From Liberty to An Incestual Ex-President

Fort Liberty, North Carolina

Mike Pence is all for the Confederacy. There is an iconic Army base in North Carolina that was named for the worst, most hated general in the failed insurrection by the Southern States, otherwise known as the American Civil War. Pence said, “We will end the political correctness in the hallways of the Pentagon and North Carolina will once again be home to Fort Bragg,”

It makes no sense to name any government facilities, especially military bases, after enemies of the U.S. General Braxton Bragg took up arms against the United States. Besides being an angry, cranky old asshole, Bragg was a terrible leader who was known for turning certain victories into absurdly embarrassing losses.

Years ago I visited Fort Bragg. while stationed at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune My friends and I went to Fayetteville for … err … entertainment. I don’t know what we were thinking because we could find the same type of … entertainment … in Jacksonville, N.C. plus, we took a bus. That sucked because it took over three hours each way, due to all the stops it made along the route. The bases are 135 miles apart.

Anyway, I knew nothing about the names of either base. Lejeune was where my school was located (engineers) and being there in the winter sucked. In the summer it got insufferably hot and muggy with mosquitos and other insects. It is named after the 13^th Commandant of the Marine Corps, John A. Lejeune.

This all started when former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling complained to FOX host Jesse Waters that he’s “tired of listening to Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz” do nothing but “talk” about stopping the criminal case against Trump — but haven’t actually DONE anything yet — because there is nothing they can do. The Department of Justice is a separate agency that is not ruled by the House of Representatives, and should not be run by either the Congress, the president or the judges who are in the federal judicial system.

Congress has oversight responsibilities with the Department of Justice, but the DoJ cannot and should not be controlled by Congress.

Then, Schilling went dark, dangerously declaring, “I don’t know where the rubber is going to meet the road and require a true sacrifice. You look at the guys, the young men that signed the Constitution and all the things that they sacrificed everything to come out from under a tyrannical government, and then eventually at some point, there was a man at Concord who decided he was going to pull the trigger. I feel like we’re getting back to a point where somebody is going to have to pull a trigger because everything we hold dear, everything this country was founded on is being just dragged through the mud and mocked and made fun of.“

Schilling is a pro-insurrection, which, I believe, makes him an insurrectionist in spirit at least.

When I hear garbage like this I have to wonder what planet is he living on?

The worst part is that, instead of immediately ending the interview and apologizing to its millions of conservative viewers for televising such a dangerous threat, FOX host Jesse Waters played it off and kept the interview going.

The enslaving Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg suddenly has become a Republican primary rallying cry, after Fort Bragg in North Carolina was renamed Fort Liberty in June.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who, it appears, has nothing to do in the Sunshine State, said, “It’s an iconic name and iconic base, and we’re not gonna let political correctness run amok in North Carolina,” Fort Bragg does have a venerable military history, of course. But its eponym, Gen. Bragg, not so much. That doesn’t matter. All these monuments to the failed insurrection, The Confederacy, are the pride of the MAGA Cult and Republican Party.

Sam Watkins, who served under Bragg said he was, “[a] merciless tyrant” who had an “uncanny ability to turn minor wins and losses into strategic defeat.”

My questions for Curt Schilling: “Are you righteous enough to stand up and be the man who pulls a trigger? Or, are you just talking?”

Poser.

Elections Matter

Democrat voters have to realize that ELECTIONS MATTER. That phat ass ex-president who likes exposing top secret documents to people not qualified to see them, was able to appoint three extremely right wing activist judges to the U.S. Supreme Court: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. They of course joined the two other very activist extreme Republican justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. The latter, Samuel Alito, was reported to have joined the Supreme Court Billionaires Club to go with his fellow right wing traveler Clarence Thomas. Read Jamelle Bouie’s column in the New York Timesfor all the scintillating details, but in a nut shell — a very big nut shell — both Thomas and Alito accepted lavish gifts from extreme right wing Republican donors, gifts that on the open market would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars — each.

According to the reporting Thomas didn’t just casually befriended billionaire Harlan Crow. No. They were paired up by right wing nut bar lawyer Leonard Leo, a longtime member of the Federalist Society, a group that now has six of its preferred judicial candidates on the U.S. Supreme Court and quite a few throughout the federal bench and probably in many state judicial systems as well. Thanks to Leonard Leo and his confederates in the Federalist Society.

Last year Roe v. Wade was reversed and this year the six Federalist Society justices opened the door to pre-civil rights era discrimination with their ruling that would allow a website designer to deny gay people his (or her) services on religious grounds. Forcing extreme right wing and allegedly Christian business owners to treat gay people as equals  is just, well, un Christ-like.

You know, if Jesus Christ was open carrying an AR-15 and Glock 9, as well as condemning scores of human beings that did not fit the description of the white, European, Anglo-Saxon Aryan Brotherhood looking Jebus we see in most churches and online articles about being devout Christ-like Christians.

True, I am a cynical bastard with very few good things to say about Christianity over all — as well as the other two religions that worship the God of Abraham, Judaism and Islam — but having family members who worship as Christians prevents me from going full vent on the religion(s).

I’ll add this: If a pope comes forward and says, “Jesus Christ was a Jew born in Palestine, the Middle East, and surely had many, defining, Semitic features. We will change all the paintings throughout the world from the Aryan Brotherhood looking Jesus to a more Middle Eastern guy, commensurate with the average looking Semitic man of that era.”

Can you imagine if Moses actually looked like Charlton Heston? A lot of those Jews who followed him for 40 years to the Promised Land would have whispered, “He don’t look like us. Why are we following him? Obviously he is lost in this desert …”

You know, one can re-fictionalize fiction already in the public sphere.

This tangent has gone on long enough. The other thing the U.S. Supreme Court did was say President Biden had no authority to relieve student loan debt … which prompts many to point out the hypocrisy of Republicans being totally against student debt relief, but being for debt relief to the recipients of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. some of whom are members of Congress and received hundreds of thousands – and even millions — of dollars.

When people I know who are “Ronald Reagan” Republicans that are fed up with the current GOP tell me both major parties are alike — when anyone tells me the two parties are alike — I must disrespectfully say, “That’s not true. Look who Republican presidents have put on the federal bench in the past 30-plus years and the thoroughly anti-democracy policies those justices have upheld. ELECTIONS MATTER.

PRESIDENT INCEST

I saw this on the OccupyDemocrats Instagram.

“BREAKING: Bombshell new book reveals the deeply disgusting remarks that Donald Trump made about his daughter Ivanka — confirming the longstanding rumors that he wants to have sex with her.

“In Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump, former DHS official Miles Taylor writes that Trump likes to talk about ‘Ivanka Trump’s breasts, her backside, and what it might be like to have sex with her.

“Horrifyingly, then-Chief of Staff John Kelly was forced to ‘remind the president that Ivanka was his daughter’ and later recounted the conversation to Taylor with ‘visible disgust.’

“Additionally, Taylor remembers incidents where Trump displayed ‘inappropriate behavior’ and was a ‘misogynistic bully’ to female officials.

“In the past, Donald Trump has publicly remarked on his daughter’s ‘figure’ and stated that he might be dating her if they weren’t related. There really is no bottom with this pig of a man.”

We always knew Donald J. Trump was a vicious misogynist who had a thing for his eldest daughter. Makes me wonder if he has subjected his younger daughter, Tiffany, to that kind of sick attention.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST

A dear friend from Milwaukee, WI, Doug Hissom. has passed away. He was a good guy who knew how to have fun and not carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. Doug was a drummer and could jam all night long, mainly because he was a devoted Deadhead and had experienced Grateful Dead jams first hand. Doug and I had indeed been to at least one Dead show together, but I think there were others.

He and his friend Ed Music used to paddle around the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness every year. It sounds like a lot of fun — until you have to portage your canoe and all your belongings between lakes and other canoeable rivers. Actually it is fun, if you come prepared

One year Doug and Ed decided to paddle across Lake Michigan, from Wisconsin to Michigan. Incredible.

Doug and I shared an office at the Shepherd Express for a couple years. We had some great conversations about music (the art form, not his friend), life and politics. I supported former California Governor Jerry Brown for president in 1991-92 and that entertained Doug. Jerry dropped out of the race leaving Bill Clinton and a few others like Paul Tsongas who had been a senator representing the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, until he was diagnosed with cancer and had to go through all that treatment. Doug was pro-Tsongas so he was understandably disheartened when Tsongas left the race. Doug was sure Clinton’s dick would get him in trouble and … Ken Starr, say no more …

Doug wrote some articles for the Post-Examiner publications, several about his adventures in Alaska and Mexico. They are well worth reading again, or for the first time We can find Doug’s presence on Facebook, if you’re interested.

So, I bid my friend a fond “Adieu,” certain he will be remembered for his great skill as a writer and editor. This is for you my friend.