The Donald knocks himself out with low blow to democracy

 

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The Mango Megalomaniac delivered the knockout punch his supporters were so hoping for in last night’s debate but unfortunately for them his hay-maker missed Hated Hillary and landed squarely on his own jaw.

The man who finds ever more creative ways to lower the election bar finally reached his bottom Wednesday night in twice refusing to say he would accept the verdict of the people on Nov. 8.

How low did he go to inflame his base by questioning the legitimacy of his country’s sacrosanct electoral process? He went lower than the snake’s anus he has proved himself to be.

Earlier this year, after travelling the Divided States for five months, this casual election observer channeled Charles Dickens in suggesting the U.S. is the best of countries and the worst of countries.

The world is seeing the worst of it now.

The dirty dogfight billed as a presidential election is putting a dark stain on the democratic tradition Americans purport to hold so dear. It is not so much an election by the people for the people as it is a no-holds-barred cage fight between the much-reviled choice of the Democratic Party elite and a narcissistic, sociopath who tapped into widespread voter discontent and the nation’s dark psyche to steal the nomination from the Republican Party elite.

Is it democracy when the people are presented with two choices out of a population of 300-plus million, both of whom are deeply disliked and mistrusted by the majority?

But there you have it. On Election Day the people must choose between a foul-mouthed, bronze-tinted, accused sexual deviant and a trust-challenged, political schemer who has her own sex pervert, if not on the ticket, then at her side on the dais and stumping for her on the campaign trail.

How did it come to this in a country that bills itself as the world’s showcase of democracy? A nation awash in good-intentioned people with intellectual depth. A land whose institutions of higher learning are beacons for deep thinkers from around the globe.

To go over the months of mudslinging from both primaries to the final weeks of the campaign is too daunting. Let’s start at the pre-Third Debate low point with the accusations of sexual assault, which might seem an odd campaign issue to observers in other countries watching an election being fought by two senior citizens.

The heavily made-up, immaculately-coiffed Czech mate’s vested marital interest aside, few objective observers believe a diverse group of women now numbering in double digits would subject themselves to the abuse of the Mango Misogynist’s knuckle draggers on behalf of Hated Hillary and the Democratic Party. That leaves morally challenged Republicans and fundamentalist religious fanatics to point the finger at Bill Clinton, invoking school yard rationalizations like, “He did it too.”

Democrats deflect accusations against former President Clinton, the Fastest Zipper in the West Wing, by pointing out that he’s not running for election. Indeed he isn’t but with the issue of sexual assault front and centre, the country’s first female Presidential candidate chooses to send the gaunt pee-pee exposer on the campaign trail as her surrogate. At the very least, the optics are terrible and her judgement should rightly be questioned.

Is it any wonder sexual assault on the nation’s college campuses is being called an epidemic, with one in five female students claiming they have suffered some form of sexual abuse? Clearly, being a sexual predator doesn’t preclude one from reaching for the top in America’s democracy.

Despite her deep-seated unpopularity with a vast swath of voters, the Democratic Party power structure handed the 2016 keys to Hated Hillary as reward for being the good soldier when Barack Obama came out of nowhere in 2008 to take the nomination from her on a platform of change.

Remember the optimism embodied in Obama’s campaign slogan–Yes We Can. It seems so long ago.

In defeat, Hated Hillary played nice and toed the party line, helping to elect Obama, then serving as Secretary of State for four years before resigning to raise money and plot her return. The latest manifestation of her long obsession to become Mrs. President began in 2012, funded by big money and Wall Street bankers anxious to hedge their bets.

And who can blame her for vacating her important cabinet post with the Middle East in flames. It takes a lot of money to become the people’s President or even for a seat in the Senate or Congress. So much money that Senators and Congressman spend a great deal of time dialing for dollars when they could be attending to the people’s business or bringing their respective legislative bodies to a standstill with pig-headed devotion to their respective parties. These muddling ideological money grubbers aren’t calling Joe the Plumber for a hundred bucks but instead are concentrating on the big fish, none of whom made their money by giving it away without expecting something in return.

Meanwhile, The Evil Orange Clown, on the lookout for attention with his reality TV career winding down, stumbled upon a power base on the dark side by fronting a fringe conspiracy movement, calling into question the first black President’s right to hold office by questioning his place of birth. Sensing an opening with the country’s legions of mouth-breathers, he declared his bid for the Presidency by following in the footsteps of history’s most successful dictators, demonizing visible minorities by blaming them for the mouth-breathers’ many failures in life.

He insulted his way through the Republican primaries with a clownish swagger that the GOP elite treated like a bad joke until he began knocking off establishment candidates and belittling party stalwarts. Using money he saved from not paying taxes, he travelled the country spewing bigotry and hate while casting his opponents into the political dung heap.

After eight years of ideological obfuscation in the Senate and Congress, during which Republican legislators shut down the federal government, refusing to appropriate funds to the Obama administration for the coming fiscal year, and with the country’s infrastructure deteriorating to Third World levels and the economy sputtering, it became plain for all to see Washington is no longer working for the people.

Enter the Evil Orange Clown stage right wing, fresh off the set of the Apprentice, where his constituency of reality TV viewers deemed him an omnipotent boardroom fixer of all things broken. People desperate for change came out in droves to support a man who hasn’t changed his hairstyle in 50-odd years, except to add a few layers of orange lacquer to his comb over.

Things didn’t turn sinister until Ferret-top’s numbers dropped in the wake of the First Debate and his subsequent late night twitter war with a former beauty queen. By the Second Debate he had been outed by his own foul words as Billy Bush’s pussy-grabbing mentor.

Seriously folks, the GOP’s bad joke had turned into its worst nightmare, threatening to drag the party that gave us George W., Sarah Palin and the Tea Party into the political obscurity it so richly deserves. Republicans hoping to save themselves from drowning in the backwash jumped the sinking ship of deplorable fools like rats running from a ferocious shipboard tomcat, leaving Ferret-top unshackled at the helm.

Instead of dropping anchor to pick up any survivors Captain Clown Face is steering toward the reef, where he will jump into his billionaire lifeboat and do what he has always done in time of crisis, namely leave the little guys whose good faith he took advantage of to their fate.

In light of his whingeing about media bias and a rigged election, followed by his unprecedented disgraceful debate performance that questioned the validity of America’s venerated democratic process, it should be clear to all but the most obtuse fanatics and the un-Christian Right, that Ferret-top is willing to take the country down to save his fake-tanned face.

Hated Hillary may be the flawed candidate of the establishment but beside the Evil Orange Clown she is Mother Teresa with a PhD.

 

 

We Interrupt This Broadcast for…

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With fruit like the Old Orange Groper hanging so low and Hypocrite Hillary dodging daily WikiLeaks revelations, it’s easy for a critic of the 2016 election to overlook a major player in the sordid dark comedy that has made America the laughing stock of the world.

The reality show’s producer tends to fade to black behind a cast of villains and victims, heroes and heroines, good guys gone bad and bad guys pretending to be good, all of them working with a script too salacious for the kids to watch.

But let’s put CNN’s name in the credits and give just due to the 24-hour news network that is the go-to source of information when calamity strikes anywhere in the world. The first all-news-all-the-time station has come a long way since being founded by Ted Turner in 1980 to raised eyebrows from the established players in the TV world. If its election coverage is a benchmark of journalistic excellence, the CNN Turner envisioned has a long way to go.

The first thing that becomes apparent to an all-day watcher is that unlike conventional networks it only has one prime-time show that stretches from early afternoon when the target audience geezers are digesting lunch to nine o’clock when they’ve finished their cocoa and are heading for bed.

The producers break the monotony of eight hours of airtime by cleverly camouflaging the show’s length with different hosts that change throughout the broadcast day, leaving viewers to discover that the content and main players are the same whenever you tune in.

Things start out with Honest Jake Tapper of The Lead playing footage of the Bloviating Trumpet Blaster’s day-old gaffs, interspersed with snippets about Hypocrite Hillary’s ongoing e-mail issues, followed by analysis from a rotating cast of blowhards and sycophants, each of them seemingly chosen for a particularly annoying personality trait.

Honest Jake sets the stage for the pretentiously named Situation Room presided over by Wolf Blitzer, who disguises the similarity of content by titillating viewers with promises of more Breaking News before every commercial break, which means previously aired footage of Ferret-top’s follies and Hillary’s alleged lies.

Titillating Wolf had this political junkie hanging through the commercials for the first couple of days, waiting with tic-tac-baited breath for the next plot turn. But even an old fool can only be fooled so many times before figuring out that the white-bearded CNN sour puss is actually the Wolf who cried wolf.

Out Front’s Perky Erin Burnett makes a nice change in the late afternoon time slot, bringing a fresh female perspective to the same old footage, Ferret-top getting off the Billy Bush bus or bloviating in front of a crowd of trailer park boys and girls, interspersed with Hypocrite Hillary suppressing her joy at the Mango Misogynist’s latest blunder.

Perky Erin is not so much out front as she is in the middle of Titillating Wolf and Earnest Anderson Cooper’s 360. Although fabulously rich and a CNN star closing on 50, Earnest Anderson musters the enthusiasm of a cub reporter while airing the same old footage and moderating fights with the blowhards and sycophants.

He anchors the favored supper hour time slot, catching the geezers as they finish up dinner at five and reeling in the after work crowd with more unfulfilled promises of Breaking News, which turns out to be the same material that’s been airing continuously since Honest Jake recycled it from the day before on The Lead.

Earnest Anderson is the network’s golden man-child, and as such gets the plum assignments, like anchoring the second debate and traipsing over to Trump Towers when summoned by Melania’s handlers, who finally deemed her sufficiently prepped for a prime time response to her husband’s sexist tape. CNN hyped its upcoming exclusive all day with tantalizing teasers that left hyped-up viewers of the Melania infomercial feeling tricked.

Despite his intimate familiarity with the world of the rich and infamous as the son of Gloria Vanderbilt, Earnest Anderson’s scoop came off like a Barbara Walters audience with the Queen. With Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway lurking within striking distance just out of camera range, viewers watched him lob softball questions in reverential tones at the former model sitting motionless on a garish gilt-edged chair. The Columbia School of Journalism won’t be showing this turkey in its broadcast journalism class.

To be fair, Earnest Anderson occasionally introduces a few new twists to the show, adding a new blowhard or two and supplementing the daytime sycophants with the prime time heavies audiences love to hate. He even interviews an actual non-expert person now and then.

By the time Earnest Anderson gives way to Dapper Don Lemon on CNN Tonight, the daily newspapers and other working online journalists have broken new stories for the network to crib. Dapper Dan intersperses the old footage of Ferret-top’s foot-in-mouth pronouncements and Hypocrite Hillary’s e-mail obfuscations, with interviews with working journalists from other organizations explaining how they got the latest dirt. He finishes up by refereeing fights between the expert windjammers and sycophant heavies before giving way to a 360 rerun, a signal to viewers the CNN ‘breaking news’ day has come full circle.

It’s understandable that CNN’s resources might be stretched a smite thin, what with having to edit a two-minute clip of Haiti’s hurricane devastation along with freelanced montages of genocide in Aleppo and the impending fall of Mosul to fill in the odd programming gap. And don’t forget the network’s doctor-on-call, Sanjay Gupta, at the hospital pacing with the parents of twins joined at the head.

Still, you’d think the network could work up a new election graphic to replace the one that portrays Hypocrite Hillary as the beatific Flying Nun and Ferret-top as the snarling red-faced devil.

Everyone expects Fox News to be biased but come on CNN, you’re better than that.

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The Christian Wrong

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A lot of people are saying that wasn’t a bible but his copy of “50 Shades of Grey”

Is there one person in all of Christendom who believes Donald Trump is a ‘man of faith’, other than Kayleigh McEnany, the psycho-eyed, crucifix-flaunting Trump sycophant, who without so much as a hint of a smile told an international television audience that the mango-flavored serial groper has turned his life over to Christ?

Oh yeah, I guess there’s also Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Junior, who lords over thousands of ‘students of faith’ at the school founded by his father, one-time televangelist Jerry Falwell. Jerry Senior also founded the Moral Majority way back when, molding the Christian Right into a political force before eventually handing the keys to his profitable earthly kingdom to his son Jes…. er… Jerry.

Jerry Junior told CNN anchor Erin Burnett Wednesday that he believes Ferret-top’s denial of the most recent groping allegations by two women who came forward in the New York Times after the second debate. As one ‘man of faith’ to another, Junior takes the world class dis-assembler at his word.

Ignoring all evidence to the contrary, including  Ferret-top’s own foul-mouthed taped admissions, Junior remained adamant that the Christian Right’s savior has mended his ways. But when pressed by Burnett, he allowed that even if the allegations were true he would still vote for the old orange groper because there are more important things at stake than electing a sexual predator as President.

Namely, filling the vacant Supreme Court seats with the sort of jurists who support the causes of an unctuously self-righteous group of right wing nut-balls who would rather see the country in flames than have godless moderates in power. In their world, it’s the Christian thing to do.

Junior, at least, comes by his distorted view of reality honestly. By divine osmosis. In the aftermath of 9/11 his Dad famously told The 700 Club: “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way of Life, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped make this happen.’”

Fact check for Jerry Senior and his church basket of demented doughnuts, may his crispy, hell-fired remains rest in peace: The United States was founded as a secular country so that persecuted people arriving from oppressed shores could practice the religion of their choice. Or not. As they saw fit. The prescient founding fathers made a point of separating Church and State.

But what chance does a kid have at a normal life view when Dad is spouting this kind of ignorance at the family dinner table. And that is what is truly scary about the rise of the  Trumpeting hate blaster. No amount of higher education or logic can turn the righteous from their path. As history has proven and their ‘barbaric brethren in faith’ in the Middle East continue to prove, no man is more dangerous than the one who is convinced God is on his side.

Still another ‘man of faith’, one-time Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson, a brain surgeon no less, says he witnessed Ferret-top get down on his knees to pray for forgiveness after the sexist tape was released. Really Ben? You sure Vladimir Putin wasn’t nearby with his fly down when the Donald got on his knees, which seems more likely than him turning to the Lord, or anyone else, for guidance.

Carson makes three believers, and the facetious opening to this blog notwithstanding, there are tens of millions more believers roaming the streets of America armed to the teeth. During the primary campaign, Ferret-top boasted he could shoot a person on Main Street and not lose his political base. Frighteningly, this boast appears to be true. His sycophants would surely claim justifiable homicide, especially if the victim was Hispanic, Muslim, or even worse,  his arch enemy Bill Maher, an atheist.

And that augers badly for post-election America.

Hitler lost his democratic bid to be President of Germany in 1932 with 37 per cent of the vote, with his anti-democratic Nazi Party garnering 230 seats of 608 in the Reichstag. Amidst back door maneuvering, political machinations, hints of a godless communist takeover and rumors of an impending military coup, the elected President Paul von Hindenberg, then in his mid-80s, reluctantly appointed Hitler Chancellor in 1933. The thinking at the time was that he could be better controlled within the framework of the government. Hitler succeeded Hindenberg on the old man’s death in 1934, abolishing the presidency and creating the new position of Fuhrer.

It didn’t work out well for Germany.

With the party of Lincoln imploding while its orange glam queen candidate campaigns on a platform of woman-shaming, scapegoating and hatred, threatening to jail his opponent if he wins, all the while inciting supporters with talk of conspiracies and a rigged election if he doesn’t, Trump’s church basket of half-baked buns are calling for armed revolution.

The Christian Right would put questions about Bill Cosby’s birth certificate aside and support him over Hypocrite Hillary if he guaranteed them their Supreme Court seats. Clearly, it’s time for ‘people of real faith’ to put the country’s well-being ahead of the narrow viewpoint coming out of this vocal, unhinged fringe element.

The world hopes it works out better for America than it did in Germany and that the people who never tire of telling the rest of us that they live in the greatest country on the globe live up to their own exalted billing at the ballot box on November 8.

Edging Trump in a close race isn’t an option. His dirty laundry basket of racist, misogynist, hate mongering, un-Christian crazies has to be tipped over and scattered to the winds of political history in a landslide.

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What’s new Pussygate?

 

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The New York Daily news headline writers are praying for a Trump victory in November.

Just when you thought the U.S. election coverage couldn’t get any smarmier CNN outdid itself with a three-shower Friday night shit show that left even casual viewers feeling soiled and in need of a sponge bath.

With hundreds dead in Haiti and hurricane force winds blasting the south Atlantic coast and the streets of Florida’s cities flooding, sending millions of Americans scurrying for cover, the network news hounds spent the night baying for the blood of an evil pussy-grabbing clown.

And who could blame them, really. Pussy trumps run-of-the-mill disaster footage every time. (Pun intended.)

On the day the draft of Hypocrite Hillary’ s two-faced speech to the bankers was finally leaked, her mango-flavoured, ferret-topped opponent stole her thunder with a decade-old command video performance, a disturbing sexist tape recorded on route to his appearance on a television soap opera with the weasel cousin and nephew of two former Republican presidents egging him on.

This stuff is so good Ferret-top’s role model and e-mail hacking election ally, Vladimir Putin, can barely tear himself away from his flat screen TV long enough to order more genocide in Aleppo, the city of suffering that became a social media punchline when  Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson stared blankly at an interviewer and said, “What’s an Aleppo?”

Seriously, folks. What’s an Aleppo when you’ve got important things to cover, like Ferret-top talking about his failed attempt to ‘fuck’ a married Palm Beach socialite by coming onto her ‘very heavily’ with a trip to a furniture store. “How about this nice day bed, babe. We could do it in the back of the truck on the way home.” As the tape winds on, we learn his bitchin’ desire for her has waned somewhat because her new store-bought tits look too phony. This from a man who layers 15-inch strands of orange-lacquer over his bald spot every morning before slathering on a pound of fake tan gunk.

We find out on the tape that you can get away with the aging glam queen look when you have the kind of self-acclaimed, tic-tacky star power that makes every woman’s ‘pussy’ available to your touch, whether invited or not.

You’ve got to hand it to Americans. They know how to put on an election and they don’t give a shit if you have to send the kids out of the room to watch.

At one point in the CNN coverage two of the female talking heads, Anna Navarro, a no-longer-proud Republican strategist, and Trump sycophant Scottie Nell Hughes,  yelled at each other over the propriety of Navarro repeating the word pussy on a prime time news show.

Sycophant Scottie, who flaunts her love affair with Christ nightly with a cross that dangles conspicuously for the cameras to catch, objected to Navarro repeating the word pussy because her daughter was watching the show. This got Navarro’s Latin blood up since only moments before Nell Hughes had defended the man she’s touting for President for using the p-word in the explicit tape that CNN was repeating every 15 minutes, dismissing it as locker room banter. Even though Ferret-top was 59 at the time of the sexist tape, Nell Hughes seemed to infer that boys will be boys.

And boy oh boy, everyone knows Republican old boys—Rush, Rudy, and Newt–like their pussy, especially when it doesn’t belong to their current wives.

With Grand Old Party stalwarts frantically tweeting their disgust in hopes of distancing themselves from Ferret-top’s badly listing ship of deplorable fools, and the Trump family–the slicked back, dim-witted duo and daddy’s hot girl Ivanka–fighting it out over damage control strategy in the gleaming tower that bears the family’s depreciating brand, CNN further titillated viewers with ‘breaking news’ banners announcing Ferret-top’s upcoming apology video.

After 12 hours of strategizing, the pussy-grabbing billionaire appeared on the TV screen in an in-house video with the production values of a 12-year-old’s birthday party, shot by uncle Albert on a first generation Huawei cell phone. He stared defiantly into the camera in a poorly lit room with a fake cityscape backdrop, his angry red face taking on a purplish hue under the orange fake tan, and read off an apology that had all the sincerity of a hostage video, before launching into an attack on Hillary for enabling Bill Clinton’s sexual depredations, which he deemed much worse than merely talking about uninvited pussy grabbing.

Is that background noise hurricane-related or is it Republican presidents Grant and Lincoln spinning in their graves? Or maybe it’s the whir from Ferret-top’s running partner’s head spinning as the ‘man-of-faith’ struggles to reconcile his funerals-for -aborted-fetuses proposal and homosexual therapy theory with the merits of extra-marital humping and uninvited pussy grabbing. But Pence shouldn’t be too worried about losing the election; he’ll never be out of work as long as Mr. Clean needs a double.

Meanwhile, CNN anchors amped up the intrigue, speculating about the timing of the tape’s release, two days before the debate. Ferret-top’s sycophants pointed their pivot fingers at the Clinton camp but this political junkie thinks the evil clown may have pulled a diabolical Machiavellian fast one by leaking the tape himself. Nobody’s talking about his taxes anymore.

The country that gave the world Hollywood and Disneyland has turned this historic PG-rated election into entertainment for the entire world with something for everyone—sex, comedy, politics, mystery, show biz and dirty talk mixed in with Christian values–everyone except for the kids of course.

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What the hell happened?

 

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From Lincoln to this…what the hell happened!

Watching the U.S. election coverage makes a believer in democracy wring his hands and run for the shower while wondering how the great experiment in governance by the people for the people has gone so far off the rails.

Nightly immersion in the media cesspool is like wallowing in a fetid mental mud hole. It’s like being addicted to reruns of Mob Wives or Keeping Up with the Kardashians or consuming a steady TV diet of My 600 Pound Life. Hour after hour. Night after night. It leaves a grimy coating on the brain.

It wasn’t always so.

In 1868, the Republicans dumped the incumbent Andrew Johnson, who took over when Abraham Lincoln was rewarded with a bullet for leading the nation through its bloody internal upheaval. The Grand Old Party drafted the man hailed as the saviour of the Union in his place, Civil War hero General Ulysses S. Grant.

A brilliant military tactician who drove Union armies in relentless pursuit of the rebel forces tearing the country asunder, the chain cigar-smoking General was a humble man who before the war had once been reduced to selling firewood on street corners to feed his family.

He accepted the GOP’s invitation to head the 1868 ticket on the condition that he would not campaign. Grant viewed electioneering as unseemly. A man of few carefully chosen words, he disdained political speech-making, preferring to let the Republican campaign theme—Let Us Have Peace–spread his view across the war-weary land.

Grant had seen firsthand what happens when a divided country stops buying into majority rules, with a generation of America’s sons buried in makeshift graves and lame and maimed survivors returned home forever altered by the horror of what they experienced.

He governed so well during the crucial Reconstruction Era, championing the rights of the newly freed black population while soothing the embittered South, that he was elected for a second term, even after infuriating Republican insiders by rejecting party politics in making independent cabinet appointments. He respectively declined Republican calls to run for a then-allowable third term.

Fast forward 140 years to the digital media age. What the hell happened?

Hillary Clinton’s campaign recently announced an outstanding fundraising month in September—$150 million, most of which will be spent on TV ads trashing her opponent in the month remaining. She says she needs it because the Donald is threatening to throw $50 million of his own ‘tax-free-smart-money’ into his election pot to piss on his opponent.

The media loves it. And why not? The 2016 election makes Real Housewives of New Jersey look like Leave it to Beaver. It’s the biggest grossing (no pun intended) reality TV show in history and the 24-hour news networks get all their content free.

On the one side, we have historic Hillary the hypocrite, an advocate for all women except the ones who accuse her husband of coercion and sexual assault. That class of woman—lowly ‘cabaret singer’ Jennifer Flowers, whose ‘love’ for the married governor got her life scrutinized by private detectives looking for dirt; Arkansas government worker Paula Jones, who Bill paid $850,000 without admitting guilt; and the naïve campaign worker willing to donate her time but not her body to hubby’s election campaigns—are not Hillary’s kind.

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Bill Clinton portrait at the Smithsonian in Washington DC

Not to mention Monica Lewinsky, the White House intern a few years older than her precious daughter, whose life she was willing to ruin until DNA evidence proved what she already knew—that Bill was a serial philanderer, a sex pervert and a shameless liar.

After all, the Left’s political power couple had already faced down a special prosecutor while brazening their way through the Whitewater financial scandal that resulted in jail terms for friends and business partners Jim and Susan McDougal.

Then there was the time in the late 70s when Hillary, then First Lady of Arkansas, who had no history or expertise on the stock market, turned a $1,000 investment into $100,000 trading cattle futures over a 10-month period, ostensibly with the guidance of the chief counsel to Tyson Foods, the state’s largest employer. At the time, the cash-strapped Clinton’s combined annual income was $58,000. When later revealed, the eye-popping windfall raised eyebrows but no government investigation.

As it turns out, the stock market profiteering was chump change compared to the hundreds of thousands of dollars she got for a single speech to the Wall Street bankers she’s vowed to reign in when she becomes President. You’d think a speech that got parsimonious bankers to dig so deep would be something to be proud of but Hillary refused to release a transcript despite repeated requests from her Democratic nomination rival Bernie Sanders.

Meanwhile, her 2016 podium partner Bill has been staying busy post-Presidency. While Hillary was Secretary of State, he managed a photo-op with Vladimir Putin after getting $500,000 to broker a deal to help the Russians corner the uranium market, the same Putin U.S. officials labeled a thug and a kleptomaniac. The beneficiary of that deal later donated millions to the Clinton Foundation.

But Putin seems like a good guy compared to another of Bill’s running buddies, billionaire and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who lawyered a sweetheart deal and served 13 months for soliciting a 14-year-old prostitute. Bill cut ties with Jeffrey before he had his day in court but not before earning frequent flyer points on Epstein’s private jet, dubbed the Lolita Express, which reportedly had a large bed aboard for the passengers’ in-flight entertainment. Not to worry Hillary, Bill says he did not have sex with those underage women.

And these are the good guys on this reality show.

Hillary’s nemesis, Donald “if-his-lips-are-moving-he’s-lying” Trump, is the reality show’s villain and star attraction, an aging evil clown with pursed pussy lips. Manhattan’s answer to what happens when you give a vulgar misogynist with low intelligence and a short attention span too much inherited money.

Think WWF showboat Gorgeous George in a suit and an extra-long tie to camouflage his reputed shortcomings, an orange-tinted, overweight blowhard with a ferret on his head travelling the country with a greasy, obsequious entourage. And that’s just the grown kids.

Complete the story-line with a trophy wife who glides at his side with the fake self-awareness learned on fashion catwalks, a high maintenance model closer in age to his older sons, who in a not so subtle effort to differentiate themselves from the alpha male in the family, wear custom corporate suits with shorter ties and slick their hair back like the bad guys on Miami Vice. That the wife at least once overcame her physical revulsion to the aged patriarch is borne out by the Donald’s youngest son, appropriately named Baron.

Completing the familial package are two daughters, the oldest of which is whip smart and attractive enough to be a Playboy model, and as her father creepily points out, somebody he might have dated if she wasn’t his daughter.

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They grow up so fast….

Her prominent position in the family business is often cited as an example of the Donald’s respect for women, though it is more likely her intelligence so overshadows the dullness of the slicked-back sons that the businessman in the Donald won out over his misogyny, at least when it comes to family.

The younger daughter, born out of wedlock in the wake of a well-publicized affair with future trophy wife number two, makes grudging appearances on the show when she can tear herself away from the New York party scene.

Trumps seeming strategy is to tell so many lies, insult so many people and issue so many over the top proclamations that detractors will be overwhelmed by the material at hand. The short list includes:

*Responding to the numerous corporate bankruptcies that left hundreds of small businesses and tradesmen who did work for Trump companies footing the bill, the Donald boasted that it was good business and that he was smart enough to get out on time

*He launched his campaign at America’s bigots by singling out illegal immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries, most of whom work hard at low-paying jobs Americans won’t do, some of them for Trump companies, calling them drug dealers, criminals and rapists.

*He has vowed to kick out 11 million men, women and children (the Syrian refugee crisis pales in comparison) and proclaimed when he becomes king he’ll build a high wall thousands of miles long to keep out the riffraff and make Mexican taxpayers pay for it. No word on if he’ll use his self-proclaimed negotiating skills to make the Mexican government ban ladders south of the border.

*Trump tried to make political hay with his bushel of deplorable followers in the aftermath of a mass shooting in a gay nightclub by calling for a ban on Muslims entering the country, ignoring the fact that such an edict is unconstitutional and against the principles of a nation founded on the concept of religious freedom. His take on the Orlando tragedy curried favour with the powerful National Rifle Association. ‘Things would have been different if club-goers were wearing ankle holsters’, he said.

*The man who wants to lead the nation and by de facto become a role model for its children, told the largest Presidential Debate audience in history, 80-odd million citizens who pay the country’s bills, that not paying taxes is smart, leaving those who pay their share to ponder whether they are patriotic or plain stupid.

*Trump University, an ‘educational establishment’ you might expect to find advertised on the back cover of comic books or on late night TV infomercials, is being sued in a class action law suit by thousands of disgruntled students who allege they were charged exorbitant fees for information they could have got for free online. After unfavourable rulings in civil court Trump claimed the American-born judge hearing the case is biased because of his Mexican heritage.

*Responding to accusations of misogyny Trump bizarrely brought comedian Rosie O’Donnell into the Presidential Debate, claiming he was justified in calling her a fat slob because nobody likes her. When his treatment of a former Miss Universe winner was brought up, a woman he once called ‘an eating machine’, the man who aspires to the world’s most powerful job stayed up late tweeting insults about her, calling her disgusting and falsely claiming she appeared in a sex tape.

In the ensuing furor, he called upon his unsavory lickspittles to shine up his image. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, an unrepentant serial philanderer who turned the tragedy of 9/11 into a lucrative speaking career, pivoted with a finger pointed at Bill Clinton’s infidelities. When asked about his own marital indiscretions, he admitted that adultery is no big deal because everybody does it.

Meanwhile, Republican ‘family values’ stalwart Newt Gingrich, whose litany of extramarital affairs and profligate spending on mistresses are well-documented, took to the hustings to mock the former Miss Universe’s weight gain. “It was a beauty pageant,” said portly Newt.

Not surprisingly, this tacky twosome has six marriages between them.

With disdain for the women voters the candidate is wooing, the Trump campaign brought on as a consultant disgraced Fox News boss Roger Ailes, who resigned his job earlier in the year in the wake of multiple accusations of sexual harassment that resulted in the network paying $20 million to one complainant.

Did I already say you can’t make this stuff up?

Political analysts point at maps with blue and red states while pontificating on the percentages of various voting blocs the candidates need to win. They tells us without irony that the ‘United’ States is divided into black voters, Hispanic voters, other less important people of colour, college educated white women, college educated white men, blue collar white voters, millennials and baby boomers, the Christian Right (as opposed to the Christian Left?), Muslims, citizens who live in Rust Belt states, seniors in rust-free southern retirement states, the military and so on.

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An undecided voter ponders the choices

With polls showing record disapproval ratings for both candidates, the Presidential hopefuls are focusing their personal energies and insults in the handful of battleground states that will decide which of these unpopular choices will win the election by default, tailoring their messages according to the latest polls.

If the Donald needs to shore up his weak showing with blacks, a visit to a black Detroit church is sandwiched into his schedule. When Hillary’s numbers with young voters need buttressing, the campaign trots out Bernie and slots in a college campus. That pandering to polls is an obvious insult to voter intelligence seems not to factor in.

While the candidates fly hither and thither, there is no shortage of sycophantic surrogates eager to mouth up to network microphones to further insult voters’ intelligence by telling them that black is white, or white is black, depending on which way the political poll wind is blowing on any given day.

Even without notes from their respective doctors (one of whom, in keeping with the over-the-top script, is a hen-pecked Park Avenue gastro with a suspicious penchant for Donald-like hyperbolic diagnostics), the months spent fighting this dirty uncivil war leave no doubt about the stamina of either of these trust-challenged senior citizens. The real question is: Will they have anything left for the job of commander-in-chief?

With a month still to go, this well-showered, disillusioned, self-admitted reality TV political junkie, looks longingly to November 9.

In the words of General Grant—Let Us Have Peace.

A Gun Too Far

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When are Americans going to get their collective heads out of their ample arses and admit their unhealthy love affair with guns is ending badly?

Gun lovers who cite the Second Amendment as justification for owning military-style arsenals have their heads buried so deeply the excrement has seeped into their brains.

The right to bear arms was enshrined in the constitution almost 250 years ago, in a century when the most prolific killing machine was a musket that required complex reloading after every shot.

When the founding fathers envisioned that an armed citizenry would act as a check on tyrants who might want to impose their will against the wishes of the majority, they weren’t thinking about assault rifles. Citing this tired Second Amendment argument in the 21st Century brings to mind Obama’s reply during the 2012 election campaign when his Republican opponent noted that the U.S. Navy had fewer ships than it did in the early 1900s. Obama wryly noted that the army also had fewer rifles with bayonets.

It’s going to take more than assault rifles to overthrow tyrants in the New Millennium. Fast forward a decade or two to a President determined to make America great again by restricting religious freedom, building walls around ghettos, monitoring its citizens electronically, muzzling unfavourable press and silencing all opinion, by force if necessary, that doesn’t comply with his vision, whether the majority likes it or not.
Think Donald Trump’s evil illegitimate child.

Picture this. Righteous freedom-lovers in the year 2040 organize on social media, gather their assault rifles and load up on ammunition before meeting in a stadium for an assault on Washington. NRA organizers pepper the clouds with bullets to hype the assembled 50-thousand dues-paying gun owners only to see their heaven-sent projectiles bounce off a shower of incoming hell-fire missiles launched from drones 10,000 feet above.

Information is the weapon of choice for today’s tyrants, backed by serious killing power that makes assault rifles as ineffectual as their single shot forerunners with fixed bayonets. The tyrants have nuclear weapons.

Where were the constitution-citing blowhards when the patriot Edward Snowden revealed the American government’s ability and willingness to spy on its own citizenry without benefit of warrant? He delivered his message at great personal cost: the government is spying on you, turning your cellphones into microphones and your computers into cameras.

Think about the implications.

The evil, illegitimate Donald Trump spawn can track your every move: when you go, where you go, who you talk to. And he can do it in real time.

Snowden was largely ignored by an apathetic populace. Instead of being revered by defenders of the constitution, he was labelled a traitor. Monitor everything we do 24/7 but don’t mess with our guns.

Do you seriously want Donald Trump’s sinister love-child having that kind of hold on you, or worse, a bitter overweight bureaucrat behind a desk in a bunker buried in a mountain? You can’t get to him no matter how many bullets a minute your assault rifle shoots.

The Democrats, under the stewardship of Obama, a former constitutional law professor, enlarged on policies implemented by the Bush administration in the hysteria that followed 911, even killing American citizens who have never been charged with a crime or had their day in court, citing national security concerns when asked by grieving family for proof of guilt.

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Without a hint of irony, NRA lapdogs in government drape themselves in the constitution while citing the remote possibility of citizens being mistakenly denied their Second Amendment right to carry assault rifles. Their argument (seriously folks) is that mistakes can be made on a no-fly list, thereby temporarily denying the gun-owner his right to pack.
And everybody knows the government makes mistakes.

Americans wring their hands at the latest cop-shooting, or in the cases of Dallas or Baton Rouge, deranged men killing police officers with assault rifles. TV talking heads look gravely into the camera while telling a weary, fearful public about another mass murder in Dallas, or Orlando, or San Bernardino or Sandy Hook.

Bad guys will always get guns, say the gun-lovers, so good guys need to arm themselves in self defense. People are the problem, they say. Bad people. Crazy people. Orlando would have been different if the club-goers were carrying, says the Donald, calling for ankle holsters for the nightclub crowd.

There is no stopping someone intent on carnage in a culture that reveres guns, in a country that makes it easier to get an assault rifle than a license to drive a car. There is no peace of mind in a nation where troubled teenagers can reach into dad’s closet for a deadly weapon, no sanctuary in a gun-satiated society where drugged out criminals can steal lethal killing machines from almost any home.

No one seems to connect the fact that cops kill so many Americans because they’re scared crapless every time they make a routine traffic stop or attend a domestic disturbance. To a jittery cop in gun-lover land, every person reaching for a wallet or cell phone, white, black, Hispanic or Asian, teenager or senior citizen, is a potential, armed cop killer.

While the percentage of cop shootings is disproportionately high for non-whites make no mistake, the cops shoot every shade, and more white people than anybody else.

It’s time Americans pull their heads out, dislodge the fecal material from their mouths, eyes and ears and demand their political lapdogs stop licking the NRA’s encrusted rump. It’s time to revisit an outdated constitutional amendment that made sense centuries ago but is far too dangerous in a society rife with unhinged malcontents.

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Donald Trump – Tit or Twat?

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Donald Trump: Tit or twat?

The above question came to mind the other day while reading the National Inquirer. Or maybe it was Us Weekly or Gawker online. Or maybe I heard about it from somebody. Anyway, it was in reference to Bill Maher’s weekly televised campaign to label the Donald a ‘Whiny Little Bitch’.

Comedian Maher, who doubles as a left wing political commentator on his HBO show Real Time, is terrified overconfident Democrats will take Trump too lightly. He hopes to rouse complacent liberal voters out of their political torpor by exhorting viewers and his live audience to take up the anti-Trump torch.

“Whiny Little Bitch,” he proclaims to television and studio audiences at the beginning of his show.

“Whiny Little Bitch,” the audience shouts back as a Twitter hashtag flashes on the bottom of the screen.

The whole thing reaches a crescendo in about 30 seconds, giving Maher self-admitted sexual pleasure.

At first the concept seemed rude and not a little crude when referencing the GOP nominee for President. After all, the man represents the party of Abraham Lincoln.

I began to ponder whether Donald Trump, who has spent a lifetime establishing a brand that shouts to the world ostentation, vulgarity and narcissism, deserved to be rebranded as a small, whimpering female dog.

To me he seemed more of a reality TV tit, or perhaps more sinisterly, a twat.

One thing is sure, the Donald stirs people’s passions, as indicated by the insults he garnered by displaying his ignorance of Scotland’s mood in the aftermath of Brexit.
The insults ranged from simple and to the point, like ‘gobshite’ and ‘clueless numpty’, to the more imaginative ‘bloviating fleshbag’ and ‘mangled apricot hellbeast’, escalating to the profane and vaguely sexual ‘weaselheaded fucknugget’ and ‘witless fucking cocksplat’ to denigrating name-plays like ‘touped fucktrumpet’ and the more disturbing ‘incomprehensible jizztrumpet,’ building momentum to the creative and evocative ‘tiny-fingered, ‘Cheeto-faced, ferret-wearing shitgibbon’.

By comparison my tit and twat debate may appear underwhelming, especially to women, who may not appreciate that in the male world calling someone a female body part carries a certain sting that the female mind might not appreciate, but does not reflect badly on women or the particular body parts.

A tit is a man who takes himself seriously while nobody else does. Tits tend to pontificate about things they know little or nothing about, which is everything that happens beyond the small bubble of their un-informed worlds. A tit constantly boasts about how well he’s doing in life, even if he’s not. Tits tend to attract easily duped bimbos, then wear them on their arms like flashy cuff-links. Tits are guys other men don’t want to hang out with, unless the other men are themselves tits. A tit is the kid who took his ball home when things didn’t go his way. A tit is hapless, feckless and strangely immune to the ridicule of others.

Twats, on the other hand, are more evil-minded. In addition to possessing most or all the unseemly characteristics of a tit, a twat is angry, mean-spirited and vengeful. A twat will screw a friend’s girlfriend and tell people about it without realizing it reveals to others that he’s a complete… well…. twat. Twats have no concept how the world views them and feel free to spew venom whenever they feel the urge. Twats are thin-skinned bullies who respond to even the slightest criticism with mean over-the-top attacks. Twats lie incessantly to cover up their shortcomings and feel no shame when caught out. A twat will do anything to get ahead in life, step on whoever gets in his way, use whatever vile means are needed to attain a goal without consideration of the hurt caused, and then use that success to lord it over others.

Hmm.

I was leaning heavily towards twat even before considering the strong resemblance the Donald’s pursed lips have to the part of the female anatomy in question. I’d noticed the likeness during one or other of his frequent televised harangues but had immediately pushed the imagery to a dark corner, not wanting to admit even to myself that I was seeing in the presumptive GOP candidate for President a mouth that looked like a shaved pussy.

By pursing his lips just so could the Donald be sending a subliminal sexual message that would explain Maher’s woody while chanting Whiny Little Bitch?

Probably not but when debating tit or twat the comparison could not be denied, especially in light of the colourful, descriptive insults coming the Donald’s way from across the pond.

It’s wasn’t much of a debate, really. All the evidence points to twat, which though evocative as a brand, is not sufficiently grandiose to capture the Trump essence.

So, with a nod to the Scots, I offer you ‘bimbo-marrying, tit-kid -conceiving, morally and financially bankrupted, bronze-tinted, orange-aircraft-carrier-headed, pussy-lipped twat.

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Meandering Home

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Message received loud and clear, now about those other commandments...

It is the best of countries; it is the worst of countries;

Apologies to fans of Charles Dickens’ for borrowing, then tweaking, the opening lines to his iconic novel A Tale of Two Cities, but it seems a perfect fit for a nation whose citizens fervently believe they are blessed by God and ordained by his heavenly approval to be the world’s standard-bearers of freedom and democracy.

It’s quite a stretch, this ‘God‘s on our side’ thing, beginning with the Pilgrims who escaped religious persecution in the Old World and established their presence on Cape Cod by placing the severed heads of hostile heathens on poles outside their stockade.

Stand in the way of religious freedom at your peril, godless savages.

It’s no secret that the world’s most powerful country owes its foothold and initial prosperity in the New World not to the godliness and industry of its earliest immigrants, though industrious they surely were, but instead to ruthless exploitation of indigenous people and the evils of slavery. The country’s revolutionary hero and much-venerated first president (he who it is said could not lie through his wooden teeth) was a wealthy plantation owner whose various businesses flourished on the backs of black slaves. The redemptive value of Washington setting his slaves free upon his death is mitigated by the lack of cotton fields and whiskey distilleries in heaven, or for that matter, hell.

Before America’s friends and sympathizers tune out in a huff muttering about a lefty, pinko diatribe, it should be known that the Dude believes the U.S. to be the greatest country in the world. (Patriotic Canadians note, he does not claim it’s the best country to live in.) Its place in history as a safe haven for the world’s downtrodden is indisputable, as is its defense of individual freedom.

Beyond that it is an endlessly fascinating nation to travel. Starting in the rugged wilderness of Maine, the Meanderers proceeded down the densely populated east coast past towns that blended into cities then back into towns that blended into more cities–a mind-boggling congregation of ethnicity from every point on the globe brought together under a star-spangled banner that is flown with a naked pride that is inspirational to behold. Think of the Eastern Seaboard as a long human strip mall.

Though located on the same Atlantic coastline, the vibe in Yankee Bangor is as different from genteel southern Savannah as Donald Trump is from Bernie Sanders. Native New Yorkers are as close in temperament to the Texans in San Antonio as a Londoner is to a Greek in Thessaloníki, and separated geographically by about the same distance. But when called to arms in defense of their universally shared love of freedom, they are all Americans first.

And they are frequently called to arms, visitors to the nation’s capital are reminded at every turn. No country venerates its military like the U.S., from marching bands and flyovers at sporting events to nation-wide military discounts at golf courses, tire stores and restaurants. Nowhere is this reverence for the military more apparent than Washington, D.C., where tourist buses are stacked 10 deep at war memorials scattered around the national mall.

These defenders of liberty have waged war on both their North American neighbours, Canada in 1812 and Mexico in 1846. When the cavalry ran out of hostile Indians to massacre in the second half of the 19th Century the armies turned on each other in a civil war that is now known in the world of political correctness as the War Between the States. America fought in the far-off Philippines at the turn of that century and has been more or less engaged in continuous conflict since; in Europe during the First and Second World Wars, in Korea in the 50s and Viet Nam in the 60s and 70s. To keep the military sharp in the 80s, the U.S. invaded the tiny Caribbean country of Grenada, before taking on Iraq in the 90s and Afghanistan in the New Millennium. Its thriving military industrial complex exports instruments of death and destruction wherever they are needed to support U.S. interests. It is the only nation to have used nuclear weapons in anger and at least one of its current presidential candidates is threatening to use them strategically in the Middle East, claiming it is “a big place.“

Military hardware aside, the U.S. is the world’s predominate exporter of pop culture. Its movies, music and TV shows are embraced by a world audience and have spawned global phenomena like the coonskin cap, the hula hoop and the peppermint twist. Its cultural icons stride across the world stage crossing language and cultural barriers with an impunity reserved for the larger than life, from Davey Crockett to Elvis Presley, from Paul Bunyan to Madonna, from Babe Ruth to Michael Jordan to Muhammad Ali.

Its innovators have changed the course of history, from Henry Ford to the Wright Brothers, from Bill Gates to Steve Jobs, from Walt Disney to Alexander Graham Bell, who while technically a Canadian made his bones in the U.S. In this technologically advanced country that put a man on the moon more than 50 years ago, businesses still prefer checks (older Canadians will remember them as ‘cheques’) to a credit card. And in most states the credit card chip is new-fangled foreign technology, even in large national chain stores that favour electronic sketch-pad signature validation.

America gave the world Hollywood, Disneyland, jazz, the blues, and rock and roll and its stars shine the brightest on the world stage–Nat King Cole and Louis Armstrong; Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby; Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughn; Bob Dylan and The Eagles; Norman Mailer, William Faulkner, Joan Didion, Ernest  Hemmingway and Ayn Rand; Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King and Mark Twain; Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry; John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Elizabeth Taylor and  Marilyn Monroe; Abraham Lincoln and Donald Trump.

Okay, just kidding about that last guy but he makes a good segue to politics, which perfectly illustrates the best and worst theme of this narrative. In a presidential election year, the country’s news stations become de facto producers of the best reality TV since Ozzy, Sharon and the kids turned off the cameras. The Donald and his supporting cast of lesser buffoons made the boys and girls from Jersey Shore seem like intellectuals in comparison. Forget about binge-watching House of Cards, the presidential election was on every night, month after month, with special episodes thrown in where the entire cast assembled to exchange insults and schoolyard taunts. Behind the scenes, the GOP establishment, the same people who brought the world George W. Bush, wring their hands because their party is being crashed by a thrice-married, often-bankrupted, bronze-tinted man who sports an orange aircraft carrier on his head in place of hair.

And that’s just the Republicans. The Democrats decided on a smaller cast, pitting a rumpled professor-like favourite uncle character against a Machiavellian schemer with a questionable financial past who despite some hard political miles on the odometer and an ass two axe handles wide sold herself to Wall Street for $200,000 a pop. Not to be outdone by the Republicans, and no doubt playing on the public’s fondness for family fare like the Osbournes, Hillary ramped up the tackiness factor by including her philandering husband on the dais when she speaks, looking gaunt and guilty but smiling angelically beside his only acknowledged daughter.

This is a man who relieved the stress of being boss of the world by sharing quality cigar time with a White House intern barely out of her teens; a man who then threw her under the bus on national TV by referring to her as “that woman” while carefully parsing weasel words on the meaning of sexual relations; a man once accused of rape by one of his campaign workers. In what other country would a leadership candidate stand proudly with a proven liar and sexual predator who paid a victim (remember Paula Jones) $850,000 to go away so he wouldn’t have to perjure himself (which unlike lying on TV is an impeachable offense) when questioned in court about his notorious serial philandering.

You couldn’t make this stuff up, and probably wouldn’t want to. It’s too over the top for a pitch for regular TV. It’s hard to believe the political pickings are so lean in the world’s most powerful democracy. Can these really be the best of the best in a population that numbers 320 million? But then again George W. was elected twice, albeit the first time with an asterisk. (Remember those contested chads in the deciding state coincidentally run by his brother Jeb, and the resulting disastrous Iraq war that owes its legacy to 20,000 befuddled Florida seniors.)

For a country that places individual freedom above all else, the U.S. imprisons more people than any other country, more than two million in total, a disproportionate number of them non-whites. One cannot drive its breadth and width without passing frequent highway signs that warn drivers—Prison area. Do not pick up hitchhikers. Penitentiary names are ingrained in the public consciousness the way famous resorts are in other countries—Attica, Sing Sing, Walla Walla, Fulsom, San Quentin, Alcatraz. Beer drinkers at the Soggy Bottom Bar outside the tiny town of Florence, Arizona, where the principal industry is incarceration, watch prisoners in orange jumpsuits walk the yard while sipping pints on the patio.

The U.S. tops the world on gun-related deaths at more than 33,000 annually, with another 84,000 non-fatal incidents. In 2010, gun violence cost U.S. taxpayers approximately $516 million in direct hospital costs. Despite these appalling numbers, gun nuts continue to have their way with U.S. politicians. During our stay in the south, Texas passed legislation making it the latest open-carry state. That’s right folks, you can now walk the streets of Laredo fully strapped. The gunfights in the streets might not be staged and the ‘cowboy wrapped up in white linen’ could be you. The sporting goods section in Walmart would pass for a respectable military arsenal in Canada, and the customers are scary enough without easy access to guns. There are armed guards standing outside banks and in dicey sections of town the super market greeters are packing. Pocket that broccoli at your peril, vegetable breath.

Despite the political pandering to the Born Agains, America makes it easy for sinners to lose their way. Booze is not only available at every gas station and corner store it is priced to tempt the most stalwart teetotaler’s willpower. You can buy 48 beers at Costco for under 30 bucks (that’s four dozen for the math-challenged) and passable wine at Trader’s Joe’s for $2.49 a bottle. In party places like the French Quarter in ‘Naw Lins’ and Nashville’s honky tonk district, drinking in the street is strongly encouraged, with bars pushing four-ounce rum drinks in To Go Cups. Smoke your face off at half the cost north of the border. And that’s just tobacco. While Liberal-minded Canadians dither about legalizing marijuana, pot heads are growing herb in Washington, D.C. with full government approval. Gambling is ubiquitous, with card rooms and full-on casinos never more than a short drive away. And no need to trudge outside to suck back a butt when playing the slots, just lean back and take a deep breath for your nicotine fix. Chances are the slot players on both sides are chain smoking.

The founding fathers ingrained the separation of God and State in the constitution but with so much sinning going on from the political top on down, it’s no surprise that Americans are god-fearing people. They have good reason to be afraid of the final accounting. Not to worry, from the pulpits of grand cathedrals, to the alters of ornate temples and humble country barns, from shopping mall mosques to lavish flower-festooned televangelist stages, prophets and preachers, imams and rabbis, priests and a host of other pretenders proffer the party line. America is blessed and God is on the nation’s side. The President says it’s so.

What a great country.

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Sin City’s Little Sister

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Take that Las Vegas!

Soggy tails tucked, the Meanderers bid a wet farewell to California, an ignominious ending to our sunny days in the land of beaches, swaying palms and wind farms. You may have put a damper on us this time San Francisco, with your unending deluge, but we are hardy Canadians and veteran Vancouverites and we will be back.

The rain put the kibosh on our intended route along the scenic Oregon coast and, in search of better weather, we head northeast to Reno, Nevada, over the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Donner Pass, which at a daunting 7,252 feet, with snow forecast, may not have been the best choice for a leisurely RV trip. The amazing vistas required a rosary or a stiff drink for full appreciation as we wound our way ever upwards with snow piling up beside the road.

The Dude, who was calm throughout the drive (I’m starting to suspect pharmaceuticals), happily discussed the Donner tragedy, in which a large extended family and friends travelling west by wagon train starved in the snowbound pass and met a gruesome end detailed in a couple of made-for-TV movies that probably turned more than one TV viewer into a vegetarian.

Reno has always been the ugly step-sister to Vegas’ Cinderella, a little down at the heels, but friendly. The drinks are faster, the slots are looser, the food is cheaper and the people are friendlier. Its citizens take so much pride in their second class status they made it the city slogan and emblazoned it on a massive sign over the street that passes for their strip—The Biggest Little City in the World.

 

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The Truckee River trail in Reno, not a slot machine in sight

Reno’s strip in daylight has the look of a 50-year-old trying to pass for 25 (please note, nothing in this article in any way alludes to the Dame, who maintains her youthful glow naturally). To help gamblers walk off the stress of losing, city fathers built a lovely pathway along the Truckee River which meanders through the heart of downtown out past tree-lined streets with well-kept bungalows, townhouses and riverside mansions, a world away from the clanging of slot machines.

We booked a week at Sparks Marina RV Park, worth all of its five stars on Trip Advisor. A marina in Reno? Okay, it’s a man-made lake that anyone with a speedboat could cover in about a minute. But it’s surrounded by parkland with walking paths, picnic areas and has a great waterfront dog park. This being Reno, a half-block away a casino advertises itself as friendly (!) while laying claim to the best cheap food in town. At the other end of the road, an outlet mall and a brew pub beckon. The Meanderers have found paradise.

Nevada has more going for it than the clang of casinos, and the sirens who await your pleasure at the various outlying ranches of ill repute. Yes, sinners, there’s a lot of history in them thar hills. And beautiful hills they are, with their snow-caps shining against the brilliant blue sky. The gold rush of the 1800s spawned a lot of boom and bust towns in the west. Remnants of once-thriving communities remain, home to a few hardy souls who stay for the quiet lifestyle and others, who like their entrepreneurial ancestors, hope to turn turds into tourism treasure by calling the abandoned buildings ghost towns.

Virginia City is famous for the Comstock Lode (the first silver rush) that drew treasure seekers from around the world. And later, for being the hometown of the Cartwrights–Ben, Adam, Little Joe and Hoss–who frequently rode in from the Ponderosa for a beer and a barroom dust-up. At the height of the mining boom, Virginia City boasted more than 15,000 residents, but is now home to about 850 people who live to recreate the frontier mining town experience for your perusing pleasure. Tourists stroll its wooden sidewalks shopping for t-shirts and trinkets in saloons, restaurants and former brothels that date back to its heyday. Surprisingly, the town boasted an opera house and a number of live theatres.

Mark Twain, then known as Samuel Clemens, spent time in town working at the paper. His tenure is said to have ended when a disgruntled reader took exception to his reporting and challenged him to a duel. Twain, who may have accepted the challenge while under the influence of alcohol, took the first train out of town in the morning, ending up in San Francisco. His time in the Sierra Nevada mountains coloured many of his subsequent writings.

Virginia City is seriously hungover the Monday we arrive, with many of its shops shuttered in the wake of the weekend’s raucous Rocky Mountain Oyster Fry. A tattered flyer advertising the “Ball Breaker Saloon Crawl” offers a hint of the festivities. This oyster fry (readers claiming to have big cajones, please note) involved a whole lot of people cooking up a whole lot of bull’s bollocks for their dining pleasure. The names of competing teams say it all: “Cajones Caliente”, “Virginia City Testicle Chili”, “Nut Up or Shut Up”

So sorry we missed it.

The present day tourist centre is housed in the former Crystal Bar, established in 1867. A gorgeous multi-coloured chandelier dangles dangerously in the centre of the room above the stained and dented long wooden bar where Twain and other swells bellied up. The original mirror, shipped over from France with the chandelier, reflects pictures of the town’s colourful past on the opposite wall. Squint your eyes and imagine yourself, cigar-in-hand, downing a shot of whiskey in preparation for a trip to the bordello upstairs. (Okay, that’s the Dude’s fantasy, not mine.)

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Booze is still for sale at the Tourist Bureau/former saloon

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The striking chandelier is original as is the bar

The Crystal Bar is manned by a friendly gentleman with mutton chops dressed in collarless shirt and vest. He tells us that at its high point the city boasted 115 bars and saloons. Only five remain, luring tourists with unappetizing names like “Bucket of Blood”, Red Dog Inn and even the Ponderosa, a nod to the TV show.

No ghost town is worth its bones without a graveyard and Virginia city has taken a casual approach to skeleton storage; some might even call it chaotic. The graves, in varying states of disrepair, extend over scrubby desert hills at the town’s edge, marked by vandalized weathered stones and buckling slabs surrounded by wrought iron fences.  Reading the faded inscriptions brings back to life the pioneers who defied hardship in pursuit of the earth’s shiny treasure. The entire township is riddled with tunnels, caverns and cairns where miners staked their claims and toiled with an optimism that was seldom rewarded.

After a thirsty night downing shots at the saloon and a quick spurt (sorry) up the stairs to the brothel, many a miner shamefully headed to church to atone. We‘d been tipped off to visit the Presbyterian Church, built entirely of wood in 1867, one of the few buildings to survive the great fire of 1865. Perhaps the gods of fire thought things will be hot enough for Presbyterians in the afterlife.

The church is looking very ‘ghost townish’ when we pull up, its large but rickety front doors locked to the world. But wait, as the Dame captures the loneliness vibe of Presbyterian life in a former boom-town with her 8,283rd photo of the trip, a small car pulls in. Could it be the church police with a warning to be out of town by sunset? Or maybe a strapped Presbyterian minister with a prepared sermon about invading the privacy of the religious right. Not so much, non-believer breath.

It turns out that Dave, who lives in Reno but keeps a small place in Virginia City, is here to check out the church’s antique organ, which he’ll be playing at an upcoming special service. No cranky Presbyterian, he invites us inside for a tour of the church and an impromptu pipe organ serenade. The gloomy, but beautiful wooden building comes to life as he works the pedals and keyboard, its arched ceiling filling with the sounds of the great beyond.

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Dave puts on a private recital for the Meanderers

Next up, a summing up.

I Left My Soggy Heart in San Francisco

 

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Even in the pouring rain the infamous bridge is pretty amazing and brings flashbacks to life in Vancouver, cue the Taiga jackets and rubber boots

The Bay Area, home to seven million people spread over hill and valley in 101 cities and nine counties, anchored by the metropolises of San Francisco and Oakland on opposing shores and San Jose on the southwest flank, has drawn adventurers and counter culture wanderers, alternative lifestyle seekers and brilliant intellectuals, beat writers and music titans, religious charlatans, psychics and self-help gurus, since the California gold rush of 1848 established it as the sea-going gateway to America’s West.

Song writers have rhapsodized about its allure ever since. In more recent times Tony Bennett built a career crooning about leaving his heart there while Scott McKenzie invited the world’s hippies to join the party in Haight Ashbury, but only if they “were sure to wear a flower in their hair.” Even the Animals got in on the act with Eric Burden’s biker inspired travelogue about San Francisco Nights–“Angels sing, leather wings / Jeans of blue, Harley Davidson’s too / On a warm San Franciscan night.”

Arriving from the Monterey Peninsula is not the stuff of songs, unless they’re about the ass-clenching fear of negotiating frequent lane changes on ribbons of concrete occupied by speeding vehicles of all sizes and descriptions, their drivers bent on getting to the off ramp at a place that will connect them to a safe landing in the shortest possible time. Most of them heavily armed.

We decided an RV park in Marin County would be our safe place, notwithstanding its less then idyllic location in the middle of a waterfront industrial area backed by a fetid, low tide mud flat that smelled strongly of sewage. Across the muck and water loomed the foreboding guard towers of San Quentin Penitentiary, where Johnny Cash famously recorded an album in front of its cheering inmates in 1969.

We didn’t choose it for the heavy industry or view of San Quentin, which were not mentioned on its website, but instead because it’s a 15 minute-walk from the Larkspur Ferry, which deposits commuters, suburban shoppers and tourists at the San Francisco Ferry Building on the downtown waterfront at regular intervals throughout the day.

Once landed after a mid-morning sailing, we made haste among the strollers, joggers, skateboarders and freaky people of the Embarcadero to Pier 33, where multitudes from the world’s four corners gather daily to do their tourist time on the Rock.

Alcatraz. The last stop. Place of no escape.

The Man in Black may have “walked the line’ in San Quentin but Alcatraz was “the end of the line” for many of America’s hard men. Al Capone played in the prison band and drooled in his cell until being released in a demented state to die of syphilis. Machine Gun Kelly saw the error of his ways within its walls, earning the derisive nickname ‘Pop Gun Kelly’ for his good behavior. The psychotic murderer Robert Stroud became American’s most famous jail birder.

What strikes temporary guests is its proximity to downtown San Francisco, the city’s skyline shining in the sunshine, aglow at night, so close but so unattainable, as if to further torment the prisoners with a visual taste of the world they’ve left behind. Sightseers are encouraged to wander the grounds, even to bring picnic lunches and make a day of it with the kids.

We began with our stint in the pen with a short film, outlining the history of the American Gangster era’s most famous crowbar hotel, which closed in 1963 after 29 years of hosting bad guys. In that time, 36 inmates tried to escape. Twenty-three were captured, six were shot to death and two drowned. The other five went missing and were presumed drowned.

The cell block audio tour leaves no doubt that the Rock was a desolate place occupied by men desperate to leave it behind. The hard men’s high-flying lives of crime were reduced to five feet by 9 feet, with a cold-water sink, a toilet and a cot. Bad behavior, which constituted any violation from a long list of rules, earned a spot in solitary, where the slightly larger cells did not make up for the constant darkness and isolation. Prisoners showered infrequently under steel shower heads in an open concrete room while guards watched to insure potential weapons weren’t concealed in body cavities. No bum raps, so to speak.

A couple of hours on The Rock is enough to convince budding young criminals on the tour that the thug life is no good life.  Even in a cold spring rain, the ferry ride back to San Francisco seems upbeat in contrast.

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Pier 23 is one of the many piers used for either industry or providing a thirsty traveller with a cold beverage on a gray San Francisco day

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The view from Alcatraz, so close and yet so far, except if you’re Clint Eastwood of course

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Also, don’t even think about not buying something from the gift shop on your way out

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The infamous rogue’s gallery of Alcatraz including Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly and The Birdman Robert Stroud

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Al Capone went mad in Alcatraz from syphilis, not quite as glamorous as dying in a blaze of machine gun fire like some of his counterparts in the biz

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Cell Block B is open for tourist business

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Please note, board games not included with incarceration package

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The “Indian’s Welcome” is graffiti left after the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz by Native American Indians who lived on the rock from Nov. 20th 1969 to June 11th, 1971 willingly. Prisoner 2671 is shaking his head in disbelief

After a couple months in the sunshine and arid climes of Arizona and Southern California, the Wet Coast’s grey drizzle hits former Vancouverites like a rain-forest flashback. We decide to wait out the storm with a side trip to nearby Sausalito for breakfast on our second day. By afternoon, the now-constant downpour, a certifiable-el Niño-inspired-heaven-sent-non-stop-torrent, drowned our plans to continue up the Oregon Coast. A short but soggy doggie outing to the rank mud flat left Dude, Dame and Dog with a hankering to leave our hearts in San Francisco and take our water-logged bodies east, across the Sierra Nevada mountains, braving sleet slanting down in Donner Pass, with its history of cold death and cannibalism, in pursuit of sunshine in the Biggest Little City in the World.

Next up, Reno surprises.

 

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Donner Pass is now a ski area, cannibalism optional at the various eateries on the hill. Also at 7000 feet, the summit is a formidable trip and and down, the Dame was a tad white-knuckled