This just in: Alice in Wonderland is starting to seem more like a documentary about the thought process of the American public than a story about the absurd.

I saw an elderly woman interviewed a couple of weeks ago. When asked why she would vote for Trump, she said, “I lost my medical coverage and I believe he will make sure I get it back.”

I watched those words come out of her mouth and just shook my head. If she represents the average American, surely all is lost.

Let’s compare Trump to Biden

Biden

1. He is about 10 years older than I would like him to be. It’s not that he’s out of touch. I’m more concerned with his health taking a bad turn and him becoming incapacitated. However, so far he looks to be in good shape with a sharp mind.
2. Biden supports cancelling student debt. I oppose this unless it is accompanied by a plan to prevent the accumulation of future debt.
3. Biden got us out of Afghanistan but was rather clumsy about it.

Trump

1. Found guilty of rape.
2. 4 indictments that include 91 felony counts from 4 different courts.
3. Called for the execution of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for being disloyal.
4. Promised to take over control of media institutions like Comcast and MSNBC because they were not nice to him.
5. Found guilty of years of fraud by the Trump organization which is now going to be put into receivership and have all of its assets sold off.
6. As president, he gave a huge tax cut to the wealthiest Americans adding trilliions of dollars to the national debt.
7. As president, he ordered the Kurdish soldiers to be abandon so the Turks could swoop in and wipe them out. These has been our best allies against Syria.
8. As president, he slow-walked national response to COVID causing an estimated 400,000 unnecessary American deaths.
9. Trump University was found guilty of fraud, ordered to be disolved and to pay $25,000,000 in damages.
10. Had sex with a porn star while his wife was pregnant and then paid off the pornstar to keep him quiet.
11. Told his staff not to allow wounded veterans to attend his public appearanced.
12. Does not like soldiers that were captured.
13. Avoided the draft due to bone spurs that have never shown up in any medical examination.
14. Has more than 34,000 documented lies to the American public while in office.
15. Wants to give Putin the land that Putin took from Ukraine.
16. Has a long history of not paying for services rendered to him. Most recently, his lawyers.

But wait. That’s all about Trump. Let’s look at the Republicans…

1. Want to execute Taylor Swift because she is encouraging people to register to vote.
2. Want to impeach Biden even though they have no evidence of any crime.
3. Routinely ignore subpoenas from Congress.
4. Have multiple people listed as co-conspirators in Trumps effort to overturn the election.

Let’s interview a Republican and see how they repond.

Me: What is your plan to fix inflation.

Republican: No, you shut up.

Me: What is your plan to fix healthcare.

Republican: No, you shut up.

Me: What is your plan to end gun violence?

Republicans: Make sure everyone has a gun.

Me: What is your plan to cut spending?

Republican: Cut out food stamps, free school lunches and basically anything that might help the poor.

Me: What is your position on birth control?

Republican: No abortions. No birth control. No education about birth control

Me: Since there has been ZERO evidence that the 2020 election was stolen, what is your position?

Republican: Since we lost, we believe it was stolen. Our belief is our evidence.

Me: Why do you want to shut down the government?

Republican: Because Trump told us to. This way we can defund the DOJ and keep Trump out of jail.

Me: Aside from banning abortions and giving guns to everyone, what is your platform.

Republican: Platform? Platform?! We don’t need a stinking platform!

So there you have it. Everything I just wrote is easily verifiable.

And yet, nearly half of Americans will vote Republican because the believe Trump was sent to them by God.

Alas…

Time to save the world.

Up, up and away….

Jim

This just in: I intended to stay with Fox News for a month for all of my news information. I was wondering if I would come to like the hosts. Perhaps I would become acclimated to their perspective. I wanted to be able to see “the other side” of things and this seemed like a good idea.

I lasted 8 days.

I basically saw ZERO news in 8 days. Well, aside from some hurricane coverage.

Here is a typical segue: Sean Hannity is preparing for a commercial break and says, “When we come back, Senator J.D. Vance is going to tell us what a disaster the Biden administration has been.”

Take that and repeat it over and over and over again. No specifics. Nothing like, “Biden did this and then the following happened.” No. It was more like, “Liberal policies are ruining our country.”

What’s a liberal policy?

Or then there is the “San Francisco is defunding its police department.” No one from San Francisco is interviewed. No mention of the police attack by Republicans on January 6th. No mention of ignoring the rule of law when it comes to the 91 Trump indictments. No. Just “Liberal policies are ruining our country” and wild accusations that even a child can see to be nonsense.

However, they keep on putting out the same dirty pile of nothing. I guess that they do this because there is an audience for it.

Imagine that. A large portion of our country tunes into Fox News every day to find out what they should be mad about.

There are no solutions discussed…ever.

It’s as if they walk out their door in the morning and find something they don’t like. “It’s a beautiful day today but liberals want you to spend your hard earned dollars funding China’s global warming hoax.”

The hosts, throughout, are cringe-worthy. I thought I might get used to it but every time one came on I would think, “How do you go home at night and face your children knowing what you did today?”

So, I gave up.

I didn’t go back to MSNBC or CNN not because they are biased but because they only present one side of the story. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying, “They all do it.” Fox is an outright propaganda machine peddling hate. The other side just spends too much time telling me what a criminal Trump is; something I already know.

I like ABC.

Time to save the world.

Up, up and away…

Jim

This just in: After 4 days of Fox news, I feel I am adrift in a world of make-believe.

Right now they are talking about Trump. They’re complaining about his schedule. It seems that it is very unfair he has so many legal issues on his calendar while running for president. Not a single mention that all of these legal issues are of Trumps own making.

Already this morning, the Joe Biden Crime Family has been brought up 3 times.

Time 1: Joe Biden is really old. Too old to be president. Yes, he is only 3 years older than Trump but they seem to think Trump is a picture of health so age does not matter.

Time 2: Joe Biden is bringing back vaccines and COVID to distract us from his disastrous “liberal” policies. No mention about what those policies are. They actually implied that the reason we keep getting new vaccines is because the previous ones didn’t work. One line was “Maybe they’ll get it right this time.”

Time 3: Joe Biden has 5,400 emails in the national archives under a pseudo-name. So far they all appear to be about his schedule. However, Fox wonders if Joe has a secret Yahoo account. Apparently just thinking that makes it so because the very next thing they are excited about is supposing it was true (what they just made up right there on the spot) and were hoping that someone would investigate that issue. OMFG!

Also this morning, San Francisco has a 31% office vacancy rate. Fox attributes this to “liberal” policies. Once again, I have no idea what policies they are talking about.

Good coverage of the storm approaching Florida.

Time to save the world.

Up, up and away…

Jim

This just in: Last Friday (8/25), I decided to go for 30 days without watching any political news station other than Fox. This post is my first one covering how I feel about it thus far.

The first show was hosted by Greg Gutfeld. He started by saying Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswami reminded him of his Uber driver. I was 1 minute into my first episode of Fox and already saw a racist joke.

Over the weekend, my overall sense was that Fox is the place to go if you want to be mad about something. For example, they had a 15-minute segment on how Joe Biden is attacking small businesses that make fans because Biden wants the fans to be more energy efficient. Shockingly, up to 10% of small fan manufacturers may go out of business.

This was a typical segment. Let’s break it down a bit. First, I guess that Joe Biden has no idea that there is legislation in the works about fans. As president, he does not make laws or assign spending. These jobs fall to Congress which, by the way, has a House that is controlled by Republicans. Secondly, note the term “may” when referring to a possible outcome. This is akin to a software company that says, “You may save up to 10% using our software.” Pure speculation without evidence. And finally, there was no coverage of any possible “upside” to the legislation. I guess that its part of a larger program to reign in energy consumption but I don’t know because they never said.

This morning, Monday, things got even worse.

Let’s start with the scandals…

Apparently, someone on Jack Smith’s staff met with a lower level White House legal person sometime in March. Fox is outraged that this is apparently evidence that Biden is using the DOJ to file criminal charges against his opponents. WTF?

Next, the ousted Uranian prosecutor is claiming Joe Biden, in 2016, took bribes and helped his son get deals in Ukraine. Fox News is outraged at this complexly corrupted President. They left out that this was investigated by a Republican-led senate who found no wrongdoing. Here is a link. This is old news about a disproven issue. Still, combine this with the fan-gate and a meeting of unknown substance in March and you start to feel that Fox viewers are being influenced by a massive inundation of unimportant nuance that will leave them feeling as if “something must be up.”

Then comes mask-gate. Covid is making a predictable comeback due to the fall season and the very nature of a highly contagious virus. Fox made 2 points using an “expert”. First, there is no evidence that masks have any impact on the spread of the virus, and second, masks contain substances that make you sick. I found this interesting so I typed in “Are masks effective against COVID?” Response #1: Mayo Clinic says “Yes”. Response #3: Johns Hopkins says “Yes”. Response #3: CDC says “yes”. I found no evidence that masks make you sick although the FOX host said, “Yes, I don’t feel well when I have to wear a mask.” Join the club. That doesn’t mean the masks are making you sick. It means you are a normal human being that doesn’t like wearing masks.

Noticeably missing is any commentary on Trump.

It’s still early on Monday morning so I’m sure there is more to come.

Thus far, my finding is that FOX news is where you go to be sold anger by grifters.

Time to save the world.

Up, up and away…

Jim

This just in: Trump has been indicted…again. I’m not talking about the tax evasion and insurance fraud case in New York. I’m not talking about the defamation/rape case. I’m not talking about the election interference case in Georgia. I’m not talking about inciting an insurrection case on January 6th. All of those are real cases. All of them are very serious but I’m not referring to any of those.

I’m talking about the case where Trump knowingly took highly classified documents from the White House after he was no longer president, denied he had them, and then tried to hide them. That’s the case Trump was just indicted for.

Jack Smith, the special counsel assigned to investigate this case has come through with overwhelming evidence. No hearsay or “read between the lines” to find some guilt. He has confessions. He has photos, videos, and audio tapes.

In short, the case against Trump is stronger than if he had shot someone on 5th Avenue in broad daylight in front of thousands of people.

He will go to jail for this.

But let’s look at how the Republican Party is handling this.

You might remember that they call themselves the party of Law and Order. They call themselves Constitutionalists.

They can call themselves whatever they want. The real question is: What do their actions say?

Let’s go through some of their defenses. The common thread here is that every one of these is easily countered with facts. Facts like: What does the law say? What did previous investigations find? That type of thing.

Let’s start with the Pillow Guy defense. This is where they accuse or promise something groundbreaking but never come through.

1. Hunter Biden’s laptop, any day now, will show that he and his dad did something unspeakable. We can’t tell you about it just but believe us when we tell you it’s really bad.
2. Joe Biden took $5 million from the Chinese. We don’t have evidence just yet but we’re sure to find it soon because we read all about this on the QANON site online.

Then there is the Deflection defense:

1. What Hillary did was much worse. Really? Tell me more because Trump had 4 years to investigate her and found nothing.
2. Joe Biden is a dictator. Really? Tell me more because I don’t think you know what that word means.
3. Joe Biden did the same thing? Really? Tell me more. Don’t just say words. Go through the 37 points in Trump’s indictment and for each one, cite the thing that Biden did that was equivalent. How about you just pick one and show me the equivalence?

Then there are all sorts of other things.

1. McCarthy claims it was okay because the bathroom door had a lock. He forgot that the bathroom door only locks from the inside. He implies that the documents would wait for everyone to leave the room and then lock themselves inside.
2. McCarthy also claims that Biden hid thousands of documents in a garage and we all know that garages don’t have locks. In response to this, someone on Twitter said, “I’m going to invent a garage lock and make millions.”
3. Jim Jordan said that if Trump claimed to have declassified the documents then he believed him. Never mind that this is a case of facts, not beliefs. For example, it’s a fact that Trump did not have the power to declassify any of these documents. There is also the fact that there is an audio tape of Trump saying he didn’t have the authority.

Ask a Republican about any of these points of fact and they will say, “I haven’t heard the tape” or “I haven’t read the charges.” What this means is they are twisting themselves into pretzels to defend Trump even though they claim to not know any of the facts.

Here is the problem: A lot of people only get their news from their politicians or Faux news. Thus, they are uninformed.

An uninformed public is the only reason any Republican is ever elected.

By the way, I post stuff like this on online all the time. Every now and then, someone will respond with “Hey, asshole. They all do it.”

I find this an uncompelling argument.

Time to save the world,

Up, up and away…

Jim

This just in: I had a friend, a Republican friend, recently mentioned to me that “Biden is such a weak leader.”

I ignored this comment, which came out of left field, as something said to test my political position. Sometimes, it’s best to leave politics at the door.

Still, I know the origins of this comment. This person is a Fox viewer so I immediately know that nothing short of conversion therapy will rid her of their nonsense. But the “origins” of her comment came from the tendency of everyone to refer to Trump as a “strongman.”

It sounds like a positive: Strongman.

But that’s now what it means. A strongman is a type of authoritarian political leader characterized by autocratic dictatorship which depend on the military to keep themselves in power.

Other strongmen include Hitler, Mussolini, Hungary’s Victor Orban, Russia’s Putin, and Turkey’s Erdogan.

A strongman does not refer to physical strength. Nor does is refer to a strength of character. It certainly does not refer to someone that is characterized as a leader of a democracy.

So NO. I don’t think we need a strongman. It’s like saying we need to be ruled by a dictator.

In other news…the economy is suffering because the Republican Party won’t raise the debt limit. This is 100% on them. The last time they did this, the credit rating of the United States dropped. This causes us to pay more for everything.

In other news…Today marks the 1-year anniversary of a mass shooting that killed a bunch of children. Do not be confused…This is 100% the fault of the Republican Party.

In other news…Women are suffering increased medical trauma due to the anti-abortion movement. Do not be confused…This is 100% the fault of the Republican Party.

It has been roughly 40 years since any non-destructive legislation was passed by the Republican Party.

Just sayin…

Time to save the world.

Up, up and away…

Jim

This just in: I need to bitch a little more about the Republican party. I can’t help myself.

Let’s start with the difference between an “investigation” and a “witch-hunt.” According to Republicans, if a Republican is being investigated, it’s a “witch-hunt.” If a Democrat is being investigated, it’s an “investigation.”

How do the parties differ on what to do with the results?

Democrats say, “If there is evidence, show it. If there is guilt, apply appropriate punishment.” This is true regardless of who is being investigated. Take Hunter Biden for example. I have no idea what he is being accused of but Liberal media is united in saying, “What’s the big deal? If there is evidence that he broke the law, show it. If he is guilty of a crime then of course he should do the time.”

Republicans will simply lie about it if the results are against them. Trump is found guilty of defamation of a woman he sexually attacked. The guilt was unanimously determined by a jury of 12 American citizens. The Republicans call this a joke, implying that the jury, all of the jury, hated Trump. In other words, this was a witch-hunt and deserves no recognition.

The Durham report just came out. It was started 4 years ago to investigate an investigation into Trump. The claim by Trump was that this would expose the deep state liberal plot against him. Instead, it found ZERO criminal behavior. It found ZERO influence due to political bias within the FBI. It found some procedural errors which we discovered and corrected 4 years ago. In short…a big nothing burger.

In other news, Giuliani is being sued for sexual harassment. He is also being accused of selling presidential pardons. The accuser apparently has emails and numerous recordings to support her claims. This, along with Giuliani’s well-known behavior seems to paint a fairly guilty picture of him. Still, let the courts figure it out. If he’s innocent, let him go. If he’s guilty, apply the appropriate punishment.

You see, this is how our judicial system works. You can suspect something at any time. You can investigate that “something” and then, depending on your findings, apply justice.

The judicial system is not, “He’s rich so let him go.” The judicial system is not, “He’s a member of our party so let him go.” The judicial system is not based on witchcraft. The judicial system is not based on “I have tons of evidence that I’ll show you sometime in the future.”

It’s based on facts and applied to all American equally.

Or at least, that was the original intent.

Time to save the world.

Up, up and away…

Jim

This just in: A few months ago I posted a response on Reddit, anonymously, an answer to a question. The question was, “Why have you left Facebook?” There were hundreds of answers. Mine was, “I was disappointed to see how many of the kids I grew up with became MAGA.”

I grew up in a small town; one where whites may have been a slight majority with Latino and African Americans making up the rest. I don’t recall racism being an issue. We were all kids playing together, going to school together and working in the fields together.

Then I left and joined the Navy.

Decades later, I get on Facebook, excited to see old friends. This lasted for a few years but eventually, I had to accept that the way I see the world is vastly different from many of those I grew up with.

One guy posted something about Obama being a “sand nigger.” Another bragged about how he wasn’t married but he had loads of money and this kept him surrounded by women. Others talked about loving guns and always got upset when someone said, “Maybe we should look at some common-sense gun laws.” Then Trump came along and they fell in line right behind him.

I left and never looked back.

Then last night, Trump had a townhall on CNN.

During this event, he lied about the election being stolen and the All-Republican crowd cheered. He called the woman that just won a sexual defamation suit against him a “wacko” and the crowd cheered. He said the people that stormed the Capital on Jan 6th were “people with love in their hearts” and the crowd cheered.

Donald Trump represents the most damaged personality one can imagine. He has zero redeeming qualities. He’s a pathological liar. He hates women. He can’t possibly have an IQ over 100. He is a coward. He is a racist. He is vindictive. He is a tax cheat. He tried to overthrow the government.

And people still cheer him on.

I’m not talking about a room full of people at a townhall. I’m talking about tens of millions.

That’s how many people want to vote for him and think he is the guy that should be running our country.

They want a president that added $2 trillion to the national debt just to give tax breaks to the rich. A guy that thinks Putin was a genius to attack Ukraine. A guy stole government secret documents by the hundreds. A guy tore children from their parents at the border to “teach the parents a lesson.” A guy had sex with a pornstar while his wife was pregnant and then paid her to be quiet about it. A guy whose son-in-law used his family ties to get a $2 billion investment from the Saudis.

A guy that will spend his next time as president getting the United States out of NATO.

A guy that said, “If I ever run for office, it will be as a Republican because those guys will believe anything.”

Have we no shame?

I think not. And that is the problem.

Time to save the world.

Up, up and away…

Jim

This just in: The verdict is in on the Donald Trump trial.

You may ask: “Do you mean the tax/insurance fraud case in New York?” or “The insurrection case?” or “The hush money case?” or “The case of election interference in Georgia?” or “Stolen secret documents case?”

The answer would be: None of the above; at least, not yet.

The verdict that came in is for the defamation case where a woman accused Trump of raping her and his response was to ruin her career.

Trump was found guilty by a jury of his peers. Not guilty of rape. That was never the charge in this case. Rather, guilty of sexually assaulting this woman and then denying it and thus ruining her career.

You probably already knew this, unless you listen to Fox News.

I did give Fox a listen this morning. While the other networks were all about Trump being found guilty or Republican Santos being indicted for fraud (he’s the guy that keeps lying about everything) or about gun control or about the debt ceiling or about Republican scoffing at the idea that a trial by one’s peers is even fair..while this was on other networks, Fox reported that a dog won the Westminster dog show.

Fox also reported that at 9:00 am they would be covering evidence that Hunter Biden’s laptop showed all kinds of criminal activity. I turned in at 9:00 am and there was one sentence that said something like “Later today will be the report Biden has been fearing.”

This is like the Pillow Guy spending 2 years saying, “Next week I’ll reveal all my evidence that the election was stolen.” By the way…still waiting on that big reveal.

So, a little hairy dog won a big prize and soon, we will hear more about something that will be released at a later date.

Fox news viewers are glued to their TV’s waiting for the next teaser.

Me…I have a world to save.

Up, up and away…

Jim

This just in: The debt ceiling is the maximum amount of debt the United States is legally allowed to incur. It is not a budget. It is not the same thing as the “national debt” or the “deficit.” It is not intended to be used as a budgetary or spending tool. It is an artificially created thing that basically causes Congress to notice when they are spending a lot of money that they don’t have.

If you want to increase or decrease spending, then do that will budget appropriations. This is when Congress decides to spend or not spend money. Various members can vote for or against spending or spending cuts.

To vote against the Debt Ceiling however, is something very different. It basically says, “I am voting to not pay the bills that our government agreed to pay when we created the budget.”

Let’s look at it another way. You have a certain amount of income every month and your spending is based on that. You may want to spend less and save money or you may decide that to get something you want, you have to borrow or create a debt. So, let’s buy a house and have a debt that we pay every month. Deciding to not raise the debt ceiling is not the same as deciding to not buy a house. The house has already been bought. Deciding to not raise the debt ceiling is the same as saying, “I want to spend less money so I think I will stop paying my mortgage.”

If you don’t pay your mortgage, your credit rating will drop and all future debt spending will cost you more because lower credit ratings equal higher interest rates. Also, if you don’t pay your mortgage, someone else won’t get their money who won’t be able to pay someone else who then won’t be able to pay someone else….on and on.

In short, not paying your debt, or not raising the debt ceiling is the fastest, most certain way, to ruin the economy.

And remember, this is not about budgeting unless you make it that.

You could just as well say, “We Republicans aren’t going to approve raising the debt ceiling unless the president resigns or we all get free cars or we change the name of Thanksgiving to Food Appreciation Day. None of these are related unless someone decides to make them so.

The Republicans in Congress, the ones that raised the ceiling every year under Trump, the ones that added 2 trillion to the national debt by giving tax cuts to the rich, have all decided that they will link the debt ceiling to some budget cuts. Furthermore, they have not even specified what these cuts would be.

In short, they are willing to ruin our economy so that the United States will default on its debt. Once that happens, they will blame this default on Biden even though he is fighting to keep the Republicans from causing it to happen.

This is our Republican Party. The very same party that thinks the reason the United States leads the world, by far, in gun violence is that, for some reason, we have more mental illness in the United States. The same party thinks women should not make critical health decisions for their bodies. The same party that was appalled when Bill Clinton got a BJ from an intern but cheers for Trump who is about to lose a rape trial.

Our government is a mess. I know who to blame for this. Do you?

Time to save the world.

Up, up and away…

Jim