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As Is — Woke, Woke, Woke, WOKE! Whatever…

As Is — Woke, Woke, Woke, WOKE! Whatever…

Posted on by Mike Gold

Lead Belly

You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons. — from Blazing Saddles, written by Andrew Bergman, Mel Brooks, Norman Steinberg, Alan Uger, and Richard Pryor.
There are only two types of people who use and believe in the right-wing concept of “woke” — Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis (a.k.a. America’s most obnoxious bigot) and those who think DeSantis is right. None of them seem to agree on the actual meaning of the term, but they know that, generally, it means “anything that makes life uncomfortable for white American bigots.”

Of course, these fools also believe that Black Lives Matter and AntiFa are real organizations that issue orders to their troops, that communism and fascism are the same thing, and that Donald J. Trump is Jesus H. Christ resurrected. Continue reading “As Is — Woke, Woke, Woke, WOKE! Whatever…” →

As Is: I Woke Up This Morning And Hate Was On My Mind

Posted on by Mike Gold

“And don’t try to dig what we all say” — Pete Townshend, “My Generation”

I freely admit: when I first heard the word “woke” as a positive definition of the human condition, I did not care for the term. “Woke” implies that everybody is asleep but for the lucky few who are smart enough to understand the difference between a bowling alley and a thunderstorm. I’m way too egalitarian for that.

I do not mean to suggest that DeSantis is less than truthful about his beliefs. Not at all. To quote Maya Angelou, the award-winning poet/writer/actor/dancer that Governor Ron has banned from his school libraries: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” After all, about two out of every three Americans think that Nazis are not good people, while some on the far-right object to being called Nazis, or even fascists. Evidently, these people banned the dictionary before they got through “F.” Continue reading “As Is: I Woke Up This Morning And Hate Was On My Mind” →

As Is: The Crack of the Whip

As Is: The Crack of the Whip

Posted on by Mike Gold

The babe in his cradle is closing his eyes, the blossom embraces the bee. But, soon, says a whisper “Arise, arise! Tomorrow belongs to me.” – German folk song “Tomorrow Belongs To Me,” adapted by John Kander.

From what I perceive, TikTok is not an app intended for me. The younger we are, the more juvenile we act, which is also known as “duh…” To me, TikTok is the home-game version of Jackass.

And if you get that joke, you, too, are too old for TikTok. It appears the members of the legislature of the state of Montana also are too old for TikTok. They just banned the use of the app throughout the state.

OK, a lot of state legislatures have done far worse stuff over the past, oh, two weeks. Are you listening, you bigoted Tennessee crackers? Probably not. However, there are understandable reasons for wanting to ban this product. TikTok is owned by a Chinese company named ByteDance, which calls Red China its home. Technically, it exists at the government’s pleasure. TikTok strip-mines personal information so effectively you’d think they were owned by Google or Facebook. That makes TikTok as great a security risk as, well, Google and Facebook, and that is not good. Continue reading “As Is: The Crack of the Whip” →

As Is: Bringing The War Home

Posted on by Mike Gold

Responding to a query in Parliament yesterday asking why the United Kingdom has massed over 285,000 troops along the United States / Canada border, Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the MPs “Well, Her Majesty and I were having a nice tea-time chat up in the Palace and we got around to that kerfuffle over in Ukraine. It occurred to us that perhaps Mr. Putin has a good point.

“Therefore, we have decided to follow in Mr. Putin’s footsteps and reclaim our colonies, beginning with the United States. We’ve never truly acknowledged any so-called right to be independent, either in the rebel States or, for that matter, in India or the Caribbean.

“We’re starting with the colonies because of our strong common heritage,” Prime Minister Johnson continued. “The frontierspeople west of the Atlantic pond continue to speak the Queen’s tongue, which clearly shows were their loyalties lay. The British legal system which dates back to Anglo-Saxon times remains the backbone of colonial law. In fact, the colonial subjects continue to employ the British weights and measurements that were in effect in 1776, even though much of the rest of the world went metric during the final years of the last millennium.

“Clearly, the colonial rebels are much more faithful at holding on to British traditions than we are,” Johnson noted.

“Of course, Great Britain is a nuclear power but there’s no need to dwell on that at this time. We expect the stalwart subjects of Her Majesty will welcome us with cheers, baked goods, warm lager and boiled beef,” the PM concluded.

This threat comes at a critical time for both Canadians and American colonists as this is maple syrup season. If the border is closed, Americans will have little to put on their waffles other than chicken fat. On the other hand, if Great Britain dumps all of Canada’s unsold syrup into Niagara Falls, they can set global tourism back several centuries.

The French have yet to comment in public, but it is believed they have been in deep talks with the Quebecois in and around Montreal. However, the Gaullists have been on record since the 1970s that they may decide to use their nuclear arsenal first in order to maintain its security and interests.

Independent American senator Bernie Sanders responded “there is a silver lining here, as at last American citizens will be covered by a national health system. It’s not perfect, of course, but it’s better than dying in the gutter with Josh Hawley pissing on you.”

As of this writing, the only American official who has gone on record is Congressfool Marjorie Taylor Greene, who stated “if this so-called Queen and her enslaved stormtroopers think they can push real Christian Americans around, they’ve got another think coming. They’re all a bunch of homosexuals anyway, so we know God isn’t on their side. He hates the damn Brits. Even Hitler agreed. I’m calling for an immediate embargo on Yorkshire pudding, which can invigorate their Jewish space lasers.

In response, Russian Emperor Vlad Putin issued an imperial smirk and returned with his cat to the horse he rode in on.

As Is: Stamp Collecting In Ukraine

Posted on by Mike Gold

When I was a kid, I collected stamps. This was worthy as it exacerbated my study of American history and culture and helped make me the wanton hoarder I am today.

I suspect that’s no longer a big deal with kids today, given the fact that I used to know of about a dozen walk-in stamp collectors stores back in the day and only one of them remain today, and that one seems to be devoted to underpaying desperate people for their family jewels. But, maybe, just maybe, people are still into stamp collecting in Ukraine.

Those folks may be (well, most certainly are) outgunned, outmanned, and outraged, but they have not lost their sense of humor. According to The Guardian, the government decided to issue a “go fuck yourself, Russian warship” postage stamp.

No kidding.

For those who came in late, a few weeks ago the Russians challenged the Ukrainians at Snake Island in the Black Sea. The audio transcript reads thusly:

Russians: This is a Russian warship. I propose you lay down arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed and unnecessary victims. Otherwise, you’ll be bombed.

Ukrainians: Russian warship, go fuck yourself.

According to published reports, the Russians declined that request and slaughtered the Ukrainians. The trade magazine Maritime Executive reports the Russian navy is reported to have bombarded the island with deck guns before sending their soldiers to take control and those chiropractically-challenged Ukrainians were killed. Since then, some doubt has been cast on this latter event and there has been no confirmation either way. When David faces Goliath, hope must reign supreme.

I’m not even certain Ukraine has the ability to print stamps – at least, not in Ukraine. I’m less certain they have a functioning post office, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they had something. After all, this is the nation that last week told its citizens that if they capture or claim a Russian tank, they don’t have to declare it on their taxes.

Yes, folks, Jewish comedians should run all former Soviet bloc nations. Americans need not worry; Jews will not replace the government… unless you’re one of those astonishingly deaf, dumb and blind right-wingers who believe Jews already run all governments and banks. Obviously, that can’t be true.

But if Ukraine does fall Zelensky becomes a martyr, the rest of the world does the right thing and Putin dies on Snake Island, the Ukrainians will return to what’s left of their homes and rebuild.

Given their gift for humor, they might want to rename the place “Freedonia.”

As Is: Evil Is As Evil Does

As Is: Evil Is As Evil Does

Posted on by Mike Gold

I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis quite clearly. A year before the assassination of President Kennedy and two years before Premier Khrushchev’s ouster, it was an extremely scary time. I was a politically precocious twelve-year old. Little did we know what was ahead of us.

The global response to Vlad Putin’s war on the former USSR occupied nations has been quite hopeful, and the response inside Ukraine has been truly inspirational. America should take note and elect a genuine Jewish comedian as president.

The domestic response has been rather quiet. It’s clear most Americans are far more concerned with an increase in gas prices than they are with World War III. This is not surprising, but it is truly disgusting. Do our greedy self-centered very stupid fellow citizens think Putin was just Trumping around when he threatened nuclear war — twice in one week? Do these greedy self-centered very stupid fellow citizens not remember how Hitler invaded Poland under the same pretext, and how Russian premier Joe Stalin joined Hitler in that endeavor two weeks later?

We live in a nation of Elmer Fudds, and I don’t think we have what it takes to become a bunch of Bugs Bunnys.

We don’t want to think Putin will nuke anybody, but even some of his pals have come out and said Putie has lost his mind. This is an attitude that is prerequisite to starting a nuclear war. Let us recall the days when he (evidently) still had his mind; even then, his pressing the Big Red Button wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Putin does not want to restore the Soviet Union. Too many Americans still think “Russia” is synonymous with Communism; it is not. Today, the Russian Republic is synonymous with Putin, and Putin is synonymous with Stalin. Joe Stalin wasn’t a Communist. Joe Stalin was a Stalinist.

And what makes our indigenous morons think that Putin will stop with Ukraine? Or Kazakhstan? Or Lithuania? Or Georgia? Or Poland? Or Finland, or Sweden? These days Santayana makes Einstein look like a dimwit.

Putin is counting on the Trumpsters regaining Congress and then the sanctions will go away and he can climax his dictatorial wet dreams. He may be right about that. We’ve got to Bin Laden him immediately and keep the bigoted anti-democratic Republican party away from his oligarchs and their massive mountains of money.

It’s true that many of the Russian people have taken on great risk by speaking out and demonstrating against Putin, and these are very, very courageous people. True heroes. Please remember he’s got the job until 2036, he’s got the military, he’s certainly got the money and he’s got enough nukes to keep Ernst Blofeld up nights.

It is high time we ended the menace of Vlad Putin and his gaseous oligarchs. As Putin keeps on telling us, the alternative could very well be a whole lotta mushroom clouds. That’s not a risk worth taking. Ever.

Back in the days if the Cuban Missile Crisis, we saved the planet by cutting a deal with Nikita Khrushchev: we removed our nukes from Turkey and he removed his nukes from Cuba. Vlad Putin is not as reasonable as Khrushchev.

As Is by Mike Gold – 9-11 Part Two

Posted on by Mike Gold

After two decades, the 9-11 terrorists finally cemented their victory. They did so 366 days ago this very day

The victory has been the result of the chain reaction they must have hoped for in 2001: that by mounting attacks from Boston on New York and Washington, slamming into the Pentagon building and taking down our nation’s greatest warehouse of capitalism, we might unite for a few minutes but overall but our fear and the distrust inherent within a mongrel nation quickly would vomit down upon us and we Americans would turn on each other just as we always do.

That’s the textbook definition of terrorism; that’s why terrorism is an effective course of action for those willing to play the long game.

Steve Bannon © Bill Sienkiewicz.

The time was perfect for The Impossible Pussy, Donald J. Trump, and his criminally paranoid minions of White Supremacists to try to take over the nation. I don’t think they could have gotten as far as they have – their efforts remain a work in progress – if not for Osama bin Laden, the heart and soul of the contemporary Republican Party.

Critically, this White Supremacist Republican takeover of the United States of America by any means necessary (it’s not a coup as it’s hardly been bloodless, and only some White Supremacists think it has been bloodless) is indeed just the beginning. They stand every chance of succeeding. A handful of White Christian Republican far right-wing monsters and perverts can deny the people their vote or can overturn that vote at will. That, my friends, is a dictatorship.

You may think comparing the American White Right to Hitler is a cheap shot; it is not. Read some history. Not FoxOneAmericaBannon history where teaching the lessons of slavery might bruise the fragile feelings of some neurotic Youth Corps-raised White children and therefore must not be taught, but the real thing. The American White Republican Right is desperately and militantly trying to fulfill Adolf Hitler’s dream – no matter how many White American soldiers and sailors died in the fight to stop the fascist dictator. And, today, the American White Right Republicans have managed to label “anti-fascists” as our great evil.

These people know better. In their initial response to the first assault on our nation back on January 6 2021, the actions and inactions of Donald J. Trump and his White Supremacist Republican sycophants were condemned by such stalwart Republican masters as Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Mike Pence, Lindsey Graham, and Nikki Haley. Since then, those comments have been sent to the Star Trek mirror universe. Oh, no. McConnell, McCarthy, Pence, Graham and Haley never said anything bad about Trump. That would be heretical. Trump is god; what he does is by definition for the greater good of Real America… the White Christian Republican America.

The present Republican party is the party of bigotry, hatred, and treason. Their masters are McConnell, McCarthy, Pence, Graham, Haley and Trump. We better obey the All-Mighty Trump if we want to breathe right.

Today is the 366th day of the Second American Civil War. It did not start pretty; it will not end pretty… if it ends at all. I wouldn’t bet against the United States of America not being around when and if it’s over. It won’t be a north vs. south thing, it won’t be a state-by-state thing, it will be a city-state operation where those areas dominated by people who are not White Christian Republican Supremacists will replace our “blue” states, leaving the vast dry oceans of American hatred to be our “red” states. You’ll be able to tell where you are by the number of masks worn on the streets, the availability of women’s health services, the number of non-Christian houses of worship, a general acknowledgement of deductive reasoning and the respect for the principles that were the firmament of that great nation, that Camelot-like place on hill that we used to call the United States of America.

You may have a different opinion… but you would be wrong.

Mike Gold’s As Is: Everybody Look What’s Going Down!

Posted on by Mike Gold

“He don’t know me very well, do he?” – Bugs Bunny, “Rebel Rabbit,” 1949

I’ve been taking some time off from political proselytizing. The truth has been quite blatant and either you recognize it for what it is or you are so deep in the Rabid Right’s tank that reality testing is a waste of energy. There’s extraordinarily little middle ground anymore, and you don’t need this fool on the hill to tell you squat.

On the other hand, I’ve been pontificating since 1965 and this doesn’t feel like the right time to stop. As Bob Dylan said, “If my thought-dreams could be seen, they’d probably put my head in a guillotine.” So I’m going to pundit on, with the proviso “he that pundits is verily full of shit.”

There’s been a great deal of talk about the 2024 presidential election. I don’t know why; political years are akin to dog years and there’s a lot of dogs to be wagged. But I do recognize what is missing from our uncivil discourse.

Everybody is acting like the race will be between the current president and the criminal poser with the giant Mussolini complex. I’m not as certain that’s the way it will come down. Both men are really, really old – several years older than I am, in fact – and one of them has a digestive track that is as rotted out as his moral compass. If, next year, the Republicans fail to take back the house, which is an if that is somewhat larger than those other pundits let on, our nation’s dipshit il duce will likely be under indictment if not in prison – unless he picks up an AR-15 and starts murdering Black Lives Matter Wisconsinites, which is now perfectly legal.

The current White House keyholder presently enjoys a popularity rating only slightly higher than his predecessor, so, of course, now the wags are predicting he won’t run for reelection and/or his party will dump him. Yeah. Um tut sut.

This reveals the Democratic Party’s overwhelming dilemma. It’s always something, but this time at this moment they’re completely screwed and those other soothsayers ain’t ponying up much in the way of revelation. Not me. I’m always the guy who farts loudist in the swimming pool.

People don’t like the incumbent as much as they did a year ago. Well, that will happen – but those running down-ticket don’t want to risk drowning in the undertow. As we learn time and time again, politicians love their phony-baloney jobs more than they love America.

But if they dump Joe Biden, or if he dumps himself, the pressure to promote the candidacy of Vice President Kamila Harris will be enormous. A whole lot of people went blue last year with that very understanding. The non-White vote will have a hard time backing another old White man – promises inferred are promises made. The non-male vote will have a hard time voting for any man. In politics, perception is reality and such “promises” are nothing more than perceptions.

So let’s say the Democrats back Harris. That will prove interesting. You might remember Barack Obama, the president who recently inducted Jay-Z into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame. His election and his subsequent reelection empowered the Pathetic Right and titillated the big money monsters who want to keep all the loot they’ve stolen from what once was the middle class. These people either could not abide by the concept of a Black president or have profited enormously from the reaction one-third of Americans have to the reality of a Black president.

Just imagine how these liquored up bible-babbling assault weapon hugging democracy hating marionettes are going to react to the concept of a Black WOMAN as president! It’s like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton all rolled into one! The very prospect will make the little bigots crawl out of their heads. They will come out en masse to prevent Harris from ever putting her hand on any bible. They will do so more aggressively than they have been doing since The Great Pumpkin floated down his escalator informing us the Mexicans are all drug dealing rapists, Satanists, and Communists.

As the kids say, these people will lose their shit. You know, like they did, literally, when they invaded the Capitol building this past January.

In other words, the Democrats are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

Roll on, roll on. Keep a happy thought.

And happy Thanksgiving.

 

As Is With Mike Gold: Fuck ‘Em If They Can’t Take A Poke

As Is With Mike Gold: Fuck ‘Em If They Can’t Take A Poke

Posted on by Mike Gold

Sharpen your teeth for the family feast. Let all the hungry drool roll down your chin. Hide the human and bring out the beast. Let all the animal games begin! – Sandy Linzer and Denny Randell, Silver Spoon, 1971.

Last week, reported COVID infections went up 11%. That’s not entirely a bad thing.

Those new cases, according to published accounts, are almost entirely among the unvaccinated. 99.5%, according to the CDC, which is closer than “almost entirely.” If recent history is an indication, this particular subset of moronacy does not believe COVID infections went up 11%. Or, alternately, that COVID has ever been a problem at all. Or, on the mutant’s third hand, it’s all a Democratic Party conspiracy.

With respect to that last idea, they might have a point. Given the overwhelming refusal of many in the Confederate States to get the jab – no nanites for true American patriots! – they are killing off each other. Perhaps they believe the Democrats have bred a new strain of COVID, the Delta Variant (which is not the name of an X-Men graphic novel) that spreads much faster and with far greater efficiency than that which attacked the Atlantic northeast blue states a year and a half ago. To hell with ending gerrymandering, we Pizza Pederasts have on our side… oh, my god… SCIENCE!

The fly in that slice of paranoid pie is that the Democrats haven’t shown the ability to get their act together to organize such a feat since they ended Reconstruction with The Great Compromise of 1877. I continue to question the use of the adjective “Great,” but in those days the Republicans were what we call Democrats today and the Democrats were what we called Republicans – until the remaining, unpurged “Republicans” bent over and turned their asses towards the ex-president.

Be that as it may, all these death worshipping insurrectionists have been warned repeatedly, in every manner possible, throughout the lamestream media. No doubt they’re still busy looking for that Washington pizza parlor’s basement. It’s possible the Cult might have heard about it through their misinformation venues of choice: Twitter, Fox News, the Qanon sites, Breitbart, The Epoch Times, Infowars, Newsmax, One America News, Twitchy, the Washington Times, and a great many others. However, these ill-dressed goose-stepping Goebbels replicants seem to share a different interpretation of the word “vaccine.” They confuse it with “Zyklon B.”

I wonder. WWAR do? What would Ayn Rand do? That disgusting, lying hypocrite took social security, so perhaps she’d take the jab as well. The far right has a hard time letting philosophy get in the way of their own personal… growth. We know her fanboy eye doctor wannabe devotee Kentucky Senator Rand Paul thinks this is a prime example of government overreach. Saving people’s lives is not something in which any Right-thinking American should engage.

As a person who believes in democracy, egalitarianism, freedom of and from religion, and the American Dream, I say to these individuals “Keep on truckin’.” We’ll see if we can bury you under the statues of your favorite treasonous Confederate heroes.

And here you thought COVID was a bummer.

As Is With Mike Gold: Bullshit at the Speed of Light

As Is With Mike Gold: Bullshit at the Speed of Light

Posted on by Mike Gold

I’ve had enough of watching scenes / Of schizophrenic, ego-centric, paranoiac, prima-donnas / All I want is the truth now / Just gimme some truth — John Lennon, Gimme Some Truth, 1971

Okay, I’m a history buff. Have been since I was knee-high to a silkworm. I will now share with you the most important thing I have learned:

Everything you know is wrong.

Not just you. Me, too. And those several people on the planet who are not reading this. In 1916, Henry Ford told the Chicago Tribune, “History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history that we make today.” Whereas I am loathe to agree with anything that anti-labor super-bigot ever said, I think any careful examination will lend credence to this view.

A more commonly deployed reaction to “facts from friends” got its start in 1932 on The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air radio show. Vaudevillian Jack Pearl played the part of Baron Munchausen, classic teller of tall tales. When his veracity was questioned, the Baron replied in a thick German accent, “Vas you dere, Sharlie?”

Commercial radio, which hit its century mark this past November, greatly accelerated the spread of both Information and its sister, Miss Information. By then, newspapers were doing a fine job of spreading both, but even with the telegraph and seven editions a day news was reported a handful of items at a time. Sometimes — not often enough — corrections were noted in later editions, but we learn in our high school journalism class that whatever you read, hear, or see as “breaking news” has yet to enjoy the benefit of fact-checking, or even of knowing the full story. Today, if you hear something on broadcast news and they are claiming it’s a breaking story (and they claim everything is a breaking story), do not confuse it with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

I read a lot of old newspapers, and I do not believe we are subjected to more incorrect and often wacky “news” today than we were a century ago. However, because “news” now travels unchecked at the speed of the internet, it seems like there’s a lot more truthiness because everybody knows something about the story, even while the body is still warm, so to speak. Unconfirmed stories gather credibility because all at once everybody seems to know about everything whether it’s true or not.

If feces is fertilizer for plants, then bullshit is the fertilizer for fake news. Reason goes straight out the window. What kind of idiot could actually believe that the Democratic Party is running a cannibalistic pederasty ring out of the basement of a Washington, DC pizza joint — that doesn’t even have a basement? Well, lots of idiots do. Perhaps millions. You don’t have to believe this particular Munchausen-on-crack tale in order to disbelieve the 2020 election, but there are plenty of other stories that thrive in this neighborhood of the absurd. The 74,216,154 Trumpsters can take their choice of such folderol. And they do.

Virtually everything that comes out of Tucker Carlson’s mouth is bullshit, and much of that is fantastically absurd. His moral comedy show attracts some four million viewers each night. Do they all think what he’s saying is true? Well, no, I’m sure there are some — perhaps many — who watch it because it is so ludicrous, like any other so-called “reality show.” Others are simply grateful the loon stopped wearing his bowties. But I think it is fair to assume that the majority of his flock is joyously lapping up his brain diarrhea. Continue reading “As Is With Mike Gold: Bullshit at the Speed of Light” →