Month: April 2017

I was going to give Trump a break this week. I didn’t want to think about him today. Why? Because today is the one-year birthday of my first grandson, Anthony Jack or simply A.J. You don’t usually give gifts to yourself on someone else’s birthday, but I felt like giving myself a little treat: no Trump.

And then he said this:

In an interview with Reuters, Trump decried the lack of privacy in his new role, stating that he was used to having little privacy in his old life, but this one was much worse. He also detests the constant Secret Service monitoring, declaring “You’re really into your own little cocoon because you have such massive protection that you really can’t go anywhere.” He misses being able to drive himself, misses so much about his old life.

But the real kicker was this:

“This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.”

Oh my God. Oh my freaking God.

How in the hëll can any grown man, much less the POTUS, be this astoundingly stupid? Everyone with the slightest amount of brains knows that being the president is one of the hardest jobs in the entire world, with the only harder one being a bank guard in Alaska (everyone is wearing ski masks.) Easier? How can he never have looked at pictures of his predecessors? Hëll, his predecessor: Obama aged twenty years over the last eight. Did Trump think that Obama just hit a rough patch? A job that ages men the way this one does can’t in any way, shape or form be considered easier than pretty much any other job anywhere, ever. We are forced to the unavoidable conclusion that Donald Trump is quite simply the most stupid man ever to hold this office. Ever. He makes W. look like a member of Mensa.

Easier. Jesus Christ.

You know what? Here’s a picture of A.J. to make us all feel better.

So recently there were blackouts in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. Tons of people were inconvenienced as subways, airports and trollies all came to a grinding halt. Yet officials claimed there was no connection.

Yet I am reminded of a line from the book Goldfinger: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”

Am I the only one who hears about this and pictures the opening ten minutes of a Michael Bay film? We cut from one stricken city to the next to the next, watch millions of citizens become stranded, and then we cut to a warehouse or office with a guy sitting in front of a computer, and he’s saying to the mastermind, “It worked perfectly. We were able to shut down all the power to the transit systems of New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. We did it.” And the mastermind says, “We did nothing. This was just a dry run. Now…now comes the real fun.”

And we cut to Bruce Willis as John McClane stuck on a New York subway, getting into a face off with a big, burly and pìššëd øff commuter before having to knock him cold. “I can’t wait to get my hands on whoever screwed things up this bad,” he growls.

Welcome to “Die Hard After Dark.”

PAD

A busy, busy week for Trump and the Trumpettes.

1) Finally North and South Korea agree on something–They both hate Trump. He’s been waging a Twitter war with North Korea and now he managed to pìšš øff South Korea by stating in an offhand and inaccurate manner that Korea used to be part of China. So now both the good Korea and the evil Korea are angry at him. I’m not certain whether a united Korea is a good thing or a bad thing, but if they are united in their hostility toward us, I don’t see how that can possibly benefit us.

2) THIS guy is the Attorney General?–On a conservative radio show, AG Jeff Sessions declared, “I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the president of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power.” It is of course hugely insulting that we would dismiss one of the states in the Union as “an island in the Pacific.” I suppose technically it’s true that that’s what it is, but the patronizing attitude cannot be ignored. The fact that the judge is in Hawaii is irrelevant; if the ruling had happened in a Manhattan court, would he have referred to THAT as “an island off New Jersey?” Furthermore, why in the world is he amazed that a judge can do this? Of COURSE a judge can do this. It’s a Federal Court judge and he naturally tossed out Trump’s insanely unconstitutional Muslim ban as a matter of legal principle. How can the man who ostensibly oversees law in this country be amazed at how the law works?

3) You can’t criticize him! He’s the President!–Trump naturally launched an attack on protestors who demanded that he release his tax returns. He dismissed them all as the actions of paid organizers, which is his usual stunt. Funny thing: it has been pointed out that when people are hyper obsessed about something, it is typically because they themselves are guilty of it. Look, for instance, at the over-the-top ministers who decry gays that are subsequently caught out as being sexual predators on young boys, or the anti-gay senators who get snagged in gay scandals. Since Trump is constantly ascribing bribery to the opposing side, it makes sense that he himself routinely paid people to be supporters for himself or attackers of his opposition. Furthermore, Trump decries as “ridiculous” the charting of what he accomplishes in his first hundred days. Which makes sense considering that his accomplishments during that time include his utter failure to overturn Obamacare, his failure to keep Muslims out of the country, and his failure to hurt the Syrians by lobbing missiles at them that did nothing to stop the Syrians from launching more airplanes from the bombed runways within hours of the bombing. Any sane observation seems to be that his major accomplishment is that he managed to last a hundred days in the office.

Did he do anything right? Well, this is a definite win: His administration managed to free one Aya Hijazi, an Egyptian-American air worker who was held for three years in Egypt, charged with human trafficking and child abuse. Let’s just hope she’s not Muslim or Trump might not let her back into the United States.

PAD

Actually, this is been a remarkably busy week for me. And now I’m down in Miami at the Florida retro SuperCom. So I’m afraid I don’t have time to produce one this week. However, if any of you would like to volunteer information, this is the place to do it. Go nuts.

PAD

When I undertook this endeavor a week and a half ago, I was in a desperate situation. And for all I knew, my honesty might simply have been greeted with derision. Which naturally some people did. “Pay your taxes!” I was told, as if in twenty years I hadn’t paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes. Maybe it just comes down to that, for some, asking for help is seen as a sign of weakness.

But the rest of you, the support has been tremendous. I cannot thank you enough.

At this point the total income is about $68,000, which is staggering, but unfortunately still not enough. I will definitely be endeavoring to negotiate, but I didn’t want to bet everything on it working. And donations to both Paypal and GoFundMe“>GoFundMe page have trickled down.

I do have one bit of bright news. I checked with a tax attorney who stated that, since these are considered gifts, this income would NOT be taxable. A gift is any money given by someone that is under $14,000. So that would keep me in the clear. Nevertheless, when I do start my Patreon.com account, that money will be set aside to cover taxes on anything else I earn. In fact, I could use some help on that: what would you want to see in a Patreon account? I’m unsure what you guys would want to see me provide and how much I should charge for things. So anyone who wants to provide some thoughts, I’d be happy to hear it.

As for the rest of the money, well, I have a very slight bit of breathing space: a month and a half until I have to settle accounts. At this point I’m hoping maybe some millionaire fans–a baseball player or insanely highly paid TV actor or someone–will say, “Sure, I’ll give him $14,000 out of petty cash” and this is done. In the meantime, thanks for spreading the word to anyone who will listen.

PAD

There were several things to discuss this week, but honestly, they’ve all dwindled into triviality because of what happened yesterday.

It was nice knowing you–In response to Syrian President Assad’s gassing of Syrian citizens, Trump launched a missile strike against the Syrian airbase that fired on the people. Although the Syrian civil war has been going on for years, and the US has been endeavoring to help the rebels against Assad, Obama refrained from doing anything to attack him directly. The reason for this was simple: Russia is a firm ally of Syria, and Obama was reluctant to do something that would possibly trigger World War III.

But Trump, who has the self-control of an inebriated toddler, felt that launching a direct assault on a Russian ally was a fantastic idea.

Don’t get me wrong: I think what Assad did was horrific. If Seal Team Six went in and blew him away, I’d be fine with that. But unilaterally firing missiles at a Russian ally who did not attack us directly is quite simply a terrible idea, and one that could trigger global consequences.

For months we’ve been making fun of Trump’s alleged adoration of Putin. How they were secretly best buds, and that Putin was actually calling the shots. If Trump wanted to do something to put the lie to that, he certainly managed to accomplish it. Right now the Kremlin is likely sitting there saying, “THIS is who we wanted in the White House? Hillary wouldn’t have done this!” Which of course she wouldn’t have. Dealing with Syria requires the long game and patience, neither of which Trump has, and his precipitous actions may well indeed have set the dominos in motion for a military conflict involving Syria and one of the few other superpowers in the world. This from a man who swore that he would not get us involved in yet another Middle East situation, except this lie of his may be the one that ends everything.

PAD

Kath here. I asked Peter if I could write an entry for this campaign.

First off I want to say Thank you from all of us for all that you have done. Every dollar, share, retweet, article, blog entry, word of mouth, prayer, and kind thought has helped us immensely.

We are about three quarters of the way to what we need to make this long nightmare go away.

Some positives that have happened is that through some help and advise we were able to get the IRS to give us a little more time before taking everything away.

We still have the sword of Damocles hanging over our head, but the thread is a little stronger than it was giving us the chance to really get our act together.

We are talking to people who have offered us help with the issue at hand. I hope that we might be able to get a reduction but I am not counting on it because of things that have happened in the past where there has been no situational forgiveness or hardship allowance. We would really like to pay them the money and get ourselves back to an even keel so we can take care of our other finances.

A lot of people want to know how we are going to keep from falling back into the same hole that we were in.

Short version is that we are going to start, after we get our debt to the IRS paid, a Patreon account where we will be publishing new work and work that we have that hasn’t seen the light of day. We are going to be doing behind the scenes entries and Peter’s writing process. All the money from that is going into an account that is ear marked for taxes only, both federal and New York State including the insane worker’s comp tax that Peter pays which he will never see a dime of but has to pay anyway but that’s a rant for another day.

We are so close but we do need your help getting that last quarter of the money that can save us from losing everything.

This was hard for us to do. It is something that we have been carrying around with us in our heads for going on 20 years now. We have tried so hard to take care of it ourselves and we fell short.

You have given us hope that we haven’t had in years and that means a lot not only to Peter but to Caroline and myself.

So I thank you for your support so far and ask for your help in getting us to the point where we can take care of this mess once and for all.

EDIT for a good suggestion to put the links in each entry.

The Go Fund Me campaign

Paypal account is padguy@aol.com

If you would rather not donate online, checks can be made out to Peter David and sent to PO Box 951, Bayport, NY 11705