Convention – RAnt(hony)-ings

Minimal Standards for President?

There is an argument to be made that, if the government is corrupt and, if the people think that an outsider is how to fix it, then forcing the candidates to conform to the status quo would be detrimental to getting the corruption righted. I won’t make that argument. I won’t make it because, frankly, I think it’s asinine that we let just anyone run for an office that clearly requires basic contact with reality, and that the current occupant of that high office fails at that basic test, contact with reality.

The Orange Hate-Monkey (OHM) should be impeached and removed from office. more to the point, he should never have been allowed to run for that office in the first place. I’ve pointed this fact out since he first threw his hat in the ring, and discounted his chances of winning right up to the time when he co-opted the Republican convention. It was then that I started writing Authoritarianism vs. Humanism -Or- The Orange Hate-Monkey vs. A Village and I remain baffled as to how he got the convention to nominate him, and how he got the Electoral College to back him, except for one lone Texan who committed political suicide in refusing to vote for him.

There should be minimum standards set, and I thought that there was no way that a fakir like the OHM could get elected to the nation’s highest office. Those were my minimum standards, and three million votes should have underscored those standards. Without the complicity of the EC, those standards would have been met. Now that we have the worst possible government we could get, I’m beginning to think that more safeguards are necessary. I’m just not sure what those standards or safeguards should be.

First posted here.

A Gratuitous Plug

I should have posted this last week. Hell, I should have posted several things over the last months. I swear, I’m working on a few things. I’ll get them out soon. In the meantime, a gratuitous plug for The Late Show, the revival of Mirror, Mirror Stephen Colbert and The Word;

For those of you wondering why Colbert changed his show so much, this weeks show goes into why that is.

Imagine that. Not being able to use your own name and your own material because your former employer claims to have the rights to your face. Sad, really.

Republican Convention Post-Mortem

…the SMELL IS SO GODDAMNED BAD PIGS WOULD DIE PUKING THEIR GUTS OUT just get away from it. And now you’ve done it. The load was supposed to be quietly burned but the machine is jammed and fans wouldn’t pull and the heating elements won’t heat and there you are with a pan of hot bubbling liquid MRE shit ON FIRE and you have to pull it out and carry it through the living quarters which are the size of a closet packed with four people trying to eat and six people trying to sleep and down the connector into the other compartment where more people are sleeping and you’d better hurry up because THEY ALL HAVE TO SHIT TOO while trailing smoke and flames from the burning shit bucket that’s now so fucking hot that your hands are melting off and finally outside where you …
Well, anyway, that’s what I thought of watching the first day of the Republican National Convention.
Stonekettle Station

I’m through trying to predict this one. I’m only a science fiction writer.
David Gerrold

I remain amazed at how easily the Orange Hate-Monkey (OHM) got the nomination. That is the only part of the equation that I remain mystified by. I remain mystified by it because, as any parliamentarian can tell you, it isn’t easy to hijack a convention like he did. And yet there is no other word to describe how the convention went down other than to say it was hijacked.

Did the “never Trump” faction have enough political savvy to stop him from becoming the nominee? The answer appears to be no. He secured the chair with someone who would gavel the convention to order. His supporters clearly understood how to silence a floor fight. All that is left is for the delegates to vote and he’s the nominee, and the GOP can finally accept the labels we have attempted to pin on them for 30 years and more. They are fascists. They are openly racist and xenophobic. They are happy to promote and embrace a christian theocracy, even when lead by a fakir.

It is also worth noting that the best politicians that the GOP can muster could not stop a political newb from taking over their convention and making them all dance his tune. They appear to deserve all the ridicule and embarrassment that can be piled on them at this point. They really are the NSDAP. They equate to the PNF. May they be remembered by history in the same light as their failure predecessor political organizations.

The choice in this election could not be more starkly drawn no matter what the Hillary haters say. It is now up to the informed and the thinking to lay out just how bad it can be with an authoritarian of the caliber of the Birther-in-Chief. Just how grim the future is when lead by the Orange Hate-monkey. Just how untrustworthy a real-estate developer is. Time to lay it all out for everyone to see so that there is no question that anyone who votes for Trump votes for concentration camps and mass extermination. Anyone who supports Trump wants the US to be destroyed in a paroxysm of self-hatred. Anyone who supports Trump wants to see civilization end. Make them prove that this is not the case at every turn. Hammer them into submission with ideas too strong to be refuted.

The next President will be Hillary Clinton. If we are lucky.

Dick jokes and eager young interns with their hands on your junk. Giggling impotent old men eager for a show. Inflexible self righteous authoritarianism. Anger. Shouting. Marines. Jerking off. Outrage. Violation. Embarrassment. Mortification. Forced to tough it out to the bitter end.
And finally you go home dirty and used, clothes ruined, dignity long fled, covered in sticky goo and shooting blanks.
In the rain.
Honestly, what DOESN’T it have to do with the Republican National Convention?
See you tomorrow, Folks. My regards to Mr. Trump.
Stonekettle Station

Facebook status backdated to the blog. The 29% chance of winning that Fivethirtyeight gave him on the eve of the election explains everything else you need to know. Comey did it.

Bernie or Hillary? What About Trump?

I answered questions one and two at some length in a blog article I titled Hillary for President? The thing that amazes me about people who react to the title to that piece is that they never seem to notice the question mark. Nearly all of them dismiss me as a schill, as if there isn’t a question in the title as well as a question in the underlying article. I will be voting for whoever wins the Democratic nomination, and I’m giving it a 98% chance to be Hillary Clinton, as I said almost a year ago.

The answer to question three is more complicated. I don’t believe Trump will even get the nomination, and without it he has little chance of winning. On the off chance that the population of the US sleeps in that Tuesday and Trump supporters are all that show up at the polls, because even without the nomination he can’t be kept off the ballot, this would give him the win by default; no I wouldn’t give him a chance. He’s already declared his intentions to destroy the US in the name of making it “great again”. I’m not going to help him with that.

To get the nomination he has to control the convention and be nominated. That is not nearly as easy as it sounds. You have to have a quorum to convene the convention. You have to control the chair. There are myriad ways of handling the problem of denying him the official nomination that would look pretty condemning for him, just ask a parliamentarian well versed on the subject of convention rules.

Even with the delegates he needs, he still has to have the convention, and it has to endorse him as the candidate. I remain unconvinced that the Orange Hate-Monkey has enough support in the leadership of the GOP to pull that maneuver off. That the GOP wants to go down in history as the American version of the NSDAP. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Facebook status backdated to the blog.