I see, I see no, I see no evil

I was doing my morning slog through the news as I had my coffee, and today's outrage from the Trump Administration was the revelation that Putin had put a bounty on U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Trump had been informed about this in March, and yet he not only had taken no action against Russia, but had continued to promote them in various ways, including lobbying for them to be invited back into the G "8."

Trump's response?

"Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me...."

Which made me think about some of his other, similar claims in the past.

Reference early warning from Peter Navarro about the Coronavirus pandemic?

President Trump on Tuesday said he had not seen memos from one of his top trade advisers warning in January of the consequences of a potential pandemic....

And reference many things that he said that he didn't say...well, take it away, WaPo:

All of which leads me to sing another chorus of Richard Pryor's Great Hymn to Brazen Stupidity, "Who you going to believe, me or your lying' eyes?

We're not going to put up with this shit anymore, are we? I mean, Republican folks...you're not down with this, are you? And you've already got your one hundred judges and two SCOTUS positions, so we're good now, right? The stupid orange cow has been milked, and you're ready to put him out to pasture, right? And Trump supporters...one of the reasons you love him is because he loves America so much, right? He even dry humps the flag whenever he gets the chance. Sure, I understand. But he was allowing Russia to put a bounty on U.S. soldiers. That's it for you, right? You're not going to stay on the side of a guy who betrayed American soldiers on the battlefield, right?

Right?

Um...right?

The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs & Trump

Joe and I have worked our way through all eleven of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars novels, all twenty-seven of his Tarzan novels, all of the seven Pellucidar books, all five of the Venus Series, the Moon Trilogy, and The Caspak Trilogy. Which leaves us with only a few more series, The Mucker trilogy being the only one of which is longer than two books...and the one which we are now in the process of reading.

We started book one, The Mucker, about two weeks ago, and have been hitting 5 pages every day. It will take us another 23 days to finish it. And it's a pretty exciting read...as are almost all of Edgar Rice Burroughs' books, actually. But it's certainly not a great book, and it's certainly not one of Burroughs' best. Still, it has its moments. 

Tonight, for instance, there was a bit which gave me cause to stop and think, and then to mark the passage. For context, Billy Byrne, who is the titular Mucker, is a vicious, brute of a man who has been part of a scheme to kidnap Barbara Harding, who is the "she" in this passage. 

Which goes like this:

"As she spoke Billy Byrne's eyes narrowed; but not with the cunning of premeditated attack. He was thinking. For the first time in his life he was thinking of how he appeared in the eyes of another. Never had any human being told Billy Byrne thus coolly and succinctly what sort of person he seemed to them. In the heat of anger men of his own stamp had applied vile epithets to him, describing him luridly as such that by the simplest laws of nature he could not possibly be; but this girl had spoken coolly, and her descriptions had been explicit—backed by illustrations. She had given real reasons for her contempt, and somehow it had made that contempt seem very tangible.


"One who had known Billy would have expected him to fly into a rage and attack the girl brutally after her scathing diatribe. Billy did nothing of the sort. Barbara Harding's words seemed to have taken all the fight out of him. He stood looking at her for a moment—it was one of the strange contradictions of Billy Byrne's personality that he could hold his eyes quite steady and level, meeting the gaze of another unwaveringly—and in that moment something happened to Billy Byrne's perceptive faculties. It was as though scales which had dimmed his mental vision had partially dropped away, for suddenly he saw what he had not before seen—a very beautiful girl, brave and unflinching before the brutal menace of his attitude, and though the mucker thought that he still hated her, the realization came to him that he must not raise a hand against her—that for the life of him he could not, nor ever again against any other woman. Why this change, Billy did not know, he simply knew that it was so, and with an ugly grunt he turned his back upon her and walked away."

It made me think about the Facebook Messenger conversation I'm in the process of having with a FB Friend who is a Trump supporter (and which you can read about HERE if you so desire). When you come at someone hard, you immediately give them a reason not to listen to you. More than that, you immediately push them into the worst version of themselves, so that they either move to defend themselves or move to attack you. Neither way is going to lead to any kind of understanding. 

In fact, I was watching a video this morning which brings this home quite vividly. In the video, there are a bunch of Trump enthusiasts driving golf carts in some kind of bizarre pro-Trump show of force. (I didn't care enough to try to find out what the context was.) It was pretty asinine, but hey, riding decorated golf carts is one of the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights, as I recall, so let's not pick nits with that. There were also a whole bunch of anti-Trump people lining the road, shaking signs at the golf carters and shouting them down. And I suppose that's more or less okay, too, though I'm not sure that I understand it. Why not just let the golf cart people do their thing and not give them an audience? 

But it was more than that, too. Because the anti-Trump people (who I am all for philosophically, I must add) were also stepping in front of the golf carts and screaming obscenities at the people driving them. Well. I have to say that if somebody screamed "You motherfucker!" at me, I would probably be tempted to scream back.  And it was in that context that one of the golf cart people screamed back, "White Power!" Which is a vile thing to say, for sure, and I certainly don't want to defend that motherfucker in any way.

But here's the thing. That loathsome thing probably would not have been said if the anti-Trump person hadn't provoked the guy. She actively campaigned to make this situation worse. In fact, after the golf cart guy said this, you could hear one of the anti-Trump people say, "Did you hear what he said? He said White Power." And maybe not, but it sure sounded like he felt that he had scored a point.

No one is going to change their view of themselves or change their political perspective because someone comes at them and threatens them with vileness or violence. That just solidifies positions on both sides. Is that the goal? If it is, then we may fast be coming to a point where both sides are equally adamant, equally unfair, equally stupid.

So I'm going to try to continue to talk with my FB Friend who supports Trump. I'm going to try to speak coolly, and give descriptions which are explicit—backed by illustrations. And given real reasons for my contempt for Trump. It might not work, of course. She might not be open to discourse which sticks to facts and avoids calumny. 

Then again....

Kamandi Watch Alert

I have to admit that DC put a big hole in my Kamandi credibility wallet with the Justice League Doom War story arc--promising big Kamandi action...even giving him cover prominence...and then delivering a story in which he does absolutely nothing noteworthy. Hell, it might as well have been Tommy Tomorrow in the role. (Little DC Alternate Timeline Joke there, in case you didn't notice.) 

But you know, hope springs eternal within the comic book lover's breast. So when I saw the ComiXology copy for From Beyond the Unknown #2, my heart leaped up.

From Beyond the Unknown #2


Story 1 - On Earth-A.D. (After Disaster), the world is a very different place-a post-apocalyptic wasteland, full of talking animals and other strange sights. While exploring his dystopian home, Kamandi, the last living human, stumbles upon a robot butler patiently awaiting the return of his human masters, who disappeared years before. Kamandi takes pity on the loyal butler and tries to reunite him with his long-lost family...however unusual that reunion might be.

(https://www.comixology.com/From-Beyond-the-Unknown-2/digital-comic/874555?ref=c2VyaWVzL3ZpZXcvZGVza3RvcC9ncmlkTGlzdC9SZWNlbnRBZGRpdGlvbnM)

Now, we're talking a 17 page issue, so minus the cover and divide by 2, that probably means an 8 pager, but still...ahmo be there on July 3rd, for sure. Besides, it's only 1 99er...and the second story is a Legion of Super-Heroes, so that might be okay. (Best news of all: the Legion story is NOT written by Brian Michael Bendis, who was so awful on the most recent incarnation of that title that I had to bail out after two issues...and I really, really love the Legion of Super-Heroes. It's written by Dan Jurgens, who is usually quite good and sometimes masterful.

Oh, and the Kamandi story is by Tom Sniegoski and Eric Gapstur, both of whom have done some decent work in the past.

Also...looks like Beyond the Unknown is one of those anthology comics that rotates through characters and creative teams, so you don't need to buy issue #1. I might do that, though, even though it features Green Lantern, because the art by Kenneth Rocafort looks pretty interesting. Check out this cover:

Nice, huh? BTW, I didn't put up a picture of the #2 cover because it doesn't feature Kamandi...and it's a shitty drawing (of the LoS-H).

The Movie I Watched: Midway (2019)

I'm not sure why I wanted to see Midway. I don't have any particular fondness for war films. I didn't know anything (beyond the obvious) about this movie. And I didn't know any of the stars very well. In fact, I didn't even know that Aaron Eckhart, Dennis Quaid and Woody Harrelson were in the movie until they showed up onscreen. I did have some faint fond memories of the 1976 version. (Actually I mostly remember that Sensurround Sound. Ruuummmbbbllle.) But I went to the Redbox to pick up A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood for Jacqueline, saw Midway 2019, and went for it.

And?

Well. That was QUITE a movie. Many of the battle shots were just stunning. Actually made me feel slightly dizzy. And the director, Roland Emmerich, did a fantastic job on lots of other things as well. Funny, I've seen a few of his previous movies--Universal Soldier (1992), Stargate (1994), Independence Day (1996), Godzilla (1998), part of Eight Legged Freaks (2002)--I actually walked out in disgust on that one--, parts of The Day After Tomorrow (2004), Anonymous (2011), White House Down (2013), Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)--and I didn't think very much of any of those films.  

But what really caught my attention vis-à-vis this movie was the idea that once upon a time there were American soldiers who were willing to put their lives on the line to defend their country. One of the most striking moments in the story was when a group of pilots sets off on a mission knowing that they don't have enough fuel to make it back to safe ground...which means that they will either end up in the ocean or in enemy territory, where there is no doubt that they will be tortured before they are killed. 

Holy shit. 

It reminded me of a Clint Eastwood interview I read awhile back, wherein Clint said that modern Americans were "more of a pussy generation." I mean...we have people whining because they can't go to a bar or because they're being told they have to wear a fucking mask, you know? It made me wonder what the hell happened to us, how we became such whiny little bitches.

But then I let go of that and let myself just sink into the idea that there was a time when being an American meant standing up for what is right, for being honest and brave and true. For being dependable. For being true to our word. For a moment, it made me proud of my country. And it's been awhile since I felt that way, to be honest, and I realized that I needed that. A lot.

Here's hoping that President Joe Biden can do his part to aim us back into that way of being. Although I have to admit that Trump is the perfect president for a pussy generation.

Wisdom From the Wheel of Fortune

Jacqueline was having a go at the Playstation 2 version of Wheel of Fortune*, and this was her wrong guess for a puzzle. After seeing it, all I could think was 

(1) that is the title of my next novel...or my first band...and 

(2) 

* Yeah, that's as far as we made it. We also still watch VHS movies.

Tom Selleck's First Rodeo

Tom Selleck's first rodeo.

BTW

Tom Selleck's net worth is estimated at $45 million.

He lives in an $11 million house (as of 2017) on a 65 acre ranch.

He is paid $200,000 per episode of Blue Bloods. 

He is probably not in the market for a reverse mortgage. 

The Blog Post Where It Happened

Yesterday at 6:20 AM I posted this on Facebook:

John Bolton's The Room Where It Happened is due to be released tomorrow, but some Bad Hombres have put it up on Twitter this morning. Poor John isn't going to have his full payday if people download it for free. Is that any way to treat a guy who undermined the impeachment of the worst president in our 250 year(-ish) history? Do not search Twitter for this book title or you might inadvertently get a copy of it.

A few minutes before this I had done a quick run through my social media feeds, and had seen that several people had posted links to pdf files of John Bolton's book. Which was surprising, since the book had not yet been released. I usually frown on pirated anythings, but in this case, I felt that John Bolton had really earned the right to be pirated (as implied in the post ↑), so I clicked on the link. No dice...it'd been taken down. So I made my way down my Twitter feed, clicking on different links. Nope. Nope. Nope. Yep. What? Well. That was a surprise. Of course I wasn't expecting that to happen, and immediately deleted the download. 😉

But I know that some of my friends are less scrupulous than I am, and figuring that they had a limited amount of time to take advantage of this thing, I did my Facebook post. 

About thirteen hours later, I got this message:

Hey Brother K.  I hope you guys are doing well.  I need a favor.  You can say no if you don't have the time or desire.  As you probably know I am VERY conservative.  All my family is conservative.  All my friends that I hang around in the nonfacebook world are conservative. So I never really get to talk to anybody with the opposing opinion. I saw your post about John Bolton's book.  You said that that Trump was the worst president.  I was wondering if you could tell me why.  Many of my fb "friends" from Manual have not been what I would consider friendly when the topic of politics comes up on fb. If i asked them to explain why, they have pretty much just told me I was stupid. Well I'm not stupid and I have gotten my feelings hurt several times because instead of an answer, people get personal.  I have been unfriended a couple of times for expressing my opinion, which I really don't do very often.  Sometimes I just gotta say something.

So the favor I need is someone to be my sounding board.  You have always been someone I considered thoughtful. 

If you don't mind if I am confused about something from the "left" can I send you a message here? I don't want to post it on fb cause it just starts a big conversation that end up getting nasty and goes nowhere.   I promise not to be a pest.  I will be nice!!  I just want to know how I can listen to something and hear it totally different than someone else.  I try to listen to other channels beside FOX.  I try to research some.  So its up to you.  You won't hurt my feelings.  I have noticed that you don't normally get in the middle of all this stuff, but with that post I know you must have a strong opinion.

So I'm done.  I hope you made it to the end of this.🤔🙂 Take care!

This was from a person I had once known fairly well...had seen pretty much every weekday for a minute or two, had chatted with, and after that had been Facebook Friends with for over a decade. We hadn't had any direct communications like this for some time, but she had occasionally commented on my Facebook posts or liked them, and I had occasionally commented back. So not close friends, for sure, but at the least we were good acquaintances who thought well of each other.

I was really impressed by what she had written, and I definitely wanted to respond back immediately. But I knew that it would take me some time to compose a thoughtful answer, so I just sent this quick note:

FBF, I really appreciate what you've said here and my love for you has only grown because if it. Thank you. I've often had the same impulse...wanting to talk to someone from "the other side," but finding it gets sticky or acrimonious very quickly. Right now my kids have the computers occupied, and I'm typing this with 1 finger on my small Kindle keyboard. I'm going to write back as soon as I get them squared away, but I wanted to send you a message right away just so you know that I'm anxious to talk to you. I have BIG respect for you.

A couple of hours later I had some breathing room and had done some thinking, so I sent this response:

Hey, FBF, I was just getting ready to send my response to your question, and I was re-reading your first message on this and had to stop. I wish that I could apologize for the FB friends who have been unkind to you because they disagreed with your political opinions. I think a lot of times people do that because they don't have anything to back up their opinions, so they cover their lack of knowledge by getting mad at anyone who disagrees with them. Since I can't apologize for them (as that's not my place), I can only 

promise you that I will never be that way to you.

Okay, here's what I have. 

Hi again, FBF. I saw an opening when Jacqueline got up to watch Jeopardy!, so I went for it. I usually don’t post political stuff on Facebook because there are plenty of other places for that kind of stuff, so it was actually more of a slip-up that I put that post up this morning. I was kind of excited that I’d found John Bolton’s book for free, because I wanted to read it but didn’t want to enrich him by buying it, and when I put in a request via the library I was 33rd in line, so that was going to take some time.

But if you’re up for an idea exchange, maybe it was a good slip up. I would like to hear what you like about Trump, for sure. 

For me, it’s partially about the way he expresses himself…saying crude things about women, for instance, but there’s a lot more to it than that. So, for instance, his administration has rolled back 66 environmental protection rules to date (and has another 34 in progress). I’ve heard him talk about this subject, and he usually says something like “They’re rules that don’t make any sense and aren’t necessary.” There may be some truth to that, too…but I know that some of those roll backs mean that our air and water are now more polluted than previously allowed, more toxic substances are permitted, and there are fewer protections for animals. I’m sure that the goal here is to facilitate the growth of business and industry, but I’d argue that there are ways to do that without the damage. Alongside this, I also don’t think the Trump Administration (TA from now on!) has made an effort to move us forward on renewable energy possibilities. There are literally millions of jobs which could be created there…and this has been done in many European countries…but it seems like the TA has instead focused on things like “bringing back coal”…which doesn’t add very many jobs at all. (Only 2,000 jobs were created in the coal industry from 2017 to 2018.) I know that’s important to those coal miners…and by the way, I hate Hillary Clinton for saying, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners out of jobs”…but I think those men and women would have been better served if they’d been trained to install solar panels. I don’t think there’s any way that coal is going to be the energy of the future. It’s expensive, inefficient, dangerous to work with, and harmful to the environment. 

I’m also very concerned about the way that Trump has refused to allow oversight on so many of his activities. Refusing to honor House subpoenas (or to allow anyone in the TA to testify when they were called upon to do so), for instance. Congress is supposed to be a co-equal branch of government. Blocking their investigations (which they are constitutionally required to perform) is exactly the thing which got Richard Nixon in trouble. The only difference is that Nixon didn’t have a Senate which was willing to protect him. I’m also concerned about the lack of oversight the TA has allowed in the Coronavirus stimulus money. A lot of small businesses haven’t gotten any money because large corporations have claimed money they didn’t deserve to get. I also have to wonder why the TA is so anxious to block oversight. It’s hard not to think that they’re hiding something when they fire the inspector generals and refuse to comply with legal requests for information.


There’s lots of other stuff…the treatment of children at the border, the asking foreign powers for help to win the election, the undermining of NATO, etc., but the biggest thing now is the reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic. That really starts several years ago, in that the TA cut out many of the programs (and over $1 billion of funding) to the agencies which were established so that we would be ready for a pandemic. Then in January of this year US intelligence people were giving briefings to the TA warning that there was a new virus in China which we had to prepare for…but the TA didn’t act. Two things really bring this home to me: first, the fact that South Korea, which has a population of almost 52 million, never had to shut their economy down like we did…and had a total of only 280 deaths from the virus. Admittedly that’s a population that is only about 1/7th of ours, but still…280 deaths and no shutdown? They did something that we didn’t do. The other thing is a graph I saw comparing the USA to Europe vis-a-vis the virus. The European Union has over a million more people that the USA, but there’s a huge difference in their numbers on the virus:

To me, the difference between these two graphs is the difference in leadership. In the EU, they acted decisively and drove the virus down. In the USA, we had a slight decrease for a time, but now we’re on the upswing again. I feel that if the TA had taken a strong stand on this right away that (1) we would have had far fewer deaths, (2) we would not have had to close the economy down for over three months, and (3) that the virus would now be under control. 

I don’t want to overwhelm you with a message that looks like the first chapter of a long novel, so I’ll stop here for now, but hopefully what I’ve said makes sense. (Not in terms of agreement, just in terms of answering your question; I don’t want to mess with your beliefs!)

Lastly, I have to say that I am often dismayed by what liberals have to say and how they say it. They are often unfair, make mountains out of molehills, and refuse to listen. (So much for open-mindedness!) I have one friend who refuses to watch FOX News, for instance. I tell him that I think Neil Cavuto is one of the fairest minded people on tv news, and he just harrumphs at me. But we're still friends.

Thank you for your response.  I appreciate it.  I need to read this more carefully before I respond.  It may take me some time.  Maybe over the course of a few days even.  Thanks again.  Take care my friend!

You're welcome! Thank you for asking. Stay safe!

You too!!

- - - - - - - - - -

So so far so good. I'm hoping that we can have a conversation about this, as I have long wanted to converse with a person who supports Trump but doesn't want to scream at me. I think we're off to a grand start, don't you? 

Also, as I was reading what FBF had said and thinking through my response, several things were highlighted in my consciousness. (Most of them were things I'd thought before, hence "highlighted.")

MSNBC and CNN are sometimes as full of shit as anything on Fox News. In fact, I've pretty much given up on watching MSNBC. Even my previously beloved Rachel Maddow rubs me the wrong way on a regular basis. I have seen anchors on both stations take a piece of information out of context, or even summarize a situation in an unfair way and twist it to put the worse possible interpretation on it. I don't say that in defense of Trump at all, by the way. I think he is awful, that he should be arrested and put in jail for the rest of this life, all of that. But (1) the news should be presenting the facts, not grinding an ax, and (2) Trump is plenty bad enough on his own; there is no need to polish his turds.

Many of my liberal friends are as closed-minded as the conservatives they rail against. If you're unwilling to hear the other side of an argument, that says more about your intellectual and spiritual dimensions than it does about anything else. 

It's never okay to make someone else feel stupid. (Although admittedly it is occasionally necessary.)

That's about it for now, but I think this conversation will continue, and it could be interesting. 

Check this space for updates.


BTW, the graph I included in my message to FBF came from The Washington Post, in case you didn't see the tiny symbol at the top of the screen.



UPDATE:

Today...six days post the above...I got a response from FBF.

Hi Brother K!  I haven't forgotten you.  I want to address everything you said.  I want to do some research to make sure I know my facts.

I agree that Trump is not careful with what he says.  He can be crude and pompous.  I wish he would be more careful.  I do feel like that a lot of the things he says is just to get at the reporters.  They rarely if ever say anything favorably about him.  He has had to defend himself from before the beginning, if that makes sense.  The recording on the bus was nasty.  Fortunately it was spoken in private, or so he thought.  I feel that part of what he says was correct.  My opinion of Hollywood is much like his.  If you are famous, you can get away with just about anything. That doesn't mean its right. A lot women do throw themselves at celebrity men.  He did say that 15 years ago. I like to think that people change.  He did apologize.  I feel that his counterpart, Biden, is much more disgusting how he has acted toward young girls.  You can see how uncomfortable he has make them feel if you have seen the numerous videos.  So this is how I feel about that.  I  will get back to you about more later.

I saw that as a positive sign for several reasons. (1) FBF was giving acknowledgement to the fact that she was not 100% happy with Trump, and thus would not defend him on all counts. (2) She also was seeking information to respond to what I had written. To be honest, that is not what I was expecting. I thought this would be more of a gut-driven dialogue than a let me get my facts straight one. 

Also, I actually agree with her on several counts. So that's what I decided to emphasize in my response, which went like this:

I agree with you on just about everything you've said here! I didn't like the bus comments, but we all say stupid things in private...especially men!...and It's not fair to judge anyone on that. And I have definitely seen media people take unfair shots at him. 


Looking forward to hearing more from you!

Admittedly I am soft-shoeing it a little bit..but actually not much. In fact, really only with respect to her Joe Biden comments. I would yield this much on Biden: he has acted in ways that seem weird--way too touchy feely and even a little sniffy. But to equate that with Trump's monstrous behavior towards women is just ridiculous.

But saying that is an invitation to cut off the dialogue, so I left it on the plate. I'm really interested in seeing where our conversation goes, so while I'm not going to be dishonest, I'm also not going to just stop and pick a fight...especially not on what is a side issue. 

More news as it happens.


As It Happens: 

I got this from FBF:

Hi I'm back.  Been distracted with all thats been going on.
  
Had to research IG.  My understanding is that he got fired because the TA thought that leaks were coming from his office.  Also that the whistleblower that started the whole empeachentwent through him. TA did not trust him.

I saw an interview after the impeachment.  I beleive it was an attorney said that subpoenas from the house were not filled out on time or properly.  Sometimes they did not even exist.  Bolton said in an interview that he was never subpoenaed.  

Comparing South Korea and the US.  My undestanding is that they have mandatory software on their phones that track people constantly.  The government knows if they've had covid or been around anyone with covid. Here, if you have had covid you call the government if you want and tell. You tell them where you've been if you can remember and who you've been around if you can remember. Then the government calls those people, and maybe those people will agree.  If they agree they probably will have to quarantine themselves for 14 days. So they won't admit they were near the original person. 

Also I read that South Korea was prepared for a pandemic because of MERS.  They had suffered through that not very long ago.  2015?  

TA offered to send experts to China in January.  Stopped travel from China in January.  Started buying PPE, and Ventilators from all over the world. 

The governors were in charge of their states.  If they needed help with supplies they were strongly encouraged to ask.  Corona Virus committee wotked around the clock.  I watched the press conferences every day.  This was my opinion from what I saw and what heard.
I think the biggest problem with the US, and why we have had so many deaths is partially because of many governors not to protect nursing homes. Last I heard   40% of the deaths were patients in nursing homes.  
Now our problem comes from our arrogance. People, particularly young people, are spoiled and are self centered.  They refuse to wear mask and social distance, just because they do not want to be told what to do.  This includes my granddaughter's family.  They have been having parties at their house. All kinds of family members and friends.  That means I cannot see GRANDSON!  Breaks my heart.  A and I are in that old age group! My mom is 95.  My son, K, has had a kidney transplant.  I can't be around GRANDSON, DAUGHTER's daughter, because I can't take the chance of her having carrying that germ to me and me giving it to mom or K.  Her dad is just like the rest of these millions of people who don't consider how their actions are affecting anyone else.  I don't see how we can go to ballgames.  I don't see how school can start.  Until it happens to them or a close family, they aren't gonna care.  And that's what I think about this damn virus!!

And don't get me started on all this ''peaceful'' protesting.  I wonder if our opinion is the same about this mess?   God help this country.

Courious if you have seen the videos that I have seen of Joe Biden.  Either he is suffering from dementia or someone is really good at editing.  I guess you can figure that I watch a lot of FOX news.  If you don't watch FOX, do you know this?

Ok.  My hand is tired.  Doing this on my phone.  Sorry I rambled on.  

Have a good night my friend.  Stay safe.

Sorry I didn't proofread.  I hope it makes sense.

I responded right away:

Hey, FBF. What you said did indeed make sense. I'll get back yo you on the bulk of it. As for the violence accompanying the protests, I am totally with you. Violence and property destruction are abhorrent to me, and I think people who engage in that kind of thing should be jailed. 

I am so sorry that you can't see GRANDSON. That has got to hurt your heart. My oldest son M and his wife C (who live in ANOTHER STATE) are about to have their first baby (literally any minute now--she's in labour), and I hate it that I can't be there.


More to come!

Once again I wanted to get the immediate response, but give myself time to get to the specifics. And I intended to get on that pretty much right away...but then I just fucking ran out of steam. And almost two weeks passed. I mean, if you say it's blue and I see yellow, where can we go? It just began to feel pointless. But I am determined to give it a try, so I'm not going to wait any longer. 

I'm thinking something along these lines:

Hi again, FBF. You brought up a lot of good points re: Trump and the TA last time. I'm going to number them for ease of reference.

(1) Reference the IG firing. Trump has indeed said it was because the IG "leaked" the whistleblower report. That doesn't make any sense, though. The IG is required by law to take a whistleblower report to congress. Saying he "leaked" it is like saying a citizen who had heard about a plot to blow up a building leaked a report of a bomb threat to the police. Also, while it's true that a president has the authority to fire anyone in his administration, it's also true that he isn't allowed to fire someone for conducting lawful investigations. That's one of the things that brought Nixon down: he tried to fire the people who were looking into the Watergate burglary. If there aren't people who have the legal responsibility to investigate the actions of our public officials, then that literally means that they can do whatever they want to do. I'm pretty sure that no one would think that that's a good idea. 

(2) It's true that Bolton wasn't subpoenad to appear before the House. They did officially request that he appear, but decided not to subpoena him when they were told that he would fight that in court, which would have meant a very long delay in the action. I'd agree that they should have done this, though. As for the other subpoenas...the reason that they weren't answered isn't because they were incorrectly filled out or late, it's because Trump ordered everyone in his administration to defy every House subpoena and request for witnesses. This is actually an illegal order--and an impeachable obstruction of Congress, which has the legal authority to order witnesses--but since the Senate was in charge of adjudicating that, he got away with it. 

(3) You're right about South Korea...they did take extreme measures vis-a-vis tracking people who had Covid-19. The kicker there is that they got control of the problem. We left it up to people to decide for themselves, and we're in really big trouble. I guess it just comes down to how we interpret freedom. Do I have the freedom to do something that is harmful to other people? If we posit this in a truly extreme fashion, I think we'd agree. For instance, do I have the freedom to to stick a rifle out of my front window and pop off rounds whenever I feel like it? (Not aiming at anybody, but if they happen to get in the way, that's their problem.) Clearly I don't, right? And yet, not allowing me to do such a thing clearly does limit my freedom. Our freedom seems to end when it inflicts harm on other people. So why should I have the freedom to spread a deadly virus through my community? 

(4) And as for the TA response to the Covid threat...from what I know, there are three problems there. First, the TA was given an intelligence briefing in January which stated that this was going to be a big problem and that we had to act quickly. But the TA did nothing until March. Second, no attempt was made to stockpile PPE during this time period...which is why we had such grave shortages. (As a matter of fact, the TA actually sold PPE to other countries during this time. There's an article about this here--https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/us-sent-millions-of-face-masks-to-china-early-this-year-ignoring-pandemic-warning-signs/2020/04/18/aaccf54a-7ff5-11ea-8013-1b6da0e4a2b7_story.html--if you want to check it out.) Third, the TA has consistently downplayed the seriousness of the virus. Even today I heard Mike Pence talking about how we have the virus under control. If Trump and Pence were telling people, "This is very serious. You have to wear masks anytime you go out of your house," then a lot of things would change. And a lot of lives would be saved. (I just read a report on a FOX news page with the title, "33,000 American lives could be saved if 95% of people wear masks in public, model used by White House shows." And yet Trump has, until very recently, said things like wearing a mask is a choice, I don't wear a mask, and even made fun of Joe Biden for wearing one. He has a lot of influence on about 1/3 of the American population, and if he emphasized the importance of wearing masks, it would have a profound effect on our plight.

(5) Saying that the governors are in charge of the pandemic response just insures that this will be a political issue rather than a health issue. The only Republican governors who are issuing strict measures (including requiring masks) are those whose states are on the brink--or over the brink--of catastrophe. The largest medical complex in the world (in Texas) has run out of bed space. People are being left in hallways to die without treatment. I can't imagine anything worse. 

(6) As for the Biden footage...well, some of that is faked. They slow down the footage so that he sounds drunk or aphasic. Some of it is due to the fact that he had a very bad stuttering problem as a young man, and even though he has overcome it, sometimes he still has an "internal stutter" which makes him trip over his words. Some of it is for sure real, too. He messes up, he loses his point, he says the wrong word. But don't we all? I know that as a teacher there were quite a few times when I accidentally said things or spoke without thinking. If you only focused on those moments, I would look pretty bad myself. Speaking of...there are lots of clips of Trump doing the same things--slurring, mispronouncing common words, saying totally absurd things. I think that if someone speaks publicly for any amount of time, there will be plenty of mistakes. 

(7) I do watch FOX news every day. I love Neil Cavuto, and consider him to be the best news anchor on tv right now. There are a couple of other people that I like and trust as well. But there are others who clearly can't be trusted. And I'd say the same thing of CNN and MSNBC, which I also watch. I think that there are a few good anchors on both of them as well...Andrea Mitchell and Brian Williams on MSNBC, Kate Bolduan on CNN...but there are others who are just not for me. 

A long response to your response, but I didn't want to leave any stones unturned.

I just spoke with M on the phone the other day. Are you all still in contact with each other? Sometimes it's hard to stay in contact with people once you don't have that day to day work contact. It almost makes me wish I could go back to teaching. 

ALmost.

Brother K.

So...I'd ask "What do you think of that?"...but now that I've made my way through it, I think I'm just going to copy and send it. As is often the case, the more I write, the more I feel that I know what I want to say.

More news as it happens. 

The Book I'm Reading: The Pugilist at Rest by Thom Jones

I can't (and won't) recommend this book for various reasons, which I'll get around to elsewhere, but in the last story there's a line which I thought was worth a bit of a chat-up.

It comes just four pages from the end of the final story in this collection, "Rocket Man." You don't really need any context for it, but here's a bit anyway: a young boxer who is getting ready for a big fight visits his friend / mentor, who is in a detox facility, and the older guy says (in part) this:

"...in every human breast a fund of hatred, anger, envy, rancour and malice, accumulated like the venom in a serpent's tooth, and waiting only for an opportunity of venting itself, and then, like a demon unchained...." 

There's no reference to the fact that these words belong to Arthur Schopenhauer...and I'm pretty sure that the only philosopher referred to in this story is Friedrich Nietzsche...which seems kind of unfair...but it's not my party, so I'll leave that at that. 

Anyway, I thought that was good stuff, and since I was sure that it wasn't a Thom Jones original, I went looking and found the source (big surprise if you're familiar with Thom Jones--it was from Arthur Schopenhauer) and a bit more of it:

"...of storming and raging. If a man has no great occasion for breaking out, he will end by taking advantage of the smallest, and by working it up into something great by the aid of his imagination; for, however small it may be, it is enough to rouse his anger

—Quantulacunque adeo est occasio, sufficit irae—

and then he will carry it as far as he can and may. We see this in daily life, where such outbursts are well known under the name of 'venting one's gall on something.' It will also have been observed that if such outbursts meet with no opposition the subject of them feels decidedly the better for them afterwards. That anger is not without its pleasure is a truth that was recorded even by Aristotle; and he quotes a passage from Homer, who declares anger to be sweeter than honey. But not in anger alone—in hatred too, which stands to anger like a chronic to an acute disease, a man may indulge with the greatest delight:

Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure,

Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.

Gobineau in his work Les Races Humaines has called man l'animal mechant par excellence. People take this very ill, because they feel that it hits them; but he is quite right, for man is the only animal which causes pain to others without any further purpose than just to cause it."

Well. That's some powerful shit, isn't it? I think it's the perfect explanation for the crowds at Trump rallies. In their daily lives, they have had to suffer all kinds of shit. The everyday shit that everybody puts up with in some cases. Extra shit if they belong to the undereducated, underemployed, and underinteeligent. They desperately need to take their anger out on someone, and Trump not only offers them a target or two, he also gives them a venue in which they can congregate and expel their venom in one huge, monstrous orgy of hatred. Who wouldn't want to feel that ecstatic mass ejaculation surging through and around them? No wonder they don't care what Trump says or does...even if it is counter to their own self-interests. He gives them this. 

Nobody else does. 

Let's put it this way: have you ever stayed with a bad partner because the sex was at worst pretty good? Well, then. Trump's base is only going to leave him if he stops jacking them off. And he looks like he can still go a few rounds.

And that's the truth. 

Giovani Santillan vs Antonio DeMarco

I just finished watching a live boxing match.

28-year-old Santillan (26-0, 15 KOs) was a 5-1 favorite over 34-year-old DeMarco (33-9-1, 24 KOs)...but he barely pulled off a victory over the older boxer (95-95, 96-94, and 96-94...and the announcers definitely disagreed with that decision, as both of them had claimed victory for DeMarco). 

It was a good match. To my untutored eye, DeMarco seemed in control most of the time. In fact, I thought that he controlled the pace of the fight, controlled positioning in the ring, and regularly dropped his hands and invited Santillan to have a go at him. Not so much in a taunting way, I don't think...but there was definitely the confidence of a strong man behind his stance.

One of the non-punching things that struck me...and which I don't remember seeing before...is that the boxers regularly touched gloves after they parted at the bell ending each round. It just seemed exceedingly polite, you know? They were both quite conciliatory towards each other after the fight ended, too...though I got the distinct impression that both of them thought that they had won, so maybe that was a part of the equation. But no second guessing here: these two guys showed great sportsmanship, and that's something I am not used to seeing in the world of professional sports these days.

Of course, I was pulling for "the old guy." He handled the defeat gracefully, though...in fact, he barely indicated disappointment at all. It made me wonder what kind of guy he is when he's not in a boxing ring, you know? 

Speaking of which...I certainly understand why some people think that boxing is a barbaric sport. It's the only sport in which the goal is to inflict physical damage on your opponent...ideally to knock him unconscious. Not that that doesn't happen in other sports, of course...but it's not the goal. Not even in wrestling. So for sure on that count it qualifies as barbaric.  I probably hadn't watched more than a handful of boxing matches on television (and never live) until a few years ago. But in the last couple of years I've felt myself drawn to it more and more...and especially since the Covid-19 Lockdown. There's something exceedingly honest about it all, you know? I mean, in football you hear stories about people intentionally trying to hurt other players on the sly (remember the bounty stuff with the Saints from a few years back?)...in baseball there's intentionally hitting batters with the ball, spiking basemen as  the runner slides in...you know? It's all sneaky shit. In boxing, it's all right there. And if you hit below the belt or try something dirty, you get penalized. So yeah, there is a certain honesty to it.

Boxing also makes for some great movies, doesn't it? Let's see...
Rocky...maybe Rocky II...Cinderella Man...The Hurricane ...Requiem for a Heavyweight (two of them)...Million Dollar Baby
...When We Were Kings...Hard Times (the James Bronson one)...
Raging Bull...The Boxer. Did I miss any? Maybe Southpaw. Yeah, for me that'd be in there. Are there that many great baseball movies? (I know there aren't that many great football, basketball, soccer, or ice hockey movies.) And if you're with me on that...why is it that boxing lends itself to great movie making? There's something to it, for sure.

ANYway...gotta go. Got some more boxing matches to watch on my dvr. And I might need to see if I can find Somebody Up There Likes Me. Haven't seen it yet, but I've heard good things....

Absentee Ballot

My first absentee ballot ever. As I placed my voter sheet into the envelope, the symbol in the top corner caught my eye, though:

I mean...really? A rooster? The Republicans get an elephant...an animal associated with power and a superb memory, and we get an animal associated with annoying everyone in the morning and fucking every female in the general area? What the hell is up with that?

I want to go on record for suggesting that the Kentucky DemocratIC Party switch over to a roaring bear. It's very Kentucky, it's fierce, and the open mouth is perfect to house a word balloon...maybe something like, "Don't fuck with me!" to parallel the old Gadsden flag (and reclaim it from those suckass Tea Party folks). Or if that's too much, maybe the milder, "Fuck with me at your own risk!"

And while I'm on the subject, I think that Amy McGrath (who didn't get my vote on this ballot, but who certainly will when she wins the primary and goes up against Bitch McConnell), would do a lot better if she'd knock off those stupid ass I'm Talking Like a Tough Guy In a Prison Movie commercials and just go to thirty seconds of footage of her flying a fighter jet and end with the words

 Fuck Bitch McConnell 

emblazoned across the screen.

Just sayin', sir.

Again, Superman: The Man of Tomorrow

I like Superman. And I like weekly comics. And I really like 99¢ weekly comics. So, as previously noted (https://songsofinnocenceampexperience.blogspot.com/2020/05/superman-man-of-tomorrow-1.html), I started reading DC's Superman: The Man of Tomorrow shortly after it premiered on April 20 2020. And I was impressed by it, and continued to read it...until May 25 2020 (#6), when all smiles stopped together. Every couple of days I checked back...nada. DC's other weekly digital comic books (Batman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Swamp Thing) were still coming out...but no Superman. Until June 15 2020, when issue #7 arrived. I hesitated before buying it. For one thing, a lot of my comic book buying depends on momentum. Once that momentum has been broken, I often stop and ask myself, "Do I really want to spend my money on this?" And the answer often comes back, "No."

And to be sure, Superman: The Man of Steel had been on a downward trajectory for me, anyway. After a good first issue, things had become more pedestrian...and then the issues started getting shorter. But I took a look at ComiXology's preview for #7, thought that it looked interesting...and gave it a try.

There had been some changes, for sure. There was a new writer, Dave Wielgosz, of whom I'd not previously heard. And a new team of artists, Tom Derenick and Yasmine Putri, both of whom were also new to me. And another new artist. Miguel Mendonca, who was also new to me. Not to mention that there were two stories in this issue, which was a new thing as well.

And? Well. First off, the art was pretty good. In fact, Yasmine Putri, finisher and colorist on the first story, was very good. She had a very nice, light touch...which didn't look at all like Gil Kane, but reminded me of him nonetheless. Check out the cover and see if that makes sense to you:

I think this was my favorite panel from this story, though:

Lovely use of light, perspective, and composition, ennit?

The art on the second story was more like standard comic book fare. Solid figures, heavy line work, saturated colors. Nothing wrong with that, of course. But let's put it this way: I wouldn't buy this book just for that art. I would buy it just for Yasmine Putri's art, though, even if the story was not very good. Maybe even if the story was bad.

Not that it was. The first story was okay. Kind of a standard issue Superman story, though. The second was a couple of cuts above that. In a few short pages (8), it goes from a Superman Slug Fest to a questioning of the nature of Superman, an examination of his psyche, and a redefinition of The Man of Steel. Pretty impressive, eh? Given all of that, I'd normally feel compelled to suggest that next time around the writer of the second story switch assignments and work with the writer of the first story, but this time around that wouldn't work out very well, since this Dave Wielgosz guy wrote both of them.

This is definitely worth picking up. (Hell, it's only 99¢, What were you going to do with that dollar, anyway?) Here's hoping that DC can this book out on a weekly--or at least regular--basis for awhile, and that the teams can maintain or improve on the quality of their first outing.

The Book I Read: Out of Time's Abyss by Edgar Rice Burroughs

I just finished reading Out of Time's Abyss, which is the last book of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Caspak Trilogy. Unless you're a moderately serious Burroughs fan, you probably haven't heard of this...though the first book in the series, The Land That Time Forgot, has gone to the movies twice (in 1974 and in 2009), and the second book, The People That Time Forgot, took that trip in 1977. It's also made it to the comic book page at least a few times...from Marvel in 1975, from Dark Horse in 1996, from Campfire in 2010, and from American Mythology in 2016. And there's a comic strip you can check out @edgarriceburroughs.com. So it's out there.

This was the 55th Edgar Rice Burroughs book that I read out loud to Joe. (I've read all 84 ERB books myself, some of them twice...all three books of the Caspak Trilogy amongst them.) And while it doesn't rank up there with the best of Mr. Burroughs, it was a fun read. And it made me wonder (once again) why ERB seems to be a forgotten man these days. According to yourdictionary.com, "His novels sold more than 100 million copies in 56 languages, making him one of the most widely read authors of the twentieth century." And IMDb lists 79 movies based on ERB's works...most of them Tarzan-related, but still...that says something about his power as a writer, doesn't it? 

And there was a time when he was either the best-selling writer of his day or second-best (to Zane Grey) from what I've read (having three of his biographies under my belt). But now...other than remaking Tarzan every couple of years, Hollywood and the world at large seem to have forgotten Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Which I think is sad. He's not one of the great authors, for sure. His work doesn't hold up against Charles Dickens or Fyodor Dostoyevsky or anyone of that ilk. But he's always a fun read. And he's often funny. And he had a great vocabulary. You could do a lot worse.

As for this Out of Time's Abyss...check out this publication history: It first appeared in The Blue Book Magazine in December of 1918. 

After that, it was reprinted in book form--either by itself or as part of an omnibus--at least 40 times...and that's only counting the English versions. Keep in mind that this is one of Burroughs' lesser  efforts, and you really get a sense of the power of the man's words.

The story itself is a little hinky at times. The basic premise of it is that there is a remote and virtually inaccessible island which has two unique features: (1) prehistoric creatures still live there and (2) all life on this island evolves from the most primitive to the most complex forms. A human being, for instance, begins as a tadpole-like creature, then gradually goes through all of the phases of evolution until it becomes a modern man. (More or less. Even the most modern men on the island seem a little cave-is.) Well...I could swallow the first one, I suppose. As have lots of other writers, since this idea has been pilfered quite a few times, hasn't it? Ka-Zar's Savage Land and Dinotopia both spring to mind immediately. But that second one...well, that's just stupid. 

Despite that, though, I did enjoy reading the book. It has some exiting action, some humor, and some insights which are worth your time. It also dredges up several of Burroughs' favorite tropes, including (1) the modern man falling in love with the primitive woman (no less than three Modern Men in the course of the whole trilogy, and each of these love affairs ends in marriage), (2) nearly naked people, and (3) wicked foreigners...in this case, Germans. (Burroughs' lack of love for the Germans got him into a little trouble at times, but I suppose it's understandable in that he lived through both World Wars, when the Germans were hard to love.) But even when he is hitting familiar ground, Burroughs manages to come up with some innovations. In this book, for instance, there is a race of winged man-like creatures, and they and their society are described in ways that make it and them both interesting and disgusting. Burroughs was an excellent world-builder, and I can't help but think that if some movie maker would be willing to put in the time to Get It Right, any of his series would make for grand box office fare. Of course, the two Caspak films that were made way back when were not very successful...and the solo one made more recently was an absolute shit storm...but none of them had a budget worth talking about. (In fact, the 2009 film had a $600,000 budget. I'm sure you can imagine how well the special effects turned out on that one. For the sake of comparison, the Star Trek film which came out in the same year had a budget of $150 million.)

All in all, though, you could do a lot worse than Out of Time's Abyss and the whole Caspak Trilogy. It took me about a month to read it out loud to Joe, but that was at a rate of only 5 pages per day, and usually only 4 days per week, so even at a mild pace you could knock this out pretty quickly. 

And you could actually start with Out of Time's Abyss and be okay. One of the most interesting aspects of this series is the way that Burroughs interweaves the stories. Instead of doing straight up sequels, he has the stories overlap and loop-do-loop in very interesting ways. And believe it or not, it's not confusing. 

As for me, I'm on to my next ERB series with Joe. Tonight we start on The Mucker...which will be followed by The Return of the Mucker, and then The Oakdale Affair. Hot diggity.