11/07/2016
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Playing Politics

Hot Air: Seeing Things

Eeny-Meenie, Chili-Beanie, The Spirits Are About To Speak

I’ve just been noodling with one of my stable of political insiders. This woman/man will be in attendance tomorrow at the Indy Convention Center, the state election night HQ for the Dem Party. S/he’ll be rubbing shoulders with gubernatorial candidate John Gregg and senatorial hopeful Evan Bayh. Together, s/he and I doped out tomorrow’s election.

Our crystal balls polished to a glittering sheen and lithium-ion battery-charged, here’s what we foresee:

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So, you see, my insider and I disagree only on the Indiana senatorial race. My reasoning? Same as it was when Todd Young first ran for Congress against incumbent Dem Baron Hill in 2010 — Young is a youthful, good-looking, former Marine who’s not a deranged Right wingnut. That’s an unbeatable combo in this state. As for Evan Bayh, if you think the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is iffy about HRC, well, friends, Bayh makes her look like George McGovern. At best, Hoosier Dem voters’ll ink in his box while holding their noses. At worst, they’ll ignore the senate race altogether.

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I’m pretty much on the fence about Shelli Yoder’s chances. This congressional district has had the leftward juices gerrymandered out of it, save for Bloomington and perhaps one or two of the cross-river suburbs of Louisville. These little pockets of Democratism may not be enough to counter the very solid red rural and smaller town terrain of the rest of the district. My Insider thinks I’m all wet but s/he does say this: Even if Shelli wins tomorrow, she’ll be a loser in 2018 when she won’t have a presdential turnout to help her keep her seat. Too bad, that. I dig Yoder the most of all the major candidates I inked for back on the first day of early voting in Indiana.

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The Election Beat

Speaking of election night, just a reminder: I’ll be one of the anchors of WFHB radio’s live coverage as the returns trickle in. We’ll have a remote desk set up at Opie Taylor’s eatery/drinkery on Walnut Street, the local Dems’ command post. I’ll be grilling party sachems as they either exult or cry real tears. Give a listen tomorrow, Tuesday night starting at 6:00pm, the microsecond the polls close in the Hoosier State.

his-girl-friday-still

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11/05/2016
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Erratum

Hot Air

The Tall One & The Big One

Tall Steve Volan contacted this global communication colossus to set me straight. I reported here Thursday that Volan, Bloomington city council member representing the downtown area, has championed a brand new parking commission to handle issues related to curb congestion, the municipal garages and surface lots, and the parking meters in this sprawling megalopolis.

I wrote:

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He and I had chatted briefly about the commission idea the night before at Nick’s English Hut while watching Game Seven of the planet-changing World Series [BTW: my beloved Chicago Cubs won it all — did you know?] We agreed to go into detail about it at a later time. When I typed up my post the next day I simply went to the Herald Times story on the council meeting and based the above on it. It was wrong and so was I. Here’s Tall Steve’s admonishment:

Hey Big Mike — Just a quick note: Ernest Rollins got the story wrong in the HT article too. The Parking Commission didn’t get a committee hearing last week when it was supposed to. During second reading Wednesday, Council decided to pass it anyway. It’s the law now. Maybe update your article?

Thanks, Steve. I’m sorry I got it wrong. Correction made.

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Bridge, Not A Wall

Here’s my secret code for opposition to a [ugh, gag] Trump presidency:

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It’s an opening bridge hand. The proper bid if the player holds it, is two, no trump. Ergo, my new Facebook cover photo, a play on words:

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So, if and when the cut-rate Mussolini occupies the White House, those of us with a shred of sanity and decency left can flash the symbol to each other in solidarity.

Strength, babies.

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11/04/2016
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Chitchat

Hot Air

Big Talk Links

Two posts in the same day — aren’t you the lucky Pencillista!

Catch yesterday’s WFHB Daily Local News Big Talk feature with hand-crafted, wooden puzzle-maker Marc Tschida here.

If you want to hear the entire hour-long interview, go here.

Tune in to the Daily Local News at 5:30pm next Thursday, November 10th, when my guest will be my boss-arina, Margaret Taylor of the Book Corner. A Bloomington institution (and some might say most of us who work there belong in an institution), the Book Corner has anchored the intersection of Kirkwood and Walnut for more than 50 years. The independent bookseller’s history goes back a lot further than that, though. Margaret’s got all the info and she’ll share it on Big Talk.

Until then.

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11/04/2016
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Saviors

Hot Air

World-Changers?

As I type this, zillions of people are gathering on the streets of my beloved hometown to eyeball and adorate the 2016 World Series champion Chicago Cubs, who are parading down Michigan Avenue a mere two days after changing the course of world history. And it’s a glorious, sunny day both here in So. Cent. Ind. and the Windy City, which is only right and fair.

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The Faithful Gather In Grant Park

[Image: Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune]

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The parade kicked off earlier at Wrigley Field (or, as my fave public radio booth announcer, Annie Corrigan, referred to it, endearingly, yesterday AM, Wrigley Stadium) and is wending its way down to the bandshell in Millennium Park. I assume Kyle Schwarber et al will thereupon be assumed, bodily and soul-ly, into heaven.

While grooving on the glee of it all from afar, a couple of thoughts occur to me:

  1. Watching the World Series games on Fox, I’ve concluded sports fans must be the flaccidest fkers extant. Every other ad was for boner pills. Man, Cub Nation’s gotta be the floppiest-appendaged assemblage this side of a castrati convention
  2. Goddamnit! For two days in a row now I’ve still had to get up early in the morning to earn a dime. The Republican Candidate for President (RCP) has not apologized for his very existence and withdrawn from the race. Civil war still rages in Syria. We’re still burning fossil fuels. The Kroger people continue to insist I pay for my groceries. Jeez, this World Series championship didn’t really change a thing. We’ve been conned!

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Trust Me, I’m A Liar

This is fascinating. New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert, who specializes in science, thinks she’s got the Republican Candidate for President sussed out. In her Daily Comment piece dated yesterday, she begins by wondering how in the world a greater percentage of American voters, acc’d’g to a poll, feel the RCP is more trustworthy than Hillary Clinton.

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Kolbert

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After all, the RCP is a pathological liar, if one is to trust the findings of the various fact-checking orgs. busily at work these days vetting his each and every utterance. And trust them, I do. Kolbert sez the citizenry of this holy land trusts the RCP because he doesn’t deny he’s untrustworthy. She writes:

Donald Trump is the kind of jerk who authentically, genuinely, unabashedly inhabits his own jerkiness. The indifference to reality he’s displayed on the campaign trail is the same indifference he displayed as a businessman, a husband, a boss, and a taxpayer. His narcissism, petulance, and whatever other character flaw you care to choose aren’t under wraps; they’re on view for all to see and hear. In this sense, he truly is the real thing.

We are one eff-you-ed nation.

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The Fascism of Reality

People talk about The Market all the time, especially my more antediluvian friends. Loyal Pencillista, the Lake County Republican, for instance, extols the Free Market as a cross between the very hand of god and some kind of sexual nirvana — and if you can sniff out the double- or even triple-entendre embedded therein, you’re not alone. The Market, free or slightly less so, will protect us from ourselves, it will put everyone to work in a swell job, it’ll clean up the environment, it’ll allow the superior among us to continue to amass billions of dollars, and — hell — it just may even make ED-afflicted, increasingly minoritized aging white men less cranky, which would be miraculous indeed.

Now, I trust the “Free” Market about as much as I’d trust my brood of two dogs and two cats to have vacuumed, washed dishes, and folded the laundry by the time I get back home this eve. That Hayek guy, in front of whose sacred icon the Free Marketeers are obsessively genuflecting, is about as spot-on as, oh…, say the People’s Temple’s Jim Jones was back in the ’70s.

Nevertheless, I trust The Market, unfettered or not, in one arena and that’s the success of failure of the everyday, local entrepreneur. If a woman or man opens a store and no one shows up, well, that’s tough but the market, such as it is, has spoken. You can cook up a fab pizza and if no one drops in for a slice, you close your doors. That’s business.

Two respected, iconic local businesses are in hot water these days. The Players Pub and Boxcar Books both are clinging to precious life by their fingernails. And both are depending on the largesse of the local pop. for further sustenance — they’re begging for dough through crowdfunding websites.

crowdfunding

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I’m not a big charity-giver in the first place. I’d rather sit next to a homeless dude and talk to him about his day than pitch quarters over to some do-gooder org. that purports to end the problem of homelessness if only I whip out my wallet. I’m not against charities; it’s just that I prefer the personal touch rather than the detached solution of giving donations and then telling myself what a swell egg I am for it. In any case, I find the idea of businesses setting up crowdfunding operations, well…, dopey.

If neither Players Pub nor Boxcar Books can make a go of it peddling their wares and services, they must close their doors. That, again, is business. It’s mean. It’s sad. But reality is a son of a bitch.

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Hey Hey, Holy Mackerel

What else?

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11/03/2016
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At Long Last

Hot Air: Heaven

The Mountaintop

Now whadda you think I was doing all last night and into the wee hours of the AM?

Yep, I spent the historic eve/morn with a motley crew of Cubs fans and revelers at, first, the Uptown Cafe and then our entire gang moved over to the venerable Nick’s English Hut where we cheered our boys on to victory. Our little army started out with B-ton fixture Kelly Wherley, attorney Amelia Lahn, international student exchange matchmaker Michelle Bird, Hoosiers, Rudy and Hill Street Blues director David Anspaugh, and a couple of visiting lawyers from Evansville who had the good fortune (misfortune?) to be sucked into riding our emotional roller coaster with us.

Eventually, Farm Bloomington chef Bob Atkins joined us, and then we lost Anspaugh and the Evansville barristers. The remainder of us dashed over to Nick’s around the sixth inning, where we watched with knotted stomachs and gaping mouths the Cubs cough up a seemingly comfortable three-run lead in the eighth inning. Tall Steve Volan was the master of ceremonies at Nick’s and we were joined by dancer and 4th Street Arts Fest volunteer coordinator Tamara Loewenthal. Our crew experienced severe emotional distress as the game seemed about to be lost, then won, then almost lost again before my beloved Cubs finally emerged victorious in the Cleveland rain in the 10th inning.

[BTW: Tall Steve had missed the first part of the game attending to his duties on the Bloomington city council. That august body had the effrontery to meet as usual on Wednesday night even though Game Seven was scheduled and the chance for world history to be changed loomed. I advised Tall Steve to quit the council and watch the entire game with me but he declined, the fool.

Still, Tall Steve escaped council chambers in good time to watch the meat of the contest. This after he was able to move a significant piece of legislation along — his proposed local parking commission was given the thumbs up by the council in a preliminary straw poll. The commission idea now will be tweaked and written up as law for eventual passage, Steve hopes, by the council at a later date.]

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A Confident Tall Steve & A Fretting Tamara

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Baseball fanatic and theater man Eric Paris Van Gucht writes on his blog this morning: “[L]et me tell you – it does feel like heaven.”

Oh, it did — I think.

Josh Timmers writes on Bleed Cubbie Blue:

The only words I have are THE CHICAGO CUBS ARE WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS! [His caps.]

No one has ever typed those words on the internet. No television announcer has ever said those words. No radio broadcaster has ever said those words.

Kirkwood Avenue was transformed into one long block party from Indiana Avenue all the way down to Walnut Street after the final out was recorded. Our little crew poured out onto the street where we met Herald Times photog Jeremy Hogan. I seem to recall Kelly Wherley joyously grinding his hips into mine as Hogan snapped away. Sheesh, if I ever run for office those negs’ll torpedo my campaign forthwith.

I’m a tad iffy about my memories and feelings because I’d begun self-medicating after Cleveland’s Rajai Davis tied the game with a home run in that terrifying eighth inning. I tell you, Ketel One oughtta be dispensed only by prescription. And speaking of prescriptions, I wonder what might shrink this throbbing skull I’m experiencing this morning.

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Me, Before The Roof (Almost) Caved In

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Carsful of happy collegiates cruised the boulevard, the strains of Steve Goodman’s “Go, Cubs, Go!” pouring out of them.

My hand still hurts from slapping so many high fives.

As for my feelings, even now, as I type some eight hours later, I can’t describe them. I’m still numb. Yeah, I thought about Ma, the Cubs fan who’s responsible for my 50-year heretofore unrequited love affair with the team. She handed in her lunch pail in early 2014 just before this current iteration of the team began to become dominant. She’d have loved every minute of last night. Bad timing, Ma — you should have hung around a couple more years. I didn’t cry this time, though. I cried like a baby a week and a half ago when the Cubs finally made the World Series. Tall Steve can attest to that. This time? I suppose stunned is the best descriptor I can come up with. And I’m still stunned.

I’d like to say, as Lynn Schwartzberg wrote, “So, this is how it feels, wow!” but I can’t.

I know this, though: Now that my Cubs have won a World Series, I can let sports go. Yeah, no sporting event or achievement will ever be able to top this one. Beginning in 1969 when the Cubs broke my heart for the first of many times, I’ve been obsessed with seeing that wrong righted. Now it has been.

As the famed ancient sports writer, Paul the Apostle, once observed, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

Last night’s triumph was my graduation. My only-now-unknotted stomach and my aching head will thank me.

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Election Night Coverage

It’s set: I’ll be covering the doings at the Democratic Party’s Bloomington election night HQ Tuesday night for WFHB radio.

The Dems will gather at Opie Taylor’s on Walnut St., hoping to bring their national, state, and local banner carriers home to victory. WFHB will have a live remote table at the bar/restaurant where we’ll do live reports and interviews. A mess of folks will be responsible for the coverage, including tech geeks, runners, remote producers, executive producer Joe Crawford, Ass’t News Director Sarah Vaughan, and vols at the station making sure our words get to your ears. I don’t know the names of all the on-scene, behind-the-scenes staff but as soon as I get wind of them, I’ll flog them herein.

I dunno about you, but I’m pumped for Tuesday, November 8th.

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Big Talk

Speaking of interviews, it’s Big Talk Thursday. My guest late this afternoon will be hand-crafted puzzle maker Marc Tschida. Marc has been an arts advocate and tireless worker in the music and theater scenes locally for eons. Now, he’s going full-time into jigsaw-puzzle making. His distinctive, collectible puzzles feature images of Bloomington and South Central Indiana as well as pix of works by local artists.

Big Talk is a regular Thursday feature of the Daily Local News. Tune in at 5:30 late this afternoon. If you miss the broadcast, don’t fret — you can catch the podcast on the WFHB website. And the mostly-unedited, full-length original interview will be posted on this communications colossus immediately after air-time (or, more accurately, as soon as I get around to posting the audio track.)

Talk to you tonight!

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11/02/2016
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Olio

Hot Air: A Ray Of Sunshine

Maybe I’m naive, but I believe I’ve found the single positive thing to emerge from the ascension of the Republican Candidate for President (RCP).

Think along with me for a moment: the RCP represents all the worst aspects of this holy land. He is greedy and self-involved. He treats women like objects and dark-skinned people like lessers. He worships wealth and the wealthy. He’s amoral. He’s a reality TV star. He’s pathologically thin-skinned. He couldn’t walk a mile in another’s shoes if he had a gun pointed at his head. He’s proudly unaware of geopolitical issues. He’s a climate-change denier. He’s a nativist. He fears foreigners. He digs tyrannical strong men who lead other countries. I could go on and on.

All that said, it occurs to me the RCP is the absolute worst major party presidential candidate we’ll ever see for the rest of our lives.

Think of it! Say Mitt Romney were to rouse himself from the dead and run for president in 2020. Say he’s collected enough chits over the last few years to actually emerge as the Republican nominee. Honestly, we’d be thrilled. Naturally, I wouldn’t agree with a word he’d say even if he claimed the sun would rise in the east tomorrow morning. Nevertheless, he wouldn’t be the RCP.

Same with Marco Rubio, or former Utah Gov. Jon Hunstman,  Georgia Sen Tom Graves, or Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton. Few of them are likely to call for redistribution of wealth, reproductive choice, or a commitment to renewable energy. None will share a stage with Black Lives Matter representatives. Nor would I care to share a cocktail with most of them.

Still, none will be as emblematic of the worst characteristics of our nation as the RCP. At the very least, they back up their godawful policies with a semblance of intellectual chops.

Hey, gimme a break, okay? I’ve gotta find some silver lining in this 2016 fetid political swamp.

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The Obvious

Riddle me this: How did the most average and unremarkable modern Democratic politician become known as such a horrifying beast to reactionaries on both the right and the left?

dc7enjogi

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Answer: She has a vagina.

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Nightlife Support

Here’s the link to Players Pub GoFundMe page. Proprietors Joe and Vicki Estivill aim to raise $55,000 to help keep the joint alive. As of 6pm today, they’d raised $1225.

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When Joe told The Pencil yesterday he might have a big announcement in the works for eight o’clock last night during the nightclub’s blues jam, I got the feeling it’d entail more than revealing a URL. Joe hinted that angels just might be fluttering around his temporarily shuttered establishment. The fact that he didn’t introduce a gang of investors or offer his undying thanks to a new silent partner indicates such angels just might still be circling the Players Pub. Simply starting up a GoFundMe page means little to vendors who want their invoices paid last month.

Fingers crossed that Joe and Vicki can handshake their way to solvency soon.

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Purity

Joe Ricketts, the Omaha-based billionaire who founded TD Ameritrade, is a known right wing crank. He’s one of those guys who, when B. Obama first was running for pres., implied the candidate was not one of us — us, ostensibly, being respectable, flag-loving Murricans but in reality meaning…, well, white. Ricketts’ four kids own the Chicago Cubs.

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Joe Ricketts

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Like many uber-successful business titans who find it wise to play both sides against the middle, Rickets has pitched scads of dough to orgs. fighting against the Republican Candidate for President (RCP) and then, only last month, it was revealed he and his bride Marlene have donated a million bucks or more to a super PAC supporting the RCP. A certain fraction of sports nation went goggle-eyed over the revelation. Allowing that sports fanatics tend to favor the GOP — it has to do with bromides like sports imitates life, competition is good for the soul, quarterbacks are great leaders, designated hitters know how to follow the rules, there is no I in team, and other holy horseshit — the fraction of them that can be described as liberal or progressive were aghast that the owner of a major professional athletic franchise would give money to the Orange-utan. In fact, there were insinuations that pulling for the Cubs might in some way further the causes of tyranny, anti-intellectualism, misogyny, racism, nativism, xenophobia and all the rest of the qualities the RCP holds near and dear.

Lemme set the liberal/progressive wing of sports nation straight. The vast majority — and by that I mean a good 98 out of a hundred — of American sports franchise owners are hard-core conservatives. As a rule, you don’t get to be a billionaire by embracing the tenets of Kumbaya. Billionaires make their mountains of cash by steamrolling over the competition, thinking, acting and believing only in what benefits them, ignoring collateral consequences of their actions, and finding true human fulfillment in the acquisition of $10,000 bottles of wine and luxury yachts complete with gold toilet-flushing handles. These are not progressive aspirations and/or qualities.

The rare liberal sports owner — the Chicago Bulls’ and White Sox’ Jerry Reinsdorf leaps to mind — stands out like a high-level ISIS operative at an Amway presentation. Sports fans in general are unlikely to be loyal readers of Cornel West or Howard Zinn. The players and their paymasters are even more antediluvian.

If one were to restrict her or his sports loyalties only to teams run by forward-thinking, humanist, kind and loving souls, one wouldn’t be watching many games at all. Or even any games at all.

For that matter, if one were to boycott every business run by an aggressive, narcissistic, materialistic troll who steamrolls the competition, thinks, acts and believes only in what benefits him, ignores collateral consequences of his actions, and finds true human fulfillment in the acquisition of obscenely expensive alcohol and precious metal toilet hardware, one would have precious few reasons to ever leave one’s comfy home.

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11/01/2016
1 Comment
The Players Pub

Hot Air: Hot Tip

Good news?

Joe Estivill just dropped by to give this global communications colossus the hottest tip of the week. Sez the co-proprietor of the Players Pub:

There is hope.

The venerable Bloomington music and grub joint which shuttered suddenly yesterday just may not remain closed long. Joe and Vicki are re-opening up tonight for an already-slated blues jam and, if all goes well the rest of this afternoon, acc’d’g to Joe, he may have an exciting announcement to make at 8:00pm.

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Estivill’s not free to disclose details at this very second but he does reveal that certain members of the community just might have scads of generosity in their hearts. Natch, they’re thinking in business terms, yet an angel — or angels — appears to be on the horizon.

Stay tuned.

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11/01/2016
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Search Me!

Hot Air: The Pathetic Apathetic

I just don’t get “undecided voters.” I have absolutely no recollection of ever not knowing whom I was going to vote for from the very beginning of any campaign.

I mean, who out there had to wrestle with their conscience for long months to decide between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney? Bill Clinton and Bob Dole? Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, for chrissakes?

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Golly Gee, I Can’t Make Up My Mind!

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And this year the presidential race is being run by perhaps the two most well-known candidates ever. A former First Lady, US Senator, and Sec’y of State takes on a reality TV show star whose name is slapped on tall buildings, casinos, steaks, vodkas, suit jackets, colognes, and scads of other gewgaws, and some several million people can’t quite figure out who they like better?

“About 15 percent of the electorate isn’t yet committed to Clinton or Trump,” writes Nate Silver. Really? Honestly?

“Voters unsure about who to pick in 2016 are not very interested in politics,” writes Mary Pascaline in International Business Times. “They are also less partisan, less interested in the news and don’t have strong opinions on the issues dominating the election cycle. In fact, only 42 percent of undecided voters are interested in the 2016 race.”

“‘Politics’ is a dirty word to the public,” opines Mathew Flinders, director of the Bernard Crick Centre, in The Guardian. “However, ‘democracy’ remains an incredibly positive notion. The contemporary problem seems to be that large sections of the public want ‘democracy’ but without the ‘politics.'” The Crick Centre is part of the University oif Sheffield in England, a country whose voters seem to be as apathetic, uninformed, and lightning-quick to eat up any social meme that reinforces their ill-conceived notions about the world and reality as those in this holy land.

I have a friend who says not everyone should be allowed to vote. He suggests potential voters should be forced to take tests to demonstrate a minimal knowledge of current affairs and civics basics. Problems with that, natch, begin with figuring out who’s going to administer the tests and guarding against the inevitable well-funded efforts of racists and economic elitists  to suppress the dark-skinned and poor votes. The wicket only gets stickier from there.

No, we’re stuck with the ignorant, the lazy, the blind, the blissfully unaware, and the criminally credulous. Democracy means everybody gets a say in who leads our nation and where we’re going as a society. Your grade school civics teacher told you that was the beauty of our system.

I’m here to tell you that’s democracy’s weak link. Still, I haven’t seen a better system come along yet.

Just as bubble economies and the wealth gap are the inevitable results of free-market capitalism, this year’s Republican Candidate for President is the natural result of giving every jimoke the right to vote.

Sure, capitalism is better than communism, and democracy is better than tyranny. That doesn’t mean I have to be head-over-heels in love with either system, though.

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Their Way, The Scare Way

This whole deal about a cabal of ultra-conservative FBI agents applying so much pressure on Bureau director James Comey that he was “forced” to write that Hillary/email letter to Congress is scary as all hell.

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Runnin’ Scared

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In fact, it stinks like a nascent junta. The fact the cabal got its way will embolden Right Wingers. Watch for more armed law enforcement entities to begin pressuring public officials to do their bidding.

I don’t believe the Far Right will take over this country — there aren’t enough of them and our real masters, the corporatists, won’t tolerate rule by such a divisive few — but over the next few years they, the wingnuts, are going to be raising holy hell in this holy land.

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10/31/2016
1 Comment
Siren

Hot Air: Evil Woman

Six Of One….

A quick hit before I get into the meat of today’s post: VP candidate Mike Pence yesterday paid a return visit to Indiana to campaign for Republican gubernatorial hopeful Eric Holcomb. The GOP’s man is currently Lt. Gov. and before that served as the state Republican Party chair. Before that, he was a trusted advisor to Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels, beginning in 2003.

So, for at least 13 years he’s been a key figure in the Republicans’ dominance over state politics and policy. Pence joined a number of Holcomb supporters in lauding him to the skies. Basically, here were their main arguments:

  1. Only Eric Holcomb can turn this state around, considering we’re in such a horrifying mess, and
  2. We must elect a Republican so we can stay the course.

Well, which is it?

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The Bad Seed

The more I think about it, the less I can find any reason to excuse the actions of FBI boss James Comey last week.

As a professional, he was obligated to report in July that there were no grounds to charge Hillary Clinton with any crimes for her email setup. Yet, he found it necessary to append to his conclusion that little chide about her being “careless” which

  1. wasn’t true and
  2. is not within his job description

He’s the nation’s top law enforcement officer, not its kindergarten teacher.

As time went by, the fact that HRC appeared to be winning galled him all the more. There is something bizarrely hate-inducing about Clinton. It’s not her fault — Susan Faludi has a great take on that. Faludi wrote yesterday in the New York Times:

One of the mysteries of 2016 is the degree to which Hillary Clinton is reviled. Not just rationally opposed but viscerally and instinctively hated.

Faludi feels much of the odium derives from “masculine insecurity.” She wrote:

The GOP’s gender grudge feeds on its own defeat. As the culture moves further away from the conservative ideal — as women gain freedoms, minorities assert rights, same-sex marriage proves commonplace — the monster howls grow louder.

Acc’d’g to Faludi (and I agree), a quarter of a century ago the Far Right, the conservatives, the religious fundamentalists, the aging white men, et al decided a witch was responsible for all the coming changes that threatened them so. With the Bill Clinton ascension, all those scared bunnies knew who she was. He alone couldn’t be responsible for the evils that were to befall this holy land. Faludi wrote:

Hillary Clinton was anointed the feminine face of evil.

7witches

At Fault

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Throughout history, females have been blamed for the evils of men. We like to think we don’t believe in silly things like witches anymore, but don’t be fooled.

Comey, like the rest of us, has been swimming in this cesspool of hate and blame for decades now. Who knows how much of that hate stuff has reverberated in his cranium as it became clear Clinton will be our next president? He may not even willingly think those thoughts, but he’s heard them. We’ve all heard them. If we’re for HRC, we wave them off derisively. Those who hate her can’t escape them, though. She must be stopped, they think. Obsessively.

The FBI director released the information that there are more emails to be heard — and allowed the implication to fester that crimes and treasons would be uncovered — a mere ten days before the election because he knows deep in his heart Hillary Clinton is…, well, evil.

I get the feeling this storm’ll blow over, especially when the rational citizenry realizes there’s absolutely nothing in the new emails that’d constitute any kind of probable cause.

Nevertheless, Barack Obama would be doing a desperately needed civic service the moment he fires Comey. And if he doesn’t, Comey has zero choice but to resign if the evil woman becomes president.

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Evil-Hearted Woman Blues

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10/29/2016
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O Sole Me-o

An epidemic rages through our holy land these days. And, no, it’s not the zika virus nor, as the TV commercials during the World Series games breathlessly inform us, is it Hepatitis C decimating the Baby Boomer generation.

It’s a pathological selfishness. Now, I’m not breaking any news here telling you that. The Me Generation 1970s was an era of saintly sacrifice compared to our self-involved times. Here are a couple of examples:

  1. This AM, NPR’s Weekend Edition ran a story about two geographically close but culturally, economically and racially far-flung big-city elementary schools that are slated to become unified. The reason being one school, populated by dark-skinned, poor, public housing kids, would benefit greatly from sharing the resources of the other which is white and wealthy. Not only that, the marriage of the two would further the goal of desegregation. The parents and administrations of the two schools currently are working out the unification details. There are, though, some detractors. One anti-unification woman was interviewed. She said she hated the idea. She’d moved to her neighborhood in large part so her kids could attend the so-called better school. The unification, she said, would be an assault upon her. “It’s a complete imposition on my personal space,” she said.
  2. The FBI yesterday revealed it has decided to nose around in more emails from the server run by Hillary Clinton while she was Sec’y of State. Merely mentioning the words email and Hillary in today’s pathologically polarized political climate indicates to certain citizens that she should be summarily shot. One of those citizens happens to be running for president under the Republican Party banner. He — whom I refuse to refer to by name — naturally reacted to the news. “Beautiful,” he said. The Republican Candidate for President (RCP) added the news would reinvigorate his floundering campaign. His bandwagon would be “really moving” now.

Let’s take the anti-unification parent first. She isn’t against a plan that is intended to benefit schoolchildren who’ve suffered greatly and, hopefully, will bring together institutionally divided segments of a profoundly segregated city because it may fail or is ill-conceived. Oh no. That’s for someone else to worry about. All that counts is how it just might affect her alone. She reigns, after all, over some self-defined territory where nothing or nobody else is of concern. Her “personal space” will be invaded, as hideously, say, as Germany rolling into Poland in September, 1939.

mlliys

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Now let’s take on the RCP. If, as he and so many other Hillary-haters believe, the email issue is a horrifying scandal for which the Dem candidate should be imprisoned — or worse, then aren’t revelations about it something less than cause for glee? To the RCP, gradually learning about it is a succession of moments of sublime pleasure. Each tidbit of info regarding her so-far harmless private email server somehow makes his life better. He’s already said the email “scandal” is worse than anything that’s ever been done in this country. I assume he’s aware of such elementary school history topics as the Native American holocaust, slavery, the Civil War, the Great Depression, Vietnam, Iraq, and a couple of world wars. Let’s assume, though, he’s speaking in his normal sloppy, unimaginative hyperbole. It’s worse, then, than the conspiracy that claimed the life of Abraham Lincoln,  Teapot Dome, and Watergate.

I was alive during Watergate. I don’t recall candidates for high office whooping it up and shouting, “Hurray, this is great!” No one dared to say, “Thanks goodness for Tricky Dick and his Plumbers and rat-fuckers. Now my chances at victory are going through the roof!”

Nope. But our RCP says of Clinton’s criminal, worst-of-all-of-them abuse of power, “This changes everything!” He says it  hopefully, merrily, with boundless enjoyment. Uh-uh — the effect of the “scandal” on our great democracy means nothing to him. It only makes him, in his deluded, probably disease-impaired brain, happy.

That’s all that counts.

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O Sole Mio

No intro needed.

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