The Jan 6th Committee does what we all knew they’d do. Yawn!

In a stunning surprise, the Jan 6th Committee has asked the DOJ to investigate Trump. Just to be clear, that is sarcasm.

I’ve never had any doubt that the kangaroo hearings would try to have the DOJ try to prosecute Trump. 

I call the Jan 6th Committee a kangaroo hearing because they relied on hearsay, and allowed no opposing council or views to be heard.

To their mind, Trump was guilty of something, anything, or everything, they said he was guilty of, before the committee sat their fat asses down in chambers. 

Personally I think the whole hearing mess has become a nuclear powered political hot potato, and they’re hoping they can hand it off to the DOJ. When the DOJ and Merrick Garland are unable to find anything that is actionable under the law, the Jan 6th Committee will wail and gnash their teeth then blame the DOJ for failure. The bright side is that Merrick Garland could be thrown under the bus and tossed out of his position at the DOJ. That might help but I’m not holding my breath.

I’m just sick and tired of the endless hearings that have always looked like Wile E. Coyote chasing the Roadrunner. What have we endured two, three? impeachments, that were big vegan nothing burgers, I don’t remember the number at this point. The impeachment hearings all ran together, It was four years of “smoking guns” and “We’ve got him this time” which ultimately were pointless wastes of time. Now the Jan 6th bullshit. 

Personally I’d love to be able to walk into that chamber with CSPAN broadcasting live to the nation and give these congresspeople a piece of my mind. The only question is, when would I tell them to fuck themselves? Would it be before I told them all to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up or afterwards?

Liz cheney january 6 primetime AP 640x480 1I noted Liz Cheney said that Trump is unfit to hold any office. God, I’d have loved to be in that hearing room. I’d have joyfully pointed out that the good people of WY have recently decided she’s not fit to hold any office either. I’d have asked her if this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black or if it’s just sour grapes that she has become so universally detested it’s unlikely she’ll be able to get a job as a truck stop waitress.

From my perspective at this point it’s not about Trump, I don’t give a shit! I’m deeply angry and offended that these jackasses have wasted all this time, and taxpayer money for jack shit. Trump isn’t the President anymore and hasn’t been the President for two years. Even the hearsay “Damming Evidence” is too thin to prosecute in a real court with actual prosecution and defense lawyers.

On the plus side, these “Lawmakers” have amply demonstrated the rampant corruption in Congress.

Once again Politicians being Politicians, 

Lying, cheating, stealing, saying anyone who questions them crazy, or a threat to democracy.

The DOJ ain’t got shit, and they know it!

Racism and Reparations, Oh My!

Over the past 10 days or so I’ve been seeing articles about California paying reparations to black folks.

I was pleased to see that beach front land LA County had stolen from an African American family had finally been returned to the family. There is no excuse for anyone to lose their property, either land, or personal possessions, simply because of the color of their skin. LA County righted a wrong they committed long ago, and it was about damn time. 

There was a time when racism was rampant, horrific, and wrong on its face. The only reason LA County had been able to take this family’s land was because racism was at the time, tacitly approved of and LA County had the power of City Hall and people who could corrupt the law. 

This once again proves the old saying, “You can’t fight City Hall”

Less pleasing is the California Reparations board. If this board was looking for similar instances of injustice as described above. Then I’d be totally on board. The problem is, California Reparation seems to be more about cash payments. Cash payments made from our tax dollars in a state that didn’t have African slavery. 

For me this raises some questions. 

Will California be paying reparations to members of the Native Tribes whose ancestors were in fact enslaved and whose servitude built Churches up and down the state under Spanish or Mexican rule?

Will California pay reparations to the descendants of Irish children taken off the streets of Dublin and sold into slavery in American slave markets right along with slaves from Africa?

How is California going to determine who gets these reparations? Will they use DNA sequencing? Or will the state resort to simply looking at the color of a person’s skin? The former is invasive, the latter is going to automatically exclude groups of people who through no fault of their own might not be dark enough. What about people who may be albino?

There was a time when America had something called the one drop rule. If a person had any ancestor who was African they were considered Black regardless of their appearance. Interestingly, when the NAZIs were trying to come up with a method to single out Jews for extermination, NAZI’s felt that the one drop rule was too extreme. They chose a genealogical method based on a Jewish family member being some number of generations back. Five generations, no problem. Only four generations back? Sorry you’re going to the camps. I wonder what criteria the California Reparations board will use.

Then there was the African American activist who said in print, anything less than $800,000 per person would result in severe consequences. Wow! That sounds more like an old MAFIA protection racket. What severe consequences? Riots, looting, buildings burning? Oh, in other words a typical Wednesday in Los Angeles.

When I read that article, my first thought was how about zero dollars? Your terms are completely acceptable. Burn down your neighborhoods or the entire city. Just realize that your actions have consequences and one of those consequences would likely be that you’ll not have a place to plug in that 75” TV you stole from the Best Buy. You can also look forward to 20 years of no-one investing in businesses or buildings in the neighborhoods you destroy. Y’all might want to loot some tents from the REI or Walmart while you’re at it.

There was another piece reported out of San Francisco about a pilot program where the city leadership was making payments of 1000 a month for two years available to poverty stricken people.

Great! Help those people get their footing and work their way out of poverty.  But reading the fine print, this is only available to African Americans. Apparently poverty is only poverty if you’re the right color. White people living in poverty and squalor is of no concern to the leadership of San Francisco.

San Francisco is also making similar payments available to pregnant poor single women. Again Great! But the fine print again specifies only African American need apply. This particular plan is being implemented in Los Angeles, and other smaller cities throughout the state. 

I’m sorry, but this is racism on its face. Poverty is poverty, pregnant is pregnant, regardless of the color of your skin.

I thought we had laws to prevent discrimination of any kind. 

Clearly I missed a memo on the nuance of racial discrimination. 

Growing up I was taught that any discrimination was bad and not to be tolerated.

Since these days it’s enough to simply identify as a woman to be called and treated like a woman.  I find myself wondering is it enough to identify as African American to be treated like an African American and therefore be eligible for these cash payments? How about if I identified as a black woman and pregnant?

“My baby daddy ran off with some skinny white girl! I need a grand a month to raise this baby!” 

I doubt it would work. 

This kind of thing is how racism is perpetuated.

For years African Americans have protested and in some cases rioted over being treated as less than. Leaders in government have been solicitous and forgiving, they’ve promised to make funding available and bring an end to racism in exchange for votes.

What will those leaders do or say when the shoe is on the other foot? How will they respond to white people protesting and rioting against clearly racist behavior targeted at them?

Or will we have the Southern Poverty Law Center designating impoverished white communities as white supremacist terror cells, then calling for these communities to meet the same fate as Ruby Ridge, or Waco? 

I find that I’m not particularly surprised when I hear white people saying things like, “We need to move someplace where the demographics are more favorable.” Which is nothing more than a polite way of saying, We need to move someplace where there are only white people.

The problem is, if white people were to carve out a couple of states and cede the rest of the country to people of color, that would be called racism. It would never be tolerated and particularly so, if white people built for themselves a nice place. This is not to say white people are more capable than anyone else, but we already have the example suburbia provided. 

At one time moving to the suburbs was called “White Flight”. The cores of cities were given over to people who, at the time,  were legitimately on the wrong side of the racial equation. People of color were ghettoized and then rightfully got angry at being mistreated and forgotten. The common explanation for these ghettos being crime ridden was these folks were desperate, and impoverished.

I suspect that while there was, at the time,  certainly a racial component to white flight, there was something else. White people simply got tired of trying. When it became easier to move to suburbia where everything was new, clean, planned and safe. Places where education was good and crime was largely unheard of, white people chose the path of least resistance.

I’m not afraid of living with people of color, I’m just tired of playing some kind of appeasement game where the goal posts are always in sight but moved at the last minute. I’ve worked with people who are actually from Africa. They have always been kind, hardworking people like myself, with similar values and expectations. On more than one occasion Africans have asked what the hell is up with African Americans? I’ve answered, that I haven’t a clue.

I find myself getting quite tired of trying anymore. I’m sick of being called names. So sick of it that I’ve actually looked into moving to a completely different country. Call it the ultimate white flight.

I’ve also considered getting a job in Antarctica. This would take me out of the USA and put me in a small community where everyone is dependent on each other for survival. I’ve been curious to find out if, in that kind of situation, the whole racism narrative falls apart and people are just people again.

I don’t believe in racism. I think it’s stupid and destructive. That being said, my experiences with people of color in California have taught me that I’m apparently in the minority regardless of race. 

It’s because of these lived experiences that I want to go somewhere and live among people that look just like me. I want to eliminate the racial stuff and if someone who looks just like me commits a crime, they get the same justice as everyone else.

I don’t want to live someplace where I, or anyone else, is favored or punished simply because of the color of their skin or ethnicity. Until ten or fifteen years ago, I thought that was where America was headed. Now I feel like we’ve taken a step 50 years into the past and are in the process of inverting all the rules too.

In my opinion, stepping back in time and inverting the rules is nothing more than revenge. It’s not a step toward equality at all. 

Oh Boy! Some journalists are super pissed at Elon.

Apparently, Twitter suspended at least six journalists for Doxxing over the past day or two.

Twitter logo 2 1At first the journalists in question said they had no idea why their blue checked accounts had been suspended.

All I thought was, “Yeah, now you know what it feels like.”

It’s later come out that Twitter has updated its user policy forbidding real time Doxxing. This on the surface seems to be related to something Elon Mush hasn’t been happy about for a while. There is or was a site where you could track his private jet’s location in real time.

Elon Musk had at one time offered to buy the site and associated Twitter account from its creator but it’s unclear if they were able to reach an agreement on the price. At the time I thought that Musk’s offer was far too low. But that was just my opinion.

If Musk offered me cash for this site, I’d sell it to him for a reasonable offer. Hey I’m a capitalist! So sue me.

I think that the whole mess went to court but I’m not entirely sure, and don’t know the outcome.

Now the Musk owns Twitter, and has amended the user agreement. He is well within his right to control Doxxing of his information and that of other people.

This too is capitalism Comrade Journalists.

Ultimately I think the move is a good one. It has broader implications than just a handful of journalists being suspended.

For example, Twitter was instrumental in the disruption of Justice Kavenaugh’s meal at a Washington restaurant. Twitter was used during the BLM riots across the nation to coordinate wanton destruction and looting while avoiding the police. 

Musk is right, if a bit heavy handed. There is no reason to broadcast real time information about the location of anyone. Particularly, about people who may have controversial views or opinions, or public figures.

It’s one thing for an entertainer to tweet out information about a concert or event to their fans. It’s quite another to use Twitter to coordinate violence or a “Flash” protest of hundreds. We’ve seen the latter with speakers at various venues from college campuses to rented halls for speaking engagements.

Jordan Peterson, Dave Rubin, Dave Chappell, and Pamela Geller, have all been “mobbed” at speaking engagements, Pamela Geller had two armed gunmen roll up in Garland TX. They miscalculated. They were in TX and were “put down” like rabid dogs.

I just pulled these people off the top of my head. These people and others, were being paid for their appearance, or their appearance had been paid for by ticket sales to rent the venue. Their livelihoods were impacted by a mob using Twitter to coordinate a protest. The people who purchased tickets were placed in danger by the mob, and the venue lost money when the appearance or lecture was shut down. The loss was real and comes in the form of refunding ticket sales, damage done to the building or grounds, and salaries for security and staff.

Many of the Twitterati who showed up for the protests did so because they had nothing better to do that night. Most of them didn’t know about the speaking engagement or where it was being held. 

Having walked through a line of foul mouthed aggressive protesters from the Westboro Baptist Church with my Mother on the way to a performance of The Gay Men’s Chorus. I can tell you that it degraded our enjoyment of the evening. Neither I or my Mother gave two shits about the sexuality of the performers, we were there because this particular chorus was excellent that year. I didn’t appreciate one little bit that we had our evening out tarnished by a bunch of moronic assholes.

We won’t even discuss what one jackass called my Mother, or the tightness of her grip on my arm. You can call a man almost anything, but call his mother a slutty whore to her face in that man’s presence… In elder times that would get you beat to a pulp, shot, or run through.

Truthfully, had my Mom not been so terrified I’d have made that jackass eat his words and then eat the rest of his meals through a straw. He had the right to protest the performance, he didn’t have the right to speak like that to my mother. I’m old school that way.

This event occurred prior to Twitter and cellphones. The number of protestors was relatively small but they were vile nonetheless. 

The ubiquity of Twitter and cellphones has only amplified the reach of jackasses who believe that they have the right not only to free speech, but also the right to prevent someone from expressing an opinion counter to their own. I got news for them, that is not free speech. That is oppression. 

The irony is not lost on me. These people use numbers and mob rule in the guise of free speech to oppress anyone they disagree with. 

Free Speech is a tough thing. You’ve got to be capable of recognizing that people holding a different view have that right just as you do. You’ve got to be responsible with the right of free speech, and mature enough to draw a line between a protest and an out of control  mob.

I wonder if this is, at least in part, the philosophy that Musk is working from. Sure he’s trying to insure his safety and that of his family. I wonder how much of the overarching issue is Musk also committed to?

If he’s applying the new rules in an egalitarian way then I’m totally in.

If Twitter is suspending anyone and everyone who is providing real time information about public figures unilaterally then good. I’ll be interested to see how that works out. 

This has the potential to limit the incitement of violence and collateral damage or disruption to innocent bystanders just going about their business.

Do you or anyone you love want to be trapped in a restaurant by protesters just because Dave Chappell happens to want dinner at the same place?

You’d think that these journalists above all would understand the concept of free speech.