Category: Charlatans and Shills
Mirror, Mirror
Last week provided a sobering look in the American mirror. Much of that ugly reflection was concentrated in the State of Virginia, where governor Ralph Northam first admitted, then denied, that he was one of the two utter dimwits who appeared in a photo from his medical school yearbook. One of the idiots was wearing blackface, ...
The Negative Space News
There is a concept in the art world known as Negative Space. The basic idea is that instead of trying to draw the branches in a tree, one draws the space between the branches, and therefore, ultimately, the whole tree emerges. So, with that in mind, last Thursday night I put on my old high ...
A Weenie for the Win
The field of candidates for the 2020 Presidential Challenge Blowout is taking shape just in time for pitchers and catchers — they report for spring training in early February – and what makes this timing so marvelous, so utterly serendipitous, is that it is also beginning to look a lot like a mid-season Sausage Race. ...
A Very Close Shave
Now that the APA (American Psychological Association) have decided that the political opinions of psychologists are a legitimate factor in mental health care decisions, we’ve reached another checkpoint on the battlefields of American culture. Under the guise of concern for “the impact of power, privilege, and sexism on the development of boys and men and ...
Fear
Americans have become a fearful lot. And I really do mean scaredy-cats, a bunch whimpering, simpering, cowardly lions afraid of everything from chocolate milk to clowns, from fake eyelashes (it’s a thing) to 11 year-old playground bullies. I’m not sure how this happened, but fear has become a pervasive element in our culture. It’s virtually ...
You Can’t Get There From Here
I’ve been wondering what there is to say about the saga of Judge Kavanaugh, and the allegations made by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. There really is no upside to joining the discussion in the present environment, largely because we seem to have regressed to the tactics of denunciation and character assassination in place of evidence ...
Independence Day
Author’s Note: This piece was written for The Nugget Newspaper, July 4, 2018. Independence is a funny thing. These days many of the folk who enjoy its fruits – liberty and freedom — are pilloried, marginalized or, as in the case of this column during the late IP43 unpleasantness, exposed to censorship campaigns ...
The Barbary Coast
On February 24 Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, no stranger to the red-hot lava beds of Oakland politics, released a message warning illegal immigrants of deportation action by ICE in the City of Oakland, California, and elsewhere around the Bay Area. Schaaf’s magnanimous behavior – a move sure to shore up her base — sparked the ...
The Agony of Defeat
And just like that, the collusion narrative imploded. Which doesn’t mean there is a political winner in the United States. Far from it. What emerges from the indictment produced by Mueller et. al, in addition to some truly laugh-out-loud funny capers pulled on dimwitted, blinded-by-rage Trump rally stooges, is the picture of a magnificently coordinated, ...
The Vanishing Middle
It’s been another great week in the world of hyperbole. I’d been hoping for an outburst from Comrade Bob, former Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, who once famously declared “Britain is a very cold, uninhabitable country with small houses.” But now that he has been whisked away by security forces we are down at least one ...
Bunkhouse Chronicle 