Big Machine Politics

(or How You Became a Child Abuser)







The problem with a big machine is when they fail the damage can be horrendous. If the operators are not constantly vigilant, they may lose control and seriously injure or kill someone.

Big is the bugger because human beings can't maintain focus on big things indefinitely. That's just the way we are. It's our human nature. We will eventually lose control of the big beast and the damage will be proportional to its size. In the off hand chance we are lucky enough to keep the behemoth from killing people, eventually all machines break down. Someone's going to have to pay the bill. This is where the real luck pays off, because that someone isn't you. It's someone down the line of your descendants who never had a voice in the matter. Once built, mortgaged, and broke, the cost of either repairing or scrapping the damn un-lumbering hulk is commensurate to proportion.

No matter what you were told by experts or assured by accountants at inception, the price tag will be much, much more than anyone imagined. Far outside the bell curve of probability, high and to the right, you'll find some number in need of expression by scientific notation. That's your bill. Please remit. Thank you.





The above is an info-graphic which illustrates the relative costs of some of our bigger government programs on an annual basis or a total estimated expenditure. Pretty huge numbers, huh

Well, that ain't solid human waste. It's practically pocket change to us because we don't pay anywhere near enough for the stuff we get right now. We pay 60%, and the rest is on the heads of our precious children and their children's children. What a bargain! It's all for the children, the bill that is. It's like an inter-generational heroin addiction except we're the only generation to experience the euphoria. The rest withdrawal.





They can't vote anyway. Can they? Hell, most aren't even born, yet! But we're taxing the hell out of them without any representation. Taxation without representation, that's what America is 40% about... now.

But wait, there's more...Here's the real bowel blaster...





See that little box in the lower left corner, that is all those expenses of which we are only picking up a little more than half. The BIG box is the money our precious little ones will have to carry 100% on, plus interest of course.

Oh, and then there are all the deficits we accumulate in the future before we escape this world leaving our tiny tots to the carnage of the...





So, let's grab all the "Free" stuff from the government, while we can. Liberals and Socialists are so compassionate and concerned, aren't they?

Enjoy!

Following the Murderers: Part One

The Means

On the morning after Americans voted [1]  to elect Donald Trump President, I scanned several television and Internet news outlets to get a sense of the nation's reaction. I was a bit surprised myself by the Trump victory, but I realized it didn't matter who won. I was not prepared for the images of chanting protesters, marching demonstrators, and violent rioters [2] in the city streets and university student unions across America.

From New York to Cleveland, Chicago to Seattle, and from Portland all the way down the Pacific coast to San Diego, people were marching, looting, chanting, vandalizing, weeping, shouting, assaulting,  and petting emotional support dogs with a frenzied sense of urgency. At first, I thought the dogs were brought in to protect people from the mentally unhinged mobs. It took me a little while to realize the dogs were there to keep mourners from hydroplaning on tears down sanity's over-lubricated slope. Without the additional emotional traction provided by the dogs, the marching, chanting, weeping mourners would join the looting, vandalizing, assaulting mob.

I felt my grip slipping too. I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn't watching The Purge or a bizarre synthesis of reality TV show and shaky camera zombie apocalypse film. This was live television news.

Partially disoriented myself, I spoke the question aloud, “Did these people take the things Trump and Clinton said seriously?”

As I Regained my composure I had to reassure myself, “No, it wasn't possible for an educated, free people living in a modern, western democracy to be that stupid. No, it wasn't possible. They would have to be completely ignorant of the last century of American history. Hell, they would have to be completely ignorant of the lessons of history.”

Yet, there they were in all their marching, looting, chanting, vandalizing, weeping, shouting, and frantic emotional support dog petting glory filling the streets of major American metropolises.

My God, they really believed the diatribes, the caustic campaign bravado They honestly bought the barrels of corrosive buffalo dung wantonly distributed by both candidates over the last eighteen months... then chewed and swallowed! Do you know what is wrong with this type of people?

I do.

They are the true believers in an incontrovertibly failed faith. They are the same type who raised their right arms in unison and screamed, ”Heil Hitler!” at the Nuremberg rally in 1938.

They are the same type of people who brought Benny Mussolini to power.

That's right. They believe that government is there to solve their problems for them. Self-centered rage and self-indulgent despair was the human kindling provided by these kind of people. Then, all an aspiring mass murder need do is add a steady blast of hot air to begin the conflagration.

Words of discord lead to acts of discord. As words of war lead to acts of war, and the battle lines are being drawn by partisan politics. Those who divide us by every demographic they can devise [3] benefit from our destruction.

Divide and Conquer!

United we stand?

Divided we are all.

Don't worry, there will be a future, but there is no guarantee it will become a history you will be proud of making.

...the others do something else.

FOOTNOTES and SIDERANTS:

1 - Granted, by the Electoral College vote, rather than the popular vote. The very same Electoral College we've been using for over 200 years. The very same Electoral College which nearly all voters couldn't give a shit about even though it inherently violates the one person, one vote principle which democracy depends upon. Unless, their particular candidate wins the popular vote but still loses the election due to this systemically flawed system, they care! Oh, they care! They deeply and viscerally care for the full length of their attention span, which is roughly fifteen minutes. Then, they immediately revert to not giving a shit, with the exception of a few wacky political blog writers who still care about things like principles.

2 - It looked like a riot, sounded like a riot, and destroyed property like a riot, therefore, I will call it a riot.

3 -  Race, gender, age, income, generation, occupation, geographical location, religious affiliation, pro or con, left or right, republicrat or demopublican, whatever.

Something Wrong

Something has gone terribly wrong with America 

Edward Snowden has been called many things; a hero, a whistleblower, a dissident, and a patriot by those who are being illegally spied upon. He has been labeled a criminal, a fugitive, and a traitor by those doing the illegal spying. His disclosures have raised debates, doubts, and public soul searching over mass surveillance, government secrecy, and the balance between national security and information privacy. The question asked is “Which side of this argument between national security versus personal privacy is right?”

This may come across as Revolutionary, but the People I side with say, "We hold these Truths to be self-evident when one understands who possess Rights and Who Created both Rights and those Endowed with them." I know this sounds like fairly radical ideas I am peddling here, but it's this Principle which separates us from the chaos of...

Jim Sensenbrenner, the co-author of the USA Patriot Act. Along with Assistant Attorney General of the United States Đinh Đồng Phụng Việt, the Honorable(?) Jim Sensenbrenner backdoored the Fourth Amendment with one of the most draconian, sweeping, and far reaching pieces of (s#it) legislation ever signed into U.S. law. The USA Patriot Act has been the (s#it) fertilizer used to grow a bumper crop of legal vagaries which subvert the Fourth Amendment. Thank God we have "patriots" (pronounced: assholes) like “little Jimmy” and “Ding Dong” destroying our Bill of Rights to protect our freedom. Thanks guys, keep up the (s#it) work.

We're not Nuts, We're Screwed!

Have you ever lived through a near death experience. A “gripping the steering wheel, your car is on two wheels, and a semi truck is peeling the paint off the other side of your car” type situation?

After the adrenaline runs its course along with some freshly externalized bodily fluid, you are suddenly overcome with laughter, uncontrollable laughter. Have you ever been there? 

I have.

In that blessed moment, It's good to be alive. No, it's absolutely joyous to be among the living! You would be elated at the thought of a migraine headache because it's so awesome to be alive!

A mere eight minutes to the next rest stop on the road, and we've already forgotten just how wonderful it is to be a sentient being. Yes, no longer is a respiring, masticating, ovulating, or (whatever the male equivalent is) -ing human of the pre-expiration persuasion all things good in the world.

Now, you just need to change your pants. It's cold outside the car, your warm increasingly odoriferous car.  The restrooms looks menacingly dark and adult bookstore dirty, and there's a line. Not just any line, a Soviet era waiting for toilet paper sort of line. You have to stand at the end of this cue as each newcomer asks the same predictable question,”What's with the pants, dude?”

You muddled through some pathetic lie about your daughter's birthday. You don't care if they believe you, and that's for the best because they don't.

A measly eight miles earlier, you were dancing with the angels in the Presence of The Almighty while looking at the world and asking, ”What shall we do with this ball?”

Now, you're reduced to this considerably marginalized position of ignoring hushed rude comments and the obligatory snickers which follow happening right behind your back.

For one brief moment, simply having the next moment of life brought you sudden and profound Enlightenment. Satori!

But now, here, you're best hand at the poker table, your all in moment at the casino, and some freshly-fallen angel holds sway over the turn of the next card. Despair!

I had just such a situation after the results of the 2016 Presidential election were announced.

Thank God Hillary is not our Chief Executive for the next four years. Yes, praise Him for His Hand of Protection over America! Thank you for being this beings God! I am delighted with laughter. I verge on dancing naked before the Lord. I felt like Solomon in all his Wisdom. Satori!

But now, here I realize… Trump! 

Soiled pants. 

Dirty, dark restroom.
Long line.
Snickers.
This sucks!
God help us.
What is that smell

An afterthought:

After sharing such celestial and humiliating experiences with you, I feel there should be some Aesop's Fables moral to this story, and fortunately my feelings haven't led me astray...

America has spoken through her election process: 

"When given only two options, we will prefer the inept over the malevolent."

Hopefully, this will be counted to us as Righteousness. 

A *Wink* to the DPRK

That's not a wink, he's just squinting.

If there was ever a nation on the modern globe which begged for régime change it's the Democratic (👈hilarious!) People's Republic of North Korea (AKA: DPRK). Washington's demagogues obsess over the DPRK's nuclear program because it might hurt people, but the "Home of the Free" (👈hilarious, too!) takes no concrete action1 to protect the millions of people who were and continue to be exterminated under the cloven hoof of the Kim dynasty since 1948. Instead, the business end  of the Arsenal of Democracy (👈chuckle!) has focused on the likes of Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad, and a cast of comparative “Vienna Boy's Choir” voices in the authoritarian régime chorus. This strikes me as disingenuous since we proclaim, promote, and propagate the premise that U.S.military intervention in any given country is prompted to secure the freedom of a repressed people because that's just how magnanimous we are.

Click to Zoom
A sense of relative value

Maybe my cynicism waxes melodramatic. There exists the possibility that the people of the DPRK actually love the prospects of living under a draconian state of surveillance, forced isolation, fictional virtues, fabricated history, excessive military spending at a cost of widespread famine, extermination, murder, enslavement, ad hoc justice, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions, and sexual violence (I used the short list) make up a typical day in this Southeast Asian neighborhood. There is the possibility that this barbarity is how human beings should treat one another and allow one another to be treated by others. Yes, maybe the “Dear Leader, who is a perfect incarnation of the appearance that a leader should have” (👈swallows own tongue laughing) lived up to his onerous title and I am but a wrong thinking enemy of the people. Maybe.

We have Disneyland and they operate secretive prison camps where perceived opponents of the government are sent to face torture and abuse, starvation rations, and forced labor (the quaint little institution we used to call "slavery").
 

Click to Zoom
Amazing dude, huh?

To each their own, I suppose. It's not like we in the “Condo of the Free” (👈giggle) would operate some secretive prison camp on an island ninety miles south of Florida where prisoners are detained without recourse to the law and deprived of their Creator endowed certain unalienable Rights, right? (👈Smirk) That would be intolerable to our American sensibilities because we are totally different from the despotic North Koreans. Different like when the Mafia runs a rigged numbers racket it's a criminal social blight called "Gambling", but when the state runs the same racket it's fun for the entire family called "Gaming" (👈 Damn funny). 

Yup, we're totally different. 
God bless America. 
Amen! 

No matter, if the people of North Korea ever want real hope and change, all they need do is exercise their Second Amendment Rights and overthrow their Beloved Leader just like we advised the Iraqi people do with Saddam. If they were to somehow be bamboozled out of that precious God given Right of self defense (👈Ridiculous!) then all the happy go lucky folks in the DPRK need do is give Pyongyang’s Juche Tower a little makeover...

BEFORE

AFTER

We'll be there directly.
Guaranteed! 
That's just how magnanimous we are.
*Wink*

Footnote:

1 - Concrete Action as opposed to Paper Action, such as:

• Paper writing
• Paper shuffling
•  Paper towel drying your hands after washing them clean of the massacre
•  Paper filing
•  Paper reciting
•  Paper deal making
•  Paper reading 
• Paper tiger origami
• Paper wiping your ass with the Constitution

That's what we do when it comes to freedom, it's window dressing, just rhetoric and feel good resolutions because we don't really believe in the principles and ideals this nation was founded upon.

Grim Facts...

...every American should know.

Syria: Rise of the Warons

Long term effects of Warons

What a difference a war can make!

Has anyone noticed what's happening in Syria?

 It seems that U.S. backed “rebels” are actually terrorist, Jabhat al Nusra and Islamic State are both fighting to topple Bashar Hafez al-Assad whilst fighting each other in their free time. Trying to delineate the opposing forces is like nothing that happens in nature or outside of it, as well. These Syrian intermural scrimmage match teams are more incestuously related than most Appalachians. I can't imagine how a situation like this came to be except for playing Twister on family night and everyone deciding to go Game of Thrones on each other. These guys are related by blood, marriage, mosque, flavor of Islam, and favorite plastic explosive compound. Oh, and they just happen to be from the same neighborhood, Syria. I'm having a hard time finding a reason for most of them them to be fighting, let alone fighting each other. Maybe they were just bored and some very irresponsible people left a lot of munitions laying around. Very irresponsible people whose reckless actions kill innocent people should be brought to justice, shouldn't they?

Whilst you ponder my rhetorical question, try to figure this out as well...



The Obama administration's top priority is bringing down Assad and somewhere (over the rainbow) down the priority list in a virtual tie with providing salad fork subsidies to transplanted Bikini Islanders, is fighting terrorism by the extraordinary strategy of attacking terrorists.

I know this is a hard one to swallow, but if you look at how we have toyed with ISIS for over a year, it becomes apparent that we're not putting our best foot forward and into Islamic State's ass. The topography ISIS inhabits is pretty easily bombed to kingdom come, at least by the appearance of their propaganda videos. Which, might I add, are of remarkable quality for Middle Eastern media. Jeddah and Riyadh viewers appreciate the unifying message to humiliate Rabbis between “I Love Lucy” reruns.

Speaking of a change we can believe in, Obama seems to have pulled a page from the Arabic Problem Solving Handbook…

1. Identify the problem.
2. Kick the shit out of the Kurds.
3. Think about how to solve the problem.

Obama rewrote the procedure…

1. Identify the problem.
2. Change the regime of your choice.
3. Watch the Kurds (who happen to be U.S. allies) get the shit kicked our of them.
4. Think about how to solve exacerbate the problem.
5. Sell guns to everyone including EXTREMIST TERRORISTS GROUPS, except Bashar Hafez al-Assad because he's a bad man. 

Please, try to maintain your composure. This is not a laughing matter. It's our ridiculous foreign policy. So, try to have some respect for Mrs. Hilarious Clinton and her hand picked State Department idiots who originally hashed the Syrian fecal fest together. Please.

Yes, it's true, Assad is no Ghandi that's for sure, but he's no Chairman Mao, either. This behooves Assad because we know what happened to Ghandi. Peace makers in the Middle East don't fare any better if you recall a man named Anwar Sadat, but I don't think Obama takes any of this kind of rational, fact based thought into account when he's obsessing. 

Barack may be suffering OCD with the “Assad must go” mantra because there are a hell of a lot more inhospitable heads of state out there on our tiny blue ball, and there are more on the way. One will be ascending to power this coming January 20th in a nation much closer to home. I could pummel Obama, Clinton, and Trump all day long and I probably will, but that's a hobby and I have to earn a living. 

Here's the money shot. The people who need to be shaken with one of those shakes that kill newborns is the American people. Oh, don't be outraged at me. No. No. You should be enraged by the behavior of our “leaders” who only retain that job title for “leading people on”. Those people being led by the nose are us, the US. The ones hypnotized by the mud slinging, the sleaziness, and the fully automatic ad hominem attacks or acquiring erectile dysfunction from exposure to another episode of the Kardashians. That's what good government/ entertainment is all about, isn't it? 

Journalism has been referred to as infotainment so why should the public sector be left unmutated? Govotainment, it is! Remember, you read it here first.

Now, continue drinking that and all other memories into oblivion because that's the final destination on the current route. While the muse is with us, we should concoct a new disorder called ”Waron”. Symptoms include, but are not limited to,

• Inability to focus on cause and effect relationships
• Easily distracted by bickering
• Confuses issues with dog and pony shows
• Repeats cliché  quotes like, “Make America great again” or “We are stronger together” incessantly.
• Innumerate (e.g. Budgeting) worth a fuck.
• Propensity to lie perpetually but not consistently.
• Maintains a delusional worldview in which Republican and Democratic policies provide different outcomes.
• Clannish as can be, and readily accepts any manufactured oppressed minority subgroup as their own clan. (e.g. - You're a Lesbian, Jewish, Folk, Artist, Male who identifies as a  disembodied spirit of a dolphin named "Harold". Sorry, a bum named "Harold". You must have checked the wrong box.)

• [Add your own] It's a fun distraction while you try to forget what you just read and resuspened your disbelief. 

If you haven't rejoined the Matrix yet, there is hope. The treatment for Waron is called “diligence”, and the only negative side effect/ benefit is awareness. It has some antisocial symptoms, such as:

• Inability to ignore hypocrisy
• Reduced capacity to suspend disbelief
• Increased skepticism
• Always results in terminal sarcasm

While all the major powers involved in this Murder on the Mediterranean game claim that a cessation of hostilities is their goal, not a single one of them has proposed an arms embargo. Not one. Nobody. 

*Sound of crickets chirping*

War On!

Laugh! While we still can...

From the Michael P. Remirez Gallery*

Truth, Justice, and the American Clinton Way

Home of the Free Entitled
Land of the Brave Safe.

* - No NEA grant money required, huh? Weird.

Lead Head: Blame it on my EPA

OK, maybe I'm slow or have ADD, but doesn't this seem weird? Anyone?

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “...even legally "lead-free" plumbing may contain up to eight percent lead.”

What's the risk of lead?

Lead is a highly toxic metal and a very strong poison. Lead poisoning is a serious and sometimes fatal condition. It occurs when lead builds up in the body.

There are no beneficial effects to consuming lead.

In children, recovery from lead poisoning can take time. Even low lead exposure can cause permanent intellectual disability.

Even low levels of lead in the blood of children can result in:

• Behavior and learning problems
• Lower IQ and Hyperactivity
• Slowed growth
• Hearing Problems
• Anemia

Adults are at risk, as well:

• Cardiovascular effects
• Increased blood pressure
• Decreased kidney function
• Reproductive problems

Like I said, maybe I'm slow or have ADD, but this is all very confusing to me. Can anyone explain this to me after I take my Ritalin? Anyone?