through my poo, which involved putting a pie plate in the toilet, to find that offending nickel. It did pass, we did sort through my poo to find it, a red letter day to be sure, and I had that discolored nickel for many years. It was not discolored before it passed through my entire digestive system. Probably because of the many moves my family made in subsequent years, it eventually disappeared for good.

Land Dump Rot or Ton Lard Dump

The Democratic caucus I went to in Millard was well attended (600+) and the Sanders people were more boisterous than the Hillary side of the room. One fellow nominated Elizabeth Warren, but "realigned" with the Sanders group after the strange element of trying to convince the other side to switch and not attracting enough people to be "viable." There were a couple of virulent anti-Hillary people on the Sanders side, but I wouldn't say many more than that. There was a rather risky method of choosing "captain" of each side at the beginning with nominations right then and there from each side's group. It was basically strangers voting for strangers with a one minute campaign speech........but it worked okay. I thought our guy did very well........ And the delegate selection for the Douglas County convention was basically a call for volunteers. Hope that works, too. Sanders won our caucus with 9 delegates and Clinton got 7. Scattered reports across Nebraska point to a Sanders win overall. * * * * * * * The Republican race seems to have come down to (and I do mean "down") to Donald "The Big Dick" Trump and Ted (Apocalypse Now) Cruz......... One driven by narcissism and the desire to have hair and the other by a greasy-haired messianic desire for the power to bring about the second coming. (About which, btw, I have always believed and continue to do so that the fewer people who welcome the apocalypse and have access to nuclear weapons, the better). The con-man v. the messianic sociopath. Good luck with that, Repubs. Good luck with that, America. There is no doubt in my mind that Donald Trump (a fitting anagram is Land Dump Rot as is Ton Lard Dump) is the biggest dick in the presidential race. Donald Trump is a political bulldozer knocking down the established Republican Party neighborhood for a new casino......... And gambling the future away.........* * * * * * * * *I saw that Carly Fiorina endorsed Ted Cruz. By the way, an anagram of Carly Fiorina is "Narc Fairy Oil." Seems about right. An anagram for Rafael Ted Cruz is "Crazed Rat Fuel." This also seems about right. Re. Ted Cruz - it has been my rule of thumb that I don't want people who are eagerly looking forward to the apocalypse/rapture/endtimes to have their fingers on the nuclear buttons. I include Cruz in that category along with numerous Iranian mullahs. Any other candidates fit that mold? * * * * * * * The NRA has recently pledged to fight noise pollution in inner cities by promoting silencers on all weapons........as well as in schools and libraries. "Just imagine a world in which a fully automatic weapons can discharge 100 or more shots is a few seconds and make no more noise than your average dishwasher," an NRA spokesperson said. "Bothered by that neighborhood rat-a-tat at bedtime? Attach a silencer to that gang member's handgun and slumber away! Why, a deranged maniac with a machine gun could go into a college library, gun down a dozen people, and not disturb students down the hallway reading Shakespeare. It's a win-win situation." btw - there was a mass shooting this week and nobody noticed. ** * * * * * * ** So my mother, 90, wrote this poem called Lonesome: Oh, what a lonely life it is/ Now that I've lost my mate./ I never dreamed I'd be so sad,/ But it seems to be my fate./ We had so many travels together/ And enjoyed so many sights./ Now, I'm left with my memories/ On very lonely nights./ If only I knew where you've gone/ So I could rescue you./ It's no good being just one sock/ Without you for the other shoe! * * * * * * * * * * It sounds very sad and melancholy, but I suspect my mother was also having a bit of poetic fun here. I'll have to ask her on Sunday when I get her groceries.

America is Great Because it is Good

If you thought last week was wacky, just wait'll you see what happened this week. The week started off with Marco Rubio implying Donald Trump had a small you-know-what - whizzer, schlong - because he has small hands. Curing the Thursday night debate Trump "guaranteed" us that the size of his, you know, one-eyed salami torpedo, wasn't a problem Such is the state of the Republican campaign. David Duke, former Grand Lizard, er, uh, Wizard of the KKK endorsed Trump and said he was their kind of guy. Donald Trump was given multiple opportunities to disavow the KKK and David Duke and couldn't bring himself to do it. A newspaper report surface from the the 1930s stating that Trump's father Fred was arrested at a KKK rally. Perhaps the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Trump's son later went on a white racist radio station and gave an interview. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was moved to hold a press conference to state Republicans must reject bigotry and racism, but I think he had his fingers crossed. More protesters were assaulted at Trump rallies. I've now seen video compilations and they are reminiscent of the early days of fascism in German and Italy. * * * * * * * * * * On the Democratic side, Hillary won 7 primaries on Super Tuesday and Bernie won 4. Both claimed their victories and vowed to carry on. * * * * * * * * * * I like the first part of Hillary's campaign words that America never stopped being great, but I don't like the "make it whole again." My brother Jerry lifted up the words of Alexis de Tocqueville: "America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." So if any Hillary fans are reading this perhaps you can pass this along as her campaign slogan: "America never stopped being great; we need to keep it good" (or some variation on that). * * * * * * * * Trump made more threats to leave the Republican party and run as a Third Party candidate. * * * * * * * I don't think Donald Trump wants to make America good. He wants to make it nasty and mean as do the other Repub candidates. * * * * * * * * I'll be caucusing for Bernie Sanders Saturday, and I believe both Hillary and Bernie want to make America good. * * * * * * * * * Mitt Romney gave a speech today in Utah and lambasted Donald Trump as a phony and a fraud and a con-man. Nebraska's Senator Ben Sasse said he won't vote for Trump, and Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader said he may campaign against Trump if he wins the nomination in order to save the Senate. Dozens of Republican national security experts warned that Trump would make the country less safe and that his foreign policy would be a disaster. * * * * * * * * * Donald Trump did finally clarify what he meant when he said he wouldn't let people die in the street after he dismantled Obamacare -- he would have roving crews pull them into alleyways. * * * * * * * * I found it really difficult to see the humor this week................perhaps next week.