Ffolkes,
O frabjous day! O happy times! At last, at last, the day is here…. and we will no longer have to put up with all the crap political ads, on the air and through the mails, both e- and snail-….. At least not for another four years. We only have to put up with whatever choices are made today…. I hope it all comes out okay…. If there are any more shenanigans on the part of the Republican Party in suppressing votes, or voting machines failing, I swear I will make it a personal campaign to drive that group into the grave, and I’m a literal sort of guy. Same goes for anyone else, Democrat, Libertarian, or whatever. I’m tired of all the lies I’ve had to listen to, and I’m tired of lying, cheating assholes who only want the keys to the treasury trying to convince me they are trustworthy, when I know for a damn fact that NONE of them come anywhere near that word….

Can you tell I’m glad this will be over? I am so tired of being lied to, and not having anything done about it. That is the part of this whole deal that gets to me the most. The idea that public figures can go on a public stage, make outrageous claims that are proven false, and never get called on it, or pinned down about it, just pisses me off royally. That fucker still hasn’t released any taxes, so how did he ever get so many idiots to support him, unless it was based on racism? Bah, humbug! I’m sick of the whole scene, and cannot wait until tomorrow, to see all the garbage that will be printed, and all the weird stuff that will be said, in victory and in defeat, by all the pundits. That part of this show is fun, if the results don’t depress you…. that is a risk….. If we have to spend another four years with the Republicans in power in the House, it’s going to get ugly, I assure you…. and that asshole Mitt the Lying Twitt in the White House would be a disaster for ALL of us….

Ah me, I guess I should have saved some of that angst and emotion for ranting below…. but, not necessary. I spent some time last night ranting about such stuff, so there is no lack of material this morning…. just a need to organize and get it all down…. GASP!…… I just realized that the material on this blog may be changing radically after today. If the incumbent is re-elected to office, as is right and proper, then the reforms being worked on should continue (and if the Dems win back the House, there may actually be some of them able to get past there, and into reality…..), and the material I have to pick from will be reduced a lot. I mean who wants to hear me rant about how cool things are? A rant, by definition, needs something about which to rant, and positive events don’t make the grade…. Ah well, I’ll take the trade-off, and gladly…. I can find more to write about, but I can’t afford to have those fools in the White House….

“People who have nothing to say often do and take a good long time doing it. People who have something to say, often do not. People who are unsure, often go ahead and say it anyway, thus putting them into the first category.” — Smart Bee (I’m pretty sure I don’t land in any of the given categories…. which makes this somewhat superfluous here, though ’tis true of many who write….)

The tone has been set for today, so I’d best get on with it… At this stage, I know not what sort of poem will be used, so you’ll have to take potluck there…. If I come up with an original piece, it should be a doozy…. but, if one doesn’t leak out, the rest is on me, such as it is…. Hopefully, something I write today will stimulate a laugh, or a groan, or a sense of outrage…. and if nothing else, will fill up a space of time you would have otherwise spent on something less fruitful, like another political ad….. rather than go through any of that again, Shall we Pearl?…..
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“Americans have the right and advantage of being armed – unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.” — James Madison

I found this yesterday; I’d seen it before, and it seemed serendipitous that it showed up just in time for the event today (psst!…. go vote!….). In my mind, a good standard for figuring out if a person is a true patriot is to get their take on the Second Amendment, and the idea of gun control by the government. As I’ve stated before, I believe the risk of letting the government restrict our rights in this regard, IN ANY WAY, can only lead to the eventual loss of the right altogether, and that is an event that is completely unacceptable to me. Yes, it means that the world will be a dangerous place, but, guess what, ffolkes, that is something that happened a long time before guns. Taking them away from the general populace is not going to stop mass killings, or unjust, insane use of guns against innocent people. That occurs on a daily basis, anyway, but with the guns in the hands of police officers; that is a fact….. So, don’t tell me that the government is more qualified to use guns than I am, because that is just stupid….

Now that I’ve insulted many of you, we’ll try to go on to the election…. didn’t mean to get off into a rant on that, but, wanted to get it out of the way, so that the discussion may go on to other ways that the government is, quite simply, fucking us left and right…. George Carlin had a lot of good points about the corporate masters and their lackeys, the beloved ruling classes, and the priestly hierarchies. He often pointed out that the world has turned into a massive corporate conglomerate, with all the world governments at the mercy of those few individuals who actually control all the resources, and money. Those are people you never hear about, or see in the news, unless it is by intent…. they don’t allow accidents like that to happen…. But rest assured, they exist, and are perfectly content to let the world believe whatever it wants, as long as their profits, their power, and their control over others continues to grow….

“The rifle and handgun are “equalizers”–the weapons of a democracy. Tanks and bombers represent dictatorship.” — Edward Abbey

But, the invisible rulers don’t like the Second Amendment…. it leaves too much chance for independence in the hands of the people, and in case the people ever find out what they have been up to, they want to be able to know where all the guns are that might threaten them….. Having the general populace of this country continue to have access to any significant firepower is not in their best interests, so they work behind the scenes to get people to believe the nonsense about gun control, and how keeping guns from the hands of the citizenry will make life safer…. which is just so much bullshit… plain and simple.  Ultimately, the only real effect of making guns illegal will be to make a large percentage of the American people outlaws, because I don’t think any of us will give them up without resistance, whether overt, or covert…..

“The right to buy weapons is the right to be free.” — A. E. Van Vogt, The Weapon Shops, — in Astounding Science Fiction, December 1942

How, you may ask, does this relate to the election? Well, it doesn’t, directly…. it’s just a pet peeve of mine, and an example of another of our basic rights that are being eroded by politicians, preachers, and those who ignorantly buy into their lies. I don’t trust the Democrats any more than I do the Republicans; perhaps even less, because the Republicans seem to be far more open about their lack of concern with the rights of the people. In that sense, they are easier to spot, and to resist. The Dems are being more subtle, but that doesn’t make them trustworthy; they do, after all, seek that power over others as well. There just seem to be more of them who are motivated to do so out of some community feeling, and concern for others, and those are trying to encompass reforms that are sorely needed.

“A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman, of the next generation.” — James Clarke

The difference between the two parties that have the only chance at the seats of power is extreme in this election; very seldom has the choice that needs to be made been clearer. One can choose to move forward into a future of change, or one can try to return society to the middle ages, with all of its injustice, and misery. It is that simple, and anyone who wishes to argue with that is welcome to present their views…. I’ll knock them down easily, with headlines from the daily news that, although not exactly unbiased or always true, are nonetheless balanced out by the outrageousness of each side’s contributions.

“Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.” — H.L. Mencken

The facts are all our there to see, and they clearly show one candidate whose only interest is in increasing his own power and wealth, and protecting his cronies on Wall Street, his cultish church, and the ruling class; he cares noting about the common man, and makes his disdain obvious. The other is, well, definitely the lesser of two evils…. on the apparent surface he is a dedicated, honest man, seeking reform and change, but, there are indications of less than stellar activity in his administration, too.  But, he obviously cares about the common man much more than his opponent, and since the common man is the one who will be affected the most by what happens this time, the choice is clear. If you don’t want to have to take up regular use of Vaseline and Preparation H, then vote the incumbent…. If you really want to get a good screwing in the nether regions, then vote the opposition…. it is that simple ffolkes…..

“There is but one element of government, and that is THE PEOPLE.  From this element spring all governments.  “For a nation to be free, it is only necessary that she wills it.”  For a nation to be slave, it is only necessary that she wills it.” — John Adams (1735-1826), Letter to John Taylor, 1814
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I Must Have Wanton Poets

MUST have wanton poets, pleasant wits,
Musicians, that with touching of a string
May draw the pliant king which way I please:
Music and poetry is his delight;
Therefore I’ll have Italian masks by night,
Sweet speeches, comedies, and pleasing shows;
And in the day, when he shall walk abroad,
Like sylvan nymphs my pages shall be clad;
My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns,
Shall with their goat-feet dance the antic hay;
Sometime a lovely boy in Dian’s shape,
With hair that gilds the water as it glides,
Crownets of pearl about his naked arms,
And in his sportful hands an olive-tree,
To hide those parts which men delight to see,
Shall bathe him in a spring; and there, hard by,
One like Actæon, peeping through the grove,
Shall by the angry goddess be transform’d,
And running in the likeness of an hart,
By yelping hounds pull’d down, shall seem to die:
Such things as these best please his majesty.

Christopher Marlowe
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50% of all people are below average….– Shocking Truth

This truth, which is mathematically indisputable, is quite a shock to many people. Oddly enough, human nature is such that nobody at all is constitutionally able to conceive of themselves being part of that 50% that makes up the lower half of the whole. If you ask anyone at all where they would place themselves on a scale of human intelligence, I would wager good money that not a single one would place themselves on that part of the curve. (It’s a bell curve…. Humanity, in all it’s measurable traits, exists on a bell curve….Trust me…..) Yet, the simple fact remains that SOMEBODY has to make up that part of the whole, and the chances that anyone at all is in the lower 50% are exactly even….

This is one of the hardest things for any human to accept, and the power of their denial is in direct proportion to how far below the average they fall. Myself, I would not trade being well above the average for anything…. It can be a pain, for sure, but the perks are very persuasive…. However, there is a lot to be said for the ability to absolutely refute the facts of reality… I think it’s been said before that “ignorance is bliss”, and this is the reason why that is true. Human beings have an incredibly strong sense of denial when it comes to reality, in spite of the obvious drawbacks (I guess if they were able to see the drawbacks, it would be different, but what is, is….), and probably nothing else in our make-up causes more problems for us than that single trait.

This ability to ignore what reality is saying to us can easily be shown to be responsible for the entire concept of global warming and climate change, two subjects that are now forcing their way into our awareness in the most dramatic fashion…. I really can’t recall a November in my 62 years where I was forced to turn on the air conditioning during the day, to combat the 85-90 degree temperatures that are currently par-boiling Northern California. It’s not as if fall hasn’t been nice before, but this is ridiculous. To have summer-like weather this far into fall, even here where the seasons tend to run together in similarity, seems to be to be pretty incontrovertible proof of the weather changes that are happening…. especially if one factors in all the OTHER places in the world where extreme weather is becoming normal.

No, global warming and climate change are FACTS, ffolkes. The evidence is right there for anyone to see…. but, most of the people who are responsible for much of it happening are in complete denial of those facts, so the problem just continues to worsen as time goes on. I suppose when the super-storms start hitting New York and Washington D.C. in mid-summer, flooding out the stock market and congress again, maybe they’ll start admitting to some of it…. Given the history of the power of ignorance and denial, though, I rather think it won’t happen until it’s too late to do much about it. I just hope by then, I’ve figured out how to emigrate to another planet, where, as a natural result of having weeded out the stupid, the more intelligent settlers of new worlds will perhaps learn to live without falling into the process of fouling our own nest…. SIGH…. A pipe dream, I know, but mine own….. and, I can’t see much else that will work, so in that respect, I’m asserting my own form of denial…..
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Well, that was a strange Pearl, to be sure. Smart Bee was playing with me, and ended up forcing that last section out of me without my actual approval. It’s just that after two and a half hours of being unable to hit on a good quote to write about, I had to make do with what Smart Bee insisted upon…. It worked out okay, I guess, but I feel used and abused by my software….. Tomorrow, I swear it will be different, and more humor will find its way into the pearls….It’s election day, so I guess I felt a need for sobriety, to indicate my sense of purpose, I suppose…. Hell, who cares? It’s done, and now I can go vote myself….   Y’all take care out there, and May the Metaphorse be with you…..
—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

gigoid

Kowabunga!