Month: August 2017

In recent days I had been restricting Cowboy Pete to my Patreon account (yesterday I put up reviews of the Game of Thrones season ender and “The Hitman’s Bodyguard.” But I wanted to get word out a bit more widely about the upcoming “Inhumans” series, having seen the first two episodes last night at the Marvel screening. Warning: there are spoilers.

Continue Reading “Cowboy Pete: The Inhumans” →

I think it reasonably safe to say that no president in the history of this country has ever started his reelection campaign eight months into his presidency. The answer as to why is obvious: Trump is constantly being barraged with polls that are telling him how incredibly unpopular he is. How the majority of the citizens do not trust him. That he’s an idiot or has syphilis or is just insane. And his inflated ego is so fragile that the only way he can survive is surrounding himself with mobs of brainless supporters who will cheer everything he says. This despite the fact that several thousand protestors swarmed outside. This despite the fact that it was observed that people who had waited on line to get in were swarming toward the doors the longer he went on.

You know, I hate to say this, but I’m honestly feeling sorry for him. He is clearly miserable in office. Nobody goes on tweet rampages if they’re happy.

1). Clever editing.. At the Tuesday rally, Trump read from his attacks upon the demonstrators in Charlottesville in which he said, “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence.” He held that up as proof that he had remonstrated the White Supremacists and Nazis. However he conveniently dropped out the very words that got him in so much trouble: “…on many sides. On many sides.” His condemnation of the right wing instigators got him into no trouble; it was his attempt to draw a false equivalency between the haters and the protestors that landed him in hot water. He was obviously aware of this, which is why he left out the key words that he has since defended. Perhaps he truly believes that people are so unaware of history that they forget even something that was said only a week previously.

2). Filibuster Rhymes. Trump is insisting that Mitch McConnell use the nuclear option and remove the filibuster so that the Senate can vote bills into law with a simple majority. Unless that happens, Trump declares, “8 Democrats control the Senate!” Of course, since his grasp of history is tenuous-to-non-existent, Trump hasn’t considered the possibility that the GOP will not remain in control. That as of 2018 they might be in the minority, in which case the lack of filibuster will backfire against the GOP. By taking advantage of the nuclear option, it will be the GOP who suffers from the fall out. But it’s useless to explain that to Trump because, like any toddler, he wants what he wants when he wants it.

3). Climbing the wall. “If we have to close down our government, we’re building that wall.” He said that in Phoenix. “Our country needs a good ‘shutdown’ in September to fix the mess!” he tweeted as well. For someone who purports to be a good businessman, how can he be unaware that the last shutdown in October of 2013 resulted in $24 billion in lost economic output? Yet Trump is threatening to do just that: to shut down the government if congress doesn’t give him $20 billion dollars to build his wall. You remember the wall. The one that the Mexican government was going to pay for? Except now it turns out that no, he wants US taxpayers to handle the cost while the Mexicans will wind up reimbursing us somehow, magically. How will he make that happen? He’s given as much detail on that plan as he did with his plans for health care.

You know what? I think that if Disney puts him into the Hall of Presidents, he should be standing with his back to the audience. Or behind Obama so he can’t be seen. That would be the ultimate commentary on his idiot tweet in which he portrayed himself as eclipsing Obama, oblivious to the fact that he was implying Obama was the sun and Trump was just passing through briefly casting shadow before disappearing.

Did he do anything right?. Yes. He looked directly at the eclipse. He proved once and for all that he listens to absolutely no one.

PAD

The following Tweet from chairman of the Democratic coalition Jon Cooper appeared today:

“After alt-right organizers saw huge counter protests in Boston, they’ve canceled 67 America First rallies scheduled in thirty six states.”

It’s what I’ve been saying all along: the answer to free speech is always more free speech. Kudos to the people of Boston for doing exactly the right thing and organizing counter rallies to these Nazi/White supremacists áššhølëš and saying, “Not in our city. Not in our country.” That is the purest essence of free speech. Great going, guys.

PAD

I have been writing about Trump’s presidency pretty much every week since he took power. And I can say this with utter confidence:

This week was the low point. Until he is thrown out of office, this is as low as it gets.

Continue Reading “Freak Out Friday – August 18, 2017” →

There’s an upcoming TV series starring Jeremy Piven, “Wisdom of the Crowd,” in which Piven’s character gathers the combined input from millions of computer users/observers in order to solve crimes. That appears to be happening in real life as pictures of the far right protestors in Charlottesville are being widely circulated and their lives are crashing down around their ears. There are already several instances where they have been fired from their jobs because their employers didn’t know that they were employing right wing Nazi sympathizers. Observers are cheering these results because they are determined to destroy these guys. Indeed, that’s why members of the KKK always wore hoods, so they could do whatever they wanted while avoiding the consequences those actions might result in.

This may outrage fans of mine, but every time I hear about another far right guy losing his job or having his life destroyed, I hate it. Just hate it.

Now if it’s someone who performed a criminal action–he assaulted somebody, for instance–then I’m all for it. Bring him down.

But if all he did was open his mouth or wave a sign, I’m sorry, no. He shouldn’t lose his job for that. He shouldn’t be prosecuted for that. I mean, obviously it didn’t interfere with his ability to do his job because his employer was fine with keeping him on as long as he didn’t harass others with his views. But now they’re being fired because their employer knows where his sympathies lie? That’s just not right. For two reasons.

First of all, all it’s going to do is drive him further underground. He might indeed start wearing a hood and, cloaked in anonymity, do worse things than he was already doing. His boss and fellow employees couldn’t sit him down and say, “Why do you feel this way? Have you ever considered maybe you’re wrong?” Engage in conversation that might change his mind (as unlikely as that may seem.).

And second, getting him fired is simply going to galvanize his hatred of the left. Before his reasons for prejudice were all lies that were fed to him by right wing sources. Now, though, he has a genuine reason to hate those who were opposed to him: they got him fired. They wrecked his life. What’s to stop him from planning revenge against his enemies? What’s to stop him from hopping behind the wheel of a car and running over some of those lefty bášŧárdš and exacting some payback? Before he was just an áššhølë. Now he’s a genuine enemy.

It is NEVER a good idea to punish somebody just because you don’t like their opinions.

PAD

On Comedy Central, they have a weekly sitcom in which a comedian imitates Donald Trump. It’s called “The President Show” and the announcer always declares Trump to be, at the top of the show, “the 45th and last President.” With what’s going on this week, I’m beginning to wonder just how accurate that may be.

Continue Reading “Freak Out Friday – August 11, 2017” →

I could do my usual thing of itemizing Trump’s insanities/inanities. But you probably have heard them discussed on CNN or supported on Fox or destroyed by comedians.

Instead for this week I’d like to take a broader view.

It’s just that I’m looking at the state of the world. The Russians obviously tampered with the election because they hated/feared Hillary that much. The Senate’s strike back at them was signed into law by Trump because he had no choice; they could have overridden his veto. This obviously infuriated Putin who retaliated diplomatically, which means we are teetering on another Cold War. Meanwhile North Korea continues to test missiles which can reach as far as California, DC, and New York, and I don’t think anyone remotely believes that Trump is capable of handling NK’s dictator if the hammer comes down.

And what I keep coming back to is this:

Let’s say five years ago, someone wanted to tell an end-of-the-world story. Governments have broken down, diplomacy has gone out the window, and lunatic nutbags are running things. If the storyteller wanted to provide a shorthand to establish how things could have possibly gone so wrong, all he would have to do is have a newscaster talking about “President Trump.” Because five years ago, the audience would have snorted and said, “Well, sure, I totally believe that if this country was stupid enough to put Trump into office, then it makes sense that the entire world is falling apart. Hëll, we probably deserve to be nuked out of existence if things have gotten that bad.”

Writers do that all the time. Alan Moore made sure that Richard Nixon was still president in the time of “Watchmen” because you could totally buy into the notion of Nixon overseeing a steady but inevitable crawl toward atomic destruction. In the episode of “Supernatural,” The End, Dean Winchester of 2009 is transported forward into 2014, where mention is made of President Sarah Palin while the world falls apart. It’s a nice writing shorthand to establish a reality on the edge of total destruction.

Except that’s fiction.

And this is fact.

The fact being that we have a man in office whose mere mention in a work published or shown five years ago would have viewers buying into the notion that we are all effectively screwed.

Am I the only person to whom this has occurred?

PAD