Tariffs: One Way to NOT Make America Great Again

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Yesterday my sister (a diehard Walmart shopper) sent her only sibling (me - who has not been inside a Walmart store in over thirty years) a copy of an internet news article from the Daily Mail.  The article covered a statement by Walmart CFO David Rainey in which he said that due the anticipated increase in tariffs on imports by the incoming presidential administration, consumers might see price increases on some items at Walmart.

Mr. Rainey appears to be a master of the art of understatement.

The article that my sister forwarded further stated that the President-elect is talking of imposing an across-the-board tariff of ten-percent on all imports and a sixty-percent tariff on all imports from China. Tariffs are not paid by the exporting countries, but rather by the companies that import the goods - and those companies recoup their costs by raising the prices that consumers pay. 

According to the statement Mr. Rainey made yesterday, one-third of the items Walmart sells are imports, so yes, if there is an additional fee (tariff) placed on everything coming in from abroad, prices will undoubtedly be going up at Walmart - and at Best Buy - and at Dollar General - and at all of the other stores in the United States which sell imported items.  

And just how deeply will this new de facto sales tax reach into our pockets? According to the Daily Mail article that my sister forwarded:  

"A May report from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a non-profit think-tank, estimated that these levies (tariffs) will cost middle-class families at least $1,700 a year." 

$1,700 is a significant amount of money in my household. 

Or, as Jim Bob says, "Tariffs will learn them foreigners not to mess with America!  MAGA!"

Salt Lake City in December

 

by Pa Rock

Family Historian

Much of the time that I spent at the computer during the early years of my retirement was focused on genealogy.  The first big task was getting my old genealogy newspaper columns ("Rootbound in the Hills") typed into the computer, indexed, and finally printed into book form.  It was a massive undertaking (over 240 individual columns with thousands of surnames), but when the chore was completed the columns were preserved and available for research in several local libraries and two national genealogical libraries, and my children each had copies to pass on to their descendants.  

After that I researched my own personal ancestors and published profiles of them in this blog, and spent an abundance of time tracing and writing about the descendants of one of my 19th century ancestors on whom I had extensive information due to records from an old court case.  The original family surname was "Smith," and I thought that by carefully sifting through a few generations of their descendants, I might not only learn more about many of my distant cousins, but also provide some helpful material for future family historians who are researching a "Smith," the most common family surname in the United States.  I titled that collection of blog-postings "One Smith Family."

Now I have separated all of those old blog profiles into three separate collections:  my father's lineage ("The Macy Family"), my mother's lineage ("The Sreaves Family") and "One Smith Family," and am finally ready to begin a final proof-reading, filling in gaps, and getting them ready for publication.  To do that most effectively - for the peace and quiet as well for the ready availability of a world-class family research facility - I am preparing to head to Salt Lake City for six full days of research and work at the Family Search Library (commonly known as the Mormon Library).  I will be staying next door to the library at the Plaza Hotel.

I made that same trip in 2018 and had an extremely good research experience - and I hoping that this excursion will be even more productive. The trip is planned and booked for December 15th through the 22nd, and it will hopefully knock three more things off of my bucket list.

And I suspect that Salt Lake City will be a very nice perch from which to enjoy the holiday season.

A Tanning Bed and a Foul Smell

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

In what sounds like a cascading series of failures to  use established protocols and common sense, a 39-year-old Indiana man apparently died in a tanning bed at a commercial fitness center last weekend and his death in the business facility went unnoticed for three days.

The man had left his girlfriend and her daughter shopping at a local department store on Friday, November 8th, and walked to a nearby fitness center (a member of a national franchise) to inquire about a membership.  There he apparently joined, went to one of the center's tanning rooms, possibly injected drugs (a syringe was later found in the tanning room), and then got into a tanning bed where he died.  Even though the center was reportedly open throughout the weekend, the man's body was not discovered until the next Monday when customers began complaining about a "foul" smell coming from the tanning area.

Failure #1:  An open business failed to notice that the door to one of its tanning rooms remained closed during three business days.

The man had been arrested and brought to trial last year on a charge of narcotics possession and possession of controlled substances, and he had entered a plea arrangement which confined him at home for a year wearing an ankle bracelet and under the supervision of a probation officer.

Failure #2:  Whoever was responsible for monitoring the location of the ankle bracelet over the weekend apparently did not notice that it was no longer located at the man's residence.

The man's girlfriend reported him missing to the police when he had not returned home on Sunday morning.  One news report says that he was found by police on Monday when they followed up by searching at his last known location.   Another report indicates that he was found by his probation officer.  Interestingly, he was apparently not found by staff members of the fitness center, even though customers told the press that they had reported the bad smell in the tanning area to employees of the business.  Evidence from the ankle bracelet shows that the man never left the facility after entering on Friday, November 8th.

Failure #3:  There was no immediate clamor from the man's family or support group to locate him when he initially disappeared.

The man's mother said that she anticipated that when her son's toxicology report comes back it will show that he had fentanyl in his system.  She referred to him as "a human being with value and worth," and said he was "the kindest person" with "the softest heart."   Other family reports indicate that the man "struggled with drugs."

Now, it would seem, his struggles are over.

The Lesson:  We need to be looking out for one another whether it is our job to do so, or our family responsibility, or simply because it is just the right thing to do.

War Novels: The Red Badge of Courage

by Pa Rock

Reader

(Note:  This posting will hopefully be one of several which explore the use of literature as a way of transmitting the reality of war to students of history.)

I mentioned in this space on Veteran's Day that I am a veteran of four years of active duty service with the United States Army, though thanks to a long college deferment from the draft I never had to serve in the Vietnam War which was raging during those years - so I am what is commonly referred to as a "non-combat" veteran.  My major in college was history with a strong emphasis in American history, and I went on to teach history at the junior high, senior high, and undergraduate college levels, and while doing that I quickly discovered that although many students regard history as being fact-laden and dull, they do tend to perk up when the topics are war and politics, especially if those subjects are taught with some insights into the human situations that played through the history - if the subject matter has a personal feel.

As an illustration, think of how director Ken Burns ignited broad public interest in the American Civil War with his in-depth series that told the war from the perspective of the people who lived it - through personal accounts (journals and dairies) and photographs showing the actual sadness and savagery that resulted from the four years of blood-soaked battles.  Burns had to use the archives for his video retelling of the war from the human perspective, because all of the participants and observers had been dead for decades.

Many of the generals and political bigwigs of the Civil War era published books on their involvement and the war, but those tomes were almost always heavy with facts and light on the humanity exposed by the war -  the impact that it had on ordinary individuals and families.  That began to change when Stephen Crane came on the literary scene.

American poet, short story writer, and novelist Stephen Crane was born in late 1871, more that six years after the end of the American Civil War.   By the early 1890's he was an established writer and like many young men of the time had an interest in war and combat.  (Some of that mass popular interest presented as a sort of "envy" toward the Civil War vets and a desire by the young men to have their own glorious war - one of the factors feeding into the rush toward the Spanish American War.)

Crane read some of the available books on the Civil War and was disillusioned by what he saw as sterile factual accounts that neglected the human element.  He interviewed surviving veterans, visited battlefields, and developed a feel for what the experience had really been like, and channeled his research into a fictional war experience of a very conflicted young man.  Crane's protagonist, 18-year-old Private Henry Fleming of the Union Army, had joined up in the hopes of acquiring some glory and honor from the experience that would hopefully follow him through life.  His service might even result in one of the greatest honors of all, a war wound - also known as a "red badge of courage."

The author told the story from a third-person (outside observer) perspective, but he would occasionally reveal the thoughts of his main character, Henry, as a way to advance the story while giving the readers more insight into the complicated soldier and his situation.

The unit that Henry joined did not immediately engage in battle, and, in fact, remained encamped for several weeks, and that gave Henry time to think about things.  Would he be brave and thrive during battle, or would he be overwhelmed by his growing fears and be subsumed by cowardice?  Before the multi-day battle (based loosely on the actual Civil War Battle of Chancellorsville) ended, he lived both experiences amid very brutal and bloody circumstances.

Stephen Crane's novel of the Civil War was so original with its strong bent toward realism and naturalism along with a unique style of narration that American readers  were slow to engage with it after the book was first published in 1895, but it was a big hit in England -  which made American readers give it a second and more enduring look.  The novel has never been out of print since its initial publication.

"The Red Badge of Courage" is relatively short and would be a quick read if it did not give readers so much to stop and ponder.  After its publication, future books about war generally followed Crane's example of being compelling stories rather that collections of maps and facts.   For those who would like to develop a sense of what combat is really all about, "The Red Badge of Courage" is a good place to start - and, teachers, it will quickly captivate novice students of history and generate much discussion.

Rusty (the Mutt) and the Arrogance of Humans

 

by Pa Rock

Dog Servant

Many years ago when I worked in the field of education by day, one of the ways that I supplemented that meager income was by also working in the field of education a couple of nights a week as an "adjunct" instructor for a small community college.  The coursework that I taught for the college was varied and interesting, everything from freshman composition to American and world history, geography, government, economics, and even general psychology.  It was during one of the general psychology classes that one of my most memorable nights of teaching - and learning - occurred.

On nights when the basics of the lecture had been completed we would dedicate some time to class discussion on various related topics.  One night I led off the discussion with this question, "Can animals think?"  The class, mostly my age or older, caught fire with that one and the responses were still coming fast and furiously when it was time for the class to end.  The unanimous opinion was "Yes, of course they can think!" and the class offered up an enormous supply of fantastic animal tales.  We heard about animals, primarily dogs and cats, who solved their own problems, outsmarted their owners, performed complicated and multi-part physical operations, showed empathy, and were just generally all-around smart creatures.  Everyone had amazing pet stories to tell!

As anyone who has ever had a long-term pet knows, they quickly learn to understand what their human companions want and expect from them, and they also seem to innately know how to get what they want.

Most of us who have been around more than half a century probably remember Koko, the gorilla, who was taught American Sign Language and promptly used that skill to request a pet kitten which she cared for and loved until the feline was unfortunately run over by a careless driver behind the wheel of a car - and even then Koko used her sign language skills to grieve for her lost companion.  Koko learned more than one thousand words in American Sign Language and she was able to show an understanding of two thousand other words which she learned through listening.  It would be hard to argue that Koko the gorilla did not possess a great deal of intelligence, the ability to learn more, and the ability to share her thoughts and feelings.

Ranger Bob forwarded a brief video clip of famed primatologist, zoologist, and anthropologist Dr. Jane Goodall who has spent much of her life studying and working with chimpanzees in the African nation of Tanzania.  Dr. Goodall, who is ninety now and still educating the world on environmental and animal welfare issues, actually met and visited with Koko the gorilla on several occasions.  This clip is of Dr. Goodall's response to one question which was posed to her at the Clinton Global Initiative:

Question:  "What can we learn from the chimpanzees?"

Goodall:  "How arrogant humans have been.  When I got to Cambridge to do a PhD in 1961, I was told that I couldn't talk about chimps having personalities, minds, or emotions because those were unique to humans, and as a scientist I shouldn't have empathy with my subjects.    But fortunately I had a great teacher when I was young who taught me that all the learned professors were totally, totally wrong - and that was my dog, Rusty.  He was a mutt, he was just amazing, and, you know dogs are my favorite animals.  But we now know (and it's a very exciting time for young people wanting to study animal behavior, you know) we now know the intelligence of chimpanzees and other apes, whales, elephants, as well as pigs, rats and octopuses."

Dr. Goodall's remarks certainly lay the groundwork for the acknowledgment of the intelligence of the little monkeys who escaped their captivity from a lab testing facility in South Carolina last week.  Many of them are still free and now there is even some discussion of their potential legal rights as escaped wildlife.  (For a look into that subject please see:  "43 lab monkeys escaped in South Carolina. They have a legal claim to freedom."  by Angela Fernandez and Justin Marceau in the current online issue of Vox Magazine.)

When an "animal" shows clear signs of being smarter than the guy who lives down the road, it feels immoral to condemn it to captivity or slaughter.

Perhaps I have now exhausted this topic, or maybe it has exhausted me.   We'll just have to wait and see.

Missouri Passes Progressive Ballot Measures

 

by Pa Rock

Missouri Voter

While Missouri has morphed into a reliably red state over the past quarter century with regard to candidates for political office, the show-me state can take a surprisingly liberal view of specific issues which make their way onto the ballot.

Over the past several years the people of Missouri have rolled back a gun "concealed-carry" bill that had been passed by our legislature (though it was later enacted anyway) and gutted a "right to work" bill that had been passed by our lobbyist-controlled, fundamentalist state legislature by passing a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the rights of workers in the state to organize and join unions.  A couple of years ago we even enshrined in our state constitution the right of adults to partake in the  recreational use of marijuana. 

This year Missouri voters, while voting for the GOP candidate for President by a margin of over eighteen percentage points, also managed to pass some surprisingly progressive ballot initiatives.  First, there was the issue of sports betting (which I do not regard as progressive because the gambling industry targets the poorest among us and lonely senior citizens).  But nevertheless in a state with a high density of self-proclaimed, fundamentalist Christians, and in an election where almost three million votes were cast, sports betting managed to squeeze out a victory at the polls with just over four thousand votes statewide.

Missouri also had one of the strictest abortion bans in the nation, again thanks to our rigid moral compass, the Missouri State Legislature - but a constitutional amendment passed by voters this year rolled that back and repealed the abortion ban making abortion legal in Missouri up to the time of fetal viability - while at the same time inexplicably returning anti-abortion zealot Josh Hawley to the US Senate!  The abortion amendment passed with 52% of the state vote.

And after ensuring Missouri worker's right to join unions just a few years ago, the people of Missouri delivered another victory to working people with the passage of a constitutional amendment this year that will raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour in Missouri over the next two years and will force employers to provide earned sick leave to employees.

Missourians may have their collective heads stuck deep in the sand when it comes to candidates, but with policies that affect them directly, they seem to be paying more attention.

The Climate Is Changing; Politics be Damned!

 

by Pa Rock

Earthling

The incoming President assures us that climate change is a hoax and that he will protect us from the dangers and inefficiencies of energy technologies which he does not like, such as wind and solar, and instead create American jobs by more digging, drilling, and clear- cutting our very limited natural resources until they are used up and the air and water so noxious and poisonous as to render the planet essentially uninhabitable. Squandering our resources and destroying Planet Earth is good for business, don't you see?  

The flaw in that "comprehensive" energy and environmental plan is that it is based on nonsense.  Climate change is happening.  I can look out my living room window and know that for a fact.  Ten years ago when I first moved to this house, almost all of the leaves were on the ground by Halloween.   This year, halfway through November, they are still falling and will be for another week, or possibly even two.   There has only been one light scattering of frost so far, and I still have roses blooming and a lilac bush that is trying to bud again.  The tomato plants in the backyard have blooms, and yesterday I even picked a delicious little red tomato and ate it.

People are still mowing their yards in this area during the middle of November.  I will give mine one more good mow, but I am trying to wait until the leaves have basically all fallen.  It would be nice to get the lawn put to bed before Christmas.

I grew up in southern Missouri, a hundred-and-seventy-five miles due west of here.  When I was a lad in the late 1950's we had two years in a row where the first snowfall happened on Thanksgiving Day - and they were major snows!    Thanksgiving this year is two weeks from today, and we haven't even had a decent frost!

I did see one encouraging climate story in the news this week.  Darren Woods, the CEO of ExxonMobil has gone on the record encouraging the incoming President of the United States not to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Accords - like he did during his first term as President.  Mr. Woods sees climate change as being a global concern and says "we need a global system for managing global emissions."   

All of the world's countries have been a part of creating the climate change that is happening, and all of the world countries have a shared interest in combating and fixing the problem.  The United States has been a major industrial force and polluter for the past two centuries, and we own a good share of the current climate and environment problems that the planet is experiencing.  Of course we should be involved in finding solutions.  Thank you ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods for making that point.

People who will be living on the Earth a hundred years from now will not be strangers who are of no concern to us.  They will be our grandchildren's grandchildren, and they will (rightfully) be holding us accountable for the condition of the planet on which they struggle to survive.   

In a week or so I will be mowing and mulching the leaves which are covering the yard in order to help build the soil for the benefit of people who will be living on this property years from now, people I will never meet - and I should be doing even more.  Somewhere someone else is out planting a tree today, and tree that will make shade and oxygen and perhaps even fruit for someone who hasn't been born yet, perhaps one of my great-grandchildren - or yours.

The Earth is our home and it will continue to be a home for humanity for a long time.  We must protect it for ourselves and for our future selves.   Politics be damned!

Great Apes and Monkeys, Deer and Cows

 

by Pa Rock

Student of Nature

(Note:  As some of you may have noticed, I am on a hiatus from writing about politics.   I used to devote a lot of space in this blog to discussing the politics of our nation, certain states, and even my local community, because it was always easy to find outrages to write about, but of late the outrages have been piling up so quickly, and so high, that I have decided to leave digging though the shit to others, and I will endeavor to find more interesting things to write about.   Expect more variety and less tension.)

I had an email yesterday afternoon from my good friend, Ranger Bob, a former ranger with the national park system and a well-trained naturalist.  In responding to yesterday's blog posting where I talked about the plight of elderly chimpanzees currently being housed in a chimp research facility at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, I referred to the chimps on multiple occasions as monkeys.   Ranger Bob informed me of the error of my ways and said that chimpanzees are actually a type of "great ape" and monkeys are not.

I did a little digging on my own after receiving Bob's message and collected a few more specifics.  According to a pamphlet published for the Center for Great Apes called "About Apes" which is available on the internet:

"Although there are a number of differences between apes and monkeys (apes have a longer life span, larger body size, larger brain-to-body ratio, and higher intelligence);  the main difference is that monkeys have tails and apes do not have tails.  The difference between great apes and lesser apes is general size.)

Apes and monkeys are distinct and different, but they are members of the same order of mammals, "primates," and so are humans.  Merriam-Webster defines "primate" as:

"Any of an order (Primates) of mammals that are characterized especially by advanced development of binocular vision resulting in stereoscopic depth perception, specialization of the hands and feet for grasping, and enlargement of the cerebral hemispheres that include humans, apes, monkeys, and related forms such as lemurs and tarsiers."

Bob also told me in a humorous fashion that referring to chimpanzees as monkeys was like calling a deer a cow - which put me in mind of an old Ozark folktale about some guys from St. Louis who decided to head to the Ozarks and hunt deer.  After two or three nights of getting drunk at their deer camp, and two or three days of hungover hunting, they had no dead deer to show for their efforts and decided to pack it in and head back to the city.  However, on the way home they happened to pass a meadow where they saw a few deer grazing peacefully.    They quickly pulled to the side of the road, took aim on the poor creature who was standing closest to the road, and opened fire with several rounds hitting the target which fell dead.  They gutted their prize, tied the carcass to the top of their minivan, and headed home to certain praise and glory.  They were on the outskirts of St. Louis when a state highway patrolman pulled them over and asked why a dead cow was strapped to the top of their vehicle!

That is a folk tale.  It undoubtedly has its genesis in something that actually happened in a rural location many years ago, and it likely is enhanced with every retelling.  If the guys who actually shot that cow are still around, they should send their resumes to the incoming presidential administration because one of them would certainly be a shoo-in for Secretary of the Interior - or perhaps Secretary of Agriculture!  Nothing speaks louder in a job search than experience.

Finding things to blog about is simple if you possess an untethered mind!

Caring for the Elderly. (More Monkey Business)

 

by Pa Rock

Elderly Primate

There was a report out yesterday morning stating that twenty-four more of the little monkeys who escaped from a research facility in rural South Carolina had been recaptured.   The CEO of the company that breeds and owns the monkeys said later in the day that “more than half” were now back in custody.
 
I’m not sure how I feel about that.  I guess they are safer in the testing facility than they would be out in the wilds of South Carolina, at least for the time being, but who knows what ugly fate awaits them now?
 
There is one other monkey story in the news, but it involves chimpanzees.  The Alamogordo Primate Facility (APF) at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico has been housing a colony of chimps that were brought from Africa as juveniles sometime around 1970.  They were initially under the supervision of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and used for flight and space travel research, but over the years, as the colony grew to over six hundred, the facility was contracted to a company that used them for medical research.
 
No medical research (at least the “invasive” research) is reportedly being done with the chimps now, but those who were exposed to certain diseases are still being studied and tracked.  Some of the chimps who have survived thus far are quite elderly, and so too are some of the human primates who care for the chimpanzees – and many of the humans are expected to retire by next summer.  Most of the chimps have been moved to a non-research facility in Louisiana, some sort of “care” home, but twenty-three very elderly ones were thought to be too old and frail to endure the trauma of a major move.
 
Now apparently the NIH has reconsidered their earlier decision and will send the old chimpanzees to “Chimp Haven” near Shreveport, Louisiana.  
 
I’m not sure how I feel about that either.
 
(I have a very elderly friend who was incarcerated for several years in a women’s prison in California.  Old prisoners are a big drain on prison budgets, and my friend had plenty of medical maladies that are common to old people.  A few years ago California got smart and released many of their elderly prisoners, those who were too feeble to resume their lives of crime, to the care and supervision of family members.  My friend’s family were all in southern Missouri, and she was sent home to be with them.  Not long after that the relatives placed her in a nursing home, and when I occasionally visit with her over the phone, her description of life in that facility is very similar to the life she had been leading in prison – one of pain, misery, and captivity.)
 
I hope that the elderly chimps were moved for their own benefit and not to take pressure off some government bureaucrat’s financial spreadsheet.
 
We need to be showing more humanity to all creatures, great and small.

Thoughts Regarding Veterans on Their Day

 

by Pa Rock 

Veteran

Today is Veteran's Day.  It is one of those rare federal government holidays that is attached to a specific date - November 11th - and therefore does not automatically fall on a Monday, but this year it does.  I need to remember not to bother checking the mail today.

November 11th is the old "Armistice Day," or the date on which World War I officially ended - on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918.

I am what is called a "non-combat" veteran, a person who wore his country's uniform (for four long years!), but because the Vietnam War was winding down when I went into the service in April of 1971 with an ROTC commission, I never had to go to the hellhole that was Nam.   Even without the constant danger of getting killed, maimed, infected, or addicted in a rotting jungle thousands of miles from home, I still found my time in uniform to be generally demoralizing.  At one point during my service I was putting in such long hours training troops for combat roles that they would hopefully never have to fulfill, that I had time to smoke four packs of cigarettes a day in a culture that encouraged consuming alcohol in excess.

The military did afford me and my very young family an opportunity to travel.  My oldest son was born at no cost in a military hospital on the island of Okinawa, Japan.  After the military experience was over, my spouse and I each received multiple college degrees thanks to the then generous GI Bill program.  Those benefits lasted forty-eight months, and we made the absolute most of them.  The Veteran's Administration also helped many young people just starting out in life with home and small business loans.

I rejoined the military, in a manner of speaking, later in life when I was in my early fifties and accepted a position as a civilian social worker with the military.  My first duty station was with the Army at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, and not long after that I was transferred to Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, another army base.  Luke Air Force  Base near Phoenix, Arizona, was next, followed by two years at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, and then back to Luke.  I retired to the Ozarks following my second stint in the hot sands of central Arizona.

My years as a civilian working with the military were more productive and personally rewarding than the years in which I served in uniform, but that is not to say that they came without a cost.  As a professionally licensed clinical social worker, much of my time was spent counseling young men and women whose lives had been impacted by their involvement with the oil wars in the Middle East.   The amount of emotional harm that can befall an individual or a young family when one member is removed from the home and placed in a combat role for a year or more can be staggering.  I still hear from some of the troops that I worked with more than a decade ago, and many of them continue to struggle to regain control of their lives - and that is not hyperbole!

In Phoenix ten years ago we still had homeless veterans who were sleeping on the streets.  God damn a country that lets that happen.  Just wearing the uniform leaves a mark on your soul, and serving in combat can eat your soul.  A bed, a roof overhead, and good medical care is cheap compensation for what our veterans have given.

(Thank you to the West Plains High School which has a nice program honoring veterans every year, the community of West Plains which hosts an annual Veteran's Day Parade, and the local Arby's which is giving away free roast beef sandwiches to veterans today.  Salute!)  

Another Monkey Tale

 

by Pa Rock

Sympathetic Primate

There are reports out this morning that one of the forty-three monkeys who escaped from a research lab in the backwoods of South Carolina (and whom I wrote about yesterday) has been captured and returned to the research facility where she will be used to test a variety of horrors concocted in the mind of man.  Investigators believe the other forty-two are close by, perhaps within yards of their "home." 

I had heard about the monkeys fleeing their lifelong captivity several days earlier, but had intentionally chosen not to write about it because the circumstance of cruelty to those beautiful little creatures brought to mind something that I had read in a fictional novel about the Vietnam War, a passage so moving that it has stuck with me ever since I first encountered it more than a decade ago.  But now that I have breached that very painful literary encounter, I have decided that the best way to deal with it is to share the troublesome passage here and pass it on to others.

The novel, Tree of Smoke, by Denis Johnson, is approximately 700 pages long and tells the story of the Vietnam War roughly over the period of time that the United States was involved and a few years beyond.  The characters in Tree of Smoke are fictitious, but the speak mighty truths.  The writing is elegant and at times poetic, and the story portrays the savagery of war in a way that can never be replicated through news accounts.  Tree of Smoke won the National Book Award in 2007.

The novel begins not in Vietnam but on an island in the Philippines on which a contingent of US Navy personnel are stationed in what appears to be some sort of preparation for the big war in Vietnam that would soon follow.   The year is 1963 and it is just hours after word has arrived of the assassination of President Kennedy in the United States.  A young Navy seaman by the name of Houston who is stationed on that Philippine Island, decides that he wants to go out into the jungle and hunt wild boars, perhaps as a way of dealing with the shock of Kennedy's death as well as all that is occurring around him.  After carefully picking his way through the humid jungle for an extended time, the young seaman places his rifle next to a tree and takes a break, and while he is resting he suddenly sees movement in a tree.

(The following five paragraphs were taken from pages four and five of the copy of Tree of Smoke which I still own and cherish.  If this scene does not break your heart, it is doubtful that you ever had one.)

"He kept his vision on the spot where he'd seen it among the branches of a rubber tree, putting his hand out for the rifle without altering the direction of his gaze.  It moved again.  Now he saw that it was some sort of monkey, not much bigger than a Chihuahua dog.  Not precisely a wild boar, but it presented itself as something to be looked at, clinging by its left hand and both feet to the tree's trunk and digging at the thin rind with an air of tiny, exasperated haste.  Seaman Houston took the monkey's meager back under the rifle's sight.  He raised the barrel a few degrees and took the monkey's head into the sight.  Without really thinking about anything at all, he squeezed the trigger.

"The monkey flattened itself out against the tree, spreading its arms and legs enthusiastically, and then, reaching around with both hands as if trying to scratch its back, it tumbled down to the ground.  Seaman Houston was terrified to witness its convulsions there.  It hoisted itself, pushing off the ground with one arm, and sat back against the tree trunk with its legs spread out before it, like somebody resting from a difficult job of labor.

"Seaman Houston took himself a few steps nearer, and, from the distance of only a few yards, he saw that the monkey's fur was very shiny and held a henna tint in the shadows and a blond tint in the light, as the leaves moved above it.  It looked from side to side, its breath coming in great rapid gulps, its belly expanding tremendously with every breath like a balloon.   The shot had been low, exiting from the abdomen.

"Seaman Houston felt his own stomach tear itself in two.  "Jesus Christ!" he shouted at the monkey, as if it might do something about it's embarrassing and hateful condition.  He thought his head would explode, if the forenoon kept burning into the jungle all around him and the gulls kept screaming and the monkey kept regarding its surroundings carefully, moving its head and black eyes from side to side like someone following the progress of some kind of conversation, with some kind of debate, some kind of struggle that the jungle - the morning - the moment - was having with itself.  Seaman Houston walked over to the monkey and laid the rifle down beside it and lifted the animal up in his two hands, holding its buttocks in one and cradling its head with the other.  With fascination, then with revulsion, he realized that the monkey was crying.   Its breath came out in sobs and tears welled out of its eyes when it blinked.  It looked here and there, appearing no more interested in him than in anything else it might be seeing.  "Hey," Houston said, but the monkey didn't seem to hear.

"As he held the animal in his hands, its heart stopped beating.  He gave it a shake, but he knew it was useless.  He felt as if everything was all his fault, and with no one around to know about it, he let himself cry like a child.  He was eighteen years old."

Animals and children stumbling around in a world ravaged by the hate-riddled mind of man - and trying to survive and make sense of it all.

There, I've purged.  The little monkey is now yours.

Use Stockholders for Lab Testing!

 

by Pa Rock

Howler Primate

Forty-three of our primate cousins escaped custody from a research facility in South Carolina earlier this week when a keeper (an inattentive primate) left their pen unlocked.  The small rhesus macaque monkeys, all females,  weigh about seven pounds each (the approximate weight of a newborn human primate) and were all bred in captivity for medical research and testing.  There were fifty in the pen when the adult human primate screwed up, and seven were still there when the breakout was discovered.

The great escape was from a company called Alpha Genesis which specializes in breeding monkeys for  medical research.  It occurred in southern South Carolina in an area that is commonly referred to as "the Lowlands."  People living in the area are being advised to keep their doors and windows locked and to not allow the little monkeys into their homes.

(Pa Rock is advising the monkeys who are currently on the lam to not get into any pickup trucks driven by smelly human primates named Bubba or who go by two first names, especially if the truck is flying any type of flag.)

Nineteen monkeys escaped from the same facility in 2016, and two years later, in 2018, 26 more also ran to temporary freedom from the Alpha Genesis breeding and testing facility.  That leads one to ponder which group of primates at the facility is smarter, the guards or the inmates?

Latest reports indicate that a group of the escapees have been spotted in the woods near where they had been imprisoned, and employees at the facility are trying to lure them back into confinement with food. The monkeys are reportedly very fond of apples.

A primate who represents part of South Carolina in the US House of Representatives has vowed to keep her constituents up-to-date on the situation with the escapees.  Pa Rock's Ramble is also carefully monitoring the monkeys' brave attempt for freedom.

(Corporations that manufacture items which require lab testing with animals should consider using stockholders - and leave monkeys - and other innocent creatures - the hell alone!)

An Ode on Theft Mode

 

by Pa Rock

Septuagenarian

Old people, and particularly those living in rural areas, hang onto their driver's licenses and cars for as long as possible for three primary reasons:  grocery shopping, doctor visits, and trips to the pharmacy.  Some of us also like to make the occasional trip to visit grandchildren.

Yesterday afternoon I had an appointment for a doctor's visit in the community of Mountain Home, Arkansas, which is fifty miles from my residence.  It was an important visit centering on a cardiac test, and it was to be followed by two more visits to the same clinic over the next couple of weeks.  If for some reason I failed to make yesterday's appointment, the result would likely roll over and impact the timing of the next two visits as well.  I HAD to get there!

The appointment was for one p.m.  I hustled around in the morning and did a day's house and pet work in just a few hours, and at 10: 40 a.m. I walked out of the house and got in the car - with plenty of time to spare.  I sat in the driver's seat, got myself organized, and put the key in the ignition - and the car would not start.  Not only would the low mileage 2020 Kia Soul not start, the car alarm started going off as well, sending loud, repetitive blasts of the horn out across the serene rural community.

After two or three minutes the alarm stopped on its own, so I tried putting the key in the ignition and starting the car again, and the entire noisy process started once more.  My son has a friend who is a mechanic but I didn't have his number in my phone, so I called my son at work who didn't answer.  Then I phoned my other son who only lives a few hundred miles away and told him of my issue.  He called the Kia dealer in Kansas where I had purchased the car and quizzed the person who answered the phone.  She advised him that it sounded as though the car was in "theft mode," and that I would probably have to get it towed to a Kia dealer to have the "theft mode" shut off.

My son phoned back with that information.  The nearest Kia dealer was in Batesville, Arkansas, which was seventy miles away.  My daughter-in-law, a saint, was also on the internet trying to find a fix for the situation.

The car was in "theft mode," and I was rapidly going into "panic mode" as the time kept ticking away.  I knew there had to be some simple way to fix the situation and I began experimenting.  All that I learned was that every time I put the key in the ignition, the car alarm would start, and if I got out of the car, every time I opened the driver's side door the alarm would start.

Finally I decided that my only immediate options were either to cancel the appointment, something I was loathe to do, or rent a car for the afternoon.  I went in the house and got on the internet and found one place in West Plains that rents cars, but then I decided to call my insurance agent to see if her agency would cover the rental or if she had any other ideas.  Ramona is always very helpful.

Ramona didn't answer the phone, however, Addie did - and that was good because Addie is the smartest person in West Plains.  Addie listened to my tale of woe and then said "I need to look something up."  She put the phone down for a couple of minutes and when she came back on asked if I was in the car.  "No, I'm in the house," I told her.

"Go back outside and when you get to the car, press the 'unlock' on your key fob."

"It's already unlocked."

"Just do it, and then open the door and get inside and try again."

I did what she said and unlocked the already unlocked door, opened the door and was excited to find that the alarm did not go off, and then I seated myself behind the wheel, inserted the key, turned. the ignition, and the damned car started!

Old people, if you are pressed for time and have to be somewhere - and your only car won't start, don't muck around with car dealers and tow trucks.  Call your insurance agent and let that person find a way to keep you from spending their money!

I made it to Mountain Home with fifteen minutes to spare!

(Has there ever been a time when a car alarm actually prevented a crime - or are they just there to be a nuisance?)

Nasty People

 

by Pa Rock

Survivor

I was in town yesterday in a publicly-funded building sitting in a private room having a conversation with a representative from the Area Agency on Aging as she guided me through the upcoming year's enrollment in the Medicare Part D (prescription drugs) program.  I meet with the same woman every year in the same public building, and she is always very helpful in assisting me to obtain the best deal on the program that helps me afford all of my many meds throughout the year.

(If you haven't noticed, the cost of being old is going up markedly.  Last year she found a program for me that was less than ten dollars a month out-of-pocket.  Wowzer!   The same program for next year has risen to nearly $45 a month and it no longer covers three of my important medications, so we had to come up with something else.  The best and most affordable option turned out to be a plan that runs just over $90 a month - a raise of 800%.  I'm not expecting things to get better under the next President who doesn't have to worry about the cost of his meds and is unlikely to worry about the cost of mine.)

The lady from the Area Agency on Aging had borrowed a room for the afternoon from a publicly-funded agency that deals with old people.  When I entered the small room I neglected to close the door, which was alright because it was stuffy anyway and we were neither one loud people.  But as we sat at the table trying to conduct our business, two women showed up and sat down outside of the open door.    And although they were speaking softly, they were just loud enough that one could not avoid tuning in on their conversation.

The first thing the Old Dears did was to congratulate each other on Kamala's loss on the previous day.  Then thy proceeded to get nasty.

"Democrats are such nasty people," one said.

"Yes, they are nasty,"  her friend replied.

"And did you see that they carried Colorado and New Mexico?  Those are nasty states."

"Yes, I saw that, too."

"And Democrat cities.  Those really are very nasty."

"Yes, they are so nasty."

Of course, if you were replace the word "Democrats" with "Blacks" you would have had the complete and unfiltered meaning of what they were really trying to communicate to each other.

When they started harping on Democratic cities, I realized that I was more focused on their drivel than I was on the important information that the lady from the Area Agency on Aging was trying to impart.  "Would you care if I closed the door?"  I asked, politely.

"I'll do it," she replied quickly and got up and shut out the racket.

I'm old enough to remember when people did not just routinely refer to others as being "nasty," but I realize how we have gotten to that point - and I know specifically who to blame.   The United States of America is a nastier place than it was just a few years ago, and basically one man is to blame.  His incivility and vulgarity has infected us all,  even me and two two nasty old biddies who sat in the hallway yesterday sharpening their good Christian tongues on the nastiness of Democrats.

As I was driving out of the parking lot after the meeting, a pickup truck being driven by a young man roared past with a large flag flapping in the breeze.  It was one-half of an American flag connected to one-half of a Confederate flag.   The nasty young man driving the vehicle was obviously celebrating something!

Missouri's Extreme Abortion Ban Reversed by Voters!

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

In one of only a handful of good news stories to emerge in last night's election results, Missouri voters approved a state constitutional amendment that overturned the extreme abortion ban that had been imposed on the "show-me" state by it's right-wing GOP legislature.  The measure which passed with 53% of the vote will add language to the state constitution guaranteeing "a fundamental right to reproductive freedom."   The amendment also says that any government interference in reproductive health care, including abortion and contraceptives, is invalid.  It is set to take effect in thirty days.  

Opponents of the freshly passed measure are vowing to fight it tooth-and-nail in the courts and to push an effort in the legislature to ask Missourians to vote on the amendment again.  They appear to favor the process of democracy only when it goes their way.

Pro-reproductive rights measures also passed in Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, and Montana - and failed in Florida (which required a super-majority of 60%), South Dakota, and Nebraska.

Certain Republican politicians had spoken publicly during the campaign season saying that decisions related to abortion were best left with the states.  It will be interesting to see if they maintain that air of neutrality now that the election is over.

Missouri took a gigantic step forward yesterday in re-establishing a woman's right to control her own body and health care decisions.  Now, fellow Missourians, let's fight like hell to preserve that win!

Famed West Plains Native Endorses Kamala

 

by Pa Rock

Missouri Voter

It's not all doom and gloom here in southern Missouri on Election Day.  Well yes, the weather is still gloomy and the rain continues to fall, but that actually could be good news in a county that has given Trump 80% of the vote in the last two presidential elections - because for every voter that decides not to go to the polls in this wet, nasty weather, there is an 80% chance that it is one of Trump's!  That, and the fact that there is a popular Abortion Rights amendment on the ballot, could conceivably skew the county total more to the left than it has been in the recent past.

Hope abounds.

Also today I noted on the internet that one of West Plains, Missouri's, most famous offspring, comedian and actor Dick Van Dyke, has endorsed Kamala Harris for President.  Mr. Van Dyke, who was born in West Plains on December 13, 1925,  after his poor pregnant and unmarried mother had been packed off to live with relatives during her pregnancy, left our community as an infant, something which likely impacted his political leanings.

Dick Van Dyke is currently 98-years-old - and still voting.  He, like centenarian Jimmy Carter, understands the importance of voting in the preservation of our democracy.

If you haven't already been to the polls, GO VOTE!  (And if you live in southern Missouri, take an umbrella!)

Scam-a-Lot: Elon's Lottery is a Fraud!

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

The Oxford On-Line Dictionary offers this definition of "lottery":   "A process or thing whose success or outcome is governed by chance."  

Elon Musk, the world's richest human, is currently involved in an effort to send Donald Trump back to the White House.  On October 19th Musk made an announcement at a rally in Pennsylvania which excited a bunch of people.  He told Trump rally-goers that he was going "to be awarding one million dollars randomly to people who have signed the petition - every day from now until the election."

(After carefully removing my shoes and socks so that I could get the count right, I believe that means he will probably issue his 18th and final million dollar check today to some lucky, random, petition-signer.)

The petition to which Elon Almighty referred is an innocuous document in which signers attest to their support of the First and Second Amendments to the US Constitution.  So far, so good, but:  people who sign Elon's petition must be registered to vote in one of the seven swing states (Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia) and they must provide - in addition to their names - their email addresses, cell phone numbers, and mailing addresses.

All of that private and very personal information on registered voters in swing states would be of inestimable value in a close presidential election.  But, it's Elon's money and if he chooses to rain it down on lucky random winners, then so be it.

But the state of Pennsylvania, for one, had some problems with the whole scheme.  The state reasoned that even if Elon was not outright trying to buy votes, he was at least using his money to encourage people to register in the hopes of being randomly selected to win a million dollars - and paying people to register to vote is also illegal.

Yesterday when the state of Pennsylvania finally got the matter before a judge, after a stall by Elon as he killed a couple of days by trying unsuccessfully to get the case transferred to a federal court, Elon's lawyer, Chris Gober (who was working for Musk's America PAC), disclosed that the winners had not been chosen randomly, as in a lottery drawing, but were instead pre-selected by the super PAC (America PAC) that is primarily funded by Elon Musk, and the criteria for selection was to choose winners based on who the PAC believes would be effective political spokespeople.

Again, it's Elon's money, and if he wants to give it away to complete strangers in million-dollar lumps, he certainly can, but what some are arguing he cannot do is to promote the eventual winners as being "randomly" selected when, if fact, they are not.

The state of Pennsylvania and been arguing that Musk had been operating an illegal lottery, and Musk's lawyer essentially replied, in court, that it was not a game of chance because the winners were pre-selected based on their perceived ability to be of help to the Trump campaign.  The money was more of a "salary" than it was a lottery win.

Christopher Peterson, a law professor at the University of Utah, was quoted by NBC News on this new Musk revelation as saying:

"This is absolutely, unambiguously illegal.  You cannot lawfully lie to the public about conducting a random sweepstakes, lottery, or contest and then rig the results to hand-select the winners.   It really is not complicated.   This is just fraud;  a simple, ugly fraud on the public."

Elon Musk, of course, is rich enough that no court will get very meaningfully deep into his pocket, but this scam has at least given him the street cred to prove to the national Republican Party that he is, at his core, one of them.  And from a taxpayer's perspective, it is nice to know that now some of Musk's money is actually going to be taxed by the US government!

Small mercies.

Dawn is Breaking on a Stormy Election Day

 

by Pa Rock

Persistent Voter

It began raining in southern Missouri late Sunday night and has been coming down almost nonstop ever since.  The unrelenting rain and thunder with occasional lightning is still with us as the sky slowly brighten into day - Election Day.  I voted early, a week ago yesterday, and I am glad that I did because I would not want to have to get out in all of this wet mess, drive to the polls while dodging occasional flooding along the way, and then have to weave my way through the MAGA trolls in the parking lot in order to cast my ballot.  Instead I am home, and dry, and thinking about breakfast.

Missouri does not normally allow for early voting, but this year the state legislature enabled something they call "No Excuse Absentee Voting"  which allowed voters to vote an absentee ballot in their county clerk's office a couple of weeks before the actual election.  The process is much more convenient than waiting on the single Election Day and then wading out in the rain to cast a ballot, but sadly, not everyone knew about it.

The Missouri Legislature is not big on early voting, or any other subversive plot that might weaken the white, male, Republican hold on our state government.  They (the legislative GOP majority) are even trying to pass an amendment to our state constitution this year that would make ranked-choice voting unconstitutional - and to make sure it passes they hooked it to language that also bars illegal immigrants from voting, something that illegal immigrants could not do to begin with.

But I digress.

It is bleak and stormy outside this morning and that WILL impact people's ability to get to the polls - and in this area many of those people who cannot get to the polls, or who choose to remain home and stay dry, will be Republicans.

Election Day should be a federal holiday so that more people would have the day off and be able to vote when it is convenient - or dry.  Or, the election should be spread over several days and end on Election Day.

Why shouldn't everyone have a safe and dry opportunity to vote?  It's called democracy.  What a concept!

Pa Rock has voted.  You should, too!

Is Iowa a Swinger, Too?

 

by Pa Rock

Voter

I live in a very red, rural county that gave Donald Trump right at  80% of its votes during the last two presidential elections, and my state, which is also red, gave Trump just over 56% of its votes during those same two elections.  I'm not proud of any of that, it's just the way it is.  Because my state, and especially my portion of the state, is not competitive, national candidates never bother to campaign here,  They solicit our donations but really don't give a rat's ass whether we even bother to vote or not.

Missouri will cast our ten electoral votes for the elderly, convicted felon, Donald John Trump.  Any third-grader with access to a laptop and wifi could have safely predicted that a year ago.  The deed is done, the die is cast.  Save that campaign cash for the battleground states of Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia.  They are the chosen ones who will select our President for us - just as other chosen ones like Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and a handful of others sort through all of the candidates who would like to be President and let us know which ones will actually be on the ballot.

Easy peasy.

People who live in certain states, like Missouri, can go suck eggs because we have no say in the process whatsoever.  God's favorite states and the electoral college will present us with a new President in January, and then we can all sit back and prattle on about the triumph of democracy, even if it excluded us.

With my negativism in how this "democracy" selects its President firmly entrenched, imagine my utter joy upon hearing just a couple of evenings ago that a crack has developed in the system and a rural state just to the immediate north of Missouri has a new poll result circulating which says that the Democrat, Kamala Harris, is leading in that state by three points.  The state is Iowa, and it has a long, solid history of voting for Republicans for President.  Iowa, like my own state of Missouri, is routinely taken for granted in  the general elections where Presidents are chosen, so candidates do not spend money or waste their valuable time there.

Candidates go to the seven swing states, over and over and over again, and Iowa is not on the list.

But now Iowa has a highly regarded poll from a well respected polling firm of Selzer and Company and which was conducted for the Des Moines Register and Mediacom which shows Harris in the lead by three points - in a non-swinging, supposedly red state.   WTAF!   Nate Silver, another highly respected national pollster, says that Ann Selzer, who heads Selzer and Company, "has a long history of bucking conventional wisdom and being right."

National Republicans responded by calling the poll "fake," (one of their favorite four-letter words), and Trump reacted with indignation (one of his favorite moods).

So if this new poll is for real, and I, for one, certainly hope that it is, then what gives?  Why is a reliably red state suddenly developing a noticeably blue blush?  One speculation that seems to be soaking up a lot of printer's ink is that Iowa farmers, the primary economic engine of the state, are still pissed about the Trump tariffs from his last term that crippled their sales abroad.  The other major speculation is that Iowa women are angered by the Trump Court's Dobbs' decision which overturned their right to an abortion that had been in effect for nearly half-a-century, and that they are also turned off by Trump's constant denigration of women.

If the poll is right, and if those reasonings are too, that can only be good news for the Democratic Party as those same motivators play out across other midwestern farm states - including the one I live in.

It's a damned shame that the national Democratic Party did not think enough of us to spend a few dollars out in the sticks during this election cycle.  It could have been the smartest investment they ever made.

Give 'em hell, Iowa!

Unwell Candidate Rages Over Faulty Microphone

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Donald Trump's mental acuity is no longer just slipping, it now appears to be cascading downward at a very rapid rate.  This week alone he has publicly fantasized about former congresswoman Liz Cheney in a combat situation staring down nine gun barrels as they fired at her face, opined about a potential assassin having to shoot his way through the news reporters covering his rally in order to get to him - and said, "To get to me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news and I don't mind that so much," complained loudly about his opponent appearing on "Saturday Night Live" (something he has done twice), made multiple unfounded allegations about potential election fraud, and made a verbal threat of physical harm to backstage workers at a venue in Milwaukee.

Trump made the unseemly remarks about Liz Cheney getting shot in Arizona, and that state's attorney general has said that her office is investigating whether Trump's remarks rose to the level of a death threat toward Ms Cheney or not.

Milwaukee this past Friday night seems to have been a truly critical point for Trump.  He was onstage speaking when his microphone failed.    Trump raised and lowered the microphone trying to get it working, with no success, and at one point he began bobbing his head over the mic simulating oral sex.  The microphone was apparently set lower than Trump liked, and news reports said that he spent four minutes complaining about the height of the microphone.  Then he said, "You want to see me knock the hell out of people backstage?"

Finally a technician gave him a handheld microphone, and Trump did not like that either.  He roared to the crowd:

"I'm working my ass off with this stupid mic.  I'm blowing out my left arm, now I'm going to blow out my right arm, and I'm blowing out my damn throat too, because of these stupid people!"

Much of what Donald Trump says is, of course, just noise.  Realistically a man with almost eight decades under (and hanging over) his belt is not going to "knock the hell" out of anyone, and Liz Cheney has undoubtedly faced down insects that were more of a threat to her than Trump, but still he roars, and still the press reacts as though his childish outbursts are news.

They're not.

They're just more signs of the rapid onslaught of aging.

How Are the GOP Wives Voting?

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

The Republican Party, one of the most paternalistic organizations in America, may be dealing with a gender revolt within its ranks.  

A political maelstrom began building earlier this week when a political action group calling itself "Vote Common Good" released an ad for the Harris-Walz ticket that was voiced by actress Julia Roberts.  In the ad Ms. Roberts is speaking to American women.   While discussing the sanctity of the voting booth, she says:  "In the one place in America where women still have a right to choose, you can vote any way you want, and no one will ever know."

That language takes a subtle swipe at domineering husbands, and by employing the word "choose," it is also a dig at the Trump abortion bans.  The commercial is a masterwork of political messaging, and one that has many Republican's outraged.

In the ad a woman emerges from the voting booth after casting her vote, and her husband asks her if she made the "right choice."  At that point she winks at a female friend.

Reaction to this blatant appeal to connubial treachery from Republican hacks has been swift and severe.  Jesse Watters, a Republican mouthpiece for Fox News, said that if he found out that his wife, Emma was "going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that's the same thing as having an affair!"

Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and a founder of Turning Point USA, discussed the ad with Fox News host Megyn Kelly on her radio program.  Kirk, who was clearly unhappy with the concept of the Julia Roberts ad, said:

"I think it's so gross.  I think it's so nauseating where this wife is wearing the American hat, she's coming in with her sweet husband who probably works his tail off to make sure that she can go you know and have a nice life and provide to the family, and then she lies to him saying, 'Oh yeah, I gonna vote for Trump,' and then she votes for Kamala Harris as her little secret in the voting booth."

Former GOP congresswoman Liz Cheney reacted to Charlie Kirk's tirade by referring to him as a "twit."

Donald Trump even pushed his way into the discussion over how wives vote.  In a call-in to Fox and Friends after the ad came out, Trump, who was famously photographed on Election Day of 2016 trying to observe how his wife was voting, disparaged Julia Roberts as well as the ad itself.   He said he was disappointed in Ms. Roberts and predicted that she would look back on the ad someday and "cringe."  Then the cringe-worthy, elderly politician went on to say:

"But the wives and husbands, I don't think that's the way they deal.  I mean, can you imagine a wife not telling her husband who she's voting for?  You ever hear anything like that?  Even if you have a horrible - even if you had a bad relationship, you're gonna tell your husband.   It's a ridiculous ad, it's so stupid."

The thrice-married Trump apparently considers himself an expert on interactions between husbands and wives.  And as for the "ridiculous" and "stupid" ad, it certainly seems putting the fear of the ballot into more than a few Republican blowhards!

The fundamentalist clergy also checked in on the matter.  According to a posting in "The Guardian" by Rebecca Soinit, "This week, the fundamentalist Christian pastor Dale Partridge argued in a series of tweets that 'in a Christian marriage, a wife should vote according to her husband's direction'"-  and, one must suppose, the Constitution be damned!

Just remember, ladies, that within the confines of the voting booth, you still have freedom of choice - whether your men folk like it or not!

 

Great work "Vote Common Good" and Julia Roberts - you have produced a winner!

Ending Missouri's Abortion Ban

 

by Pa Rock

Missouri Voter

For the past couple of decades the Missouri State Legislature has increasingly become a cesspool of right-wing political hackery and bigotry fueled by the religious fervor of evangelical zealots.   Sometimes the outrages of the show-me state legislators go unchecked, and at other times their legislative "accomplishments" are so harmful to the common good that the people have to step in and correct their legislators.

As an example, a few years ago the Missouri State Legislature thought it would be in the public's best interest if they passed legislation making Missouri a "Right to Work" state, an intentional misnomer which actually makes it more difficult for workers to unionize and thus helps to keep wages low.  Angry Missourians who have to work for a living took to the streets passing petitions for a state constitutional amendment to do away with the legislature's phony "right-to-work" legislation - and the amendment passed.

Now Missourians are preparing to go to the polls to correct another of our legislature's overreaches.  Several years ago the legislature passed a total abortion ban that would go into effect if and when the US Supreme Court ever overturned the Roe v Wade decision.    When the conservative cabal that controls the Supreme Court did that very thing in June of 2022, Missouri enacted its total ban on abortions within an hour of the announcement of the Dobbs' decision.  This coming Tuesday, Missouri will very likely become the first state to reverse a total abortion ban, and they will do that by a vote of the people on a proposed constitutional amendment.

I received a very simple flyer in the mail this week.   It was one sheet of plain paper, eight-and-a-half inches by eleven inches, folded in half with the message on one side and the address on the other.  The flyer contained a notation that it was paid for by a group called "Missourians for Constitutional Freedom," and it had a return address that was a P.O. Box in St. Louis.  The message was in favor of Amendment 3, the proposed constitutional amendment in Missouri that would repeal our state's abortion ban.

(I am a supporter of Amendment 3 and have a sign to that effect in my yard.)

The complete message was outlined in two columns.   One side was a listing of what voting "yes" on Amendment 3 would accomplish, and the other was a listing of what voting "no" on Amendment would accomplish.  The message in its entirety was stark, and it was effective in bringing the matter into a sharp focus.  Here is a verbatim summary:

Voting YES on Amendment 3:

• Voting YES on Amendment 3 will end the abortion ban and provide access to care for Missouri women, including survivors of rape and incest.
• Voting YES on Amendment 3 will ensure that Missourians, not politicians, are in charge of their own healthcare and decisions.
• Voting YES on Amendment 3 protects the health of women and ensures those with pregnancy complications or miscarriages get the care they need.

Voting NO on Amendment 3:

• Voting NO allows the abortion ban to remain in effect, with no exceptions for rape, incest, or when the woman's health is at risk.
• Voting NO gives the government the power to make the personal medical decisions for women and their families.
• Voting NO means doctors must wait until patients' conditions worsen before providing treatment.

Ten states have measures on the ballot next Tuesday that will establish or strengthen abortion rights and will help American women regain the right to control their own healthcare decisions.  They include:  Nebraska (which also has an "anti-abortion"measure on its state ballot), Arizona, Florida, Montana, Nevada, South Dakota, Maryland, Colorado, New York, and Missouri.

A right that was summarily taken away by the US Supreme Court is being reinstated in a piecemeal fashion, state by state, through votes of the people, but there is still a danger that a Republican dominated national government could pass legislation for a nationwide abortion ban.  Ultimately the United States will have to do what Missouri is about to do, and enshrine a woman's right to make her own healthcare decisions and control her own body in its constitution.

Healthcare is a matter of personal freedom and certainly not the business of political or religious hucksters. 

Voting ends next Tuesday.  Do your part to support democracy and protect our individual freedoms!

Whether They Like it or Not

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

The American patriarchy, channeling itself through the bulbous personage of Donald John Trump, recently set about establishing a perimeter of defense for our nation's women.  In a speech in Wisconsin on Wednesday night, Trump seemed to be talking about the threat he apparently believes that immigrants pose to American women, although with the way he rambles it is possible that he could have also been bemoaning the dangers that sharks or even celebrity cannibals might present to American womanhood.

Well, have no fear ladies, because Donald John is on the case!  At that speech in Wisconsin Trump described himself as a "protector" of women, and he said that he would protect them "whether the women like it or not."

Glory be!  Safe at last, safe at last, thank God almighty our women folk are safe at last!  And they will be personally protected by Donald John Trump, a man who has been found civilly liable for the sexual assault of a woman.  In an article published the day before yesterday in an online publication entitled "The Cut," writer Andrea Gonzalez-Ramirez lists twenty-eight women by name who have accused Trump of some form of sexual assault, and he, himself, bragged into an open microphone several years ago on the now-infamous Accesss Hollywood tape:

"I'm automatically attracted to beautiful ---, I just start kissing them.  It's like a magnet.  Just kiss.  I don't even wait.  When you're a star, they let you do it.  You can do anything.  Grab 'em by the pussy.  You can do anything."

Women do face many hardships and obstacles in their lives that do not impact most men as dramatically as they do women, and some might even be desirous of extra attention and protection from men, but clearly Donald John Trump is not the person who should provide it.  His record with women speaks for itself.

I suspect that women are already fighting hard this year to protect themselves, and they are conducting that fight with ballots.  And I further suspect that this year Donald Trump is going to find out how it feels when women finally fight back - whether he likes it or not!

The Oligarchy Comes to Prey

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

 

Donald Trump, a blowhard whose status as a billionaire is well within the margin of error and whose power rests more within the confines of his lungs than it does his cranium, nevertheless likes to think of himself as rich and powerful - and to surround himself with true billionaires who actually are rich and powerful.  Those individuals gravitate to Trump because they know that he can be easily flattered and influenced - if not purchased outright - by cash donations.

Donald isn't shy about asking his rich friends to stuff his pockets.   In April of this year he invited a large group of oil company executives to a dinner at Mar-a-Lago where he pressed them to make a billion-dollar contribution to his campaign.   The meeting was labeled "a roundtable discussion on energy security," but the message seemed clear that a quid pro quo was afoot and that if the oil companies would take care of Trump, he, in turn, would take care of them.  News reports indicate that Trump specifically promised the group that he would slash Biden's tax credits for electric vehicles and he committed to spending less government money on developing wind power.   Some oil company "wants" were discussed as well including their desire for the government to end the pause on new natural gas export permits, and expanding the number of off-shore drilling lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Supreme Court says that money is speech, but it is also obviously influence.

This past week there have been a couple of US-based billionaires in the news as they genuflected and sucked up to Trump.   Each, by virtue of their business interests, could benefit financially by cultivating ties to the Republican presidential nominee.

First, obviously, is Elon Musk, the world's richest person.  Musk, who owns SpaceX, a company which has put most of the planet's communications' satellites into space, and which occasionally provides a taxi service to-and-from the International Space Station, now seems to be running Trump's political ground game in Pennsylvania and has been attending and speaking at Trump rallies.  Musk, who one commentator referred to as "an out-of-control pogo stick" because of his tendency to jump up-and-down on stage at the Trump rallies, has also begun sponsoring a lottery that gives one million dollars a day to a swing state resident who is registered to vote and who signs a generic petition saying that he or she favors the First and Second Amendments to the US Constitution.  The legitimacy of that lottery is being decided in court today.

Musk also owns the media platform, "X" (formerly Twitter), which of late has become little more than a right-wing echo chamber for the Trump campaign.

But clearly Musk is sharing his wealth in an effort to strengthen the election chances of Donald Trump, and clearly Musk, a businessman, sees that effort as something that will bear fruit at some point.   Elon Musk has many contractural ties with the US government.

Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of Amazon.com, Prime streaming services, Blue Origins (a space flight company), and The Washington Post newspaper, was also in the news this week.  Bezos, the world's second richest human, has many lucrative government contracts of his own and benefits directly from his dealings with the US Postal Service and the nation's space program.  This week when his newspaper, The Washington Post, the nation's premier political newspaper and one that is based in the capital city of the United States, was preparing to endorse Vice President Harris for President, Bezos personally stepped in and announced that the paper would no longer be endorsing presidential candidates.   Bezos, the businessman, could not afford to run the risk of offending Donald Trump, a man who could potentially become President again and could then negatively impact Bezos's business interests.

Influence.  It's as good as cash in the pocket.

Bezos, unlike Musk, did take a financial hit over his editorial interference in his own newsroom. Several Post employees spoke out against their boss, and a couple resigned, and at one point yesterday it was reported that 250,000 individuals had cancelled their subscriptions to The Washington Post.  (Looks like our Prime rates may be about to go up!)

Vlad Putin has his own cadre of filthy rich oligarchs, and he plays them to his advantage, and while Donald Trump is clearly not the sharpest crayon in the box, he does pay attention to how the men (it's always men) he perceives as strong leaders do things.  Trump knows that political power has a value, and people who want to avail themselves of his power will pay for the privilege.

The oligarchs prey on the government and its treasury through useful idiot politicians, and then, sooner or later, the rest of us pay the bills.