I’m going to be posting from my iPad, which is something I do not do well. It’s amazing I can do it at all so shuddup about it.

I couple of things have been on my mind.  First of all, I have to let know that the Jones trial in Connecticut has been a goat rodeo.  There are eight families suing all at once go things can get confusing even though their lawyers have been excellent.  Mark went to Connecticut to watch for a few days and I watched online.  We talked immediately after the case went to the federal six-person jury and both of us predicted that the jury would be out a day – federal juries have to fill out all manner of confusing forms – and then come back in and award them One. Billion. Dollars.

Not so much.  After two days, the jury decided to take off three days over the weekend and they came back today.  They have sent out a slew of questions, most of which no one understands.  Everyone in the courthouse is confused about what is happening.  I follow Elizabeth Williamson on Twitter because I know her, she’s smart as the dickens, she’s in the courtroom and her book on Sandy Hook is winning all kinds of awards.

Since I’ll be in and out of pocket, you might want to follow her on Twitter.

And I sent John Fedderman $25 more today for this.

Dr. Oz is still going to be a fraud.

That’s worth a round of applause.

Earlier this week the NYTimes published an investigative story that had several revelations including an account of TFG demanding that yet another lawyer lie for him early last year that he had returned all the documents and that lawyer refusing.  More important, it’s damned likely he still has government documents somewhere else like his NY apartment, in Bedminster, or even Mar a Lago.

But the story also recounted TFG’s desire to used the stolen documents as trade bait.  The key quote:

“Mr. [TFG], still determined to show he had been wronged by the F.B.I. investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia, was angry with the National Archives and Records Administration for its unwillingness to hand over a batch of sensitive documents that he thought proved his claims.

In exchange for those documents, Mr. [TFG] told advisers, he would return to the National Archives the boxes of material he had taken to Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Fla.”

So there it is.  Not only did TFG recklessly steal top secret and other government documents, he then concocted a plan to use his unlawful possession of stolen documents as a hostage to get evidence to support his contention that the FBI was out to get him.  It’s classic mobster behavior; worse, it’s stupid, careless, and another example of the danger this man poses to not only the country but to himself.

I’ve had several theories about why TFG stole these documents and then toyed with the DOJ for over a year and a half; first, obviously TFG is a dumbass with shit for brains; second, I figured he saw value in them to sell to the highest bidder; third, he loves all the trappings of being president and continued playing Oval Office and pretending he’s still there; lastly I figured he just likes pissing off the “deep state”.  All of these theories are plausible and damned likely; what I hadn’t thought about that he believed he could use the stolen documents to steal more documents.  That act is just a glimpse into how evil TFG truly is.

Two of my favorite songs on my playlist are “Vegetable Man” and “Scream Thy Last Scream” by Pink Floyd. They were not officially released until the last decade because the band didn’t want to make them available for public consumption. They represented a time in Syd Barrett’s life when he was in a really bad way. Roger Waters said that they were akin to showing naked pictures of an aging actress.

In a similar way, saying anything about the rise and fall of Hershel Walker feels wrong in many instances. You have someone that is very clearly not all there. You can’t know whether a former athlete has CTE until you do the final autopsy, but we are about as sure about this as we can of anyone that played in the NFL.

However, Walker represents something bigger than himself. Everything old is new again in politics. Those that know U.S. history remember learning about the Know Nothing Party. The similarities don’t just end with the name. The platform is also pretty similar when we consider the brand of conservative politicians coming out these days. Give those pre-Civil War guys Twitter and 24 hour news and I imagine they would have come up with something eerily similar.

What can we say about Walker? He said he graduated with honors from the University of Georgia. He didn’t graduate. He said he was in law enforcement. He wasn’t. He fathered multiple children out of wedlock. He didn’t tell us the truth about that. The children we do know about all seem to be coming out against him.

Finally, we get the news that he funded an abortion in 2009. Yet, this is where you get into a pickle if you are a true progressive. We want people to be able to have the choice to have an abortion. So, ultimately do we care whether he funded one? The quick and simple answer is that we don’t, but that isn’t really the point. The point is that you don’t get to run on a sanctimonious platform when you have entire collection of skeletons in the closet.

Watching conservatives fumble around with representatives and candidates that are clearly intellectually deficient is hilarious on one level, scary on another, and just pitiful on the rest. Whether it’s not knowing that “wanton” murder doesn’t refer to the soup found in Chinese restaurants or watching Walker be told that the lieutenant governor said something about him, watch him ask who the lieutenant governor was, be told who he was, and then ask what that guy was currently doing.

Commenting about such things is the true no win scenario. No one should make fun of half-wits. It would be akin to making fun of someone with a physical handicap. Yet, here we are and this is the field that the GOP has laid down before us. At some point we need to put the blame on the powers that be that parade these folks out there for us to exploit and laugh at. Laughing feels utterly awful, but at a certain point you just can’t help it.

The NRA has been stumping for Greg Abbott pretty hard and heavy. I hear their radio spots at least a few times every day. Beto O’Rourke has an F rating according to the NRA. However, Greg Abbott has been governor for eight years. I’m still not sure why we should vote for him. The only thing he tells us is why we shouldn’t vote for Beto O’Rourke.

Terrorism is defined as “the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.” I don’t know why that word popped into my head just now. It must be one of those random thoughts that have nothing to do with anything.

That same dictionary defines domestic terrorism as “the committing of terrorist acts in the perpetrator’s own country against their fellow citizens.” The Patriot Act said that people are engaging in domestic terrorism is they perform an act “dangerous to human life.” So, if we follow this random tangent to it’s logical conclusion we would have to assume that people that participate in mass shooting events are domestic terrorists.

Mind you, I’m not calling the NRA a sponsor of domestic terrorism. I’m simply defining terms. The city of San Francisco has already done that. Many Americans already agree with San Francisco. However, lets walk this through. You have an organization that opposes waiting periods, background checks, and any sort of regulation of semi-automatic weapons, age limits, licensing, or carry restrictions. They support an 18 year old’s right to openly carry an AR-15 whether they have passed a background check or not.

So, there is a sizeable gap between supporting any right to own a firearm and where the NRA currently stands. According to Gallup, as of 2020 only 32 percent of Americans owned a firearm and only 44 percent lived in a household with at least one firearm. However, that is in stark contrast to the number of firearms actually in the United States. So, if there are 1.2 firearms per person, but only 32 percent of people own a firearm then that means that the average gun owner has three or more guns.

Whether the NRA are domestic terrorists, support domestic terrorism, or are indifferent to terrorism is for shock jocks to consider. One could credibly claim that the NRA serves a very small segment of society. After all, even most gun owners are in favor of waiting periods, background checks, and restricting access to certain weapons. Most support age restrictions as well. So, when one earns an F grade from the NRA what exactly does that mean? I’d say it means he is a decent and reasonable human being.

Here on the Left Coast, we normally have low key elections, because face it, the outcomes of most races here in deep blue California is already known.

Not here in the “Fighting 41st”. Here in CA CD-41, the outcome of this year’s congressional race is not assured. Right now registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans in a newly redistricted congressional district. This is a first for incumbent Ken Calvert (R-CD 42). Democrat Will Rollins, a young energetic former federal prosecutor, is putting up a credible fight against this 30-year incumbent who has skated through 14 campaigns with large R turnouts. And so as that goes, Calvert’s crew is playing dirty now.

Will Rollins’ campaign signs, far and few between as it is, are disappearing from their stakes and fences at an alarming rate. Of The 16 signs that I have personally posted around town, half have now gone missing. I did find one in the dirt, and another covered up by a 4 X 4 sign (not Calvert’s).

See? You can see the upper left corner of a Rollins sign that was covered up by a city council candidate’s sign.

So a grass-roots visibility campaign was initiated by Rollins campaign volunteers with a call for donations. They’re going to need just shy of 2 grand to buy 50 4 X 8s to post in high visibility areas.

I just sent them my dead presidents. You can also donate to the new push for visibility by going here. You can also send them a check via snail mail at the address that is given here (scroll to the bottom). Write “signs” on the check memo line and it’ll be used for signs.

I am descended from immigrants. Only a very few of us here are not. Some of my ancestors originally lived in eastern Prussia that is now part of western Poland. They lived in Reinfeld, Prussia. And they were called “Old Lutherans” aka Evangelical Lutherans.

Between 1830 and 1840 King William Frederick III of Prussia took on the task of exerting control over Protestant beliefs in his country, in an attempt to unify all Protestant beliefs under one central belief system that became known as The Church of the Prussian Union.

What a great idea, huh? If we can all agree to the same religious tenets we can stop arguing and fighting religious wars and we all prosper.

Evangelical Lutherans, however, were not impressed. They were unwilling to accept new creeds let alone abandon ones that they accepted just so they could all just get along.

They disagreed, by God.

After a couple of decades of living in a regime that decided what religious tenets to believe and how to believe them, my ancestors decided, along with their fellow parishioners, to relocate to America where the rumor was that there was a constitutionally guaranteed freedom to practice the religion of their choice.

So as a direct descendent of these persecuted people, I am here, in part, due to narrow-minded religious persecution by those in power.

Things are a little different now, but not by much.

Today, religion in America can be found in anything, and it has so many new uses. Some use it to decide how to vote and some use it to decide what pillows to buy.

And some don’t see any relevance that religion has in politics at all, and they buy pillows that are the most comfortable, and not necessarily the ones made by the My Pillow Guy.

Like the Prussian Protestants of the 19th century, we are still religiously divided, but in a whole new way that even the 1st Amendment can’t fix.

Because we still have Prussian kings among us that believe that their religious beliefs trump (sorry) all others and it is their duty to enforce them, even on the non-religious.

God save us. Or not.