Excuses!

 Im sick of it. I am sick of not only mass murders of Black folk, Jewish folk, Gay folk, Muslim folk, Children, Latino folk and now Asian folk but I am sick of law enforcement, politicians, and everyday white folk making excuses for these asswipes. Any time a white person commits some horrid act of violence, murder, or mayhem we hear excuses.

The T***p scum that attacked the United States Capitol were just frustrated patriots upset over voter fraud that was perpetrated upon them and cost them 4 more years of their Dear Leader's wise and firm leadership. US Senators backed them and felt sorry for them, The human furrowed brow Tucker Carlson says they did nothing wrong. Senator Ron Johnson (R-Klan) said out loud he was never scared of his fellow white rioters because they werent black or wild eyed white guys with crazy hair.

Kyle Rittenhouse murdered two people in the streets of Kenosha because he felt compelled to travel somewhere he didnt live to "protect" property he didnt own. 

In 1998 Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson abducted a young gay man named Matthew Shepard and tortured and beat him to death near Laramie Wyoming.

Dylan Roof prayed with black churchgoers before killing 9 of them in a South Carolina church basement in 2015. 

Patrick Crusius drove 650 miles across Texas to murder 23 Latinos at an El Paso Wal Mart in 2019.

Robert Bowers walked into the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 and murdered 11 Jewish  folks minding their own damned business.

In 2008 Jim Adkisson walked into the Knoxville Unitarian church and started shooting what he perceived as liberals after being indoctrinated by the likes of Sean Hannity. He killed 2 innocents before the liberal churchgoers tackled him and hopefully beat the shit out of him.

And then last night in Atlanta a 21 year old loser named Robert Long walked into 3 massage parlors and murdered 8 people, 6 of them Asian women.

What do they all have in common other than being murderous scum? They are all white, they were all taken into custody alive, and they all had excuse made for them by fellow whites.

Long had a "bad day". Roof was taken to Burger King by cops after his arrest. Crusius was concerned about immigration. Rittenhouse was defending property and was praised by cops after he killed two people. Bowers was just angry about Jews and was raised by a rapist. Adkisson was "insane" and couldnt help himself. And of course the "patriots" who killed a cop and trashed the Capitol were just frustrated and caught up in the moment. Henderson and Russell were in some sort of "gay panic".

Excuses y'all. 

Only made for white folk who lose their shit. 

Its as disgusting as mayonnaise . 

Shut Up Nebraska!

News from the state making every attempt to become Texas, or Mississippi or South Dakota or Iowa, no wait all those states have touristy shit like casinos and places to visit. Nebraska is making that attempt to qualify as the absolute most boring goddamned place on Earth outside of Nebraska 02 of which I still couldnt be prouder. Its leader is the man above, Governor and Trust Fund Kid Peter Ricketts. And by leader I mean a man so utterly despised by the two places in which actual people reside, Omaha and Lincoln, but worshipped anyplace else because he has that R next to his dumb name and dumb face.

Just listen to him. This dumb son of a bitch couldnt get elected to the board of the Chicago Cubs by his own family so they sent him here to get him out of Illinois. We now know why. This shiny headed talking thumb (thanks John Oliver)  says this stupid shit all the time. Marijuana kills kids. Undocumented immigrants cant get the Covid vaccine because they dont exist here. People with underlying conditions cant get the vaccine because they arent old enough. Yet somehow in the sticks, the places not Omaha and Lincoln, the places nobody lives, the places that voted for him twice by Saddam type numbers in the 90% range, all seem to be fully vaccinated. This guy is walking Dr Evil. 

I mean we are already thought of as dumb hicks worldwide, but we dont need Ricketts to further embolden that view (did I mention Ne 02?). We are not all a gaggle of knuckle dragging rubes barely remembering to breathe and Republican brain dead to boot. Yet here he is, our Leader, a T***P ass licker, saying OUT LOUD that a plant that is used to keep children in his own state from having seizures will kill them. Yeah the plant is also used to get high as a kite, but who wouldn't want that living in this Ricketts dominated wasteland? Ricketts, a man who attempted to obtain illegal  drugs so he could kill a guy, suddenly opposes a drug legal in 30 plus states. Perhaps in Ricketts logic, he should just give death row inmates a pile of pot and let them "kill" themselves.

This dumb prick is term limited so we have two years left of his shitty leadership. Lets hope by then he has granted all of his loyal subjects the privilege of being vaccinated from Covid, not just the ones who voted for his dumb ass. But then, he will run for the United States Senate in 2024, a job for which Daddy failed to buy for him in 2006 because he got fucking crushed by an actual Nebraska Democrat named Joe Manchin  Ben Nelson. But that of course was before 2008, when white America lost its ever lovin mind. So who knows if the people of this state will be stupid enough to send this dope east. If we do, I am going to commit suicide by plant.

Meanwhile for you football fans. yes indeedy, the suck fest that has befallen the once mighty Nebraska Cornhuskers only gets worse. Yeah we stink, we havent had a winning season in years, but our name is still marketable. The state lives in the past not only politically but footbally . Its still the 90s here in terms of football. Ya know back when we were good, maybe great. The problem is young people not only dont remember when the greatness existed, they also cant get stoned legally when the Huskers find yet another stupid way to lose. 

But anyway. Remember the Nebraska vs Oklahoma series? Man was it good, trust me kids. It ended in the late 90s  because we left the conference to get our ass kicked in the Big Ten. But this year, it is 50 years since the Game of the Century in 1971 and a celebratory game was scheduled for this year in Oklahoma.

'

Whoaaaaaaaaaa there pardner. History be damned and along came Nebraska to attempt to weasel out of the game in which they will lose by 30 or 40 points and replace it with a home game against some patsy who could easily rise up and beat them anyway but at least the millions of dollars would be deposited in the coffers. Oklahoma blew the whistle on Nebraska's attempted chicanery and the rest is us looking all dumb again all  in one week. 6 hours after the news broke of Nebraska's attempted deviousness they folded and tried to blame Covid for the confusion. Yeah they are playing Oklahoma. And how dare you think any different. Oh man.  

Please Nebraska. Just shut up and stay uninteresting again.

Creighton's Plantation!

 Look I admit this. I despise Creighton University. Its an elitist Jesuit college here in Omaha  that overcharges students and puts itself on a Hilltop above all. With an alumni full of physicians and lawyers who pretty much run the government around here, the place has infuriated me with its iron grip on this town for many years. So when it goes thru tough times, whether it be passing illiterate basketball players right through the system to keep them playing and then discarding them like trash, or when assistant coaches get nailed by the FBI for taking bribes I take great pleasure. But this latest problem, in which the head coach, a man named Greg McDermott, uses what can only be described as racially insensitive language at best I dont take any pleasure in this. Because once again, it highlights this nations greatest shame. Racism.

McDermott, after a loss at Xavier Saturday night, stood in front of his team in the locker room, a team of majority black players and said "Guys, we got to stick together. We need both feet in. I need everybody to stay on the plantation. I cant have anybody leave the plantation". Plantation? To a bunch of unpaid black players? I assume he didn't use the Foghorn Leghorn voice as he said it.

The blowback has been brutal. McDermott got out in front of this. He apologized. He offered to resign. He has been doing the mea culpa tour of local talk shows. And he hasnt even gotten to New York, where his conference tournament will be held. Where his worst days will occur.

White Omahans are weighing in, as if it matters. Universally it is at best well he didnt mean anything by it to at worst the cancel culture morons defending his words. But this locker room fuck up, by a well respected coach says a lot about all of us. What lays deep inside the minds of white people can come out when stressed, sometimes awkward and badly stated at best, to hateful and nasty at worst. McDermott is a farm boy from Iowa. What the fuck does he know about plantations? Well apparently something took hold inside his psyche and out it came. Maybe it was one of those things you say that as its coming out of your mouth you try to suck back in. We have all done it. Maybe McDermott did it too. But wow man. That was bad.

I don't know if McDermott survives this. Creighton doesnt take well to bad pub. They have a rep to maintain. They are after all a Jesuit University. The Jesuits are highly educated priests who from what I've experienced, don't even believe in God. So if McDermott stays on, and I honestly don't see how he does, he's a twice wounded animal. Thru the FBI scandal and now this. Yeah I hate Creighton, but this is just another embarrassment suffered for us white folks.

Years ago, 1970 or so, when my Dad had season tickets to Creighton basketball games, I'd often go with him. The racial tension in the student section was apparent. The white privileged students would sit together and be the loud vulgar assholes they still are, and the black students sat together, didnt stand for the anthem and openly rooted for only the black players no matter what team they played for. It was uncomfortable to even be there. One game after a white student threw a chair on the floor and a miniature brawl broke out among blacks and whites who went to the same school, Dad stood up, put on his coat and said lets go. We left early. On the way home he told me he doubted if he'd ever go back stating that school has problems and I dont want to get caught in the cross fire when it blows up.  Those problems apparently remain.

CPAC 2021!

 Yeah its the annual gathering of the nuts, CPAC 2021, this time live from Florida where none of the attendees need to wear a mask. No need to protect others or themselves from the T***P virus hoax. Where they can let Jesus or Satan or you know who protect them from all evils near and far, like socialism or reality.

The first thing the insurrectionists running this little Cop Killer Woodstock did was cancel culture a black wingnut named Young Pharaoh , who had some very strange things to say about Jews. So cancel culture the black kid, they really didnt want any of them there anyway. The second thing they did was construct a stage in the shape of an Nazi SS symbol, haha, a little dig at the libs, or anybody else with a sense of humanity. Madison Cawthorn, wheel chair bound Hitler enthusiast, who doesn't seem to understand his heroes would have wheeled his dumb ass right to the showers, probably was mind fucking Himmler when he saw it.

The third thing was the sight of a Mexican made Golden Calf  , T***P being wheeled into place for the evangelical Bible thumpers to worship without realizing the irony of the moment. The Golden T***P was quite popular among the Cult 45 members who wished for a Myanmar type takeover of this Biden government that got thoroughly routed by hundreds of millions of votes proved by the fact Biden rallies didnt have as many attendees as the rallies they went to because Covid is a hoax and all. PROOF!!!

The CPAC 2021 list of speakers contained the most insurrectionist sympathetic list of goons perhaps since 1937 at Nuremberg.

You could sit back and watch Josh Hawley (Moron-Mo) double down on his overthrow attempt. Ted Cruz, looking refreshed and tan, scream FREEDOM! like a lunatic while his constituents froze and died back in Texas. Donald Trump Jr (Cokehead-NY) express his outrage over cancel culturing the Muppets while sniffing like a stopped up camel. Can this guy just OD already? Lauren Boebert (Coup Conspiracist-Co) saying no more times than she ever has in her life combined . Marsha Blackburn (Dumbest Woman in Senate Ever-TN) soft talking her condescending bullshit. You could watch people stand in line to get a selfie with butter faced bigot Marjorie Taylor Greene (Gym Banger-Ga).

Oh its an insurrectionist heaven. There isnt one person there who if the FBI raided the place wouldn't be detained for days, if not years. But hey its America . The God given white nationalist playground that got all stained by Slaves and Mexicans and Asians and uppity chicks and the homos. The CPAC 2021, given a hall pass, would eradicate all of that, and is attempting to do it now via voter suppression laws so that only white people can elect other white people who will keep them privileged and in white only sub standard housing and trailer parks living the good life.

Insurrectionist Heaven will conclude with a speech from the Golden God himself . The only True Leader who will totally be re installed on March 4th  or May 19th or whenever the next date is dreamed up by internet con artists. 

One man who declined to participate, probably for good reason, was Mike Pence, the guy the Golden One put a hit on back on the 6th of January. Had he shown up, Pence would have been booed at best, and strung up at worst as the insurrectionists completed their failed mission.

All bow at the feet of the Grifter in Chief. The con continues. The GQP. Ya gotta feel a tinge of pity at the rube-ness of this bunch. At least as the jail door slams.

Nomadland!

 Look, you'll either get this movie or you wont. Like the wonderful Pixar animated classic Soul. if you're older and not full of youthful arrogance about being indestructible, you will like this movie, rather appreciate this movie much more than the kid you tell to watch it who then goes yeah old person, it was boring.

Here's the deal (I'm all Joe today), you either thrive on seeing the country and world by slowly letting it unfold thru the window of a vehicle stopping at places no sane person plans on seeing (obscure museums and roadside attractions of giant dinosaurs), or you prefer to have an itinerary of airplane flights, upscale hotels, planned tours and sitting around on a beach chair doing nothing. I prefer the former and that's why Nomadland struck me so hard.

Its a road movie. But its also a commentary on America. Nomads are real in America. People who wander from season to season doing odd jobs and living in a van or a camper , sometimes down by the river. They are "homeless" so to speak. They are also more free than most of us ever could imagine.

In Nomadland, Frances McDormand (a Mount Rushmore actor if there ever was one) plays Fern , a 60 something woman living in Empire, Nevada when the 2008 economic crash occurs, closing a sheetrock factory after 88 years, and shutting the town down. Fern stays, her husband dies of cancer, and Fern grabs her shit, loads it into a creaky van, and leaves. 

She works at Amazon during Christmas, loads up her shit again and heads for Arizona where she meets the nomads at the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous, a gathering of people like her who follow a nomad guru named Bob Wells  (real guy on Youtube). She meets nomads, who are played by real people not actors, she falls in with them and relationships form. People live, people die, people drop out of the lifestyle, people need help, people help. It makes humanity look tolerable quite frankly.

The details include trips to South Dakota, Nebraska, California ,Arizona, Nevada for seasonal work. The same characters keep popping up. Like a family, its great to see them. These nomads have been acting all their lives and this film contains no awkward not an actor moments. I'm sure when these people tell stories its simply them telling the truth about who they are. Its just fascinating.

Now about the actual actors.

When a female actor turns oh I don't know, now maybe 50 in the past 40, she tends to lose work. They grasp for their glory days and get work done, their lips swell, their faces become unrecognizable and dammit it still doesn't work. But some actresses say fuck it, I am who I am and you can all go to hell if you don't like it. That's Frances McDormand. She is 63 . She looks 63, she acts 63 and she is a delight. I am not sure there are more than 2 or 3 other American actors who could have pulled this off. She is so damned appealing, she comes across as a truly nice person who can draw you in with nothing more than a stupid Happy New Year hat, a sparkler and a quick smile and nod. She's going to win every award known to the industry, that's just a fact.

The only other professional actor in this movie is the wonderful David Strathairn  of what hasn't he been in fame. He's one of those character actors who when you see him you know whatever movie it is has just become better. Oh it may just go from a 1 to a 2 but its his doing that it went up. He plays Dave, another nomad who pops up now and then at the seasonal work sites and obviously has a thing for Fern. But Dave goes another route away from Fern and its irreconcilable in the end. 

Theres no happy ending to Nomadland. Its just real. And the people you meet , like real life nomads Linda May and Swankie and Bob, are a blessing. I want to talk to them for real. But I'm too afraid to search for them.

I watched this movie on Hulu. In my house. And it made us even more angry that this pandemic was so fucked up by certain people. It robbed us of the 2-3 times a year we became Nomads and  drive around endlessly seeing things that would bore others yet fascinates us. 

I cannot recommend watching Nomadland enough. Directed by Chloe' Zhao, I cant wait for her next project. She knows what she's doing.

Bravo!

Rush!

In the 1990s I used to drive around with a Flush Rush bumper sticker on my vehicle. The reactions were varied but I will say it was 5 middle fingers for every raised thumbs up. Once in a great while a shouting match would occur until I realized they had guns and I didnt. The reaction to dissing a radio yakker should have been warning to what was coming. The right loves their blowhards. 

Rush Limbaugh died today after a lifetime of denying reality whether it be his own health or the nations health. I'm not gloating though at one point he was the only human being on Earth I hated. He became irrelevant sometime in about 2000 after his nemesis Bill Clinton left office though he maintained his devotees, aka Cult, that moved on to another blabbermouth sometime in about 2015.

I used to listen to Limbaugh in the late 1980s. He was kidding, right? He made me think. He made me angry. He wasn't really serious, right? I kept expecting , despite Maya Angelou's advice to accept who somebody is when they tell you,  that he would suddenly tear off his fat face and switch sides like all con artists do. But he didn't. 

Limbaugh was the classic example of the overfed, cigar chomping , country club living, golf playing, boisterous bigoted Republican. The classic stereotype of the kind of guy the Republicans should shun. But the GOP decided in about 1994 that this crude, insulting, dishonest way of life was successful and Limbaugh was their bullhorn. Little did we know what was coming.

Rush is gone now. The ultimate white supremacist. The guy who started this nation down the Asshole Highway. Mean and nasty, openly bigoted, speaking his muddled mind, openly disdainful of the gays, the blacks, the kids, he was on par with Joe McCarthy and other demagogues who easily fool the American right. 

I still wont gloat. I stopped paying attention to him long ago. It was despicable that one Loudmouth gave another Loudmouth a Medal of Freedom. Despicable. It cheapened the award forever. But it worked because it owned the libs, me included. And isn't that all that matters to the Cult? The cult that followed one braying jackass to another, The bitters that cannot accept equality because that means they arent more equal like it used to be.

Be Gone El Rushbo! You've now achieved what you mocked others about. You have assumed room temperature. 

Save Us Again Please!

 Its fucking over. Last weeks shit show in which I actually believed for a hot minute that the heated phone call in which T***P brazenly told House Leader Kevin McCarthy that he didnt give a damn about Pence, or McCarthy or anybody else in harms way up there at that there Capitol may have brought some Republicans on board for conviction, it was not to be. 43 cowards voted to acquit a mob boss who is on tape calling his soldiers to arms. 43 chickenshits, whether true believers in the concept of fascism and one man rule, or scared little kittens afraid the T***P thugs will actually kill them or their families voted to let this obese Ox off the hook. It truly is frightening. But its over, right?

At least on a political level. We may never ever have to listen , hear, or see that fucking disgrace ever again. Part of the reason I held the remote in my hand during every moment of that overwhelming prosecution of a  gangster was due to the House Managers playing video of T***P insisting his mob of morons march up the street and kill people and I could mute his voice. My head didnt ache, my neck wasnt stressed into tightness unless I heard that mind boggling bullshit coming out of the  Treasonist in Chief's pie hole. It was just as stressful to witness history as it was to live it. That fucking voice. My Gawd it was like PTSD. He'd been gone for  3 weeks and I was already cured. Like the environment when not exposed to toxic gas, I was healing. Then this.

But its over. He got away with it again, despite the blatherings of Mitch McConnell trying to have it both ways on the Senate floor after he voted to acquit a man he obviously hates. Our only hope now is various local prosecutors like Fulton County DA Fani Wills, who seems intent on indicting this bribery artiste'. Perhaps NY Attorney General Letitia James will get her ducks in a row and put the entire Crime Family where they belong, Sing Sing. 

 Nonetheless, for this Putz in Chief to still be walking around free, emboldened by his perceived victory, and his cult members still willing to kill for him, is dangerous for all of us. His grift continues, his bullshit continues, his cult of personality continues and once again, America may have to be saved by the only thing with the guts to remove this toxic sludge of a man from the hanging by a thread  democracy.

The African American woman. They've saved us before. They can do it again.