Where We Are

I can’t take much more of this. And neither can you.

Pick a card. Any card.

Oh, you know what I mean.

I’m tired of unarmed Black people, mostly male, dying at the hands of white police officers.

Hold it. I have nothing against police officers. Or white people – working class or otherwise. But whether a dark-skinned guy is holding a book, an Epi-pen, or even carrying a firearm that he is clearly NOT pointing in your face, you don’t shoot to kill. Forget nuance and details and circumstance. It’s pretty simple. A last resort. Whether it’s a cop or you shooting because you’re being disobeyed or wholly confused – or only pseudo threatened. Not convinced? Okay, pretend it’s NOT you but someone else, anyone else, and they’re aiming a gun at your little brother or your older father. Or grandfather. Or MOTHER. Cause that’s next. Then answer. So…right?

Let’s get real here people

I can’t deal with any more mentally ill young people going into a nightclub, movie theatre, school or, in the latest case, a mall in Seattle, and shooting it up.

Five dead and another troubled white boy in his twenties in custody. Sound familiar? The truth is no one would get shot if we didn’t have guns. Stop! No, ain’t gonna take your guns away. I’m just sayin’. You can’t shoot someone if the machines to shoot with are illegal. Can’t happen.

Wouldn’t reducing the number of guns out there even slightly lessen the number of deaths? Forget if you like to shoot elk or simply want to reenact the Revolutionary War with your friends…or the practicality of passing legislation. Maybe we prevent one death, just one – your kid. Or you? Could it be worth it? Or would you rather just have everyone carry and live as if you were on the set of Braveheart but with 2006 Mel Gibson. Too soon? Then how about Gunsmoke or The Wild, Wild West? (Note: TV or film remake). Or Falling Down with 1971 Clint Eastwood playing the Michael Douglas part as Dirty Harry. Better?

Where should we start?

I’ve had it with arguing about which ethnic or religious group subset is responsible for said terrorist bombing du jour.

I don’t effin’ care. Really. A terrorist is not a member of any sane religious and/or ethnic group that I’ve ever run across. Their sub-set is terrorist, plain and simple. I’m a New Yorker and I hate that some soulless ass thought a lethal pressure cooker in Manhattan was a good idea several weeks ago. But blaming it on his skin color or spirituality…Wait!

That’s like blaming the gays for Roy Cohn. Or the Christians for Ann Coulter. Or putting me, Tom Cruise, Dave Franco and Usher in the same pot because we’re all 5’7.” I’m nothing like any of them, though certainly we’d fit into some of each other’s clothes (Note: Hi Ush…). You know what I mean?

Uh, Tommy WISHES he was 5’7″ #lifts

Still, if you want to know the truth, where this is all coming from, here’s what it’s really about.

I just can’t take any more of the Trump.

Yet as a good citizen who has had issues with my country over the decades but has come to see that I love it nevertheless, I am afraid to fully turn him/it off for fear of waking up in more of an alternate orange reality than I am already in.

#IMWITHHER

You know how they say there’s a tipping point for everything? That final push that breaks the camel’s back or yours – the thing puts anyone or anything over the edge of sanity or maximum density?

Well, I finally hit it. And over such a little thing, too – at least by comparison.

The NY Times, CNN and others report that Gennifer Flowers, the former mistress of Bill Clinton – he’s the former president who is the spouse of current Democratic nominee for president, Hillary Clinton – has been invited to Monday’s presidential debate. By Republican nominee Donald Trump.

umm… WHAT?

Okay, FINE! If you want to split hairs it’s technically only slightly murky – the way every single statement, tweet and Trumpism is. Which means – it’s the norm. In response to fellow billionaire Marc Cuban being seated in the front row at the debates, Trump tweeted, that if that happens perhaps I will seat Gennifer Flowers right next to him. Talk about false equivalencies!

For those too young to recall or wise enough to forget, Ms. Flowers many, MANY decades ago had an affair with Bill Clinton and Republican operatives in the early nineties tried to blow up his presidential campaign by bringing her to the forefront when such things as marital history and monogamy mattered in presidential politics. It’s been quite a while since we’ve heard about Ms. Flowers but every now and again she reappears on the national or international scene when people get desperate enough about the Clintons and throw up their hands when they’re out of ammunition.

The only place this woman belongs is on some third-rate reality show #CelebrityApprentice

The idea that this Orange Clown, this spray-tanned-backed-by-Russian-oligarchs buffoon, this counterfeit trust fund baby, is sick enough and so utterly weak of character and self-confidence that he actually thinks inviting the woman whom his opponent’s HUSBAND had an affair with decades ago to sit in the front row during a PRESIDENTIAL debate against said opponent, is a way to distract her and win, speaks to a kind of base immorality we have not seen before. His knee-jerk childishness and temper tantrums and clear terror at the prospect of only being able to talking about ISSUES is mind-boggling, not to mention a bit scary. As for Ms. Flowers, she has told the NY Times that she will attend the debates – though whether she will indeed be #Drumpf’s guest and/or sit in the front row is still in question.

#DRAMA

Nevertheless, whether or not Ms. Flowers will or has attended the debates by the time you read this is not what’s relevant. To be considered more seriously is where we are and how silly and sad this has all become. Donald Trump has the temperament of an immature child and commands the room only because the adults in charge, meaning all of us, let him. However, his just desserts are that in this presidential race he faces one of the few adults in the political world – a strong woman (nee Mom) who won’t let a bilious little boy get away with lying and mouthing off just because he’s angry and bored and tired of all of the many expensive toys he’s been given.

So, really, he could spit into her face or turn into Regan from The Exorcist and it won’t matter. Come Nov. 8^th, he’ll be grounded and his fake presidential seal will be taken away for life.

AMEN #ThatsAllFolks

As terrorism, gun control and the racist American demons this child has unleashed, let’s hope she can be half as successful in conquering them.

Finally, if you’re voting for Trump…

09.11.16

by notesfromachair

Basket Case

The iconography of the US represents freedom and diversity. Of course, this is theoretical. No icon, or its iconography, is 100% real. It’s an ideal to strive to at best. It’s a fictional image, at worst. Still, and purely by comparison, it would not be an understatement to say that the United States does have more diversity and freedom than most places in the world and that those words, though not perfect, are as good as any to represent the principles upon which this country aspires to and was founded on.

You know.. those tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to be free #sheknows

This week is the 15^th anniversary of 9-11, the day multiple terrorist attacks exploded the Twin Towers and Pentagon and caused 3000 plus lives to be immediately lost – not to mention the respective bombings, wars and various other mega-skirmishes spawned in its wake that cost the lives of tens of thousands of others.

That said, not a bad week to reflect on freedom and diversity in the U.S., wouldn’t you say?

Hillary Clinton stood up at a fundraiser this week and categorized HALF of the supporters of Donald Trump for president as being a basket of deplorables. She elaborated to define this group as Islamophobes, sexists, racists, homophobes and various other ists or obes. If you’ve been paying any attention at all you know who they are. The people who almost daily voice or post nasty remarks that categorize anyone who do not agree with them as anti-American or threaten and/or insult the dissenters by focusing on some element of their personal selves – be it race, sex, ethnicity or sexual preference.

Truly headline news

If you’re not quite following or don’t agree, here’s some help. Examples of the latter would be things like calling Mexicans murderers and rapists; singling out Blacks as police haters who primarily live in poverty and are dangerous criminals who should go back to Africa; generally referring to most or even all Muslims as anti-American and advocating they all be thrown out of the US; coarsely categorizing women they don’t like in terms of their body parts, looks and FemiNazi tendencies; and condemning LGBT Americans as a corrupt influence on the general moral fabric of the country, particularly when it comes to raising children.

I’m not sure if these people make up 50% of Trump supporters. It could be slightly less. Or it could be significantly more if they were forced to take a lie detector test. Of course this is my opinion – but it’s supported with the thousands of articles and speeches on the presidential campaign I’ve heard or read about in the last year and a half. And that’s more reading than Mr. Trump admittedly does himself.

Well.. that’s if you don’t count anything more than 140 characters

What is surely true by any reasonable conclusion, based on what we see and read, is that the 50% number is at the very least in the ballpark. That said, I’d be willing to go as low as, say, 33 and a third in order to get my point across. I’ll bet I could even get the vast majority of us vs. them to agree on that.

Here’s the thing – you don’t bring a noodle to a gunfight.

Or as Sean Connery’s Malone tells Kevin Costner’s Elliot Ness re capturing gangster Al Capone in The Untouchables:

“He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way.”

Donald Trump has in the last week praised Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un for their strong leadership and popularity in the polls of their respective countries –thoroughly ignoring that both rig pubic opinion by exiling or murdering dissenters, many of whom bear a resemblance to or are supporters of the types of people his aforementioned deplorables despise.

https://twitter.com/AudraEqualityMc/status/737709282163052545

He also gave a speech this weekend where he proudly said all he cares about are making the best deals for the country and if this meant liking or acting like Russia, and North Korea it was immaterial to him.

Let freedom ring. And screw diversity while we’re at it. If we can get the equivalent of a $5,000,000 NY condo at the bargain basement price of diversity and/or freedom – hell, let’s live it up in gulag-like luxury. Who cares what it cost cause it won’t cost a lot.

Or will it?

Not everything is measurable in money and deals. I, for one, hate gold gilt. Nor was I ever partial to the color orange, except in juices. And tempting as it is to do a luxurious comb over, when you get to be a man of a certain age, I’m gay enough and manly enough to realize that living in truth, especially when it comes to your pate, will ultimately trump the illusion or perverse fantasy of imagining yourself as a 2016 Gorgeous George with a1970s Farrah ‘do in the long run. After all, there comes a moment when your control over time, not to mention your money, will cease and all that you’ll be left with is your actual mirror image. (Note: Ask Sumner Redstone).

I’m looking at you too, Larry.

Which is really the point. Some 15 years since the collapse of the Twin Towers what do we see? If we are to believe they hate us for our freedom, we still have to at least aspire to our principles, don’t we?

This starts with truth – not faux facts or fantasy beliefs. From both sides. It is not easy to run for election without offending someone or exposing oneself to inscrutable scrutiny. This means admitting you didn’t always do right when it came to drawing within the lines of each governmental guideline throughout your political career. And admitting your past and present mistakes. But more to the point it means you don’t lie, malign and slander whole ethnics groups, religions and even sexes when they dare to criticize you. Nor do you make up facts like whether you supported past wars or if you have any sort of plan at all for how you will govern (other than a secret one). Not to mention, it requires you to occasionally read a book, apologize when you misspeak and study the facts as they are – not how you wish them to be.

In short, it requires a look in the mirror.

Own your basket.

notes from a chair

Tag Archives: Hillary Clinton

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Basket Case