Thoughts while wearing my wife’s clothing:

(Nothing beats a great pair)

If you’ve inherited a wardrobe from a spouse that fits you perfectly, stop reading here…

( You’ve been advised.)

Nothing beats the skin of your kin’

And nothing beats a great pair of L’eggs.

Sweet sweatshirt blues with the icon: you choose,

NASCAR hat with “I love you” on the headband inside.

I hide the loss of this: so much better half

By adorning the boldest intensity inside her closet.

A victim of sorts…

And Size.

Everyone is challenged by individual contradictions, from the point at which they are capable of comprehending their choices and actions come with consequences. Few exceptions exist, and those generally involve states of diminished mental capacity. Therefore, whenever a person knowingly opts to directly contradict their own stated values and morality in exchange for some benefit for themselves (or for others), we refer to this decision and its consequences as being hypocritical. This is simple stuff.

For the young and impressionable, it is common to overlook the hypocrisy of those figures they are taught to respect and admire. The Social programming spoon-fed through state institutions is a constant force, shaping our understanding of the past. Such a process imprints young minds with a philosophical simplicity conveniently edited to eliminate any possible questions of morality, or contradictions in character.

As a nine year old boy, my experience in the lead up to the Bicentennial celebration was a period of patriotic pride reinforced by my first political interaction with elected officials. It created an unassailable assumption that our system was functional, and that well-intended actions meant to improve and expand upon the unity of our collective republic, are always destined to succeed if they are properly presented.

Part One:

Naïve White boy follows silent instructions and and buys the merch.

My bedroom became a colonial shrine in 1976. Adorned with oversize broadsides, reproduced on actual parchment paper, replicating the Constitution of the United States, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre, and recruiting posters disseminated to encourage enlistment in the Continental Army back in 1775: I was fully, and joyfully immersed. There was even wallpaper colorfully depicting Revolutionary War soldiers occupying one of the walls.

Then came the great inspiration. I learned of a movement that had taken hold of other children throughout the country. A grass roots decorative drive to paint fireplugs to resemble colonial soldiers in celebration of Independence Day. I was drawn to the idea like a sugar junkie to a Giant Pixie Stix. It became my summer vacation project.

Fast forward to parental approval, making a presentation to the local city council in order to obtain permission for my artwork, the purchase of luminescent paint, and creation of the only fireplug like it within a thirty mile radius. Everything went my way. The path was made easy. Success was guaranteed. Long live the status quo.

Part Two:

Naïve White boy assumes everyone experiences equal treatment.

In this same period of time, my mother’s Southern friends convinced her of the Lost Cause rationale. I too, was willingly indoctrinated into the core belief, that somehow the revolutionary spirit of colonial soldiers was manifested within the slave owning leaders of the Confederacy during the American Civil War. I was right. I was wrong.

As a student of history, thoroughly immersed in the names, dates, and places of the past, I managed to score in the top four on the history examination we were given that school year. Our fifth grade class presented a living wax museum of American history as an annual event, and so only three options of a historical figure were unavailable for me to choose based on that ranking. Others were out of bounds due to race and sex.

To the surprise of everyone, I did not choose Washington, or Lincoln, or Edison, or even Franklin. Instead, I chose to stand in representing Robert E. Lee’s bodyguard at Appomattax Court House, during the signing of the official surrender to the Union.

Part Three:

Naïve White boy rejects historical fictions sold as foundational truths.

The battles most often fought and lost throughout this lifetime, embodied themselves within many inauspicious attempts to control my unreasonable thoughts and actions. Only by culling those blatant misperceptions responsible for ongoing rationalizations of hypocrisy, has it been possible to obtain the necessary wisdom to comprehend just how fallible I am. My education is ongoing, and will never be complete, but I have learned something from blind obedience to Nationalist dogma: most of it is fake.

Robert E. Lee only released the slaves that had belonged to his wife’s father before he died, because of a court order to abide by the manumit clause written into the will. Lee’s father-in-law was the stepson of the slave owner George Washington, and had decided to free his slaves after his death. Lee, who was already a graduate of West Point, and eventually commanded the Confederate Army, petitioned to keep the righteously freedmen in bondage to him, but the courts blocked that attempt in 1862.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin all owned slaves, thereby undermining the assertion that it was the southern colonies which were responsible for the existence of that institution within our fledgling republic. The sobering truth is, that the leader of the Continental Army, and the majority of authors involved in writing the Declaration of Independence were all slave holders at the time.

If Benjamin Franklin had been an affluent American publisher during the past three decades, there is a high likelihood (based upon his salacious reputation), that his name would most likely also appear within the millions of Epstein files already released.

Part Four:

Naïve White boy realizes the universality of modern American hypocrisy.

Looking beyond the past, and into the near future, the words of Mark Twain’s painful paean come to mind. He struggled mightily to convince the American people to refrain from the blood lust that allows us to overlook the humanity of others, but ultimately chose to keep some verses hidden until following his demise. It was clear to him, that our society is often engineered into battle by the hollow words of glory from men completely bereft of honorable intent, who remain safely within their own homes.

“O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it…”

-”The War Prayer” by Mark Twain (1905)

My many hypocrisies are considerable. They bring me shame… but not nearly as much shame as I feel when I look at what my nation has become since that year I filled my room with an homage to liberty. We are a fallen as a people, now betrayed by our own.

Part Five:

There shall be no end to the hypocrisy of those in power today.

As our congress sits unable to exercise the singular lawful authority which could end this ongoing reign of terror, I find myself no longer interested in the pursuit of engagement with a class of thieves whose very election now requires the ability to openly deny their own hypocrisy as accomplice. Our streets are full of the largest collection of deadly, unidentifiable government agents to ever plague any nation in the history of the world, and our representatives feel no shame at their collective inaction, while continuing to fund an ongoing genocide. We are on our own now.

To be clear, more than 1/3 of recruits seeking employment as ICE agents have failed their physical testing. Of those whom passed that test, more than 50% have failed the open book academic testing. That means half of these recruits who were permitted to reference material containing the answers while taking the test, could not pass it.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion are the enemies of the incompetent, ignorant, and discriminatory. They have been twisted like our history, into a tool to be used in a process of destruction intended to strip our stable society into factions of opposition, in order to distract us from the unity that protects all of our rights and liberties equally, under the law. The stench of hypocrisy emanating from a federal system dismantled by billionaires, at the insistence of racists, aided and abetted by a captured and subservient media requires a pink 3M mask… even if you stay inside your home instead of rallying in the streets. Hopefully, you’ll consider showing up on 3/28/2026.

My prayer is not a Samuel L. Clemens reboot. It is beyond the ability of those ensnared in the unending propaganda and religious fervor to be awakened to the depths of their own delusions. QAnon moms who were on the warpath for Clinton blood based upon Comet Ping Pong disinformation, conveniently evaporated when faced with the evidence of crimes against children by members of the administration. The racists and nationalists so obsessed with cleansing the blood of the nation, have zero interest in comprehending how the wealthy have harnessed them into a death cult, which will inevitably result in their own demise. If there’s a red-white-and blue Punisher skull on their garments or vehicles, I no longer even bother with conversing.

Rather than a celebration of 250 years as a country, it feels more like involuntary palliative care pushed on an aging relative. It’s as if Uncle Sam is withering away inside of an understaffed VA, slowly slipping into an irreversible coma from which he will never awake. So my prayer is more of a personal eulogy intended to apprise those already fully independent of the control structure and political parties, that they are not alone in their cognition of these facts.

Though it is always a struggle to maintain the personal dignity that defines us, we can continue to resist the impetus to destroy what it has taken this long to achieve. We can only do so, if we remain unwilling to surrender our conscience. Hypocrisy comes easy but always with regret. Should patently absurd incompetence bring about the end of this empire, please join me in bidding it a fond farewell!

My Personal Anti-War Prayer

There is no meaningful oath to the tyrants and orcs,

Fashioned from past glories into great phallic farce.

We watch in abject horror at mass extermination,

Having witnessed it before on black & white film.

Internet dying color body counts grow.

May the world save itself from the US,

Former defender of all freedoms:

Lost the thread decades ago,

And now much concerned

With the petrodollar…

And social media.

Amen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0tsOzbp7WY

I believed, if faced with the acknowledgement of obvious intentional murder of innocent people provided live via grainy transmissions Americans might all be able to agree it was a crime, even after the slaughter of those in that bomb shelter in Iraq.

I reluctantly admit I was wrong: there simply is no depth of depraved indifference to which my nation, the United States of America will not gladly descend, in order to artificially prop up the value of the almighty petro-dollar to save our sadly failed state.

The blood sacrifice of the Soviet Union was tens of millions during the last century, as well as the tens of millions more sacrificed for Communist China. These were internal sacrifices, borne by civilian populations too fearful to resist the voracious appetite of their oppressors… lest they too end up in a gulag, or before an unflinching firing squad.

America has had the luxury of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Iran, Vietnam, Cambodia, El Salvador, Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Egypt, and Gaza to comprise the tens of millions of dead bodies in our portfolio.

The perverts and predators who skulked around inside Epstein’s mansions, funded and supported the forever wars that killed our relatives, and yet MAGA still cannot comprehend the linkage that the rest of the world can see even on darkest of nights.

Our myopic vision is clouded when we look at ourselves in the mirror of history, and reflect upon the limitless suffering that has been imparted on those considered to have been an existential threat to our nation, which has not been invaded since 1813.

The enemies we are now told, are those who would exercise their Constitutional Right to Freedom of Speech: “extremists” who dare embrace the fundamental Liberties afforded to question the legitimacy of institutions whose legal strictures rest upon the consent and approval of the People, regardless of any supposed notion of their Divine origin. And herein lies the rub, for the burden of proof lies upon those whom would dare to purport that this nation is in any way an extension of a religious tenet or belief.

Their arguments are weak (as always), but consolidation of power has enabled removal of those for whom a racial mandate has been established for expulsion, and this monopoly has morphed into an ideological potentate in which the traditional ideals of family, religion, and morality are now deemed sacrosanct subjects of public discussion.

Brave though the masses may be, there has been an ongoing collection of names that has existed for decades. Previously referred to as Main Core, and having a rumored twelve million names on the roll more than a decade ago, one can only assume that the new iteration of the rabble-rouser list currently being assembled by the ascendant aristocracy will far exceed the available detention capacity. But yes, they’ll build more.

The power of the nearly 200 million people who still think for themselves in this nation is actually unstoppable, but we have to be willing to believe in our own power. This is that Matrix moment, where we are willing to accept that we are our own savior. Anything less guarantees that those sick perverts who raped teen girls will get away with it, and that most of us will be homeless people living in tents while AI steals our jobs. It’s not pretty, Neo… but that’s why you can’t stay home: Follow the White Rabbit!

PLEASE LISTEN. United We Stand!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3tgzDTmWlg

As an unending thread of violence continues to be unwound upon descendants of the people who lived in the West Bank prior to 1948, one might start to think of them as aggressive and immoderate religious fanatics… rather than just peaceful olive farmers.

Hold that thought.

While thousands of media outlets on the European and North American continents shovel narratives in support of killing an unarmed U.S. reporter, and locking up a U.S. teenager inside an Israeli prison, our supposedly “America First” administration of the Red, White, and Blue pocket square, boldly looks in the exact opposite direction.

Should you require the receipts:

Shireen Abu Akleh was intentionally murdered by an Israeli military sniper, while wearing a Press vest and helmet, in an area from which there was no other gunfire.

Mohammed Ibrahim is from Florida. A 15-years-old taken into custody by the Israeli military, he has been held without trial for nine months, without access to lawyers, phone calls, or visits with his family. He supposedly might have thrown some rocks.

If the American people can be brainwashed into believing our own citizens deserve death and detention, because some other nation run by a corrupt politician facing multiple charges of fraud and influence peddling says so, then we are truly screwed!

Obviously, there is an enormous overlap of questionable moral judgment shared by both Bibi and The Donald… and their mutual acquaintance Jeffrey Epstein. The distance between the facts in these cases and the bold assertions of Israeli officials manages to remain unquestioned, like the intentional murder of an American in 2003.

More than 20 years ago, an incredibly brave and promising young student from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington decided to involve herself in the protection of homes and water wells being intentionally destroyed in Gaza. If you never heard of this kind and fearless, peaceful warrior… her name was Rachel Corrie.

Yes, the process of demolishing the homes of innocent civilians in Palestine is a project that was started in 1948 and has been ongoing ever since then. Just a fact. Armored Caterpillar bulldozers about the size of a detached garage, have been the tools provided to the Israeli government for decades courtesy of American tax dollars.

All 120 lbs. of little Rachel refused to retreat from the diesel roar of the armored monster, as dozens of tons of hardened steel plowed her way. Her body was crushed underneath the tracks, and subjected to even further disrespect as the driver put his machine in reverse, and proceeded to grind her into the soft and sandy soil again.

When I met her parents three years later, their story of the inaction of every member of the Bush administration to whom they had pled, was no longer accompanied with tears. Their voices were strong and determined, and stridently focused on sharing their belief no justice would be obtained on behalf of their daughter due to actions taken by the United States Government. Sadly, to this day, that fact has not changed.

We can use our collective power to seek violent retribution for the loss of the innocent, destroy countless other lives in that process, and create even more bodies to be sacrificed in the unending competition of destruction… or we can recognize the martyrs, praise their sacrifice, and hope to some day be half as good as they have been.

When I was a child, the message I heard conveyed through the passionate words of the followers of Jesus Christ was far less concerned about the presence of an American flag over their house of worship. The poor, the weak, the sick, and the hungry were to be revered as the living manifestation of the Almighty in our lives.

The Turds may outnumber us, but we are not of them. We can still choose to be the kneeling martyr, rather than the collaborator ushering unknowing victims into a shower from which there is no exit. Our souls belong to us, and although the future of our nation may be fading into some sort of narcissistic oblivion, we do not have to.

Love is Now a Political Act!

“But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act.”

-George Orwell (1984)

Cheering the elimination of the trade unions which were responsible for the end of child labor and the institution of a 40 hour work week, has resulted in lower wages, toxic pollution, and an increasingly hollow economy rife with cover stories. Not much effort required to blame economic collapse on immigrants willing to gut chickens and hand-mix mortar for less, while hurling baseless accusations of Communism at anyone capable of critical thought in the disgraced tradition of Senator Joe McCarthy.

Multinational corporations have abandoned almost all of their financial responsibility to our people, using tax loopholes, offshoring profits, slashing employee healthcare, halting retirement pensions, excluding overtime eligibility, and outsourcing the manufacture of American products. In fact, the Reagan administration even created a branch of the U.S. Government which lobbied American corporations to relocate to Central America using taxpayer dollars, until it was covered by CBS on 60 Minutes.

The first salvo of upper class warfare was launched by a group of wealthy interests, using Nixon and Kissinger to open China for the planned relocation of American manufacturing. That was more than 50 years ago, and regardless of any promise made by either political party, American manufacturing will never return. But, there is an endless supply of plastic crap at the local dollar store, if that makes you feel any better!

Over the past 50 years American productivity has gone up, yet real wages have dropped, along with the average savings account balance. In 1969, the rate of federal income tax on those earning more than a million dollars was 90%, but now… even if that money isn’t hidden offshore, loopholes keep the top tier effectively below 30%. Such changes, and undeclared “wars” in violation of the Constitution, have run up a $29 trillion national debt, forcing almost a hundred million Americans to borrow themselves to the very brink of financial collapse… and beyond. To put this in perspective: medical bills have been the #1 cause of bankruptcy for two decades!

Meanwhile, corporations with tens of billions in quarterly earnings, such as General Motors, Verizon, Exxon/Mobile, and General Electric, often pay no income tax at all. Some of these blue chip companies have even figured out how to score a tax refund on top of profits. Now that, is the true definition of a wasted federal welfare program!

The fall of the Soviet Union took place almost 35 years ago, yet the straw man of Communism is still trotted out to distract and confuse the average voter. Remember, it is Communism that provides the cheap Chinese labor that’s earned trillions in untaxed profits for the wealthy, and funded construction of the new Chinese military.

The five heirs of Sam Walton, now collectively control more wealth than 40% of the American people. Anyone capable of thought can see that Capitalism is not only alive and well, but working overtime to squeeze one last dollar out of the American people… unless of course, our government manages to get its greedy hands on that money first.

If this sounds odd to you, that’s because it is. This narrowly-tailored case was brought in order to force victims of homelessness in an Oregon municipality, to subject themselves to religious proselytizers for a free bed inside of a supposedly “Christian” shelter. Sadly, if the person was a “no” on pray, they were a “no” on stay. Jesus Christ!

Thankfully, there are new options being made available for the unhoused in southwest Oregon allowing them to avoid the “loving” strong-arm of the two well-scrubbed fundamentalist fanatics pictured above. Sadly, the decision in this case established a very dangerous precedent, ready to be wielded by a voracious corporate menace seeking to incarcerate at least one adult American… for every single bed it can create.

In 2005, Utah began a groundbreaking project intended to provide every single homeless person in the state with housing. The Housing First program was so successful other states (and even Canada) began to adopt their client-centered model.

By 2015, Utah was able to document an astounding 91% decrease in their homeless population, and decided to cancel the program. At that point, Housing First clients in Utah had a documented home retention rate of more than 75%. That’s like, a big wow!

Today, the State of Utah and Salt Lake City are working together to construct the prototype for involuntary incarceration of homeless people on 16 acres. Rather than restore the proven model that served the state in the past, the Republicans in the statehouse and the governor’s mansion are moving in the same direction as Texas.

Soon these “homeless camps” will become a standard feature in our nation, full of Americans considered to be unworthy of assistance or support. They will be leveraged for their labor, denied medical treatment, subjected to institutional dogma, and have absolutely no recourse unless someone is willing to adopt them. We are, in essence, creating human cages for stray people abandoned by a society that will still continue to profit from their misery… not unlike the process being imposed upon immigrants.

More disturbing than the fact this is already in motion with taxpayer dollars, is the speed at which this model will ultimately be replicated by private contractors already incarcerating literally tens of thousands of Americans. Rather than living in the hell of Nazi Germany, we are watching the rise of a totalitarian state where being poor is the only yellow star necessary to justify your internment. The inconvenience of social responsibility, has been shed to provide tax relief to those incapable of spending the massive wealth that they’ve managed to hoard within just one single lifetime. So, yay?

The cream of the crop, were animated School House Rock educational segments, produced in cooperation with Disney and ABC. Though the United Negro College Fund permanently embedded the concept of a mind being a terrible thing to waste… Mrs. Nancy Reagan permanently re-branded fried eggs as more than just breakfast.

Fast forward to a new millenia: fade-in on close-up shot of Fred Trump’s son running his mouth about how everybody else is absolutely incompetent on a wildly popular NBC “reality” television show called: The Apprentice. Just gag me- with a silver spoon!

After his ride down the golden escalator surrounded by people hired to show up by day-labor outfits, Donald followed up with this pronouncement: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?”

Just so this is absolutely crystal… both of these references are to Fifth Avenue in NYC.

In the here and now, where members of the U.S. Military are regarded as fungible tokens to be leveraged in support of both foreign and domestic policies that serve to inflate the value of $TRUMP meme coins, the president cannot stay awake after 2pm.

The millions of American families (of all political stripes), who have experienced the slow disintegration of the mental faculties of an elder, intimately know the tell-tale signs of Sundowning. We’ve “been there, done that,” and can see the truth (social).

Reporting on bruised hands, swollen ankles, gratuitous cognitive testing, and endless “possible” stroke narratives… cannot for one minute deny what tens of millions know. We were there. We stayed up at night to keep our loved ones safe from themselves, or to prevent them from being removed from their care facilities due to uncontrollable night time behavior. Yet, here we are… with a Stage 5 president holding nuclear codes.

Those fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to have read my previous “homage” to Joe Biden should realize that I do not pull punches regarding either political party. The fact that Trump’s symptoms are so obvious, public, and undeniable should scare you.

The Democrats, for all of their back-pedaling and vain attempts to construct cover stories to protect their party after-the-fact, were finally able to change course (albeit after the ship had already run aground) in the 2024 presidential election campaign.

The entire world is watching us right now, and billions of them know the facts of Alzheimer’s from personal experience. Should the political party in power continue to deny what everybody sees, it will only place the national security of our nation at even greater risk. Reagan took his naps, but the guy in the Oval Office passes out in public.

We may be losing a president by enacting the 25th Amendment, or Article II, Section One, Clause Six of the Constitution of the United States of America, but refusing to take any action is the worst possible precedent we could establish for any president.

Never before has such a massive round of authoritarian bullshit been intentionally fired into the leading foot of a democratic society by its own ruling political party.

You have to hand it to the incompetent gimps entrusted with the most self-destructive game plan ever foisted upon a group of willing accomplices: civil unrest has been activated, violations of international law have been normalized, and nuclear testing has a green light! Meanwhile, our national debt increased by $2 trillion in just 10 months, as foreign trade declines under ever-rising unemployment and inflation.

This presidential administration was built with money from wealthy South Africans who spent their formative years celebrating Hitler’s birthday, and presenting the Sieg Heil alongside their grade school classmates. They do not have any skin in this game.

The Deep State policies utilized for almost a century to destabilize weaker foreign governments in order to topple their regimes, loot their natural resources, and occupy strategic global choke-points, are now effectively being used to destabilize our society.

“I think this is a prime example of the devil’s chickens coming back home to roost.” -Malcolm X (1963)

John Perkins referred to the dark carriers of such covert political destruction as “jackals” in his autobiographical tome, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (2004). He had a simple antidote for the malevolent machinations of such bad actors.

“It isn’t about changing the mechanics of economics. It is about changing the ideas, the dogmas that have driven economics for centuries: debt and fear, insufficiency, divide and conquer.” -John Perkins

So, here we are, in the destructive phase of an intentional demolition. Not just of our beloved White House, USAID, or the Department of Education, but of a social fabric woven over lifetimes, with a clear intent to heal old wounds, to embrace the refugee, to feed the hungry, to care for our Veterans, and assist all of those who may be sick.

It is not because I seek to sow despair that I lay out these connections, for there is more than enough of that infecting our people. No, this is illumination people in power would prefer you did not have. They vainly wish you to remain ignorant of the connections between their covert operations to install Bukele, and slickly-packaged torture-porn from El Salvador’ CECOT, where 90% of those filmed were not criminals!

The resistance is real. It exists when any American recognizes that the same horrible practices used to torture other nations into submission are now being turned upon the innocent people of this country, no matter what their color of skin. The economic coercion, the purchasing of political parties and pardons, the rigging of districts and corporate mergers, the silencing of dissent in the press, educational institutions, and non-profit organizations, the manipulation of unions to pit them against their very own fellow workers, is all real. This is their agenda, and racism is just the cover story.

I am not a “stable genius,” nor have I ever been portrayed by one in a reality show. That having been said, our government is being run into the ground by a man who has repeatedly defended his incorrect answers, and refused to verify facts by consulting an objective third party. This might also explain why we still have all of these tariffs.

Trusting the judgment of an Epstein neighbor to be your numbers guy seems a bit odd, especially one who claims he never noticed the parade of teen girls going in and out the door forty feet to the left. Though it is likely Mr. Lutnick can accomplish basic multiplication tables, apparently he never actually learned to count quite that high.

The stunning inability of an entire administration to comprehend the basic concept of percentages would normally be problematic, but for some reason… just adding extra zeroes without a decimal point is now considered to be an improvement in “mathing.”

Therefore, when the press secretary claims the president is 1,000% correct, not only is that a numerical impossibility, but then the millions of people watching on Fox News automatically agree with her 1,000%. That is where all this inflation is coming from!

You’d think even the Liberals would be happy that our president has announced his plan to reduce drug prices by up to 1,500%. Apparently that’s not good enough for people with an education. Personally, I wholeheartedly support Buy One Get 15 Free.

The silly people out there in the press who keep trying to trip up the White House with multi-part questions, asking When, Where, Why, Who, and How… are not really making things any easier. This type of confrontational journalism smacks of word problems from fifth grade, and we all know how hard they were the third time around.

In closing, I would just like to thank all of those math teachers who were willing to spend extra time with me after school even when I tried to take off all of my clothes. Your time and attention meant a lot to me, and I really mean that… like about 1,000%!

It’s really every bit as absurd, as believing you could win the Powerball by playing the zip code numbers that showed up on the last piece of junk mail to arrive at your trailer.

You could spend weeks studying iridescent streams of glowing numbers slowly rising on-screen during certain scenes in The Matrix (1999), but they would never be able to provide you with the exact date and location of the black cat who will cross your path.

The powers in control of society decided long ago that compartmentalization would be key to maintaining plausible deniability. Not everything runs along the same damn algorithm, not every bad guy has his hand in the till, not every president has a clue as to why he’s told to do what he ends up doing… and fact is, that mystery is compelling!

Pedophiles, rapists, liars, mass murderers and priests have always filled our wildest hallucinations, and managed to escape into the ether of time without much of a fuss.

Here we are now, with no idea of how we can tell if an image that is reported to us by authorities to be real, is in fact just that. We’ve allowed ourselves to be transported back to the Dark Ages by a technocratic class of thieves who refuse to pay their taxes.

Humble as I might be (and that’s really not something to wager on), it is fairly obvious to my untrained eyes and ears that not only does Denmark smell fishy, but there’s serious issues with authenticity verification for anything touched by the Ellison clan.

The Palentir horse of the apocalypse is fast approaching, and that may portend the very future Orwell envisioned with his Goldstein model. Constant surveillance of any and all human life in real-time, with absolute coordination between every single database of knowledge is only capable with the development of energy-intensive computer installations draining massive amounts of water, on an almost daily basis.

We can refuse this paradigm, or else we can continue to hunt for answers inside the rabbit holes that they so willingly provide. That choice has always been left up to us.

Sure, my melancholy internal cynic decided to put on a Patch Adams (copyright) red rubber nose and kick hell out of my lesser angels, but what does that really matter within the grand scheme of a two-party duopoly selling itself to the highest bidder?

I argue against all, both Right and Left, swinging with wild historic haymakers, and obscure minutiae bound to appeal during the close infighting. The battle to establish a common ground upon which “all men (and everyone else) are created equal” is the heart of the whole damn problem in the first place… and it feels like loss is inevitable.

The famous Hendrix lyric from Purple Haze has been brazenly appropriated for a DreamWorks production. Some dirge of programmed monotony credited to Maren Morris has replaced the wildly original namesake. Unfortunately, many young readers may find this pop reference somewhat confusing… and inevitably ask: Hendrix who?

The whole palette of verbal color and tonal variation that spread out before us just four decades ago when midi was the next big thing, is now repetitive auto-tune and pitch correction, buried beneath dark apocryphral shades of The Velvet Sundown.

The Velvet Sundown (fake AI band)

Just like stoned hippies joked about an implied homosexual kiss sandwiched within the phrasing of Jimi’s immortal guitar anthem, the current generation is busy building powerful memes to combat the desensitization in this age of overwhelming despair.

We are not trapped within the frozen amber of time but slowly rotting on the vine, in vain anticipation of some moment that might have already come… but alas, we were far too busy on our phones, ordering the next meal from DoorDash to actually care!

Neo is you! Neo is me! Neo is everyone empowered with the option of a red pill and critical thought. Yet here we are, in an American sociopolitical mosh pit bashing our collective brains out, as the elimination of employment through the application of artificial intelligence in the workplace renders us homeless, and the power grid fails.

Oh yeah, a socialist named Zohran Mamdani won tonight… so there is tha-a-a-aat.

The schadenfreude expressed in anticipation minority collaborators may soon reap the pain of Trump’s racist policies, might serve some as some soothing balm in this moment of growing uncertainty. Unfortunately, all such targeting does, is create an even more impenetrable barrier to the possibility of cooperation with the resistance.

Knowing and unknowing collaboration with White Supremacists has always fared badly for those unfortunate enough to become their victims of circumstance. Whether it was the participation of Black men suffering from syphilis in Alabama (intentionally refused treatment with penicillin), or the Jewish Gestapo who profited within the horror of the Warsaw Ghetto, eventually great suffering will visit the collaborators!

I highly advise opening our arms (and our minds) to any and all people of color willing to acknowledge the racist nature of an administration now choosing to eliminate all refugees, save those with a multi-generational ideological fealty to White Supremacy.

Those still masking up to take to the streets (and courthouses) in order to deny others their guaranteed due process under law, may eventually come around. But, if they do remain on the payroll, the retribution visited upon minority collaborators after the fall of a racist regime (as recorded by historical fact), tends to involve a very bloody ending.

Just as the slow deflation of the poorly educated MAGA crowd has begun, those fringe of minority supporters lulled into complacency (and the voting booth) by some need to feel part of a “patriotic” group, are quietly peeling away from the slow-witted herd.

It is a cadre of staunchly dedicated racists, who remain loyal to the core political and social mission of this administration. They have proudly proven that their Nazi roots cannot be bleached. And as always, in this brazen braggadocio lies their very undoing

We always enjoyed the annual presentation of the Wizard of Oz (1939), but one year I found myself totally enthralled by a Stanley Kramer movie of which I had never been aware. Though the underlying theme might have escaped my juvenile brain, the slapstick treasure hunt of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) sucked me right in!

“The maddest, wildest, zaniest chase ever filmed,” according to the theatrical trailer. Dozens of world famous actors, in endless vehicle chases (and crashes), captured in all the eye-popping glory of Cinerama, and etched with a sharp palette of saturated color.

At the time of first exposure to this cinematic spectacle of American greed, lovingly spoofed by an all-star cast, the U.S. occupation of Vietnam was slowly winding down to an inevitable withdrawal. The bookends of that conflict being the original filming of the movie and my eventual viewership, it also served to frame my date of birth.

As I grew up in a neighborhood surrounded by fathers who worked for the military industrial complex, and sweated annihilation at the tip of nuclear missiles intended to destroy our way of life, I began to believe conventional war was no longer a possibility.

The mad, mad, mad, mad, mad pursuit of engaging in combat with tens of thousands of delusional men (and women) for the treasure of territory, seemed as farcical as the possibility some criminal would hide his loot beneath the palms trees of a public park.

And so it was… until recently. As the gradually eclipsing power of American Empire descends into fascism and poverty, the once proud defender of international stability now merely resorts to hollow euphemisms in order to defend genocide and starvation.

There is no excuse for denial. There is no substitute for consistent and continuous leadership by example. No other nation state has a track record of saving democracies from dictatorships, funding the health and nutrition of suffering poor around the world, and enacting legislation to protect the air and water of future generations.

We did this. It wasn’t a singular act. It wasn’t one political party. And it sure as hell wasn’t the work of corporations. Corporations have been attempting coups against our form of government since 1933, because the American people are kind at heart!

When a democratic government no longer represents the majority will of its own citizens, our U.S. State Department terms that to be a “failed state.” Sound familiar?

The actions of this administration demonstrate that lawless excess of violence on the world stage is not just something the U.S. is willing to ignore for the right price, but something in which it is actively engaged, both in international waters… and at home.

The mad, mad, mad, mad world of old man dementia has become the new blueprint.

Oscar Brown, Jr. was a poet, singer, songwriter, actor, playwright, and aspiring politician from Chicago. If he was alive today, he’d probably be confronting any masked government agent who dared to harass a neighbor without due process.

Though many still remember The Jackson Five, The Manhattan Transfer, and Nina Simone, most Americans only know Mr. Brown because of one song he wrote: an adaptation of a tale told by a slave and storyteller from ancient Greece, who lived hundreds of years before the dawn of Christianity, and left behind hundreds of fables.

In 1968, Al Wilson recorded a version of this song originally written in 1963 by Oscar Brown, Jr. The Snake soon slithered all the way up to #27 on the Billboard Hot 100. The story might have ended with the re-release of that recording in 1989 and a British TV ad in which it was featured, but it seems as though some classics just refuse to die.

At the start of 2016, hoping to capitalize on racist sentiment towards refugees from Syria (fleeing a war-torn country where Islamic extremists had been covertly trained and armed by the United States), Donald Trump began to publicly recite The Snake.

At rallies throughout the following decade Trump read the lyrics, originally adapted from Aesop’s The Farmer and the Viper, presumably to coax xenophobic cheers from those in attendance. This ritual soon formed a mainstay within the MAGA movement.

Now, as the farmers and ranchers of this country begin to experience the same pain as the kindly soul who dared to take the serpent in, a strange convergence of coincidence and policy has created a moment of clarity which threatens to reveal a deeper truth.

To brag of endless power, and then to recklessly cause harm to those who form the foundational bedrock of the very political platform from which such awesome force may be projected, obviously requires vanity far beyond restraint. Agricultural operations struggling to locate labor and overseas markets, have seen competitors in Argentina bailed out with U.S. taxes, while our national debt has risen by $2 trillion!

Is that why this man always reads the final line of the song with such vigor and relish?

“You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.”

I am not a professional trained in the science of mental health, nor am I reticent to refer to the vile poison of racism as some unfortunate malady of the impoverished, which inexplicably renders those with white skin, somehow mysteriously incapable of recognizing who their actual oppressor(s) may be. And that would be putting it mildly.

As admittedly such, I now provide a link to a most intense discussion of this problem by others more well-suited to the subject. I sincerely hope you will consider investing another half hour or so, in pursuit of knowledge regarding this important subject.

Ralph Nader Radio Hour

The (Un)stable Genius

We are joined once again by Dr. Bandy Lee, forensic and social psychiatrist and violence expert, who edited the 2017 New York Times bestselling book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.” We get her latest take on whether someone with Trump’s psychological profile should have the nuclear football and whether he would actually leave office peacefully. Pl…

Listen now

8 months ago · 104 likes · 41 comments · Ralph Nader

While classmates labored for the federal minimum of $3.35 per hour, members of the UFCW got nearly a buck more, plus double-time on holidays, and a shift differential.

Whenever non-union kids would scoff at me for paying my union dues, I just smiled. When you’re paid 30% more per hour and surrounded by a union family, it’s easy to comprehend the cost-benefit ratio… even as a seventeen-year-old grocery store clerk.

Cut to 2004, and the union contract for three major grocery store chains in Southern California. On advice of union leadership, the “family” ultimately decided to keep their own free health coverage, rather than secure a contract that guaranteed future UFCW hires would be entitled to that same free health coverage that they enjoyed.

If you missed the story, it’s no big deal. Though the national press did fixate on the UFCW workers’ five month strike, and their eventual lock-out from the workplace, the final details of the contract just weren’t as sexy as framing a “union victory” spin.

Since then, almost every single American labor union has accepted the same Pyrrich victory: sacrifice free health coverage of future members, in exchange for contractual guarantees current members will retain free coverage… or adopt a partial-pay plan.

For the past two decades, future union members have been relegated to the status of red-headed step-children. Such insults shouldn’t offend non-union folks, but one union leader has now decided to target health care for tens of millions of Americans.

President Everett Kelley of the American Federal Government Employees Union (AFGE) is exerting divisive political pressure on behalf of his 82,000 members. Their union apparently considers all uninsured Americans to be a type of sacrificial lamb.

If the Democratic Party adopts the currently proposed continuing resolution to fund our government, Medicaid cuts and expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies will create an underclass of uninsured, made up of both disabled… and working-class Americans!

As the balkanization of the American voter now takes a stunning right turn straight into the ranks of the unionized working class, one should really reflect on the century of leadership that created our 40 hour work week, a federal minimum wage, and successfully ended the exploitation of children in the workplace. Perhaps, instead of fighting amongst ourselves for those table scraps from on high, we might consider the words of a man locked up in order to prevent his possible election to the presidency.

“Solidarity is not a matter of sentiment but a fact, cold and impassive as the granite foundations of a skyscraper. If the basic elements, identity of interest, clarity of vision, honesty of intent, and oneness of purpose, or any of these is lacking, all sentimental pleas for solidarity, and all other efforts to achieve it will be barren of results.”

-Eugene V. Debs

For those too young to remember the insane predictions of doom and gloom, that forecast a youth apocalypse inevitably submerging the mighty NYPD under a fleshy young mountain of man-meat prior to the rise of Reagan, check out The Warriors (1979)

For those familiar with this kitschy little 70s gem, there’s no need to bring you up to speed. And you probably already know this era of NYC history, totally sucked Koch.

The bookends of ultra-hyped teen gang threats, and full-page endorsements of state-sponsored murder for five African-American teens eventually exonerated of gang rape, serve to frame the inept and celebrity-driven management style of the Centipede.

In the here and now, as a growing number of American citizens are arrested for the non-violent crime of causing emotional distress to members of the National Guard or for asking pointed questions in the presence of masked agents employed by DHS, the specter of 40,000 buff young men ruling the street by night might seem almost quaint.

The threat of reciprocal violence is not the antidote for tyranny. There is safety in numbers, and those numbers need to coalesce in a pattern that is both recognizable and reflective of the peace-loving majority who actually keep our nation running. As events are successfully organized without any violence, their contrast to spectacles of repression against peaceful Americans, grows even more stark and visceral every day.

What occupied our collective lives just one week ago as a joyous celebration of unity and conscience, has been reduced by intentional abuse, demolition, and the historic disenfranchisement of our Veterans, ranchers, farmers, hungry children, and even our disabled neighbors. There is no working person overlooked by this wrecking crew!

On November 5, 2025, those within driving distance of Washington, D.C. can choose to gather themselves in one place. The right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances is guaranteed under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America. That is still the law.

The number of Americans living within 350 miles of the U.S. Capitol easily exceeds 50 million, and if just 3% of those people showed up in the streets of Washington, D.C. on November 5th, it would be the largest protest to ever to take place in the U.S.A.

In a democracy, no business is more important than that of the people.