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Brainiac On Banjo: Ungrateful Bastard

Brainiac On Banjo: Ungrateful Bastard

Posted on by Mike Gold

“There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.” Arthur Jensen to Howard Beale. From the movie Network, written by Paddy Chayefsky.

Screenshot

Seashells? Really? Seashells!

Oh, sure. After about a week of being at the butt end of every comedian’s routine as well as every barroom blather-babble (my favorite type), “acting” Attorney General Todd Blanche said he most certainly has other charges to lay on former FBI Director James Comey, but he was not at liberty to say what those charges are. He’s new on the job, so he hasn’t had enough time to make new shit up.

By the way, “acting,” when used in reference to any Donald Trump appointee, is a euphemism for “Donald Trump.”

All these unending persecutions of Comey are the result of his tempestuous relationship with The Donald back in the beginning of Trump’s first term, when he actually employed a couple people who were smart and courageous. Those appointments, of course, did not last long. The fact is, if Comey did not break with F.B.I. procedure and launch still another investigation into Hillary Clinton and her email servers shortly before the election, she would have won the 2016 presidential campaign. You’d think the Orange Hump would show him a little gratitude!

Please. He becomes an octogenarian in about five weeks. He also needs time to adjust. Earth just ain’t what it used to be before the Fascists lost World War II.

Blanche busted Comey for this photo of seashells that he and his boss both claim is a provocation to assassinate the president of the United States. The shells spelled out “8647,” which became the bank passcode of a great many MAGAts.

Of course, a couple thousand committed truth seekers, a/k/a snotty leftist rabble-rousers, immediately whipped out their phones and searched Amazon for “8646,” which, according to Trump and Blanche, must mean these people were attempting to murder or otherwise inconvenience Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, a/k/a President 46. The products shown on my page are among the many that are still available today.

So, this must be an active conspiracy! Continue reading “Brainiac On Banjo: Ungrateful Bastard” →

Brainiac On Banjo: More Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind

Brainiac On Banjo: More Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind

Posted on by Mike Gold

“Semolina pilchard climbing up the Eiffel Tower. Elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna. Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe!” From I Am The Walrus, written by John Lennon.

As the great Hedley Lamarr famously said, “My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.” It is under this premise I share these random errant thoughts.

The closer President Joe Biden comes to the end of his term, the more he looks like he was drawn by Will Elder.

I firmly believe DC’s latest sub-imprint launch is being co-funded by a major vodka company.

Will Robert Downey Jr. be cast as Dr. Thomas Wayne? Will we see him buying those damn pearls?

I think Agatha All Along is a great example of contemporary social satire. Sorry, incels. She still won’t sleep with you.

There’s a great job opportunity waiting for a person qualified to keep IDW’s revolving door well-oiled.

The current Ryan North run on The Fantastic Four is nothing short of brilliant. The stuff that should be there is there, hung on the strong framework of great human interest stories. I highly recommend it. Continue reading “Brainiac On Banjo: More Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind” →

Brainiac On Banjo: Existing While Belligerent

Brainiac On Banjo: Existing While Belligerent

Posted on by Mike Gold

“Your mama told you never to eat your friends with your fingers and hands. But I say you ought to eat what you will. Shove it in your mouth any way that you can.” From Silver Spoon, written by Grace Slick (before she went Vegan)

Do you know where you were 56 years ago? Statically speaking, most of you folks weren’t even zygotes back then, but I remember where I was in August 1968. I was in Sweet Home Chicago, specifically in Lincoln Park and in Grant Park, and I was pissed.

Compared to today, America was as different as Earth-616 is from Earth-1. You’ve probably heard a lot of noise juxtaposing the Democratic National Convention in Chicago back then and the Democratic National Convention that started today. Most of the comparisons I’ve encountered are bullshit.

We were protesting America’s War in Vietnam and similar issues involving freedom and truth. We didn’t like the policies of candidate Hubert Humphrey, a failed, phony progressive who became President Lyndon Johnson’s top toady. LBJ was a man whose ego overwhelmed his sense of decency and honesty. “Dump the Hump” became Hubert’s epitaph. The only major difference between Humphrey and his opponent Richard Nixon was that the latter was less cheery and more creepy.

Nixon won anyway by seven-tenths of one percentage point. The Vietnam War didn’t skip a beat, plodding on until Saigon fell on April 30, 1975. By then, Nixon had been forced to abdicate by his own political party, and Gerald Ford continued to steer the ship of state into the iceberg.

Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, a true-blue Democrat who was almost as powerful as he thought he was, believed the best way to support Humphrey was to dress his police force up in riot gear and beat the shit out of the more than 10,000 protesters who were marching peacefully. I know; I’ve seen just about every minute of television coverage both aired and unaired (I can explain that, but I’m in full-babble mode). Many of us, including myself, were beaten by the police for committing the crime of existing while belligerent. One was killed.

Our well-broadcast chants evolved from “Stop the war” to “The whole world is watching.” The turmoil expanded to the press corps and to the floor of the Democratic National Convention itself where some credentialed reporters and delegates also were harassed, gassed, and beaten. Continue reading “Brainiac On Banjo: Existing While Belligerent” →

As Is: Heroes

As Is: Heroes

Posted on by Mike Gold

“So, come on ye childhood heroes! Won’t you rise up from the pages of your comic books, your super crooks, and show us all the way! Make your will and testament. Won’t you join your local government? We’ll have Superman for president. Let Robin save the day.” From Thick As A Brick, written by Ian Anderson.

The Old Folks At My Home

It’s amazing which people I’d vote for over Donald Trump. I suspect at least seven billion out of our global population of 8.2 billion would make that list, including a couple former Nazis who draw the line at fascist fundamentalism. This is not about Trump. This is about saving our nation — and not just from Trump. He’s not even the tip of the MAGA iceberg. In fact, after November they will no longer really need him.

If my goal was simply to defeat Trump, I’d back Taylor Swift. And it’s not about Joe Biden‘s accomplishments, which are truly breathtaking particularly given the fact that if Joe sneezed not a single MAGA would say gesundheit. It’s been four years of pushing the boulder up the mountain against a right-wing House of Representatives, a nearly evenly split Senate, and a Supreme Court filled with religious fascists too insane for The John Birch Society. Against all that, Joe has been doing great.

Judge Holden

This is not about age, and it most certainly is not about a bad head cold. That’s not what we saw last Thursday. Mick Jagger is only a year younger than Joe, and Keith Richards is the man who invented aging. While Joe was debating Judge Holden, Mick and Keith were kicking ass on stage at Chicago’s Soldier Field. But the job of running the United States of America should be a bit more focused.

(Yeah, I know. It’s only rock and roll…) Continue reading “As Is: Heroes” →

Brainiac On Banjo: Deep Fakes Ghosting On An Open Liar

Brainiac On Banjo: Deep Fakes Ghosting On An Open Liar

Posted on by Mike Gold

I’m a substitute for another guy. I look pretty tall but my heels are high. The simple things you see are all complicated. I look bloody young, but I’m just back dated. — “Substitute,” written by Pete Townshend.

Is artificial intelligence a good thing or a bad thing?

Perhaps you’ve noticed a recent upsurge in pro-AI marketing and advertising. Damn near very web browser is now toting their AI capabilities, joining a hell of a lot of other software manufacturers in their braggadocio. I’m not just talking about computers: if you think about it every microchip is a computer. Your car is a computer. Your smart-television is a computer. Robots of all sorts are computers, and it seems like every damn one of them have started bragging about their artificial intelligence.

Unlike commercials for gambling apps or alcohol products, there’s no disclaimer at the bottom of AI product ads suggesting you to not use their product for fraud or for theft of intellectual property or for defaming your fellow human beings.

The morass of software developers, or, to be specific, their marketing departments have started screaming about the virtues of something we have been using for decades but, now, can be deployed for grand theft… to steal even your work. So, they want to distract us from their dark side the way gun manufacturers con us about the need for assault rifles on a hunting excursion. You can never tell when a pack of godless communists might be hiding behind that wounded doe. Continue reading “Brainiac On Banjo: Deep Fakes Ghosting On An Open Liar” →

As Is by Mike Gold: Old Joe, My Ass

As Is by Mike Gold: Old Joe, My Ass

Posted on by Mike Gold

We live in a political world, The one we can see and feel. But there’s no one to check. It’s all a stacked deck. We all know for sure that it’s real. “Political World,” written by Bob Dylan.

It’s time to get real. As of this writing, there are four presidential candidates who are likely — but not assuredly — to be heading their respective political party tickets.

The Democratic Party has Joe Biden, age 81. The Fascist Party has Donald Trump, age 77, although it is vaguely possible that they will have to share their Orange Pumpkin with our federal prison system. The Fossil Fuel party has Joe Manchin, age 76. He has yet to announce for president, but he has said he will not run for reelection to the Senate. I guess he’s afraid Exxon will take his yacht away.

(Fun Fact: Manchin, who has a cash register in his yacht’s master bedroom, is the right wing Democratic senator from West Virginia, which is a land-locked state. Anomalies abound.)

Finally, there is Bizarro Bobby Kennedy, age 69, from the Kill-Your-Neighbor Party. Unlike such movies as Godfather II and From Russia With Love, Bizarro Bobby adds credence to the philosophy “sequels-aren’t-as-good-as-the-originals.

That means Bizarro Bobby, at 69 years of age, is the cub in the pack. Ergo, “too old” is preposterously relative. I know a shitload of people who died before their 69th birthday, and even more who died before they turned 76, 77 or 81.

But let’s hope to High Hell that Bizarro Bobby is too apeshit for the electorate. That’s a big assumption after Trump and, unlike Trump (at least this week), Bizarro Bobby is pro-abortion… as long as said abortion occurs within three months of the zygote’s propagation. Recently, he’s tried to walk back that part, which shows us just how feckless the bastard is. But he is the baby on the railroad tracks so we’ll grade the others on the curve.

Manchin, 76. Trump, 77. Biden, 81. That’s a five-year span, yet it is Biden who is targeted as “too old.”

Friends, age is not the issue here.

It’s Kamala Harris. Continue reading “As Is by Mike Gold: Old Joe, My Ass” →

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.

 

Happy 420. We’ve Still Got A Long Way To Go

Posted on by Mike Gold

“Please don’t waste your energy on me my friend / cause we still got a long way to go / We’ll meet again someday / but right now just go away / ‘cause I still got a long way to go.” Michael Bruce, Long Way To Go, 1971

Happy 420, a holiday that, I dare say, gets happier each year.

In the past six months, Arizona, Montana, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, South Dakota and Virginia have legalized the recreational use of marijuana. That means as of this writing, its use is legal for adults in 16 states, the “District” of Columbia, and Guam – not to mention Canada, Mexico, and a rapidly increasing number of industrial nations.

Another 20 states have legalized the medicinal use of marijuana and most of those are entertaining complete legalization. More than two-thirds of all Americans support legalization, and this cuts across both political parties and those who identify as liberal, progressive, conservative, libertarian, and Anglo-Saxon.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, we spend nearly four billion dollars each and every year enforcing the existing marijuana laws. 45% of all inmates in federal prisons are there for drug-related offenses (source: Federal Bureau of Prisons). 1.5 million people are arrested each year for drug-related offenses and over 500,000 are behind bars (source: The Economist). We are spending in excess of twenty billion dollars keeping these miscreants behind bars each and every year.

Of course, a highly disproportionate number of weed inmates are not white men and certainly not white men who are “of a certain age.” It bears noting that a young person with a prison record is extremely likely to be marginalized throughout his or her “career,” and, thus, is equally likely to be a financial burden on society. This should go without saying, but if it did, then it wouldn’t be an issue.

You’d think there would be more productive ways to spend our tax dollars, including (but not limited to) reducing taxes.

But if you did, you wouldn’t be President Joe Biden. He’s opposed to national legalization efforts, and his schedule has been tied up firing some of his staff members who have admitted to prior weed use. This liberal icon has been very busy putting our money where his mouth is. It should be noted that Joe Biden, like his legal predecessor and like this writer, does not consume alcohol.

Of course, there are people who are opposed to legalization. There are the usual religious totalitarians who are convinced their invisible hoary thunderer gets angry every time anybody receives any enjoyment out of life. There also are the self-appointed moral monitors who believe Reefer Madness was a documentary.

And, of course, there’s the prison-for-profit racket, a gaggle of soulless entrepreneurs and investors who are all too happy to feel your pain all the way to their bank.

I firmly believe in the original conservative philosophy that demands we “mind our own business.” Here’s a fun fact: when Benjamin Franklin designed the very first American coin, one side states “Mind Your Business” and the other side declares “We Are One.”

I think we would do well by remembering those two phrases, particularly during these difficult times when our nation and its values are under armed attack by those Anglo-Saxon separatists.

Or… maybe… let’s legalize marijuana just to save the money and to free resources that actually will inure to the benefit of our society. Old school Republicans — who seem to have been purged from the party that carries their name — should embrace this idea just to kick big government in its big ass.

Of course, there are other ways to celebrate 420. Personally, I’m partying down at my local vaccine clinic and getting my second jab. I’m told I will likely get sick for a couple of days, and I appreciate the wisdom of the “but it beats getting Covid” mantra.

Hey… party on, Mike!

And have a safe, healthy, and amusing 420. After what we’ve all been through, we deserve it.

Weird Scenes #124: Smoke on the Rotter

Weird Scenes #124: Smoke on the Rotter

Posted on by Mike Gold

“Just ‘cause somebody can’t handle anything don’t mean we have to pay for their pain / Nicotine, caffeine, chainsaws and guns gotta, make your own regulations / Psychedelic mushrooms good for your mind. If you’re ready to use ‘em, then ya outta try ‘em / How did freedom mess up your life? Decide for yourself what’s wrong and what’s right.” Mojo Nixon, Legalize It!, 1985

Yeah, I’m gonna bray about weed again… and I’m gonna launch my first verbal attack on our present president. You know, Joe Biden. Nice guy, but…

As you read this, dozens if not hundreds of White House staffers have been “suspended, asked to resign, or placed in a remote work program due to past marijuana use,” according to the Daily Beast. Five such staffers have been fired already.

Well, that’s liberalism for you.

Personally, I would be inclined to think that any potential White House staffers who haven’t smoked weed – first or second hand – or haven’t tried an edible or had a medical condition that warrants such use has been living under a rock and therefore has been too isolated to function properly in the job.

Or, perhaps, that cat is simply lying. This might very well be the point. If you’re working at the White House lying is pretty much in the job description.

According to the Daily Beast article, “For the FBI, an applicant can’t have used marijuana in the past three years; at the NSA, it’s only one. The White House … (states) that as long as past use was ‘limited’ and the candidate wasn’t pursuing a position that required a security clearance, past use may be excused.”

But if you’ve toked around a bit, for whatever reason, at any time, the Biden White House thinks you are a security risk. You can put away as much alcohol as you want, but if you’re doing your job and you don’t use politically incorrect language, they’re completely fine that you won’t blab our secrets to Putin.

This is not the matter of following a law that can’t get through the RepubilQan filibuster. As we have seen during the previous administration, the president has the final word on who gets a security clearance.

Let us also note that Joe Biden has appointed Dr. Rahul Gupta as his Drug Czar, a.k.a. the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Gupta was public health commissioner in West Virginia from 2015 to 2018. He ripped apart that state’s needle exchange program, showing a lack of concern about HIV and hepatitis. This is the moral position known as “Shoot up and die, creep!”

By the way, West Virginia is a national leader in drug overdose deaths, so maybe his policy wasn’t exactly a “Mr. Watson, come here; I want you” kind of moment. According to Filter Magazine “West Virginia also had the highest rate of hepatitis C infections in 2015. Today, West Virginia is experiencing multiple HIV and hepatitis C outbreaks.” Continue reading “Weird Scenes #124: Smoke on the Rotter” →

Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind #115: The Whiny Little Bitches Ride Again!

Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind #115: The Whiny Little Bitches Ride Again!

Posted on by Mike Gold

He is the president but wants to be the king / Know what I like about the guy? Not a goddamn thing / I want to know, how can four years seem so long? / Lord have mercy, what the hell is going on? – “What The Hell,” written by Elvin Bishop, 2020.

I like Bill Maher’s show, but I haven’t been watching it much lately. Semi-populated audiences and well-distanced guests are quite appropriate these days, but I find it creepy on a comedy panel show. No biggie; one way or another, all this will pass.

So I can’t say for certain Maher continues to refer to Baby Don as “that whiny little bitch.” He was on the money when he started this, and either he’s right today or you really do think Hillary Clinton has been running a pederasty ring out of the basement of a Washington DC pizza joint – one that, I hasten to add, doesn’t even have a basement.

Oh. Right. Sorry. I’m talking about that whiny little bitch and not QAnon… per se.

I’m not going to whine about Trump. He is what he is (whatever that is) and, as Anderson Cooper said last Friday, Trump is no longer relevant. He is a loser reacting to his mammoth defeat exactly the way we knew he would react, and if he had made a sincere attempt at being a human being we might think “hey, look, an Elvis impersonator finally landed a new gig!”

Nope. Like Caligula, Trump is history. It’s his supporters that vex me. People who are or at least once were otherwise intelligent. People who truly believe the election was stolen, despite the fact that every state’s attorney general has affirmed the validity of their election results. Despite the fact that every judge, be he or she a Democrat or a Republican with a track record of drifting left or drifting right. They all have chucked the Trumpsters’ cases out of court. Trump lost at least his first 16 challenges, as of this writing. If he had one leg to stand on, he’d be Dudley Moore.

Trumpsters are crawing about how close this election was and, in their flea-ridden brainpans, any shift in the vote count most certainly would keep their savior in office. Really? Trump lost by five million votes (and counting), which is two million more votes than he lost by in 2016. But, as we all know, the United States is a republic and not a democracy, so the popular vote is merely a means to the end. It’s the electoral college that votes according to the laws of the elector’s individual states, and Trump lost that one 306 to 232.

57% to 43% is not close. In fact, four years ago when Trump won the electoral college by the exact same count Trump’s acolytes could not stop braying that 306 to 232 was a “landslide victory.” Well, numbskulls, if 306 to 232 was a landslide victory for Trump in 2016 then 306 to 232 is a landslide victory for Biden in 2020.

It has been well established that Trumpsters are science deniers. Let us remember that mathematics is a science and in the murky mentality of these mindless mopes, 232 Trump electoral votes is closer to 306 Biden votes than 306 Trump votes was to Clinton’s 232 a mere four years ago.

This weekend, literally hundreds of reason-challenged paranoids took to the streets of Washington DC to exercise their constitutionally-guaranteed right to have their disease spreading hissy fit. That’s fine by me. Make your voice heard. Stand up for your beliefs. Four years ago, I was at an anti-Trump demonstration held a mere three days after Trump’s election that was organized by high school kids – it attracted a couple thousand people. I gotta wonder what took the Trumpsters so long to get their act on the road.

Oh. Yeah. I get it. Cellphones and social networking also are products of science. They know how to whine online under the cover of their witless pseudonyms but most of them lack the courage and the skill to actually stand up for their beliefs. They are cowards who, fortunately for the rest of us, think Covid-19 isn’t a big deal and therefore are hellbent on killing one another. You know, just like the maskless imbeciles who invaded Sturges, South Dakota last August causing, according to USA Today, at least 414 COVID-19 cases and at least one death, as of September 8.

Whine on, little bitches, whine on.

Bye-bye Baby, bye-bye.