If We Were Honest With Ourselves, We’d Admit That Alcohol And Pandemics Simply Do Not Mix

November 22, 2020November 22, 2020 ~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

Pandemics don’t sit well with social creatures. Covid19 would be a lot easier to beat if humans were more like snow leopards — exceptional at self-isolating from other snow leopards. But, humans mostly crave each others’ company. We like socializing. We especially like drinking while socializing. Sometimes, in fact, we like the drinking more than we even like the socializing. If we socialized without drinking, we’d feel like we didn’t really quite “socialize” properly. Don’t get me wrong — there’s nothing wrong with either self-medicating or self-medicating together. But the last thing we need is a “medicine” (alcohol) that makes us more susceptible to a pathogen by encouraging stupid behavior.

I stopped drinking alcohol four years ago. I didn’t mean to. The mood stabilizer I started taking to treat a suicidal depression gives all alcohol a terrible, grapefruit skin-like aftertaste. Even a big, inky red loaded with fruit and depth suddenly became grapefruit skin on the finish. Given the choice between not being suicidally depressed and not drinking alcohol because of the aftertaste, I turned my back on a collection of lovely reds, single malt scotches and all sorts of interesting alcohols. I walked away from bracing, ice cold gin martinis and sumptuously malty IPAs. I didn’t just drink alcohol, I savored it. I collected it. I celebrated it.

These days, I self medicate almost exclusively with cannabis. I could not be happier. Literally.

Being a non-drinker opened my eyes to both my own excessive drinking and — sorry, guys — everyone else’s too. Don’t take this personally. It’s just a stone cold fact: you all drink too much. You think about alcohol too much. You don’t appreciate how much it impacts you because you haven’t the (non-drinker’s) perspective. It’s fascinating to go to a bar or party (back when we used to do things like that) and, over the course of a few hours, watch everyone you’re with become less coherent. Or worse. I can’t tell you how many times, over the last four years, I’ve watched friends and loved ones become painfully silly the more they drank and thought “There but for the grace of alcohol go I”.

We know this to be true: the more alcohol you drink, the more your motor skills diminish. The more your thoughts blur together. The more your emotions — anger especially — spark to life. Alcohol obliterates our capacity to edit ourselves. In vinas veritas? Bullshit. In vinas stuff you shouldn’t say. Not because it’s “true” but because however you’re going to say it, you’re going to say it inelegantly. You’re not going to articulate the nuances of your feelings, you’re going to take a huge emotional dump all over the person you’re focused on.

How much trouble has alcohol caused at sporting events around the world? How much rioting? How many championship celebrations have morphed into street violence? Take alcohol out of those equations and — I betcha — those equations all end differently.

Imagine for a second that instead of serving alcohol at sporting events they served cannabis. Think there’d be any violence at the end of a soccer match? Hell, no! Cannabis doesn’t work in our brains the same way alcohol does. Not even remotely. Ever see gangs of people hopped up on cannabis rioting? No? There’s a reason for that. Cannabis does not compel you to do anything like that.

Cannabis (especially sativas) focus the mind while drenching you in feelings of mild euphoria. One can appreciate nuances of the game one would miss on alcohol. And there’s no anger. Oh, yeah, sure — if your team’s playing badly, it’s not nearly as much fun as when your team’s winning. But a stadium filled with fans high on pot would never turn violent. They might hug each other a little too tightly. They might praise each other a little too effusively. They might be asleep.

I had the pleasure of going (only once unfortunately) to LA’s first cannabis cafe. It was awesome. At the time I went they didn’t serve alcohol; I’m not sure if that ever changed; I hope it didn’t. A couple of quick takeaways: the most striking thing to me was how the place sounded. For starters, the profit-driving product for sale wasn’t alcohol — served in glasses — it was cannabis — served in joints or as ground flower or concentrate. One heard lighters flicking a lot. But very little clinking of glass. Cocktails weren’t be mixed. Beer bottles weren’t being opened. Toasts weren’t being made.

And what happens after the drinking begins — that wasn’t happening either as my friend Johnny and I sat there, enjoying first the giant sativa joint we bought to share and then a very good lunch: people getting louder. People getting high on cannabis may laugh a lot more — and there was abundant laughter in the room (joyful, delighted, high-as-a-kite laughter), but no one got boisterous the way alcohol makes people boisterous. Cannabis, by contrast, draws people inward.

They get a little quieter actually, more thoughtful. Johnny and I — the THC from the sativa (I don’t recall what strains were blended into it) drenching our brains — had a very good, very intense conversation about what we were experiencing. We couldn’t help noticing how many of the tables around us were doing the same thing — in the same normal tone of voice. That’s the thing, ya see: unless you’re (deliberately) wasted? Most people on cannabis don’t change much from when they’re NOT on cannabis.

So — the Cannabis Cafe was quieter because less glass clinking, more conversation using indoor voices exclusively, more focus and euphoria. Cannabis, by the way, makes food taste awesome. And the menu was created with a clear understanding of the ways pot makes you hungry and what it makes you hungry for. The Korean tacos would have been good anyway. On pot, they were transcendently good.

One other relevant observation. The cafe has a parking lot right next to it — with valet service. Johnny and I both parked on the street and walked a half block or so to the cafe. When our ninety minutes were done (that’s all the time you get — there’s a line of people waiting for your table after all), Johnny and I paid our bill and headed for the door. Like everyone else, we’d just spent 90 minutes eating and getting high.

Just outside the cafe’s front door, Johnny and I watched the other diners get their keys from the valet, climb into their cars and drive off. Johnny and I then said our good-byes (and how much we enjoyed ourselves) and headed off to our cars — which we both got into and drove off. Having — all of us — just smoked dope. Know how many traffic accidents happened just outside the cafe (as “high” drivers, oblivious because they’d smoked weed turned into oncoming traffic)? Zero.

There’s a reason. Alcohol and THC do not act on our brains the same way. Though we treat them like they do, they simply do not. While alcohol impairs your motor skills almost from the get-go, THC doesn’t. There’s data from the National Highway Transportation that makes the point. It states in fact:

“…Most marijuana-intoxicated drivers show only modest impairments on actual road tests.^37, 38 Experienced smokers who drive on a set course show almost no functional impairment under the influence of marijuana, except when it is combined with alcohol.”

It does not matter how experienced a drinker you are. You will always be impaired by a certain amount of alcohol. It’s just math — and blood-alcohol chemistry. The same simply is not true of marijuana.

Hell, I take a hit or two of Durban Poison (a wonderful classic sativa) before playing tennis because it improves my timing. The THC slows my thought process down (I’m hypomanic) just enough so I can focus on the ball. I see it far better WITH the THC in me than without. I know where I have to be to put the ball where I want it to go. Another benefit I’ve noticed? My timing is better because I become more “coachable”.

I listen to myself. I make the necessary adjustments in order to play better. And then I do.

Alcohol, by contrast, causes terrible decision-making. People say things they shouldn’t. They have sex they shouldn’t have with people they shouldn’t have sex with. They get into their cars and turn on the ignition.

Or they go out drinking with friends during a pandemic.

If there was more of me and less of you, I’d try to stage an intervention on your behalf. Alas, there’s not so I can’t. I totally get our obsession with drinking. It used to be my obsession. But, these days, if I get hurt or die in a drunk driving accident, I know going in I won’t be the cause. Neither will my medication. I can’t control drunk drivers.

Neither can I control assholes who won’t wear a mask. I wouldn’t even try.

They’re probably drunk.

Since “Republican” Now Equals “Trump”, Non-Trumpist Republicans Need To Re-Brand; I’m Here To Help

November 15, 2020 ~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

As much as they suck at governing, Republicans excel at marketing. Remember “Mission Accomplished”? The only thing “accomplished” was hanging that banner. While Americans vote with their hopes and dreams, Republicans only ever deliver smoke and mirrors. Missions UNaccomplished. Skies NOT blue. Plenty of children left behind. The words promise plenty. Too bad they’re all as hollow as Donald Trump’s heart. Hollow because corrupt — and corruption is what binds Trump to each and every Republican.

The fact is, Trump epitomizes Republicanism, its every cynical, greedy, power-mad excess cranked up to eleven. That’s why Republicans — and the republic — are now hurtling toward the mission Republicans have ALWAYS wanted to accomplish: a state of permanent minority rule. Republicans are about to learn a harsh, harsh lesson. The criminal mojo that worked for Trump his whole life is about to stop working.

For four years, every Republican benefited from the fact that Trump gets away with everything by themselves getting away with almost everything. The thing is, those around Trump did NOT get away with everything like Trump does because they’re NOT Trump. Republicans have forgotten: what worked for him would never work for anyone else. Without Trump — and his corrupt, befuddling sorcery — the backstop Republicans have grown accustomed to is gone. They just don’t realize it yet.

But Trump does. He’s even said it in private, back stage. He’s worried about going to jail and he bloody well should be. Because he IS going to jail. One way or another. And the process that puts him in jail will be as highly entertaining as it is revelatory.

We’ve forgotten ourselves how the world works when we have even a semi-functional Department of Justice — that’s how perverted our view of justice has become with Bill Barr at the DoJ’s helm. In addition to attacking the pandemic head on as they hit the ground, Team Biden also must attack corruption head on because corruption threatens the effort to attack the pandemic.

Even with some in the American news media still determined that “both sides do it”, most Americans — the majority of us — see clearly that, really, only ONE SIDE “does it”. Only one side made Donald Trump their candidate and thus their standard-bearer. Only one side made a Devil’s bargain with Russia — and Russian money — in order to win the 2016 election. Only one side has resisted oversight with religious zeal — as if they had something to hide. Only one side refuses still to acknowledge the decision We The People just made about our future leadership.

To call oneself a “Republican” now is to call oneself a “Trumpist”. That won’t change tomorrow. In fact, the fact that Republicans made themselves the Party Of Trump is going to be the brush all future political campaigns paint all future Republicans with. If they WANT to be “The Party Of Trump”, they’re good to go! Voters will understand their choice. But if a Republican wants voters to see them as something other than a Trumpist?

You can’t “call yourself” a Trumpist and not expect people to think you’re a Trumpist. Regardless of whatever nuances YOU apply to the word, the rest of us see zero nuance. We only see Trump. Ask the Coca Cola company what happens when you try to nuance “Coke” with “New”. However the Coca Cola company perceived themselves or wanted their customers to perceive them — they got the opposite. They got confusion — and then anger, resentment and customers turning to Pepsi or RC.

The “Republican” brand is about to be as dead as the “Whig” brand. The problem: we still need those people we used to call “Republicans”. Not the Trumpists, of course, the normal people. We still need their voices of moderation to counter balance ours — which are about to send the country heading hard to the left. Rest assured, whatever resistance Mitch McConnell thinks he’s going to present will be undermined by Mitch’s legal problems. He’s not going to be worried about blocking anything Joe Biden’s doing; he is going to be worried about saving his own bony, white, Treason Turtle ass.

Also — I believe we’re going to learn that all the Republican-manufactured voting machines (the voting machine manufacturers are all Republicans, Republican donors and their boards are all loaded with Republican politicians) have been padding Republican vote totals for YEARS. When a fully functioning Department of Justice begins pulling the thread of Republican Corruption, that garment will unravel faster than a Trumpian lie. We will see Trump, the Republican Party, the Republican leadership and Republicanism bare-assed naked.

Every revelation about greed, corruption, cynicism — and especially treason — will sledgehammer the Republican Brand further. By the time we get to the 2022 mid-terms, Team Biden will have 1) mitigated the worst of the pandemic, 2) eased the economic hurt most Americans are now feeling, 3) restored order and rational thinking to our political process and 4) begun to uncover whole mountains of criminal behavior. To call oneself a “Republican” while running for office would be like saying “Hey, never mind that I may be a criminal myself — since I run with criminals — vote for ME!”

In an environment where integrity and caring about the Commonweal are the norm, good people will want to be perceived as having integrity and caring.

All those good, former-Republicans are going to need a new brand to describe themselves to the American voter. I have a helpful suggestion. A real one.

The problem with calling yourselves “conservative” is that the word gives away too much. As a Progressive, my politics are all geared toward progress — toward meeting the future’s challenges head on with new, outside-the-box solutions. Conservatives are no different. Their politics are all geared toward “conserving” — just like their name says.

The question is “WHAT do conservatives want to conserve?” Obviously it can’t be the future. You can’t conserve what isn’t. Conservatives want to conserve what IS. How we are now — because it still holds on to the bits of how we WERE that conservatives REALLY want to conserve. Ask any conservative what they want to conserve and, ultimately, they’ll reveal that the thing they want to keep alive is the past.

Tradition’s important and all but — in a rapidly changing world, tradition can be dangerous because it’s based on old knowledge that new knowledge might contradict. If they try to bleed you in a hospital emergency room? Say no! Their medical text books are out of date.

And, really, these moderate Republicans aren’t conservatives anyway. Most of them are social Progressives with a Methodist’s view of money. Circumstances — a dissolving economy — are going to force Progressive solutions on us. The cash Team Biden will use to flood the economy is very much a form of Universal Basic Income. We’ll witness ourselves how cash flowing America from the bottom up works far, FAR better than trickling money down from the top ever could work. Even after we’ve wrestled the pandemic to the ground, more pandemics are coming; we have no idea what pathogens a thawing permafrost will release. In a world where we’re as healthy as the least healthy among us — it only takes one person to start a pandemic raging (hello, COVID19!), socialized medicine can’t be a pipe dream. It needs to be a fact of life.

Yes, yes, yes — what Progressives like me want to do will be expensive. Americans will pay more in taxes at the end of the day. But they’ll get something valuable for the money. And the wealthy will pay far more than they do now because they can afford to but — more importantly — because it is their obligation as citizens of this country. Don’t like the responsibility? You don’t have to be a citizen. You can take your chances with your money elsewhere.

Hey, though Trump paid virtually no taxes to America, he obligingly paid hefty taxes to China — because he feared what would happen if he DIDN’T pay his taxes to China.

See? How does the other side counter “corruption” arguments? “Be more conservative” won’t sell. How about “Let’s be more moderate”?

Moderation may not be progress’s diametric opposite (regress), but it is the perfect alternative to “Let’s Do This Now!” Moderation says “Let’s take a deep breath and make sure we’re making the right decision for the most people”. There’s nothing wrong with making Progressives bring their receipts with them. By all means — please check our work. Hell, I bet that while checking our work, these new “moderate former-Republicans” will innovate solutions that Progressives didn’t think of. Those solutions may not get Progressives everything they want but then welcome to democracy.

America is best when it’s moderates are most dynamic — when they’re taking the best ideas and knitting them together into workable solutions. And think how sensible “moderation” will sound going forward. Calling oneself “Moderate” — or “The Moderation Party” would be a bold, direct announcement of who these former Republicans are. With its mission statement baked into its name, a “Moderation Party” would be incredibly attractive to a lot of Americans.

Maybe there’s a better, sexier word than “moderate”. It won’t cut to the end of the chase like “moderate” does. Conservatives won’t go away any time soon though their numbers will dwindle as conservatism takes residual damage from Republicanism’s fall. Ironically, their voice will sound increasingly extreme, making moderation — or a “Moderation Party” that much more sane-sounding.

Please, at least take my suggestion under consideration, moderates. Call yourselves something other than “Republican”. Most of you already do call yourselves something different — “Former Republican”. Let’s find you something you can be proud to call yourselves not as a reaction but as a statement of faith and purpose.

This Progressive is happy to say out loud: We need YOU.

The “Wednesday Morning Quarterback” Says “Be Patient” — Let The Game Come To US…

November 4, 2020November 4, 2020 ~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

It was wishful thinking and our lust for payback getting the better of us. That’s what’s coloring our disappointment this morning. We wanted the repudiation we ordered delivered all in one massive go. Alas, repudiation of All Things Trump and All Things Republican will be delivered in pieces — for assembly later. It may be like a set of IKEA instructions — meaning, we’ll put a major piece on backwards then have to disassemble the thing in order to fix it (but we will). We, together, will fix it. But, first — we have to take a deep breath. We have to look at the Big Picture. We have to be a little more patient still.

When Kobe Bryant was a young player, he had a bad habit of trying to take over games. Sometimes it worked and Kobe’s one-on-five heroics got the W. But more often than not, whatever the team was doing ground to a halt so that Kobe could try and be the hero he hadn’t been called on to be. Yet. Later in his Lakers career, with age, discipline and experience in his pocket, Kobe got better at not doing that. He involved his teammates more aggressively — and (surprise, surprise) when they returned his confidence in them with points or assists, it took pressure off of Kobe and allowed him to operate with more freedom — producing more and better results.

Remember what our game is here — what we’re doing on the fly while the game is on: we’re trying to reverse a coup d’etat that’s already well on its way to succeeding. We’re trying to do this with Russia interfering massively in real time. We don’t even know yet from where all the disinformation is flowing. We don’t know why Democratic hopes of retaking the Senate got dashed so spectacularly. The Democrats, as of right now, could still have control of the Senate (they could get to 50-50 with Kamala Harris being the tie-breaker). All that means — in terms of the game — is that the first two years of the Biden-Harris admin will be a little harder. At first.

Here’s the part where, if we just wait for the game to come to us, we’ll have the repudiation we want — and the nation needs. Make no mistake — the 45% of this country who still adore Trump need to be repudiated. Their values need to be repudiated. Ditto their racism, bigotry, misogyny, ignorance and willingness to herd immunity themselves and us into the graveyard. And we don’t know yet in what ways Mitch McConnell and the RW money manipulated the results.

Let’s not be naive. Mitch knows where the game’s headed. His mandate — from the RW money — is to put that off for as long as possible the inevitable socialization that a diverse America will demand. The Republican game is permanent minority rule — a kind of slavery-on-the-down-low where a few rich white guys own everything and the rest of us work our whole lives just trying to tread water, never owning a thing in the end.

Mitch also knows that with Joe Biden as president and former prosecutor Kamala Harris as veep, the Department of Justice will return to the business of dispensing justice (rather than acting as Trump’s consigliere). That — right there — will be when the game looks toward us. Mitch worked his bony white ass off to keep the Senate from falling into Democratic hands because that’s his last move to stave off checkmate. It’s how he hopes to protect all his judges. It may work — at first.

But, as the newly rejuvenated DoJ begins to look into everything the Bill Barr DoJ refused to look into, things around Washington, DC will get uncomfortable. Guys like Mitch — with his new six-year term — won’t be protected like they used to be. Mitch will have to answer for everything he did in the lead up to 2016’s election — you know, how Mitch refused to let We The People in on the secret that Russia was actively engaged in subverting the election’s results. Mitch will have to answer for lifting the sanctions on Oleg Deripaska — the Russian intel officer responsible, in part, for subverting the 2016 election.

When placed under oath and question relentlessly for hours, weakling Mitch will fold. So will every other Republican back in power. Without Trump using executive power to protect them, the Republicans will have a massive problem. We’ll dunk on them relentlessly. Rather, the Truth will. And that’s when the score will start to run up. Mitch won’t serve his six years — unless we count the time he serves in a federal prison.

The game will come to us. We’re not going to win it in the first thirty seconds like we dreamed of. Nope. We’re going to have to play the whole game.

But we are already on the road to winning it. And then we’ll win the game after that. And the one after that — until the whole season is done. When we look back, in time, we might even forget how much of a struggle it was. Yeah, we’ll remember, it wasn’t easy, but, when the game eventually came to us?

We nailed it at the buzzer.

In A Fight Against Evil — Like Now — You HAVE TO Take A Side

October 27, 2020 ~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

In a time as immoral as ours, moral choices matter. MSNBC is about to broadcast an interview with a “non-voter”. That’s a strange concept in an environment as morally clear as this one. Even if you don’t love Joe Biden, the other choice — Donald Trump — has taken the country to a moment of genuine existential peril. That is not hyperbole. The choice isn’t so much between two men as it is between two diametrically different directions for the country to go in. This isn’t between two variations of beige paint for the living room walls. It’s actual life and death. Who the hell is STILL having a tug-of-war in their heads about which one they’d prefer?

The non-committed voter is not being careful, they’re being indecisive. It’s not the same thing. Where a careful person is weighing the information, the indecisive person is weighing their own fear of being wrong. They have no moral convictions to guide them. Their compass reacts to how the group perceives them. The last thing on earth they want is to be unpopular. They need to be accepted and they’ll do ANYTHING to be accepted — like change their mind. Or make their mind your mind.

If being accepted means hating Black people or Jews (even if on the quiet), they’ll do it even if Blacks and Jews mean nothing to them. Even if they actually like Blacks and Jews. The undecided are utterly spineless. Utterly empty.

And yet MSNBC just made the case — by “yeah, but what if-ing” a “case” for the undecided: “Yeah, but what if the undecided are right and there isn’t a clear case between Biden and Trump?” Yeah, but what if there isn’t a clear case between Hitler and whoever is running against him? What if there isn’t a clear case between throwing children in cages or separating them from their parents forever and not doing those criminal things? What if there isn’t a clear case between protecting the nation from the pandemic and NOT doing it?

It’s not just a stupid question, in the current context, MSNBC, it’s offensive. And journalistically irresponsible.

It’s the kind of question a practitioner of “both sides do it” journalism would ask because that kind of journalism, steeped in cynicism (instead of skepticism), assumes the worst of everyone. It assumes that everyone does what they do for the exact same reasons. The thief and his victim, the murderer and the murdered, the rapist and his victim. In a both sides do it world, no one is truly innocent because everyone is guilty of something. We just don’t know what.

That’s how a Donald Trump can get away with literally everything — including rape, treason and murder. He says “Don’t blame me — blame the other guy!” — his version of both sides do it. The “both sides do it” press hears the dog whistle and falls right in line. “Yeah, but what if THIS TIME Trump’s telling the truth?” they think in their heads — and they give Trump the benefit of the doubt he long ago stopped deserving.

If America’s news media were capable of aggregating the Donald Trump story, he’d already be in a federal prison — along with his whole family and the entire Republican Party. Oh, we WILL get there. We absolutely will. It’s the only place this country can go if they ever want to get healed. First things first: wrongs must be undone as much as they can be. What Donald Trump and the Republicans have done — in order to hold onto power indefinitely — must be UNdone. Or changed completely.

The big irony of our story is that the RW Money, in their desperate attempt to establish a state of permanent minority rule, will have caused America to go the very socialized places they most feared. Socialized medicine. Socialized secondary education. Universal Basic Income. Higher taxes for the wealthy (heading back toward the 1950’s when America’s economy boomed) and a bigger, broader, more compassionate social safety net. The fact is, we have no choice. There are no conservative ways out of this. They simply do not exist.

The pandemic has driven one point home: it always starts with ONE PERSON. Patient Zero. We are all susceptible because one person can infect all humanity. Therefore we must be able to treat every single person inside our borders for our own collective good. If we charge them money for it, it may be an obstacle to them seeking the care they need and we need them to seek. It would be self-destructive therefore to charge money for something essential both to each individual and to us as a society. We can only ever be as healthy as the least healthy among us.

Freedom works the exact same way. We can only really be as free as the least free among us. Freedom can’t be “everything”. That’s how children think. Freedom in a free society is weighted — the individual vs the group. Too much freedom for any individual that infringes on the group’s freedom — say, to not get shot while going to school — cannot be. One person’s perceived freedom (to own all the guns they want and fire them at will) cannot cancel another person’s freedom to live securely within their own body. Something has to give. Guess who?

I hope that’s not a hard decision. If it is — and choosing between obvious good and obvious evil — challenges you, it just so happens MSNBC just did a segment about you.

Freedom Is Never “FREE” — It Always Comes With Responsibilities

October 24, 2020 ~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

Pandemics bring clarity. This one has clarified that people who refuse to wear a mask because “We’re not the boss of them” have a five-year-old’s idea of “freedom”. They think freedom is getting to do whatever they want, wherever they want, however they want. If it bothers you or interferes with your rights — or infects you with their disease? That’s not their problem — and anything you do to affirm YOUR rights automatically steps all over theirs. They have plenty of rights. The rest of us? Not so much. Sounds like Libertarians, doesn’t it? And Tea Partiers? And Republicans in general.

My dad was a captain in the Air Force. He was fond of saying “Rank has its privileges and its obligations”. Everyone loves the sugar coating. But that coating’s on a Brussel sprout. And you have to eat that too.

Every freedom — whether to say what you like or love who you like — comes with exceptions. You are NOT free to threaten people with your words. You are NOT free to love people who aren’t old enough to judge whether or not to love you back. You are NOT free to take your legally owned weapon and discharge it at will in public. Without those exceptions to complete and total freedom, we’d have complete and total chaos. It’s the “responsibilities” that make freedom workable. But only if everyone agrees to meet those responsibilities.

As we’re now learning the hard way, if too few Americans don’t take their responsibility to vote seriously, that very right gets eroded — by people who don’t want them to vote period. Voting shouldn’t be a “use it or lose it” proposition. It should be more “use it because it fills you with PRIDE to use it”. Or “use it because that’s how a representative democracy like ours works”. Use it because it’s your responsibility.

People who take their rights for granted are setting themselves up for failure. That would be us — right about now. Freedom, it turns out, is a muscle that must be warmed up, stretched and worked out like any other. It needs to be looked after so it can look after us.

By the same token — the rule of law is just an idea we invented. It cannot and will not enforce itself. That’s entirely up to us. If we want to live under the rule of law — and Donald Trump has demonstrated what the alternative would be — then we have to live by it We have to enforce it.

And we have to make sure that everyone who violates it — regardless of who — gets treated exactly the same.

That includes the punishment part.

The Correct Response To “Trump ‘Won’ Again” Can’t Be “Woe Is Us!”, It Has To Be “NO EFFIN’ WAY!”

October 23, 2020 ~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

Who needs a smoking gun when the entire forest is on fire — and it’s the very gun that started the fire? Not every dot needs literal connecting to be connected. We are surrounded by well-documented evidence that says clear as day that Donald Trump is not now and has never been the legitimate President of the United States because the rule of law says — clear as day — that you can’t become president if a foreign country helps MAKE you president (especially if that foreign country has declared CYBER WAR on us). Every last bit of what I just wrote is easily supportable with copious evidence — starting with the data collected by our own eyes and ears. Donald Trump is a traitor. Everyone who’s known or suspected as much — no matter how vaguely — was obligated by the rule of law to say something. When they failed that obligation, they, too, became traitors.

America did not vote for treason in 2016, but it is what we got. Rather, it was what the Republican Party — in league with Russia (Russia!) twisted the result we voted for into. What they couldn’t alter by means of old fashioned voter suppression — wiping names off the books wholesale — they accomplished via new-fangled voter suppression — flooding Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin with Facebook ads directed at individual Black voters. Or, rather, stepping back and watching while RUSSIA flooded those three states with the weaponized putback of voter data given to Russian Military Intelligence (the GRU — in the form of Konstantin Kilimnik and Oleg Deripaska) by Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s campaign manager.

Treason, treason and MORE treason.

Sorry, but no bloody way the most amazing (but flawed) experiment in human self-government goes down the crapper because of treason. Not when the majority have no interest in it — and voted otherwise. These criminals hijacked the bus once.

Sorry — they ain’t hijacking it again. The passengers won’t allow it.

It’s easy to become cynical. Driving people away from hope and toward the darkest cynicism is one of authoritarianism’s goals. Without hope, people lose their will to fight. What’s the point if nothing will come of it but terrible pain? If Donald Trump and the Republican Party thought they could take over America without having to go through this election, they’d have done it. This election scares them. It’s the one, gigantic variable they can’t fully control.

Oh, they can try to. The whole point of voter suppression is to limit the size the opposition. To them.

Democrats, you’ll notice, NEVER try to suppress Republican voters. It would never even occur to us to do such a thing. Democrats have this bizarre idea that you should vote for them because you like their ideas better. You’d prefer how they would govern over how the Republican clearly intends to “govern”. As of today, over fifty million Americans have already voted (four years ago, it was around two million votes at this point). They’re voting by mail and standing in long, long lines. Sure, sure — a few of them must be Republicans. But the polls aren’t trending up and down. The polls paint a picture of more House districts flipping blue and red Senate seats previously thought impregnable suddenly looking soap bubble vulnerable.

We’re gun shy about getting too excited about what looks like a blowout because, you know, 2016. But this isn’t then. This year’s version of the Comey Letter — the Hunter Biden Whatever — just blew up spectacularly. Last night Trump sounded like a lunatic spewing nonsense only QAnon-tards could fathom. Then this morning the Wall Street Journal (owned by Rupert Murdoch) blew the rest of it apart. Oh, did we mention? It’s all Russian Military Intelligence work product.

Yeah. It’s something our enemy dreamed up.

Let’s be crystal clear: Donald Trump did not “win” in 2016. He is not now nor has he ever been the legitimate president. Cheating again will not make him legitimate. It will only add to the criminality we must prosecute. Because that’s how we need to see this — not as the “oh well, better luck next time…” lament of people cheated out of their democracy (there won’t BE a next time), but as the last straw. The people behind Trump — the right wing money — represent a sliver of a sliver of who we are. Even the most violent Trumpanistas — the ones who will most likely go down in blazes of “gory” — represent not just a minority point of view but an extreme minority point of view.

We’re headed into winter. Where most of them live, winter will drive them inside if it hasn’t already. They won’t mask, won’t distance. Even as they gather together to plot against the election’s winners — the rest of America — they’ll be sickening each other. Yes, for sure there’ll be flashpoints. But they’ll peter out as the virus takes hold of their parts of America.

Remember in HG Wells’ “War Of The Worlds” how the Martians land and kick the crap out of earth’s armies? We look doomed until the Martians start dropping dead. What kills them? Germs. Earth germs. The Martians aren’t vulnerable to bullets or bombs, but they are to the tiniest earthlings — single-celled pathogens. That’s exactly what’s happening to Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

A teeny-tiny pathogen — a thing not even alive! — is going to save America and drive the Republican Party into well-deserved extinction.

The day of bullies owning the schoolyard is over. We own the yard now. We The People. And we do not plan to surrender it any time soon.

Dear American News Media: Stop Asking The Democrats To Compromise With Republicans; No One Should Compromise With Evil

October 14, 2020 ~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

“Evil” is a loaded word. It’s a little like “Nazi” or comparing people to Hitler. Back when Donald Trump was sworn in — and some of us noticed how evil and Nazi-like Trump was already behaving — “Godwin’s Law” was invoked (Godwin’s Law says that “as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1”) to poo-poo any such comparisons. Donald Trump — per the news media — was just a “different kind of potus”. You know, the kind that doesn’t follow rules. Or the law. Or the Constitution.

Donald Trump is not a “different” kind of president, he’s a criminal. He’s a rapist and a thief and a money launderer and a traitor (not necessarily in that order). That’s all in the public record. It would be how we already think of Trump — except the news media keeps setting side all the details they learn about Trump in order to start each day’s reporting from that “he’s a different kind of potus” perch.

Oy.

If Donald Trump walked into the house of each of those journalists who can’t put the proper names to Trump’s criminal, corrupt, treasonous behavior and deliberately infected them and their whole families, I bet those brave journalists would call out Trump for being not just evil but Evil. I guess once their families are in the game, shit gets too real. But what about other families?

Evil is evil is Evil. Raping women is evil. Donald Trump is a rapist. Money laundering is evil. Trump has laundered copious amounts of Russian mob money. Separating children from their parents and putting them in cages is evil. Trump has done that. Committing treason is evil — as is stealing an election (then trying to steal your re-election) and lying about a pandemic because it hurts your electoral chances.

Mitch McConnell — he’s evil, too. Where to begin?

Mitch’s pandemic relief proposal is designed to be too little to do anyone any good. Remember: it’s Mitch’s game plan to kill off any possibility of “socialized” government. Pandemic relief — to the RW money behind Mitch — is the same as UBI (universal basic income). That’s even worse than socialized medicine to these crony capitalists. As horrified as Mitch is by Nancy Pelosi’s $2.2 billion dollar demand for relief, he was even more horrified by Trump spitting and spewing how he wants to shell out way more (he’s at that desperate “buy all the votes you can!” place).

The point: Mitch isn’t negotiating. His starting point was meant as his end point — and he was reluctant to be that generous. By design, Mitch’s proposal won’t pay anyone nearly enough to stay home and wait out the pandemic (like most other countries have done). Like Trump, he’s happy with everyone rushing into the pandemic’s maw — so long as he gets to stay safely at home.

Quick reminder: In the leadup to election 2016, Mitch refused to let We The People in on the dirty secret that Russia was weighing in to the election, bent on making Trump president. It was Mitch who tossed aside the sanctions against Oleg Deripaska so he could score a $400 million Russian aluminum factory in Kentucky. Deripaska, remember, was sanctioned for his role in subverting the 2016 election.

Mitch McConnell is evil — with a turtle face.

The news media — and a few wavering Democrats — want Nancy Pelosi to compromise with Mitch and the Republicans. They want us to take Mitch’s bullshit proposal seriously. They want us to make a deal with bullshit. With evil bullshit.

While some very desperate people will get relief the desperately need, that very short term fix won’t solve their long term problem. In fact, it will exacerbate their long term problem. Evil will have gained greater leverage.

How might the Jews have compromised with the Holocaust hunting them? How might the Armenians have compromised with the Turks hell bent on slaughtering them? How about the Croats being snipered by the racist Serbs? I could go on.

The people urging compromise with evil have never been subjected to evil. Or, if they have, they’ve sold out as a response — hoping like hell that by selling out, they can avoid the slaughter. Like the Jewish capo’s who worked with the Germans in the Warsaw Ghetto — offering to fill the railroad cars bound for the camps themselves. These Judenrats — Jewish councils — did all of Hitler’s dirtiest work for him — and then got tossed onto the same pile of bodies anyway.

All compromise bought was a little time — at the expense of one’s soul.

That’s a terrible deal.

It’d be like compromising with Donald Trump — and letting him inside your house to harangue you (while infecting you and your entire family).

Only a fool — or, apparently, an American journalist — would do such a thing.

Russia Didn’t “Influence” 2016’s Outcome, Russia CHANGED It — And That Matters

October 7, 2020 ~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

The rest of the world’s leaders show what THEY think of Vlad Putin while Donald Trump shows what HE thinks. See the difference?

You’d think that a journalist, hearing from a reliable, informed source that Russia (a hostile foreign power) had “influenced” (or even tried to influence) an American election to favor Donald Trump (who’d laundered Russian mob money through his Atlantic City casinos), would ask the next obvious question: “Really? Russia actually INFLUENCED the outcome of our election? How exactly did they do that? In what ways? To what ends and effects?” You’d think a journalist would recognize a Woodward-Bernstein-sized opening? There’s already mountains of evidence that indeed Russia DID influence the 2016 election. You’d think American journalists would be the loudest canaries in this coal mine — squawking their heads off that Donald Trump is a traitor who owes Russia (perhaps even Vlad Putin himself) hundreds of millions of dollars!

That’s the hardest thing to wrap one’s head around where our press is concerned. There has been some amazing reporting. But it’s always forced to share oxygen with an overload of “both sides do it” hackery and sheer access-craving cowardice. The TV news media — where most Americans get their news — seems incapable or unwilling to aggregate its own reporting. They see pieces of the mosaic but never the mosaic itself; in fact, they don’t seem to grasp that what they’re staring at is a mosaic.

If America’s news media had aggregated its own story — much like the remarkable Seth Abramson has done — they’d already be miles further along in the narrative. When we get to the part of the story where everything gets fully revealed — and we will — we’ll discover that all sorts of crimes were being committed in real time while we watched. In other words — crimes are being committed right this second that we could be pointing at or better yet stopping.

But our news media keeps restarting the narrative every day from some bizarre square one where nothing we’ve learned exists. Instead, our news media starts its day reporting from a place where Trump’s just “a different sort of POTUS” who doesn’t follow the rules or the norms, calls Mexicans rapists and grabs women’s pussies because he’s rich and “they’ll let him”, where lying isn’t just anticipated, it’s accepted!

From the get-go, our news media poo-pooed the idea that Donald Trump’s presidency was 100% illegitimate. They’ve insisted that We The People “elected” Trump — inventing a narrative to explain how Trump “won” Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. What, oh what, will our News Media do when, at last, they’re confronted with the stone cold truth: by using proprietary polling data (supplied by Paul Manafort) to suppress Black voting (that is criminal right THERE!), Russia made it possible for just enough vote flipping to capture PA/WI/MI’s electoral votes for Trump. Recall — those three BLUE states were “won” by a combined 77,000 votes.

In the face of all that Russian activity — that we KNOW was happening — you’d be insane to think Donald Trump “won” anything legitimately. Well, you’d be insane or a Republican.

Donald Trump has never — not for one stinking day — been the legitimate President Of The United States.

Nothing he’s done has had the actual authority that flows from We The People.

He’s never had the authority therefore to change anything he’s changed, push the tax breaks he pushed, or nominate a single one of the judges he nominated — SCOTUS judges especially. But then, judges and hijacking the judiciary has always been the point of the exercise.

Battening down the judiciary has always been how the RW money (the Kochs & the Mercers) were going to stop America’s “slide” into diversity and a more civilized, socialized form of governing ourselves instead of forcing us into the authoritarian, church-based neo-feudalism of their wettest wet dreams. Russia did not pose a problem for them. It presented a partner.

A partner in crime.

We The People sat here — for bloody years — thinking that either or both Robert Mueller and the FBI were deep into probing Donald Trump’s foreign entanglements — especially his painfully obvious relationship with Russia, Russian gangsters and dirty Russian money. We had no idea that Rod Rosenstein had stuck a shiv in our back. There was no investigation of Trump’s foreign entanglements. Russia has truly been at the wheel of our ship of state from the instant Trump both took and broke his oath of office at the very same instant.

That needs our immediate attention. Our self-destructive pandemic response is part and parcel of every other Russian perversion of our government. It’s meant to disarm us, weaken us and make us look foolish to the world. The goal is keep us on the sidelines for as long as possible while Vladimir does his worst to Europe and the rest of the world. The thing he fears most is an American government that ends his free-for-all.

Vlad knows a day of reckoning his coming. With the Democrats in power, Vlad Putin will become a kind of persona non gratta. We will hunt down every bank account he has an interest in. Remember — Vlad can’t do his banking in Russia — it’s too corrupt. He relies on our regulated, much more trustworthy banks to hide and launder the massive pile of money he’s stolen from his own people.

Every sanction we had on Russia will go back. Plus a thousand more. It is going to suck to be them. They’ll have to take it up with Vladimir.

That scares Vladimir almost as much as being poor.

Russia cannot get to win in any way, shape or form. That shouldn’t be a revelation. Russia worked with Trump for dark, nefarious reasons. Trump worked with Russia for dark, nefarious reasons. The Republican Party worked with both Trump AND Russia for dark and nefarious reasons. They’re all thieves and criminals.

And — in the America that’s about to reassert itself — thieves and criminals never get to keep what they stole including the will of the American People. The intent of our Will was clear as can be in 2016. It’s even clearer today.

It is absurd to argue that America “has to” accept and keep the political consequences of criminal acts — including treason. We absolutely do not — and will not.

There are many hard battles ahead. Doing the right thing is never easy unfortunately but — as we should have learned with slavery — screw up your country’s founding principles at the founding? It will haunt you forever.

We’d be stupid as a Republican to go and make THAT foolish mistake again.

Breaking News: Having Experienced COVID-19 For Himself, Trump Reveals His New, Trump-Style Health Care Plan: It’s Called “TrumpCare PICK-AN-ORGAN”

October 5, 2020 ~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

Finally – a health “care” plan that thinks like Donald Trump does — and “takes care” of people the same way. That is, it picks their pocket with one hand while taking their temperature with the other. Or it behaves like a super spreader’s super spreader.

Donald can relate to COVID-19 — now that he’s had it. Now that the coronavirus has paid the very house call he dared it to. Why, having feared for his mortality, suddenly Trump has gone all George Bailey and suddenly wants to make the world a better…– Oh, puh-lease! Who are we kidding? Donald Trump will always be “It’s A Wonderful Life’s” Mr. Potter — except a kajillion times worse and a far, far bigger asshole.

Speaking of assholes — the problem with normal health insurance is you end up paying to insure stuff that probably doesn’t need insuring. Like your asshole. Or your gall bladder. What are the odds either will go bad on you. Hell, you probably don’t even know what your gall bladder does (hint — it doesn’t gall you). So, how could you miss it?

With “Trump-Care ‘PICK-AN-ORGAN”, you’re in “full control” of which organs you insure and which you’re willing to gamble on. C’mon — when was the last time you gave a flying crap about your spleen? Hey — better question: when was the last time your spleen gave a flying crap about you?

Who wants to pay for health care YOU won’t ever get — or “might not” ever need? Only a schmuck pays for other peoples’ healthcare, amiright?

Think of it THIS WAY: You have lots of organs. What are the chances any will ‘go south’ on you during your lifetime? Your lungs? Probably not — unless you smoke. Your kidneys — You have two — you’re playing with house money. Your heart? Well, okay — that one could be a problem but at TrumpCare, we assume you don’t have a heart so what are we even talking about?

The point is, Trumpanistas are too smart to INSURE organs they don’t need to — or are worth the risk NOT to insure. And that’s why they (and everyone! will love “TrumpCare PICK-AN-ORGAN”!

LUNGS

Odds are nothing will happen to either of em. But you want to play it safe — so we offer options to allow YOU to decide: Insure Neither Lung, One Lung or Both Lungs!

See? Easy! Now, of course, the trick is, if you insure just one? Ya better hope like hell you insured the correct Lung — the one that’s gonna be needing insurance…

LET’S TALK INTESTINES!

If you’re like the average Joe, you have LOTS of this stuff inside ya. You have intestines to spare. In fact, you have so much intestine you even have two kinds (I know — weird, huh?) But do you really need to insure both? Do you really need to insure ‘ALL’ of it?

And what about your APPENDIX? You don’t even use it — hell you haven’t used it in millions of years. Only an idiot insures something he can’t use — amiright?

I KNOW THAT’S MY LIVER BUT WHAT THE HELL IS THAT ‘GREEN’ THING?

cartoon-of-human-liver-and-gallbladder-vector-7563173

The Truth is — Outside of your heart and lungs, your stomach and your anus, you haven’t a clue how any of your plumbing works. You know you HAVE a Liver and you remember somebody lecturing you once about alcoholism while you were passed out in a drunken stupor but that was so long ago.

Be that as it may — This is probably you: “What in hell’s name is that green thing — and please don’t say I have one…!”

Yeah, you have one all right — and it costs a BOMB to insure it — IF you insure it…

YOUR SPLEEN — 1-2-3-ANSWER QUICKLY: ‘WHAT’S IT DO?‘

human-spleen-visceral-surface-synthesizes-antibodies-53319933

Not a goddamned clue, amiright (and “The spleen ‘spleens’ ain’t it”)?

Here – we’ll even show you a spleen and point out all its bits. Does THAT help? No?

And you want to insure this WHY?

AND THEN THERE’S THIS ORGAN…

Insuring brains is expensive. In fact, it’s SO expensive, you’d have to be crazy to pay the freight. So why bother.

TrumpCare ‘PICK-AN-ORGAN’: ‘Hey — look at all the money YOU just saved!’

Oh, The Irony — It Will Be Corrupt Conservatives Who Turn America Into A “Socialist Paradise”

September 10, 2020 ~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

The only thing that scares a conservative more than “socialism” (their idea of it anyway) is diversity. Oh, they’ll tolerate diversity in the business they own. At the end of the day, they’ll happily pay minimum wage to whomever. But will they tolerate diversity in their country club — or worse, their neighborhood?

Surely, you jest!

That Black family may be able to afford to live in the rich, white conservative’s gated community, but they were never supposed to be able to afford it. And that’s the point. Conservatism’s real mission is to keep everyone in their “proper” place in the pecking order — as it was in the 50’s — the 1850’s.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with capitalism — private ownership of the means of production — for profit. In theory, capitalism is color blind. The money doesn’t care who’s profiting from it. It turns toxic however when it becomes crony capitalism that excludes most everyone else from access to that money and the means of production. Crony capitalism is greed run amok. It moves capitalism from the “apolitical” pile to the “immoral” pile. Also — crony capitalists are distinctly political because politics are always required if the crony capitalists are going to hold onto the unchecked power that keeps crony capitalism afloat.

Slavery was the epitome of crony capitalism. It was immoral and highly political. Connect all the dots of conservatism and a picture of crony capitalism emerges. One hand needs to wash the other.

Donald Trump is the epitome of the crony capitalist. He epitomizes its deep down corruption. That’s conservatism’s real problem. We’ve now seen first hand what crony capitalism aspires to. It’s very, very good for a percentage of the 1%. It frankly sucks for pretty much everyone else.

The deep hole we’re in was dug by crony capitalists practicing crony capitalism. We can keep digging — that’s what crony capitalists would want us to do (instead of decking them and climbing out of that hole). It’s just a fact (we live inside the data set): no conservative solution to the mess conservatism caused exists. All conservatism can do now is make the hole bigger, deeper, danker.

America, we now realize, does not have a health CARE system, it has a health INSURANCE system — not the same thing. When people walk in our door, the first question we ask isn’t “How can we fix you?”, it’s “How’re you gonna pay for this?” No other industrialized, first world country has profit incentive at the heart of its health care system because health care and profit are mutually exclusive propositions.

A publicly traded company has a fiduciary responsibilities to its shareholders to maximize the returns they’ve made on their investment in said company. They care about profits not patients. Patients, remember, are cash out. The more an insurance company or for profit hospital spends on patient care, the less they’ll make in profits — and the less happy the board of directors and shareholders will be with them.

Any of us needing an expensive procedure to save our lives is going to have to be more worthwhile than the Maserati the insurance company’s chairman of the board has his jaundiced eye on. The coronavirus pandemic has made it crystal clear that we can only be as healthy as the least healthy among us. It only takes one person afraid to reveal their illness to set another pandemic off and running.

People unable to afford health care — unable to take the time off from work to seek the care — are perfectly primed to infect everyone and everyone they meet. And it’s not their fault. They’re being exploited. Universal single payer health CARE is coming to America.

There’s no stopping it now. There’ll be no stopping guaranteed public university education (or comparable technical training). Think of it as something we’d be doing for ourselves. I also believe public service is vital. Every high school graduate should owe a minimum of 18 months of public service. They can join the military, man polling stations, teach kids to read or get food to the hungry and homeless. They can use whatever their skill sets are to make their country a better place for all Americans.

We could even pay for medical school educations with one caveat. We The People will pay to make you a doctor — but you will have to invest some time in public health as the means to pay We The People back. You get, you give. Yeah — it’s socialized. But it’s still democratic.

Andrew Yang’s presidential run didn’t just put universal basic income on the table. The pandemic shutting down the world’s economies made UBI downright respectable. UBI became the only comprehensive way to keep the economy from completely tanking. All the data on UBI says the same thing — it improves peoples’ lives considerably. Rather than leaping at the first job offered because they’re desperate, people receiving UBI tend to wait for the right job to come along — the one that utilizes their skill sets best and makes them happiest. Being happy makes them more productive.

And the money people get via UBI? They don’t hoard it like a bank would. They spend it — on their rent, their utilities, their food and gym membership. They put that money right back into the economy. The taxes paid all down the line help cash flow the UBI all over again. The reason Republicans like Mitch McConnell despise UBI is because it proves them to be liars, pirates and thieves. It works while their policies don’t.

There will be no way out of this crashed economy except by progressive means. When we find ourselves eventually on the upside of this tragedy, progressive policies like universal single payer health care and UBI will have been mainstreamed. Not only will they NOT have brought down Western Civilization, they will have actually benefited more Americans.

I look forward to toasting all my conservative “friends” one day. As awful as many (not all) have been in this period, it will be conservatism as a whole that finally brought America to its senses — by making America a democratic socialist paradise. Let’s be real. Even if we never made it to “paradise”? Whatever progressives do will be a thousand times better and more popular than anything Donald Trump might ever do.