COLIN POWELL EASY TARGET

Colin Powell would do best to stay at home and watch television. I can't imagine how he justifies his participation among republicans that point their racism at him, an easy target. It's like in the Sixties when the Black Panthers were staging evening news events, going into the churches of white liberals and demanding "reparations." I wondered what would happen if they went into a Baptist church toting shotguns and demanding money. I suppose they wondered too, the reason they only picked on liberals. They cracked me up in that time pointing their racism at easy targets, people that appeal to reason and logic before they point fingers. Now the republicans are bashing Colin Powell again for being dumb enough to associate with them. I thought the Cheney-Rummy-Bush triumvirate burned Powell bad enough a blister to keep him out of their circles. He talks like he thinks the republican party has reason tucked away in some out of sight niche, if he continues to talk sense, maybe it will connect with somebody in the party who has some sense. It has never happened for him. Cheney-Rummy-Bush set him up to be the stooge for their lies about WMD and got Powell discredited and out of their way. Powell is now back saying racism and intolerance characterize the republican party. Duh. Now they're all over him running him down, calling him a fool in their third grade tone of voice: So there!

I saw it in a video clip somebody put up on facebook, Americans Against The Republican Party. I went there to see what they had to say, but turned it off 30 sec into it. It's that So there! attitude they spit in your face when they talk about (oh no!) liberals. So there liberals! Being a somewhat rational man, the republican party is no place for Colin Powell. I don't know why he keeps on going back for more unless his publicist is telling him negative attention is better than no attention, or unless he really is not rational. Dems don't want him same as they don't want Joe Lieberman. The republicans shit in Powell's face, he goes back for more, they rub it in and he doesn't get it. He must have more invested in reason and logic as human motivation than I do. I learned many years ago never to expect reason or logic, unless maybe in a test question. I am coming to see that Powell wants reason and logic to be a factor in the world he lives in so much that he goes about acting like they function for him. Maybe he's practicing the principle of being the change he wants to see in the world. Maybe he thinks if he believes enough that republicans can be rational, his belief will make it happen. If so, it failed to work out.

I'm not going to complain about the implosion of the republican party. I'm happy to see the party of lies, assassinations, deception, racism, sexism, hate, contempt for the American people, the party of uneducated white men, the party attempting to turn forward momentum to backward momentum, happy to see the party fade away as do individuals who build their reputations on falsehoods. It works for awhile. Then it doesn't work at all. They're going into the doesn't-work-at-all phase. The funny part is by now their lies and chicanery are not fooling anybody but themselves. Occasionally I'll look at something on youtube from Fox. Every time, I think nobody can believe this but people who want to believe it. They get together convinced they're right and always have been, reinforce each other with agreement and emphatic tones of voice. Like at a Southern Baptist convention where they're expected to believe alike, and pat themselves on the back for it. Sameness confirms rightness. It must be why they're called the Right. They're right about the way they see everything. Being right is very important. It's the foundation of their smarty-pants tones of voice. Laura Ingraham on Fox talks like Ann Coulter, the blond mini-skirted Barbie in highest of all possible heels. I laugh every time I see something of these blond commentators with the camera looking directly between their legs requiring them to keep their legs tightly crossed with hand on miniskirt holding it down. They squirm keeping their legs together, except Ann Coulter. What a riot she is.

Gore Vidal's words ring in my mind, When Americans can't recognize stupid, we're out of business. Not all Americans, by any means. Maybe "out of business" will be localized to republican party, the ones that embrace stupid. Mark Twain has a saying something like, "It's easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled." That's what the republican party and Fox pretend-news knows. And they count on the American attention span being shorter than a cat's. This isn't to say everybody. Just enough to make 51% a challenge. A century and a half of the science of psychology, our people with mental issues are on the streets and in prisons without being charged or tried. The knowledge gained from the science of psychology is used in advertising, propaganda, population manipulation. We're told that gun violence in movies, easy killing, does not influence people who watch it. Maybe not once, but watch it every day of your life and it has some kind of influence. Advertisers pay an awful lot for a half minute to influence your mind. I think they know something the purveyors of killing as entertainment also know. I see the Yeats line, the center does not hold. Centrifugal force without gravity. Interesting time in that way. This is how a belief system flies apart. It can be looked at as sad. It can be looked at as necessary to break down the old calcified belief systems that have become tradition and need changing. They have to go before we can move forward to the next phase of our collective development as Americans and as human beings.


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SECEDE TEABAGGER SECEDE

jim dine, pinocchio

I woke this morning to news that fourteen or seventeen or however-many states have republicans in them running petitions to gather signatures to secede from the Union. Texas, of course, leads the lemming charge. It's just republicans calling attention to themselves. A state is not going to secede from the union because a few thousand wingnuts sign a petition. If the people signing the petition were serious, they'd move to Texas or Arizona, states that have already seceded in spirit. Both states have oppressed Latin populations. The racist wingnuts hate "Mexicans" the same as they hate black people. I suppose if Texas secedes over racism, the next step will be to banish the Latin population to make Texas fit for teabaggers. Why bother all the other people in states the petitioners want to secede? Teabaggers are a minority. If they're really committed, they'll move to Texas. If they don't move to Texas, they're not committed. The wingnuts are just making noise for the sake of making noise. As usual. The ruse that the wingnuts were leaving the country after losing the election fell through right away when nobody left the country. Now they're talking something they cannot do, secede, so they can make more noise about the government not allowing a few thousand cement-heads to manipulate states of multiple millions.

We'll be hearing this nonsense for weeks to come. I'm recalling the last time Jehovah's Witnesses came to my door several years ago. A man and a woman handed me a Watchtower. I handed it back and told them they really don't want to give it to me. Giving it to me is the same as throwing it in the trash, because the trash is my next stop. They wanted me to take a little book that proves something or other I'm not interested in. I declined. Then they had a bigger book, not in thickness, with a lot of pictures in it. They flipped through it showing me the pictures. They asked, "What does this look like to you?" I said, "A children's book." They explained that the average American has the reading level of a fourth grader. I said, "I'm not average. I read adult books." A glaze came over their eyes as they imagined me with a houseful of porn, a bad sinner. I didn't bother to explain I was not talking about XXX adult reading, but adult reading they, themselves, could not read because they were of the fourth grade level they were calling average.

I think of Jehovah's Witnesses an abuse of freedoms. They have the freedom to knock on my door at will and bore me with their agenda. I have the freedom to close my own door in their faces. The very worst was a Christmas visitation, a man and a woman who were not married and a boy of about ten, playing family. I knew the man and knew this was not his child or his wife. I hated to close my door in his face, but he had crossed the line. No matter who you are, come to my door as a JW and the door will close in yer face. I hang up on telemarketers the moment I find out what it is. I regard JW behavior of knocking on my door to tell me about their belief system simply rude. I give them rude back. A time before these people came to the door pushing their books, a white-haired JW man started reading Bible verses to me. I interrupted him and told him since he came to my house, it's my place to tell him about my belief system. He ran. The couple with the books were the last JWs to stop at this intractable old turd's house.

My neighbor Allan used to work for a man I could not work for. He made me so furious I walked off the job and never went back. He believed employees were about being cussed at. He lit into Allan one day with a string of words. Allan lit into him with his own string of words. Boss said, "You can't talk to me like that!" Allan said, "When you talk to me like that, I talk to you like that." You don't want to hear it, don't put it out in the air to be heard. I about fell over backwards when Allan told me the boss never cussed him again. I said, "It was that easy!" I laughed. I'd made a big issue of it, I Quit By God! All I had to do was cuss him back. However, Allan and I are not temperamented alike. Somebody gets in my face cussing, I get so wound up inside I need to exit myself or something untoward might happen. That's the hillbilly half of my blood. Somebody believes he has the right to give me a cussing, I believe I have the right to do whatever happens next.

I hope these teabagger monkeys swinging through the trees in Karl Rove's mind understand when they call the rest of us unacceptable, the return is that we find the teabaggers unacceptable. So the teabaggers have guns. The rest of us have guns. They've already shown repeatedly they have no concept that everything-comes-back. After 32 years of systematic republican attempts to shut down the democrat party, they've imploded. I'm rubber, you're glue, everything you say bounces off me and sticks on you. Now they're wanting to secede, which they know is not possible, a few thousand from each state. It tells me they're not serious. It's the same as playing a kazoo, the clown's instrument. Something to keep the Fox channel on the air: a secession movement, big drama. Like I said, if they were serious, they'd move to Texas and root for the Cowboys, a team that, alas, happens to have an awful lot of black cats on the playing field. What's the world coming to? Like it was said among white folks in 1956 when white teenagers were listening to Little Richard and Chuck Berry, "The niggers are takin over." I laughed then. I laugh now. Half a century of that fear growing and growing and what do we get? A deceptive tv channel that goes by the name fox.

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