Washington Bullets

by Pa Rock
Reader

My little rural nirvana sits near the end of a mail route which means that I often don't get the mail until late in the afternoon.  A couple of times this winter, especially when the regular driver was off and a sub had the route, it had been after dark before the day's mail arrived.  And Saturdays, for some reason are the worst.  I have often joked that if the Saturday mail arrived much later my end of the route would be experiencing a government first - Sunday mail deliveries!

So imagine my surprise a couple of Sundays ago when I was sitting in front of the living room window typing - around lunchtime - when I looked up and noticed my regular mail lady pulling up to my rural mail box, lights-a-flashing, and watched in amazement as she put mail in the box!  I hustled out to the mailbox and found a single package, a book from Amazon addressed to me, a book that I had not ordered and that arrived without the name of the purchaser.

But hey, I like books.

(My son, who can be a bit of a conspiracy theorist, later informed he that he heard Amazon has a special arrangement with the postal service that includes Sunday deliveries.  Jeff Bezos has more money than the government, so I guess that is possible!)

The book was titled:  "Washington Bullets:  A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations,"   The author was Vijay Prashad who is described on the book's cover and on his Wikipedia page as "an Indian historian, journalist, commentator, and a Marxist intellectual.  He is an executive-director of Tricontinental:  Institute for Social Research and the Chief Editor of Leftward Books."  Leftward Books had published the book that I had just received in the mail.

"Washington Bullets," is relatively short, 160 pages, and a fairly easy, though uncomfortable, read.   The material presented by the author is basically a history on the origins and impacts of American foreign policy from World War II to the present, and it is presented from the perspective of the peoples whose lives and movements were subjugated by those policies.

It is an alternative history, or a account of history which includes events or perspectives not usually presented in standard history texts or courses.  Reading "Washington Bullets" brought to mind the historical interpretations presented in Dee Brown's classic on America's wars against our native peoples, "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee," and Howard Zinn's monumental "A People's History of the United States, 1492-Present."

Mr. Prashad sees American foreign policy as being set up to benefit capitalism and the country's corporate interests, with the history of the country being focused on controlling other nations as a way of securing natural resources for the manufacture of goods and markets for the sale of goods.   He cites the Monroe Doctrine as a uniquely American justification for control of the Western Hemisphere from the early 19th century onward, and the containment of communism, war on drugs, and war on terrorism as more recent justifications for our continuing exercise of military muscle on the world stage.

Prashad points out that in world geo-political affairs, it is always the colonizers, or nations attempting to control situations and peoples beyond their borders, who are seen as the civilizing forces, and indigenous or subjugated people who are labeled terrorists. He cites a litany of examples of our government (as well as other world governments) continually rushing into prop up dictators and undemocratic regimes at the expense of the local people whose sweat and labors create the wealth that others seek to exploit.  

The author stakes out a trail of human exploitation and suffering that stretches across Central America and Africa, through the Middle East, across Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and into Southeast Asia, a trail of greed and rancor in which America's corporate needs continually took precedence over the needs of the native populations.

Like I said, "Washington Bullets" is an uncomfortable read - but it also clearly depicts a very real part of America's complicated history.

(The sender turned out to be an open-minded young in-law who felt that the book would be something that I would enjoy - and I did.  Thanks, Jason!)

The Royce Agency

by Pa Rock
Reader 

I have just finished reading a well-written novel by a young man in Oregon - a thirteen-year-old first-time author by the name of Sebastian Files. 

Mr. Files' book, The Royce Agency, focuses on a millionaire entrepreneur named Charles Royce.   He owns and operates the "Phoenix Dealership," a business that he started and built into a success by himself. The Phoenix Dealership is not like a normal car agency whose purpose is just to sell cars.   Instead it designs new cars, manufactures and tests them, and sells the new cars to the public.  The Phoenix Dealership performs the repairs on the cars that it sells.  Charles manages the company himself, and he also designs and test drives many of the cars.

Charles lives in a nice home in a good part of town along with his pretty wife, Alice.  They lead a fairly uneventful life until one day when Charles begins encountering strangers who seem to be following or watching him - and he starts to hear news reports indicating that criminals may be in the area.  At about that time Charles meets one of the strangers, a man named Grindle Wrangler, who informs Charles that he is about to come into a strange inheritance.

Grindle tells Charles that the time has come for him to take the reins of another family business - the Royce Agency - a large, secretive crime-fighting organization that had been founded by Charles' forebears several generations earlier.  Charles had never even heard of the Royce Agency, and now he was expected to take charge and direct the agency in its crime-fighting mission.

Charles Royce's life was getting complicated!

One of my favorite scenes in this book is when Charles and Grindle chase a bad guy into the city's sewer system.  They encounter several surprises as they races through the underground tunnels and finally lunge through a door that leads to a harrowing . . . well, let's just say that the sewer adventure has a surprising conclusion!  During the chase through the sewer, I was reminded of my favorite fictional detectives - Fenton Hardy's son's, Frank and Joe.  Those Hardy boys got in all kinds of scrapes and wound up in some really strange places - though never a sewer system that I can remember.  That was a very original setting.

Young Mr. Files did a nice job with his book.  It included 125 pages of story text divided into eight chapters, along with various acknowledgments, notes, and even a section of tips on writing.  It is available from Amazon.com both as a Kindle edition and in paperback.  And - there are reports that he plans to extend this initial volume into a series!

Watch out, Frank and Joe, Sebastian Files is fixing to crowd you off of the library bookshelves!

(Nice work, Sebastian.  Your grandfather is impressed and proud of you!)

Another Day, Another GOP Attempt to Steal the Election

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

GOP politicians are undoubtedly crying bitter tears over the unfairness of it all.  Donald Trump and his handmaid, Mitch McConnell, spent four full years of the Trump Presidency (when he wasn't playing golf) packing the federal courts with conservative judges, and now when Dear Leader needs a few friendly rulings, suddenly his judges are turning their backs, en masse, on their political benefactor.

Oh for the good old days when a politician who was bought stayed bought!

In the almost six weeks between Election Day on November 3rd and when the Electoral College met to confirm a winner on December 14th, Donald Trump dispatched his oddball group of lawyers into Court a total of sixty times in an effort to overturn Biden's victory in several key states.  Judges either ruled against Trump (or threw the cases out of court outright) in fifty-nine of those sixty lawsuits.  (On one occasion a court in Pennsylvania ruled in favor of Trump, saying that poll watchers would be allowed closer to poll workers as votes were being counted - but the Pennsylvania Supreme Court eventually overturned that very minor victory!). The Trump legal train had no evidence of vote tampering or election fraud - just a lot of noisy individuals who could not believe that someone as glorious as their Dear Leader had lost both the popular and electoral vote.

 

But Donald Trump would not give up, and neither would his diehard supporters.  Yesterday another lawsuit was announced.  This suit was filed by Rep. Louis Gohmert, a Texas Republican who is often reviled on social media as being the "dumbest" member of Congress,  and by Arizona nutmeg and GOP Party Chrir, Kelli Ward, as well as several other lesser known Republican rebel-rousers.

An 1887 law known as the "Electoral Count Act" governs how the Congress officially arrives at a presidential winner, an activity which will occur on January 6th and represents the very last bit of the election process.  The Vice President usually presides over that count in a ceremonial role.  The lawsuit filed by Gohmert, Ward, and others asks a federal judge in Texas to strike down the "Election Count Act" as unconstitutional and allow the Vice President to overturn Trump's defeat in several key states - an act which would also directly benefit the Vice President!

For his part, Donald Trump retweeted a supporter who had urged Pence to refuse to certify Biden's win when Congress meets and does its count on January 6th.  Apparently Trump has been heard grumbling that Pence hasn't done enough to help secure a Trump victory.

Some say it's sedition while others chuckle that it's just Gohmert being Gohmert, but it is yet again one more attempt by members of the Republican Party to subvert democracy and keep their unique brand burned upon the nation's soul.  The US District Judge in Texas who will hear the case is a Trump appointee, and election law experts expect that he will rule that the litigants lack a legal right to sue.

All of those damned judges and only one very small victory - a victory which was soon overturned.  It just is not fair!

Meanwhile Trump golfs, Pence skis, Americans suffer, and Biden and Harris are both hard at work trying to restore our faith in government!

Of Human Bridges

by Pa Rock
Man in the Middle                

(Note:  I have Christmas shopping for my younger grandkids down to an art form:  they tell me exactly what they want, often through a web link, and I make the purchase and have it sent directly to their homes.  Easy, peasy.  Ho, ho, ho!     This year I decided to mix things up a bit, and in addition to the requested gifts, I also sent an "in-home drone" - one of those small flying saucers that have been advertised all over the internet as of late - to my daughter and son who still have young children at home - as well as one to each of my four nieces and nephews and their families.)

Molly replied a few days ago with an email video of her three youngsters squealing and chasing their flying saucer around the living room.  I replied that it looked like "too much fun," which probably is an impossibility, but it clearly was an ample amount of fun - apparently for the whole family!

Then this morning the first message that I pulled up on email was a note from Tim with a photo of his four-year-old, Sully, staring utter amazement at the flying saucer hovering over his dining room table!

That set me to waxing philosophical.  

I thought about my grandfather, Dan Sreaves, a man whom I knew well and admired a great deal.  Granddad was born in northwest Arkansas in 1888 and migrated to Missouri as a twelve-year-old with his parents and younger siblings at the turn of the 20th century.  They made that arduous trip with all of their worldly possessions packed into two horse-drawn wagons.   

Granddad had been born at a time when homes did not have electricity or running water, and well before the advent of cars, airplanes, radio, and television.  He lived to be eighty-two-years-old, and never moved more than a few miles from where his parents had settled at the beginning of the century.   Before my granddad died he had owned and operated several vehicles, had a color television set, and had flown to California on a jet airplane where he waded in the Pacific Ocean and even vitiated Disneyland!

Now here was my youngest grandson, Dan Sreaves g-g-grandson, watching a flying saucer buzz around the inside of his house.    That is Sully's life today, and today is just the barest of hints as to what tomorrow may bring.  With a little luck and healthy living, Sully will be around to peer into the next century - and who can imagine the things he will see and experience during the time it takes to get there!

My grandfather rode into Missouri on a horse-drawn wagon, and my grandson may fly out of Kansas on a personal drone - and I will have been the bridge between those two travelers, the person who enjoyed the unique privilege of knowing them both.

And that's what life is - a privilege!

United States Has More Guns than People

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

This holiday season I received one of "those" cards.  It was a family photo of a woman whom I used to know well along with her husband and two teenage daughters.  Every member of the family had a rifle cradled in their arms - signifying, I suppose, happy birthday to the King of Peace.

I read an article recently which stated that the United States has more guns than people.  Even though I don't own a gun and I know others who also eschew personal weaponry as well, I do know a few people whose love of guns borders on psychotic and who undoubtedly have weapons buried in caches around their property for that dreaded day when their own government comes rolling in and tries to strip them of their firepower.

So I decided to do a little research.

The Small Arms Survey is an independent research project from the Graduate Institute of International and Developmental Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, which has been conducting research into the world's weaponry for more than twenty years.   Their work focuses on "small arms" which they describe as:  revolvers or self-loading pistols, rifles and carbines, assault rifles, sub-machine guns, and light machine guns.

According to the group's report for 2017, the United States was the world's leader in civilian-owned small arms, a finding that would probably surprise no one.   However, what was surprising, at least to me, was the amount of firearms in civilian control in the US.  During that year's survey it was estimated that there were 393,347,000 small arms owned by civilians in the United States, at a time when the entire county's population was 326,474,000, or, as the researchers chose to  quantify it:  the United States had 120.5 guns for every 100 people living in the country.  The United States had more guns than people - and that was even counting small children and infants!

I guess that makes us pretty damned safe, you betcha!

At that time, when the citizens had just under 400 million guns, our military had 4,535,380 and our nation's police had 1,016,000.    The country's citizens had almost 400 times the individual firepower of the nation's police.   Maybe that reality plays into the police tendency to fire first and properly assess the situation later.

Two other nations were above the 50% level (barely) for gun ownership, the Falkland Islands and Yemen, and a few were between 30% and 40%, but the vast majority were far lower than that.  In Israel, as an example, there was an average of six civilian guns per one hundred individuals.

The United States stands alone as the most paranoid nation on earth, the only one where guns outnumber people, and  the one where the Christian religion manages to conflate itself with firepower.

Happy birthday, Jesus.  We weren't able to do much about hunger and poverty this year, but we did manage to outfit the entire family in new body armor!  

Praise be!

Very Good Expectations

by Pa Rock
Reader 

Charles Dickens populated the world's literary landscape with a whole host of unforgettable characters.  His Ebenezer Scrooge was the epitome of soulless individuals who hoarded their wealth at  the ultimate expense of the suffering masses (think Mitch McConnell with a  well worn topcoat and stovepipe hat), and on the other end of the social spectrum, the young orphan Oliver Twist gave readers a view into what life on the streets really resembled.  Dickens created characters whose very names became synonymous with their faults.  We all, for instance, instinctively understand what it means to be labeled a 'scrooge."

One of my favorite Dickens' characters is Miss Havisham from Great Expectations, the eccentric recluse living in her delapidated mansion, Satis House, where she has remained in seclusion since her fiancé hoofed it on their wedding day many years before.  The old woman was still wearing her wedding gown, the wedding cake was still one the serving table where it has been rotting away for decades, and all of the clocks were stopped at what would have been the hour of her wedding.  Miss Havisham was perhaps as unforgettable as any character ever given breath and dialogue by the pen of Charles Dickens - even Ebenezer Scrooge.

I first became acquainted with Miss Havisham and her ward, Estella, and Pip, the boy from the forge, through a literature textbook in high school that contained a chunk of Great Expectations.   It was years later (2012) when I finally went back and read the novel in its entirety, an endeavor that showed me just how much I had missed out on with the high school abbreviated version.  (With that in mind, I probably should also tackle Silas Marner, another literary exposure that I had in high school.)

(I know that I read Great Expectations in the fall of 2012, because I had it with me at the Toronto Film Festival one morning when I was out scouting around for a quick breakfast and a convenience store clerk who was operating the deli almost came across the counter when she noticed that I was holding a copy of the Dickens' classic.  "Oh my God,"  she declared.  "You're reading Dickens!  I love Great Expectations!")

Literature pumps the lifeblood through the brotherhood of man.

This week I watched the three-episode Great Expectations that was produced by the BBC in 2011.  The BBC  was not able to cram the entire novel into three hours while doing justice to  the Kentish moors and Dickens' London, but it caught most of the feel of the story nonetheless.  The story line, particularly in the second and third episodes was hammered about some, and the character of Biddie was dropped entirely, but it still managed to tell the basic story with much the same feel as had originally been imparted by the great Charles Dickens himself.

And Miss Havisham, portrayed by the amazing Gillian Anderson, remains unforgettable!

Overall I would rate the entire experience not as "great," but certainly as "very good" expectations.   The three-episode series is streaming now on Britbox, and it is well worth a watch.  Of course, if you have the time and the opportunity, the book will be even more satisfying.

Lincoln in the Bardo, A Review

by Pa Rock
Reader

(In Tibetan Buddhism, the Bardo is a state of existence between death and rebirth varying in length according to a person's conduct in life and manner of, or age at, death.)

William Wallace "Willie" Lincoln was eleven-years-old when he passed away in the White House after suffering a protracted bout of typhoid fever.  His younger brother, Tad, also had the fever but survived.  Willie's funeral was at the White House and he was then temporarily interred  in the Carroll family vault at Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown.  The Lincoln family anticipated  eventually interring Willie at a cemetery in Springfield, Illinois.  When Abe Lincoln was murdered three years later, Willie's casket accompanied that of his father on the train to their final resting place in Illinois.

Willie Lincoln reportedly had an exuberant personality and appeared to be the favored child of both parents.  His death seems to have hastened Mary Lincoln's slide into mental distress, and it had a pronounced emotional impact on his father.

In his novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders presents a fictionalized account of how Willie Lincoln's death might possibly have influenced the course of social advancement in the United States.

The "bardo" envisioned by George Saunders was the Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown where Willie was laid to rest.   By day it was just an ordinary cemetery whose oldest burial dated back to the Revolutionary War, but by night it was a spirit-infested gathering place for many of the tormented souls whose bodies were interred there.  The spirits would rise from their graves at dusk and spend the nighttime visiting among themselves and re-living their past lives, often giving the same speeches night after night.  When daylight approached they went back underground and rested in their "sick boxes" with eyes closed so that they did not see the putrid remains that stayed within the boxes

The residents of the cemetery or bardo did not realize they were dead.   Many knew that they had been brought to this place while convalescing in their "sick boxes" by multitudes of relatives and friends.  The boxes had been buried, with the patients inside, and the arrivals waited patiently for their loved ones to return or for their circumstances to change.   There was something beyond, and occasionally people would explode in a burst of light and noise and move to the next destination, but most were afraid of that transition and struggled to remain where they were.  Infants and young children usually left immediately, but older individuals would either grow tired and disillusioned and give up, or they would be talked into leaving by visiting apparitions - or they reluctantly stayed put.

Things began to change when young Willie Lincoln arrived at the cemetery.   Willie's spirit was sitting atop the Carroll family vault the night after his funeral, and the adult spirits were assuming that he would soon be taking flight to the next place, but then something odd happened.  Willie's father showed up at the cemetery riding a horse so short that the rider's feet almost touched the ground.  The father entered the vault, pulled his son's casket out from where it was shelved, opened it and began to mourn his lost son.

The visit was highly unusual and it caught the attention of all of the spirits.  When the President left later that night he said aloud that he would return.  Many of the residents thought that might bring about some changes in their circumstances.

As the tale plays out, Willie and his father have an impact on one another as well as on the spirits of the bardo, and some of those spirits manage to impart their thoughts into the mind of Abraham Lincoln.

The author, George Saunders, has penned a very unique book that draws upon multiple styles of writing.   One reviewer went so far as to state that the author may have engineered a whole new writing genre with this effort.  

Saunder's "bardo," while closely following the Tibetan model, is also somewhat reminiscent of the Grover's Corners Cemetery residents of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," although those envisioned by Saunders sometimes have grotesque appearances that do not resemble their earthly bodies.  The historical depictions, such as one set describing a White House holiday party, are pieced-together snippets from various diaries, historical journals, books, etc, in much the same manner as  those made famous by Ken Burns.  The fictional residents of the bardo also speak in snippets that gradually reveal their past lives and concerns.   

The writing can seem fragmented, but sticking with the award-winning choppy tale results is a most satisfying reading experience.  

I recommend Lincoln in the Bardo without reservation!

Pardon-Palooza

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

According to updated information at the US Department of Justice website, Donald Trump has granted "presidential pardons" to seventy individuals, with forty-one of those being announced within the last forty-eight hours - and so far he hasn't even gotten to his relatives!

Trump began his personal war on American justice back during his first year in office when he pardoned Arizona conman and former sheriff of Maricopa County (Phoenix), Joe Arpaio.    Old Joe had been convicted on a federal charge of contempt of court and was awaiting sentencing.  The good people of Arizona then had their say three years later when the state wound up supporting Trump's opponent, Joe Biden, in the presidential contest.

Arpaio was the only Trump pardon in 2017.

Trump stepped up his pardon game in 2018 and wiped the slates clear for six individuals.  The most notorious included Scooter Libby, a former aid to Dick Cheney who had been convicted in federal court of  two counts of perjury and a couple of related law violations - and Dinesh D'Souza, a GOP operative and conspiracy theorist  who had been convicted of campaign contribution fraud.  He also pardoned and freed an Oregon father and son, the Hammonds, who had set fire to federal land in a states' rights protest and who were associated with freeloading "rancher" and anti-government activist Ammon Bundy.

Eleven individuals received presidential pardons in 2019 including First Lieutenant Michael Behenna who had been convicted of murdering an Iraqi prisoner.  Some other crimes that received pardons were participation in illegal gambling operations and plotting to steal guns from interstate shipments.

And then came 2020!

Before the election in November Trump pardoned a total of ten individuals including historical figure Susan B. Anthony for illegally voting - despite objections to the pardon from Anthony's current-day followers who contend that she did nothing which would warrant a pardon.   During the early part of 2020 Trump also pardoned a pair of tax-fraudsters, financier Michael Milken and former NYC Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, who were both personally known to him.

But it was after the November elections when Trump's zeal for protecting his friends became crystal clear. On November 25th he pardoned his first National Security adviser, Michael Flynn, for making false statements to federal investigators - crimes that Flynn had admitted to twice in court.  Not long after that Flynn attended a  evening meeting in the Oval Office where the primary topic of discussion was reportedly how to overturn the results of the recent US presidential election - the one Trump lost.

Trump granted pardons to two former GOP congressmen, Chris Collins for conspiracy to commit securities fraud and making false statements, and Duncan Hunter - and his wife, Margaret Hunter - for conspiracy.   He also pardoned George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign who had been convicted for making false statements.

Four individuals who received Trump pardons this week were mercenaries working from the Blackwater Group that is headed by prominent Trump campaign contributor, Erik Prince, for their part in a deadly incident in Afghanistan in which a number of Afghan civilians were wounded and killed.  Those pardons, in particular, seem to not be sitting well with some current and former members of the US military.

And then last night in the most recent round of pardons, Trump threw one to Charles Kushner, Jared's father, who already served two year in the penitentiary for convicution on sixteen counts of fraud and making false statements, a case which had been prosecuted by former federal prosecutor, Chris Christie.  Christie, a friend of Trump's, described the Kushner crimes as being "loathesome."    Apparently when Charles Kushner realized that his brother-in-law would testify against him in court, he hired a prostitute to seduce him and then tried to bribe his brother-in-law with video tapes that he had made of the seduction - and then wound up sending those tapes to the guy's wife - Kushner's sister.  Trump said that Mr. Kushner has been involved in philanthropic work since his release from prison in 2006 which "overshadows" his past criminal activity.

Maybe Charlie ran a children's cancer charity - like the Trump's!

Yesterday Trump also pardoned his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who had been convicted of tax fraud and related financial crimes, and Trump campaign operative, Roger Stone, who had been found guilty of obstructing justice and witness tampering.  Trump had previously commuted Stone's sentence.

Anyway, that's where the pardon's stand as of this morning.  Trump is in Florida today, along with his expensive, publicly-funded entourage (security detail), most likely playing golf.  Perhaps he will post another list tonight.  His time as the pardon-master grows shorter by the day!

Nebraska Republican Senator Ben Sasse described Trump's pardon-palooza as "rotten to the core," and, as I noted, he hasn't even gotten to his kids yet - or himself!  It can only get worse from here!

If federal investigators and prosecutors want to revisit some of  the outrages that led to these convictions - especially now that many of the principals have been pardoned and no longer require Fifth Amendment protections - I hope that the Biden administration gives them full-rein to dig far and wide!

Donald Trump may wind up making far more history than he intended - and that could not happen to a more deserving person!

Trump Tries to Do Santa Claus

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist 

If I were House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which Praise Allah I am not, I would be chortling into my Metamucil this morning while envisioning the panic that GOP members of the leadership in the House and Senate must be enduring as they try to figure out how to deal with Donald Trump's latest wild shot of self-serving bravado.

Pelosi and her lot, those godless tax-and-spend Democrats, had been struggling for months, literally, to create a second stimulus bill, one somewhere north of three trillion dollars that would be more focused on meeting the needs of actual people than the first bill, a hog wallow for corporations and rich Americans, had been.

The Senate's leader, the ever-sensible Mitch McConnell, saw the focus of a second stimulus bill as needing to set up protections (legal immunity) for businesses whose employees contracted COVID as a result of their work conditions.  (Such as the thousands of Tyson's and other meat-packing employees who came down with the disease in their damp and crowded workplaces.)  And Mitch, who has long believed that wealth trickles from the top down - instead of from the bottom - the wage earners - upward, really had no interest in handing out what Rand Paul has termed "free money" to the unwashed masses.

So Pelosi did most of her months of negotiating with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, a direct representative of Donald Trump, the third party who would have to eventually agree to a proposed stimulus package.  Nancy wasn't unreasonable and it soon became known that she could dip down into the two trillion dollar level.

Still nothing happened.  Pelosi and Mnuchin could chatter till the cows came home, but no deal would be reached until Mitch McConnell came on board.   Mitch had a death grip on the actual process and everyone knew it.  He simply was not motivated to negotiate with anyone.  Screw the deal.

But then something unexpected happened on Election Day.  Yes, Donald Trump lost, but that wasn't really a surprise to most of the Washington insiders, even McConnell.  But what was surprising to many was that the Democrats lost seats in the House and only had a net gain on one in the Senate.  They failed to retake the Senate!  Mitch McConnell could keep his death grip on the nation two more years and really mess with the incoming Biden administration in important ways.

Probably.

Biden's win meant that Kamala Harris, a Democrat, would now cast the deciding vote in the Senate in the event of a tie.  That meant that to regain the majority, the Democrats, now with forty-eight incoming members, needed only two more Senate seats to be the effective majority - and thus bump Mitch back to a smaller office.  And lo-and-behold, neither GOP incumbent senator in Georgia managed to win an outright majority on Election Day in November, and when that happens in Georgia the top two candidates in each election must run in a run-off election.

The Georgia runoffs will be January 5th, and Democrats have a shot at winning both seats.  (Biden, after all had won Georgin in the presidential election, so two more Democratic wins are conceivable.)   Mitch McConnell has a lot riding on the January 5th runoffs in Georgia, including his iron-fisted control of the Senate.

But those dirty Democratic senate candidates in Georgia began reminding Georgians that they could have another stimulus check to spend on Christmas - and basic survival - if it wasn't for Moscow Mitch and his stingy GOP senators - like the two currently representing Georgia.   So Mitch got the stimulus religion quickly and began personally  trying to get a new bill passed.  On the one hand he wanted to appear concerned with the needs of real people - an historic first for McConnell - and on the other hand he wanted to insure that a government "handout" to the masses was not overly generous.

An odd assortment of individuals began clamoring for checks to individuals of at least the same level as last spring's - $1,200 for each adult making less than $75,000 per year - and $150,000 for married couples.  Socialist-leaning Bernie Sanders of Vermont supported relief at that level, as did Missouri's adolescent GOP Senator Josh Hawley - and Hawley even famously telephoned Donald Trump and advocated for $1,200 individual payments.

The wily old McConnell, while deftly accusing Democrats of stalling the process for months (a bald-faced lie), managed to get the overall total of the bill down below one trillion dollars (900 billion), with $600 payments to individuals.  Pelosi, who probably hasn't been in an actual grocery store since the 1950's, thought that was sufficient for most people, and agreed to the slimmed-down compromise.  The bill, which was included with a nine-month appropriations bill to keep government running, had a host of "extras" tucked into it, and the resulting legislation was over 5,000 pages long - and had to be passed right then in order to get it to Trump in time for his signature.

Members could study the fine print later to learn what they had really passed.

So last night the massive spending bill landed on Trump's desk with a big old thud - and Trump - who seldom reads anything - balked at affixing his signature!  The political huckster who is struggling to remain relevant in his waning days as President, instead went on social media to criticize the legislation.  There were things included in the appropriations bill that he did not like, such as money for national museums as well as for the Kennedy Center, and he railed that more money needed to be sent directly to ordinary Americans.  Trump said he believed that people should be given two thousand dollars each, and four thousand for married couples!

Pelosi, if she is as smart and assertive as her publicists would have us believe, needs to jump on that - this morning - and get the new stimulus levels amended to the original bill - and then send it on over to the Senate for Mitch to enjoy.

Well, McConnell probably won't enjoy it, but a lot of us damn sure would!

If Trump gets the bigger stimulus checks, he wins a tussle with Congress and comes off  as Santa Claus to a grateful nation - and if he doesn't get them he still wins by having sided with the needs of real Americans - for a change.

And the Trump 2024 campaign will have something positive to use for campaign ads.  Perhaps that was what the phone call from Senator Hawley had really been about.

But through it all, the checks still are not in the mail!

Merry Christmas, ya'll!

Writer's Almanac: A Source for Great Reads

by Pa Rock
Reader

I maintain a pile of books on an end table next to my bed that I am constantly working through.  The current novel that I am reading is by a professor of writing named George Saunders.  It is entitled "Lincoln in the Bardo," and gives a fictional account of Abraham Lincoln's visits to a spirit-infested cemetery in Washington, DC, during the evenings following the death and subsequent entombment and later burial of his 10-year-old son, Willie, who passed away during the Christmas holidays of 1862.  There is a lot to ponder in Mr. Saunder's book, and it is like nothing I have ever read before.  I will be giving a fuller account of the work in this space when I complete reading it.

What I would like to discuss today is how I learned about this unique novel in the first place.  It was not on a notice from Amazon.com suggesting titles that their algorithm thought I might like, or any other similar publication from other sources.  I found a couple of references to the author and this particular work on a free website that I subscribe to called  "The Writer's Almanac" which is the creation of Garrison Keillor, late of Lake Woebegon, Minnesota.  

Keillor and his elves who stuck with him after he retired from "A Prairie Home Companion," a very long-running radio show that was another of his creations, put together this project to provide a daily literary stimulus for his many diehard fans.    Each day "The Writer's Almanac" discusses writers, poets, and other persons of note who have special connections to that particular date in history - a birthday, the anniversary of a notable work, or perhaps the day on which a person of interest passed away.

Over the years I have found several poems through "The Writer's Almanac" that I went on to feature in this blog on "Poetry Mondays," and I have also come across some excellent novels - like "Lincoln in the Bardo."   Some other exceptionally fine novels that came to my attention through the on-line "Writer's Almanac" include "An Arsonist's Guide to Writer's Homes in New England" by Brock Clark, "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" by Mark Haddon, and "The Sheltering Sky" by Paul Bowles.  I have previously written about each of those in this space.

(I have Ernest Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast" in my read pile as well.   It is also a work that discovered through "The Writer's Almanac.")

Regardless of one's literary tastes and persuasions, "The Writer's Almanac" is a great place to unearth some of the gems that might have previously escaped your attention.  And the knowledge (or even just trivia) that one acquires through those encounters can be quite amazing.  For instance, did you know that Christopher Isherwood took the surname for his most famous fictional character, Fraulein Sally Bowles, from his good friend and author Paul Bowles?  Well, now you do.

Literature by itself is not a complete education, but it does form the backbone of a good education.  I learn something from everything I read, whether it is historical fact or pure fiction, and "The Writer's Almanac" gives me a greater sense of direction in choosing what I read - which is important especially now that my time for reading grows ever more brief.

"The Writer's Almanac" is free and published seven days a week, but Keillor does use it to promote his merchandise.   I avail myself of his literary expertise, which is extensive, but let him keep his coffee mugs!

Queen's Gambit Is a Netflix Winner!

by Pa Rock
Television Junkie 

I can play chess, barely.  I understand the basics of how the pieces are arranged and how each is able to move, but the more sophisticated moves, such as "castling," are beyond my ken.  If I sit down and engage in a game of chess with someone, I invariably lose - and usually lose fairly quickly!

(My games' strength lies in dominoes and pinochle, games in which luck plays more of a determining factor.)

A few weeks ago I noticed that a new "limited" series called "Queen's Gambit" was trending on Netflix.  After learning that it was a fictional piece about a young woman's meteoric rise in the world of competitive chess, I decided that it would not be something in which I would have much interest.  But my son and his wife told me that they were watching the program and enjoying it.  (That would be the same son who has been beating me at chess since his age was measured in single digits!). So I still figured it was a show that would probably bore me.

Then I saw a tweet from screen legend Mia Farrow in which she offered high praise for the series - and I decided that perhaps I might also find something to like about a seven-episode endeavor focusing on international competitive chess in the 1960's.  At the very least there would probably be some great classic cars from that period driving back-and-forth across the storyline.

"Queen's Gambit" is a story about chess, but it is also a story about damaged people learning to cope, life in an orphanage, and struggling with addictions.  The central character is Beth Harmon, a girl who, at the tender age of nine, is a passenger in a car with her mother when the mother takes a notion to commit vehicular suicide.  She had been unable to find anyone to care for Beth and apparently intended to kill her daughter as well as herself.

But Beth survives and is sent to live in an orphanage, a place where each of the young residents is routinely given a daily tranquilizer in addition to any prescribed medications.  One day Beth wanders down a stairwell and finds herself in the janitor's workroom.  There she secretly watches the orphanage's custodian playing a game of chess with himself.  She makes a couple of these secret visits before approaching the old man and asking him to teach her the game.  He replies that chess is not a game for girls, but then she shows him all that she has learned from watching for a couple of afternoons - such as how the pieces move - and he relents and begins teaching her to play.

Fast forward and Beth is adopted by a childless husband and wife in Louisville, Kentucky.   The husband soon walks out on his wife and new daughter.   Beth borrows five dollars from her old friend, the custodian, so she can enter a local chess competition, and she soon finds herself as the new Kentucky state champion.   Her adoptive mother encourages Beth to enter more competitions because is represents an income stream - and it gives the mother an opportunity to travel as she chaperones Beth to the competitions.

And the process rolls on until Beth eventually finds herself in Moscow playing for the world championship.

The cast of this Netflix original limited series contained several dozen individuals, none of whom were familiar names.  The lead, Beth Harmon, was played by a twenty-four-year-old British-Argentine actress named Anya Taylor-Joy who seemed to slide seamlessly into the role of a sexually alluring chess wonk.  While Ms. Taylor-Joy has several previous credits on her acting resume, I suspect that the portrayal of Beth Harmon will ultimately be seen as her breakthrough role.

Anya Taylor-Joy was somewhat reminiscent of the amazing young actress who played the lead in "Rosemary's Baby" all those many years ago.

And yes, the cars were there also, including one highly polished, maroon, mid-sixties Chevy Corvair that triggered a flood of good memories!

Michael Flynn Slithers Back into the Oval Office

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Of all of the disgusting and reprehensible characters spawned by  the Trump administration,  Michael Flynn is perhaps the most disgusting and reprehensible of all.

Flynn, who spent thirty-three years (1981-2014) in the US Army, primarily in the field of intelligence, hit the summit of his career in 2012 when he was appointed to head the US. Defense Intelligence Agency.  During the two years that he served in that role, he became known within the Obama administration for his opposition to Team Obama's approach to conducting the wars in the Middle East.  Obama wanted to excise certain elements from the opposing forces, and Flynn was more of a mind to bring down the entire Muslim world.  Obama finally sent the general into retirement in 2014.

From retirement Flynn began doing private "consulting" on an international basis.  Upon leaving the DIA Flynn had been cautioned by the US government about not accepting payments from foreign governments.  In December of 2015 he gave a speech at a formal dinner in Moscow in which he sat next to Russian President Vladimir Putin.  Flynn was paid over $30,000 for that speech.  It was at about that same time that Flynn established contact with representatives from the Trump campaign.  Flynn had once been openly skeptical and wary of the Russians, but Trump impressed upon him his notion that cooperation with the Russians might be the best way forward for the United States in the post-Obama era.

When Barack Obama left office in January of 2017, one bit of sage advice that he reportedly gave Trump was that he should not appoint Michael Flynn as his National Security Adviser - advice which Trump ignored.

Michael Flynn served just 24 days as National Security Adviser before he was forced to resign in disgrace on February 17, 2017 - becoming what the New York Times referred to as the "first felon to emerge from this (the Trump) administration."  As a result of the Mueller invenstigation, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators about his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States prior to the Trump administration coming into office.  Flynn and the ambassador had reportedly talked about the sanctions that the Obama administration had placed on Russia because of that country's illicit involvement in the 2016 US presidential elections.

When Donald Trump was asked about Flynn's guilty plea, he responded "I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI."

During Flynn's multi-year involvement with law enforcement, he actually pleaded guilty in court two times to lying to the FBI, and he was assisting with the Mueller investigation.

But then Trump fired the head of the Justice Department, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and replaced with Bill Barr who quickly began exercising more control over the FBI and it's on-going investigations.  In early May of 2020 Barr suddenly said his department would move to drop all criminal charges against Flynn - saying that Flynn's admission had been in response to an interview that had been conducted "without any legitimate investigative basis."

After Barr's dismissal of the charges, an ecstatic Trump, who had once "fired" Flynn for lying to the Vice President and the FBI, now crowed that the general was "an innocent man!"

However,  Judge Emmet Sullivan of the District Court of Washington, DC, was not having it,  and he moved to continue the case against Flynn.   The general secured new legal counsel, Sidney Powell out of Texas, and sought to have his guilty plea withdrawn.   Powell filed a "writ of mandamus" with the DC Circuit Court of Appeals asking that Sullivan be ordered to drop the charges, in line with the Justice Department's new position on the case.  The three justices who heard the case, on a vote of 2-1, agreed with the writ of mandamus and ordered Judge Sullivan to dismiss the case.  Sullivan then took the matter to the full Court of Appeals for DC which heard the arguments and declined to order a dismissal of the case against General Flynn.

After the dust from the court maneuverings began to settle, Donald Trump stepped in on November 25th and granted Michael Flynn a full presidential pardon for "any and all offenses" in connection with the Mueller investigation.

Then, this past Friday night - December 18th - Donald Trump hosted a "pity party" in the Oval Office with the primary focus of coming up with ways to hold onto his job as President.  Some of the people in the room included Trump's Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani,  and Michael Flynn and his lawyer, Sidney Powell.  The current National Security Adviser, Robert O'Brien, reportedly participated in the meeting by phone.

News reports indicate that the Friday night meeting in the Oval Office degenerated on multiple occasions to "screaming and yelling" among the attorneys in the room over who was doing the most to support Trump.  One idea that Trump floated was to appoint Sidney Powell, Flynn's attorney who has also been promoting a wide range of conspiracy theories about the election, as a special counsel to probe claims of election fraud.

Trump apparently also discussed the idea of seizing voting machines in certain states to try and ascertain if they had been tampered with.  Giuliani has also been pressuring Ken Cuccinelli, a Homeland Security official who formerly was a right-wing office holder in Virginia, to seize voting machines, but Cuccinelli has so far turned down those requests because he believes that he lacks the authority to do so.

Flynn, for his part, has been discussing the idea of invoking "martial law" in the United States until all of the election controversy could be settled - presumably in Trump's favor - a position he likely expounded upon during the White House meeting.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows may have been the only adult in the room and reportedly spent the evening pushing back against all of the crazy.

Meanwhile Michael Flynn, a man who five full years ago was speaking for pay to a group of Russian dignitaries in Moscow -  and who four years ago was, as someone outside of government, was meeting with the Russian ambassador to the United States and discussing lifting sanctions against Russia - and a man who pleaded guilty, in court, twice, to lying to the FBI - that Michael Flynn - was sitting in the Oval Office with the President of the United States and others as they actively sought ways to subvert democracy!   

And all of the while Michael Flynn was drawing a monthly check from the United States Government for his retirement from the military - a check roughly equal to what his full-time pay had been when he retired after as a Lieutenant General after thirty-three years of service.

That is an outrage of outrageous proportions!

If Michael Flynn cannot bring himself to support the Constitution of the United States of America, then the Treasury of the United States should damn well not support him!

Joe Biden likely will not attend to the matter of Lt. General Michael Flynn (Ret.) and his conduct unbecoming of an officer in the US military, but he should!

Death of an Old Friend

by Pa Rock
Class of 1966

I have basically sat at home hiding from the pandemic since word of its existence began leaking from our government back last March.  In the intervening nine months the furthest I have traveled is one hundred miles, and that was a highly focused trip to a necessary doctor's appointment.  I've cancelled one special trip to the East Coast, and missed two fairly regular outings to the West Coast to see grandchildren.   My poor old car will finally be going in for its three-month servicing next week, only about six months late.

There is a lot of COVID in my rural community, and even with my careful lifestyle I have been fortunate not to contract the disease.  I have known several people who weren't so lucky, though most of those were young and got over it quickly.  Two people that I know did get fairly sick, but they chose to take their chances at home and avoid hospital stays.  People die in hospitals.

So even though I knew COVID was out there and I was taking basic precautions to avoid the virus, the full impact had not touched me.  That changed a couple of weeks ago when I learned that one of my high school classmates, Doug, had been hospitalized with COVID and pneumonia - and was on a ventilator.  Over the next few days, the news continued to get worse.  I learned that my friend had been admitted to the hospital on Thanksgiving Day and that he was in a setting so isolated that family members were not allowed in.   This past Thursday news reached me that Doug had lost his battle with the disease that had once been dismissed by the highest levels of our government as "fake" and then as something that would be around only a couple of weeks.

We had been told to go back to work, to reopen our schools, to resume our normal lives.  Some government officials prattled on about something called "herd immunity," and indicated that the more people that caught COVID, the safer we would be in the long run.  We witnessed some of our leaders parading around brazenly without face masks - and even ridiculing their political rivals for wearing masks.  And, not surprisingly, we saw our leaders catching the disease and then receiving treatments that were not available to us mere mortals.  Nothing about the whole mess seemed honest or straight forward.

The only "straight truth" seemed to be the numbers, and they kept going "straight up."  Now we are somewhere north of 310,000 - and one of those represents a friend of mine.

Doug Morriss was seventy-two-years-old when he died from COVID and government incompetence.   He will be missed by his loving family and a host of people who had the pleasure of knowing him back when the world was normal.  

Rest in peace, Old Friend.

Blood Echo

by Pa Rock
Reader

Christopher Rice has been one of my favorite authors since the publication of his first novel, A Density of Souls" back in 2000 when he was only twenty-two-years-old.   Since that time I have read all of his books - save one which is currently waiting on the "read pile" next to my bed.  

In March of 2018 Rice published Bone Music, a book he indicated was to be the first in a thriller series with the same heroine, a young woman named Charlotte "Charley" Rowe.  Charley had been kidnapped as a young child by a family of serial killers who murdered her mother.   She was raised as a part of the serial killer family for several years until being rescued by the police and returned to her father, a man from who she and her mother had been estranged.  

Charley's father fabricated a history for Charley in which he portrayed her as having been an active participant within the serial killer family - and saying that she sometimes ran the furnace where the killers disposed of the bodies - hence her fan nickname "The Burning Girl."   Charley's father parlayed that fabrication into a traveling freak show that managed to make himself a nice income.    Charley realized what her father was doing, and she eventually left and went to live with her maternal grandmother in Altamira, California, a (fictional) small town located inland somewhere between Los Angeles and San Francisco.  The grandmother was a woman who befriended and protected Charley as a caring adult relative should.

When her grandmother died, Charley went into hiding in Arizona, trying to avoid fans and stalkers who had been drawn to the facts and fabrications about her former life in the family of serial killers.  She also used that time in the desert to try and establish herself as a functioning person through intensive therapy.  Unfortunately, her therapist in Arizona was aligned with an ethically-challenged scion of a family of pharmaceutical manufacturers who had an experimental drug that he wanted to try out on an appropriate test subject - a drug that would turn ordinary human beings into killer maniacs - and Charley unwittingly became weaponized and drawn into a plot to rid the world of many of its worst people.

Blood Echo is the second novel in the "Burning Girl Thriller Series."   As it opens Charley has again left the security of the small California town of Altamira and is on an assignment for the ethically-challenged drug manufacturer in which she is preparing to deal with a serial killer of young women.  She completes that chore in relatively short order, with a maximum of pain and bloodshed, and returns to her new developing "family" in Altamira.  Central to that family are Deputy Luke Prescott, now her live-in boyfriend but who had once been a bully toward her when they were in high school - and Martin "Marty" Cahill, the man who had been her grandmother's longterm boyfriend.   Both Luke and Marty know about Charley's work for Cole Graydon and Graydon Pharmaceuticals as they (Charley and Cole) endeavor to rid the world of its very worst people, and both Luke and Marty are as wary of Cole Graydon as they are protective of Charley.

And as Charley begins to recover from the serious physical trauma that she endured while bringing down the serial killer, she and her friends inadvertently get caught up in a web of domestic terrorism!

Like every previous book by Christopher Rice, the plotting in Blood Echo is tight and so fast-paced that the pages almost turn themselves!   It looks as though Mr Rice, who has several fine stand-alone novels to his credit, now has a successful series in the works as well.    

Christopher Rice is one of the best writers working in America today.   His novels are always well crafted, creative, compelling - and first-rate entertainment.  Blood Echo, like all of Mr. Rice's other works, is a great read!

Molly Files: A Busy Mom at Forty-four

by Pa Rock
Proud Papa 

My middle child, and only daughter, Molly Miranda Macy Files, turns forty-four today.  She and her husband, Scott, live in Oregon where they lead very busy lives as they struggle to survive in hectic times while raising three school-age children.  Molly is a "stay-at-home" mom who seldom has time to even sit down and catch her breath, much less pay attention to her personal needs.

Most days Molly will make two round trips (80 miles per trip) up and down Oregon's busy Interstate 5 to take one of her kids to school and back, and she runs a "Mom shuttle" to various child activities around town.  Of course now, with much of school occurring at home, she also has to make sure that the technology is up and running and the kids are where they are supposed to be and focused on learning.  All of that - and being a part of an active family that has seen its world upended by the pandemic!

Last night Molly sent out a middle-of-the-night (at least in Missouri!) text alerting family and friends that her and Scott's oldest, Sebastian Files - aged 13, has had a book published through Amazon that is available on Kindle.  It is entitled "The Royce Agency" and involves a family-run crime-fighting agency.  (More details in this space after I have had a chance to read it.)    I understand from Sebastian that a sequel  is in the works!

Today is Molly's day, and her Dad hopes that she is able to schedule a bit of peaceful respite for herself sometime during the day.  She's earned some cake and ice cream - and maybe even a power nap!

Happy birthday, Molly!  I am amazed by all you do!

Arkansas Loves Trump More than Ever

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

West Plains, Missouri, and Mountain Home, Arkansas, are separated by a little over fifty miles of a curvy, meandering country highway that crosses the stateline approximately halfway between the two communities.   Both towns have a light industrial base, an agrarian hinterland, and a basic contingent of small national businesses - such as discount stores and fast-food joints - that are present in most American population centers.  Mountain Home, Arkansas, is also located very near Lake Norfolk and that stirs some tourist trade.  Both communities are similar in size, each being home to approximately 12,000 individuals.

A few of my doctors are in Mountain Home, which necessitates trips there several times a year.  My last trip south had been back in September or October, before the national election, and at that time I noted a lot of Trump signs on both sides of the border.  Yesterday I made my first post-election to Mountain Home and found that while most of the Trump signs had been removed along the roadway in Missouri, the Trump political fever had intensified substantially south of the Missouri-Arkansas border.

There were still sporadic Trump yard signs along the Arkansas roadways, but there was a marked increase in in yard displays where signs and flags were arranged in manners to catch the eye and attention of passers-by. When I got into Mountain Home one of the first things I came across was a "Trump Store" along the major thoroughfare - a commercial building apparently dedicated to Trump merchandise with flags and other paraphernalia flapping in the breeze outside of the store.

Further on there was a trailer of a semi-truck sitting along the side of the same busy road.    The trailer had a Trump-Pence "Keep America Great" sign covering its entire side along with portraits of the two politicians.   The advertisement was professionally prepared and obviously expensive - not counting the cost of renting the trailer and the prime spot of highway frontage.  Somebody had put some big money into the gaudy display.

Then I passed a largeTrump kiosk along the side of the road that was an open-air affair selling Trump-Pence merchandise - and even though the weather was cold, it seemed to be doing a brisk business.

(Significantly I had not noticed the two Trump businesses and the large trailer display during my last trip to Mountain Home just a couple of months ago.  They were relatively new.)

While passing all of those bastions of diehard support for Trump, I was also listening to Mitch McConnell on the car radio as he was finally acknowledging - six weeks after the election - that Joe Biden had beaten Trump in the election and was now officially the president-elect.  

Those Arkansawyers aren't going to be happy when they turn on their televisions on January 20th and learn that they have a new president!  Maybe they need to be listening to something other than Fox News!

How to Quit Smoking: Pa Rock's ICE Plan

by Pa Rock
Ex-Smoker

January is on the horizon, the month when portly slobs like me traditionally head to the gym and put in a couple of weeks aimed at reshaping ourselves for a healthier New Year - and usually cancel our memberships by the time the March bill is due - if not sooner.  This year, of course, many of the gyms are closed due to COVID, so we either have to remove the clothes hanging from the home treadmill that hasn't been used more than a dozen times since Sears delivered it, or find some other way to feel invested in developing a healthier lifestyle.

It might be the perfect time to try to quit smoking.

I noticed a "tweet" yesterday from a man who was preparing to quit smoking tobacco.  He said that he had quit once before and was off of cigarettes for four years when some situation led him to smoke "just one," and, not surprisingly, he had then quickly fallen off of the wagon and resumed his unhealthy vice with a vengeance.    But he was determined to give it another try.  The tweeter said that as soon as he finished his current pack he would once again quit and this time he would win the battle.

I tweeted back a couple of suggestions based on my own successful attempt at quitting.

I have not had many big successes in life - other than my wonderful children and grandchildren - but back in the 1970's I did manage to quit smoking.   At the time I quit I was a young lieutenant in the US Army who was often working eighteen-or-twenty-hour days, and during those long days I consumed a great many cigarettes.  In fact, by the time I quit I was sucking down a minimum of three packs a day.

One reason that I quit was the cost.  The price of a pack of cigarettes had recently climbed to around fifty cents a pack, money that could be put to better use elsewhere.  Also, my oldest was a baby when I quit, and I knew that the smoke that I could see lingering in the air inside of our army housing was not good for him.

Once I determined to quit smoking, I just sort of stumbled into a three-step approach that actually worked, at least for me.  I call it my "ICE Plan," and it has no connection whatsoever to immigration enforcement.

First of all, I threw away cigarettes, an "investment" factor.  I didn't wait to finish what I had on hand, and opted instead to endure some immediate financial hardship by throwing several packs in the trash and not looking back.  Second, I quit with a friend which set up a bit of "competition" and a "challenge" effect.  Sadly, my friend later started up again, but I was able to stay off of the killer weeds.  I won the challenge!   And third, I told everybody within shouting distance that I was quitting, so that if I started back up dozens of people would know what a loser I was.  That was an "embarrassment" factor.

So, to recap, "invest" in the plan by throwing away some actual cigarettes, set up a "challenge" or a "competition" with someone else as motivation and to firm your resolve, and arrange to suffer some serious "embarrassment" if you fail.

No guarantees - but it worked for me.

(And, if you are successful in the effort, don't turn to eating to fulfill that lingering oral fixation with cigarettes.  Take up walking, jogging, and other good cardio-exercises to begin cleaning out those poor abused lungs.   I have a walking goal of 10,000 steps a day - and there is no gym membership fee or equipment purchase required!)

Monday's Poetry: "Holding Lady Liberty's Hand"

by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator

The Electoral College, an arcane political device that some of the founding fathers managed to embed in the US Constitution, meets today - in the various states - to officially "elect" the next President of the United States based on which candidate won  each of the states.  When all of the electors have cast their votes, and if each of those electors are "faithful" to the actual vote totals of their various states, Joe Biden will be officially elected as our 46th President by a vote of 306 to 232 electoral votes.

Those votes will then be transmitted to the President of the Senate (the Vice President of the United States) and the National Archivist by December 23.   On January 6th Congress will meet and officially tally the votes and will declare Joe Biden the winner.

Or at least that is how it would work in normal times.  This year the country is saddled with a President who decisively lost his bid for re-election yet refuses to admit defeat - and he is being propped up in his bid to illegally maintain his office by other officeholders of his same political party.  The losing side has been to court, repeatedly, and failed to present a winning argument or even much in the way of "evidence" other than just their unhappiness over the way some states allowed too many of their qualified citizens to vote.

But Joe Biden won the electoral college vote - or he will officially win it today just as Donald Trump won it four years ago.  Significantly, Trump lost the popular vote four years ago by over three million votes - and this year he lost the popular vote by over eight million votes - yet he yammers on about how the election was "stolen" from him in a few swing states - with absolutely no evidence to back up his claim.

People voted - and clearly millions more cast their votes for Joe Biden than others did for Donald Trump.

Democracy happened!

Today's poetry selection is  "Holding Lady Liberty's Hand" by Paul Lee, a tribute to American democracy.

Holding Lady Liberty's Hand

by Paul Lee

You would think that holding Lady Liberty’s hand

Would be like holding a hand of stone.

A hand warmed only by the tears from her motherly eyes.

 

When I asked to hold Lady Liberty’s hand

She said in a soft voice that only thought could hear:

Tell me that these are times for love.

 

When I asked to hold your hand you said:

No. These are not times for love or for babies.

These are times when tides and tears overflow.

 

Then I said: there were better times when

We had jfk and rfk and mlk.

Before they were struck down, they taught us

To dream big and dream of babies.

 

Lady Liberty danced with our past heros, who built

Our foundation with stone and words. Now, she is a widow

And she dreams with us, her children,

As we repair those stones and remember those words.

 

She no longer waits for a hero. But she waits for us

To learn from the past and make the future

In our own image

With our dreams and with our votes.

Missouri Legislators Move to Legalize Vehicular Homicide

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Anytime I see my state - Missouri - trending in the news I go into automatic "cringe" mode because whatever news the "show me" state is stirring up, it is seldom of the "good" variety.

In particular, news from our state legislature is seldom positive and it is usually of the type that makes Missouri look foolish to the civilized portions of America.  Our legislators, primarily a ripe assemblage of farmers and white businessmen, generally have three areas of focus.  First, they try to come up with ways to insure that the poor and working classes are the primary funders of government -  with things like sales taxes, lotteries, and other maneuvers to keep the tax burdens off of the people with money.  Second, they are always open to any national fad legislation that would put more guns in the hands of more white people.  And third, they will move Heaven and Earth to come up with ways to limit women's freedom to control their own bodies.  

Most Missouri legislators worth their white table salt will go to the wall to protect a fetus - and then sit smugly next to a warm fire while hungry children sleep in the streets on cold winter nights.  It's just how they are.

Yesterday, however, our esteemed state legislature took some initial steps in a new direction.  Now we have legislators who want to want to focus on limiting people's constitutional First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly.  Two legislators, one state representative and one state senator-elect, introduced similar bills that would give motorists the protection of state law if they were to run over protestors with their cars.

State Representative Adam Schnelting, a Republican from St. Charles, filed a bill that he titled the "Fleeing Motorist Protection Act" to protect motorists who are "trapped in their vehicle during a riot."   In defending his intent, the GOP representative talked about the horrors of having your grandparents trapped in a car and surrounded by a "riotous assemblage," and saying they needed some state protection in case they hit someone with their car as they were trying to flee the scene.

That brings visions of the "stand your ground" laws which roared through state legislatures a decade ago.  Their stated intent was to allow people to protect themselves, but they quickly degenerated into legal excuses to shoot anyone who came to your door.  Today Rep. Schnelting is concerned with terrified grandparents trapped in cars, but if his legislation is enacted it would soon be seen as a legal right to drive a vehicle into crowds of protestors for no other reason than to injure or kill as many as possible.

It's not about protecting motorists, it's about disrupting protests.

The representative's bill discusses drivers who are "fleeing unlawful or riotous assemblage," but the companion bill being introduced in the state senate is more plainspoken.  The bill introduced by State Senator-elect Rick Brattin of Harrisonville declares:

"Any person operating a motor vehicle who injures another person with the motor vehicle shall not be liable for any damages if, at the time of the injury:  (1) The person operating the motor vehicle was exercising due care;  and (2) The person injured was blocking traffic in a public right-of-way while participating in a protest or demonstration."

Bottom line:  Republicans, at least Missouri Republicans, are not comfortable with the First Amendment and right of people to peacefully assemble and protest.  These bills open the door to violent responses to peaceful protests just as the "stand your ground" laws opened the door to unprovoked murder based on such non-threatening things as the volume of music or skin tone.

America was founded on protests, demonstrations, and "riotous assemblages" like the Boston Tea Party, but leave it to today's GOP to try and turn back the clock and save the tea!  They talk freedom and liberty, but they walk in lockstep with the world's authoritarian regimes!

Real freedom is being able to talk back to your government without fear of being shot for your thoughts or being run down by a lunatic in a car!   Not having that ability is oppression and a mile-marker on the road to tyranny!

The Hotel New Hampshire, the Movie

by Pa Rock
Film Fan

There was a time back in the early 1980's when all of the cool people were carrying around a large, cumbersome novel by John Irving.  For some, that novel was The World According to Garp (1982), and for others it was The Hotel New Hampshire (1981).  (A few of the more pretentious types bragged of reading both!)   I was a young working stiff at the time with a young family. I spent my days managing the rolling insanity of students and teachers as a school principal, and many of my nights riding shotgun on school athletic buses where I continued to manage students until the wee hours of the next day.  And while I dearly love to read, I had little time for it back then.  I was not one of the cool people.

In addition to not reading either of John Irving's blockbuster hits of the 1980's, I also did not manage to catch either of the movies that were made from those two novels.  This past week I corrected some of that glaring cultural omission when I came across the 1984 movie, The Hotel New Hampshire,  streaming on Amazon Prime.

The Hotel New Hampshire is a family-life saga that centers on the Berry family of New Hampshire.  Mr. Berry and his wife worked together at a hotel when they were young and it was there that they met Sigmund Freud when he and his acrobatic bear stayed at the hotel where they worked.  Years later as the father of several children, three of whom are almost grown, Mr. Berry (Beau Bridges) decides that he isn't happy being a school teacher, and he and his wife (Lisa Barnes) manage to buy an old seminary which they turn into a hotel and  name "The Hotel New Hampshire."  It is basically accommodations for parents visiting their children at  the private school where Mr. Berry teaches.

After the new hotel venture begins to be successful, Sigmund Freud contacts the family from Vienna and asks them to come manage a hotel that he has bought there.  Later they return to America after the youngest daughter writes and publishes a book, and upon the family's return they buy yet another hotel.  They manage to name each of the hotels, including the one owned by Freud,  "The Hotel New Hampshire."

The story is simple, almost a fairy tale, about the pains associated with growing up and bears riding bicycles.  The movie version, which was scripted by the film's director, Tony Richardson, and John Irving, stands out for its stellar cast, perhaps moreso than for the story or the film itself.  In addition to Beau Bridges and Lisa Barnes as the parents, the film also presents Wilford Brimley as the grandfather and the athletic coach at the private school where his son teaches, a very young Seth Green as Egg, the youngest child in the family, and young Rob Lowe and Jody Foster as John and Frannie, the two oldest children in the family who are students at the private high school where their father and grandfather work.

A lot of the focus for the older children is learning about sex. A third older sibling, Frank (Paul McCrane) is gay, John (Rob Lowe) is learning about sex from a prostitute who works as a waitress in the restaurant in their hotel, and Frannie (Jody Foster) is enamored with a local high school athlete who leads his friends into gang-raping her.  And to complicate things even further, John and Frannie have feelings toward each other which leads to a prolonged afternoon and evening of incestuous sex.

But the bear riding the bicycle is great, and all-in-all The Hotel New Hampshire, as a movie at least, is an escape back to the 1980's when Rob Lowe and Jody Foster still looked like high school students and life, in some respects, was simpler.

 The Hotel New Hampshire is not a great movie, but it is one that is easy to enjoy.  And watching this movie is a whole lot less straining than lugging the book around - even if it is not as cool!

GOP Stooges Try to Overthrow Democracy

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Aside from serving as the Attorney General of Texas and dealing with all of the business associated with that public office, Ken Paxton also has plenty of stuff of a personal nature on his plate that he could be dealing with.  He was indicted on charges of felony securities fraud in 2015, a case which has yet to go to trial - and recently several members of his staff accused him of bribery and influence-peddling in a letter that has stirred an FBI investigation.

But Ken, who may be auditioning for a Trump pardon, has pushed all of that other bother aside and is now resolutely focused on a legal effort that he initiated to to have the electoral votes of four swing states thrown out and the electoral votes of those states decided by their state legislatures - all of which are Republican.  The four states in question - Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan - were all won by Democratic candidate Joe Biden.

While many elected officials, including John Cornyn, the senior US Senator from Texas, have been critical of Paxton for trying to interfere in the elections of other states, some GOP officials from around the country have latched onto Paxton's effort in what looks like an attempt to curry favor with Donald Trump - or at least to avoid his unhinged wrath.

Paxton's suit seeks to get the US Supreme Court to involve itself in the 2020 election by throwing out the results of the elections of those four states - Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan - and allowing the state legislatures in those states to decide who gets their coveted electoral votes - and thus to decide who is officially elected President of the United States.  The suit alleges that the states instituted pandemic-related changes to their election procedures that allowed for fraud (things like easier access to absentee ballots and voting boy mail).    Joe Biden received over eight million more votes than Donald Trump and a clear majority of the electoral votes according to the state laws that covered the elections in the fifty states as of November 3rd, 2020.

But the rights of those states to set and enforce their own election procedures are being challenged by a whole raft of people from other states.

Seventeen state attorneys-general have signed onto Paxton's Hail-Mary attempt to overturn democracy in the United States, and so have one hundred-and-six members of Congress, again all Republicans.  (By today that figure had grown to 126, still all Republicans.)   Noticeably absent among the Republican members of the House of Representatives who signed onto the lawsuit were House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and the Republican Conference Chair, Congresswoman Liz Cheney.

As a Missouri resident, I find it troubling that my state attorney general, Eric Schmitt, finds merit in Ken Paxton's political ploy and that they both have enough free time on their hands to allow them to dabble in the politics of other states.   As a resident of Missouri's 8th congressional district, I also find it troubling that my congressman, Representative Jason Smith, himself an attorney, also finds merit in this blatantly political maneuver whose obvious intent is to subvert democracy.  Congressman Smith has an abundance of local matters that are in need of his attention.

The people have spoken through the ballot box.  Joe Biden won the presidency and Trump lost - decisively - and no amount of pretending otherwise will change those results - nor will the courts.   That's the real world, and those who cannot tolerate life in the real world need to hop in their clown cars and go someplace else. 

Meanwhile this Missourian is pleased with the results of the presidential election and anxious to see our country once again headed toward greatness!

Celebrity Healthcare

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

The US Food and Drug Administration could rule as early as today to approve Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine for distribution in the United States, and if that happens people could start receiving inoculations for the dreaded disease within a very few days.  Supposedly there is a distribution scheme that will insure that the first round of vaccinations go to emergency healthcare workers and people in nursing homes, and the next round will go to the elderly who are not yet in nursing homes.  From there it will head on down to younger and healthier individuals.  

Right now the plan is for all inoculations to be voluntary, with people having the right to refuse the shots if they so desire.  Current estimates are that approximately half of the country is ready to roll up their sleeves and submit to the needle.  Former Presidents Obama, Clinton and Bush have all said that they will take the shots publicly in order to serve as role models encouraging all Americans to get vaccinated.

The new COVID-19 vaccines being developed by several pharmaceutical companies are preventative measures, not cures.    Their purpose is to keep people who are exposed to the coronavirus from getting the disease.  People who have already contracted the disease are not looking for a prevention strategy, they are after something entirely different.  Their goal is to receive a medicine that will cure the malady.

There are some curative measures on th market, treatments which seem to enhance the survival rates of those who are infected with COVID-19.  Unfortunately, the best "cures" are expensive and in short supply.  From a medical ethics perspective, those medicines should be available to the general public on an equitable basis.  Any one person should have as good of a chance of receiving a miracle medicine as any other person.  An individual's wealth, class, race, or political status should have nothing to do with whether they get the best treatment available or not.

But, of course, this is America and things do not always follow an ethical curve.

There is a rare treatment available to fight COVID-19 called a "monoclonal antibody cocktail" that was developed by Eli Lilly and Regeneron that is one of the few treatments proven to be highly effective in battling the disease.  Not surprisingly, it is the treatment that Donald Trump received while he was an in-patient with COVID-19 at Walter Reed Hospital this past October.  It is a drug cocktail so rare, expensive, and in such short supply, that hospitals who receive doses of the treatment routinely distribute them by lottery.

Donald Trump probably did not win a lottery at Walter Reed.  An argument could be made, one must suppose, that a nation's leader should receive the best treatment because the health of the nation is dependent to an extent on the leader's health - at least in theory.

But others not so essential to the nation's health also seem to be winning the treatment lottery.

Rudy Giuliani is a 76-year-old male who also happens to be Donald Trump's personal lawyer.  Monday of this week Giuliani was diagnosed with COVID-19 and admitted to a hospital in New York City even though his symptom's did not warrant hospitalization at that time.  While Giuliani was in the hospital he had a telephone interview with a New York City radio station in which he said "If it wasn't me, I wouldn't have been put in the hospital, frankly.  Sometimes when you're a celebrity, they're worried if something happens to you they're going to examine it more carefully, and do everything right."    According to Rudy, his hospitalization was the result of his celebrity status rather than his medical status.

But that wasn't all.  Apparently Donald Trump intervened on behalf of his personal attorney and got the hospital to give him the same treatment that Trump got at Walter Reed.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

Ben Carson, the US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey and an advisor to Donald Trump, also won the COVID-19 treatment lottery - with an assist from Donald John Trump, of course.

Rudy Giuliani was sent home yesterday feeling  "100% better," and on that same day 3,243 Americans died of COVID-19.   What a shame all of those people didn't have friends in high places, or were "celebrities," or at least had a fair chance of receiving the best treatment available.

And now the vaccinations to prevent COVID-19 are about to roll out, and we can all rest assured that their delivery will be fair and equitable because this is the United States of America and we don't play favorites - unless, of course, some of our betters need to buck the line!