Fear Itself

As we slog toward Tuesday's General Election through the dense, choking fog of angry lies, distortions, and empty rhetoric from Der Furor, I am reminded of the words of one of our greatest presidents, which stand in stark contrast to the words of one of the worst. In his first inaugural address, new President Franklin Delano Roosevelt told a desperate nation hungry for reassurance:

"This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days."

Der Furor, on the other hand, pictures our nation as the world's garbage dump. He promises his angry followers a terrifyingly authoritarian regime of economic chaos, racial hatred, and incompetent leadership. His economic proposals, panned by every reputable economist, would wreck the economy and benefit only the wealthy. His entire program is based on lies, distortion, vengeance, and reckless hate. He thunders about the horror of massive voting fraud that would cheat him of his victory, yet he has never ... never ... provided the least scintilla of proof that would stand up in court.  

Another great President, Abraham Lincoln, spoke in his first inaugural address words that would apply to our own fearful time:

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

One candidate in this election - Vice-President Kamala Harris - consistently appeals to the better angels of our nature, presenting a voice of hope, joy, and competence. The other candidate - Der Furor - appeals to the worst demons of our nature, presenting an evidence-free picture of a nation in decline, of crime, disease, anger, and hatred, driven by incompetence and a desire for revenge against those he believes have wronged him.

The choice is clear.

The only thing we have to fear, as President Roosevelt reminded us, is fear itself. 

Look around you, think rationally, examine the evidence, and vote your hopes, rather than your fears.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Israel/Gaza/Lebanon and an American Election

There are a lot of things grinding my gears about this year's election, but the thing that - at least today - is at the top of the list is the effect of Middle Eastern war and politics on our choice of president.

You may recall my basic position on the situation of Israel, the Palestinians, and the rest of the Middle East, which I spelled out in my post almost a year ago titled, "A Plague on Both Your Houses." As far as I'm concerned, the best solution to the problem would be to build a wall a thousand feet high around the entire region, fill it to the top with sand, and start over.

The problem with the Middle East isn't the undying hatred and the endless cycle of attack-respond-attack-respond. The problem is that it's become the rest of the world's problem. I personally don't care if the Jews and Arabs of the Middle East make a national sport of killing each other. What I do care about is that those hatreds are threatening to destroy the United States.

Across the nation, Arab Americans enraged by the Biden Administration's support for Israel are threatening to sit out the election or - worse - vote for Der Furor in the comical belief that he actually cares about them and would put more pressure on Israel to end the wars in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. Likewise, Jewish Americans enraged by a Biden Administration they feel is insufficiently supportive of Israel threaten either to sit out the election or to accept the comical belief that Der Furor actually cares about them and would go "all-in" against Israel's enemies*.

I am neither Jewish nor Arab/Muslim, but I have close friends in each camp. They are all sincere in their beliefs and their anger, and those beliefs and anger - which have echoed down the years at least since the well-intentioned but ultimately deadly Balfour Declaration of 1917 - have only grown more intense with each new death. And now all that accumulated hatred and religious bitterness threatens to upend our election here at home and return to power an angry authoritarian driven by petty jealousy, animosity toward his enemies real and perceived, and a disdain for democratic norms and common decency.

There are no ... no ... clean hands in the ongoing horror of the Middle East. I understand the legitimate fears and desires of both sides, but decry the rigidly zero-sum unwillingness of each to seek a peaceful resolution. Any such resolution will leave each side unsatisfied, but in the words of the "Game of Thrones" character Tyrion Lannister, “No one is very happy, which means it’s a good compromise, I suppose.” 

Do not allow your vote to be decided by undying hatreds from the other side of the world. No matter how sincerely you may want the carnage to end, what's important is that the ones actually fighting want it ... and, so far, they don't.

Have a good day and make sure you vote on the basis of what's good for the United States, not the goals of bitter enemies a world away.

More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* To the extent that Der Furor admires leaders he perceives as strong and ruthless, he tends to support Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu. And the fact that he receives more financial support from Jewish than from Arab supporters doesn't hurt, either.

Poetry Sunday

We conclude our annual celebration of the Halloween season with our final Poetry Sunday on the theme. What would Halloween be without mention of the evil witches that haunt the halls of Congress dark forests of our dreams? Robert Herrick leads us off with this seasonally appropriate poem ...

The Hag

by Robert Herrick

    The Hag is astride,

    This night for to ride;

The Devill and shee together:

    Through thick, and through thin,

    Now out, and then in,

Though ne'r so foule be the weather.

    A Thorn or a Burr

    She takes for a Spurre:

With a lash of a Bramble she rides now,

    Through Brakes and through Bryars,

    O're Ditches, and Mires,

She followes the Spirit that guides now.

    No Beast, for his food,

    Dares now range the wood;

But husht in his laire he lies lurking:

    While mischiefs, by these,

    On Land and on Seas,

At noone of Night are working,

    The storme will arise,

    And trouble the skies;

This night, and more for the wonder,

    The ghost from the Tomb

    Affrighted shall come,

Cal'd out by the clap of the Thunder.

Have a good day and enjoy the rest of your weekend ... and protect yourself from the curse of Empty G, Lauren Boebert, Laura Loomer, Kellyanne Conway, and other evil witches - at Halloween and for the next four years.

More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

Can we return this week for a refund?

Disgraced former lawyer and New York mayor Rudy Giuliani has been ordered by to turn over his New York penthouse apartment and 26 valuable watches in partial payment of the $153 million judgement against him in favor of two Georgia election workers he defamed; for the first time since 1976, the Washington Post has - apparently under pressure from owner Jeff Bezos - declined to endorse a candidate for president*; the Department of Justice has warned the Super PAC run by multibillionaire Elon Musk that its large cash payments to registered voters in seven swing states who sign his "petition" may be illegal under election law**; 28-year-old grizzly bear #399, the oldest known reproducing female grizzly in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and mother of 18 known cubs, was killed when struck by a car; and in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a man is under arrest after attempting to strangle a woman with an American flag ... the man's lawyer is expected to argue that he thought it was okay to use the flag as a weapon because Der Furor's supporters did it when storming the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. 

It's time for our last Halloween-season Cartoon Saturday, and what better note to go out on than an homage to mad scientists and their long-suffering assistants?

Even mad scientists have to work their way up the ladder of madness ... 

Is it worse to be mad, annoyed, or disappointed? ...

He seems to have a better media advisor than Der Furor ...

Well, it does end in -ium ...

Show of hands ... right ...

It's always good to compromise, but not always easy ...

I can see the problem ...

He's distantly related to the popular Parisian small car - the Hatchback of Notre Dame ...

Is he board-certified? ...

Zoom works better for some people than for others ...

Let's hear it for all the mad scientists who are lining up to apply for positions in the federal government should Der Furor win the November election.

Have a good day and a great weekend, and come back tomorrow for Poetry Sunday, when Robert Burns helps us fly (by broom) into the final days before Halloween. More thoughts then.

Bilbo

* I immediately cancelled my subscription and wrote both a comment on their editorial and a very strongly worded letter to the editor. At this time in history, this failure reflects moral cowardice of the highest order.

** Ya think?

Great Moments in Editing and Signage

Time for our last collection of Great Moments in Editing and Signage for October, and we could all surely use a good chuckle ... or, at least, a bewildered shake of the head ...

At least these butt sticks should be easier for the ER staff to remove ...

As if climate change wasn't bad enough ...

Don't let Der Furor and JD know ...

I've heard of concierge medicine for the well-to-do, but concierge law seems to be appealing to politicians ...

Nothing like a full-service strip mall, is there? ...

Uh ... where should I go? ...

People think correctly ...

From the Department of Weird Literal Translations ... the sign in Russian actually says, "No Exit" ...

Another one from the Department of Weird Literal Translations ... molida in Spanish can mean "ground" and (in slang) "exhausted" or "worn out" ...

I may need to be more careful ...

Have a good day and make sure you've either already voted or have a plan to vote. More thoughts tomorrow, when Cartoon Saturday's last Halloween-themed post will appear in this space ... see you then.

Bilbo

Time to Reset the DUMBCON for the Election

Long-time readers of this blog will recall that I established the National Stupidity Condition, or DUMBCON, in July of 2009 as a way of expressing the prevailing level of American stupidity. The original DUMBCON structure was modeled on the military's "Defense Condition" ("DEFCON") system, with five levels ranging from DUMBCON 5 ("Ordinary Stupidity") to DUMBCON 1 ("More Stupid Than You Can Imagine"). I set the original level at DUMBCON 1, skipping over all the lesser levels:

In the 15 years (!) since I established the DUMBCON system, I've changed it numerous times to account for the degree of stupidity. At its highest (in January of 2021), the system had a staggering ten levels, with the highest being DUMBCON Minus 4 ("Time to Volunteer for That One-Way Mars Mission") ...

I've adjusted it several times since then, and the current version (#8) has six levels:

We have been at DUMBCON Zero since January 3rd of this year.

But ...

Given that this is an election year, and that the level of stupidity generated by a single Der Furor-fired MAGA rally - much less the collective lunacy of the GOP and the social and religious right - is almost beyond imagining, I've decided that it's time to adjust the scale once again and reset the DUMBCON to a higher level. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Readers, we are implementing Version 9 of the DUMBCON structure - 

and resetting the level from DUMBCON Zero to

DUMBCON Minus 1.

I will revisit the level after election day and decide whether additional changes are necessary.

Have a good day, and be sure you have a plan to vote if you haven't already. Move everything out from under your bed to make sure there's room to hide.

More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Musical Sunday

For our last Musical Sunday offering of the Halloween season, what could be better than the slowly building, magnificently eerie instrumental classic "Tubular Bells," by Mike Oldfield - the theme from "The Exorcist"? ...

Have a good day and enjoy the rest of your weekend. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

Another week swirls down the drain of history. Finally. 

The Israeli government confirmed that its forces had killed Yayah Sinwar, the leader of Hamas; the new fire station in the German town of Stadthallen, destroyed in a multi-million-euro fire, did not have a fire alarm system installed; pop singer Liam Payne of the British boy band One Direction died after falling from the third-floor balcony of his hotel in Buenos Aires ... a rare case of a person dying from a fall from a window who is not connected to Vladimir Putin; in a town hall with Latino voters, Der Furor described the violent mob attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as a "day of love;" and 18 North Korean soldiers sent by Kim Jong-Un to fight for Russia in Ukraine appear to have defected within hours of arriving in the country and are being sought by Russian authorities. 

For our third Cartoon Saturday of the Halloween season, we look at the tightly-wound walking dead - mummies ...

When you use the tools you've got ...

Oh, the horror!! ...

The job is a lot easier now than it was in ancient Egypt ...

Truth ...

An interesting and timesaving shortcut to eternal life ...

I think they should have asked for separate tombs ...

Clearly! ...

At the very, very dry cleaners ...

Va, va, VOOM! ... 

It's in character ...

And there you have it - maybe not the mummy's curse, but surely the mummy's snicker.

Have a good day and a great weekend. Are you ready to vote?

More thoughts tomorrow, when Musical Sunday sticks another toe into the well of scary songs. See you then.

Bilbo

The Left-Cheek Ass Clown for October, 2024

We are just over two weeks away from the 2024 General election, in which Americans will elect a new President, all 435 members of the House of Representatives, a third of the Senate, and a raft of state and local officers. 

It's a fraught time in our nation's history, and the choice between parties and candidates has seldom been more clear. Polls - to the extent that the accuracy of polls can be trusted - indicate that Vice President Harris and Der Furor are in a statistical tie, and both parties are spending obscene amounts of money to sway the relative handful of voters who remain "undecided."

The vast number of candidates clamoring for attention has made it difficult over the past year to select appropriate winners for my twice-a-month* Ass Clown Awards, but this time - as the election looms - the choice seems obvious ... at least to me.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Readers, with a roll of drums and a flatulent blare of trumpets, we present the award for

The Left-Cheek Ass Clown for October, 2024

to

The Republican Party

The Republican Party, by itself or as a co-awardee, has won this award a towering 17 times previously, including three Ass Clown of the Year awards**.  I can't do a better job of summing up today's deluded, increasingly fascist GOP than did conservative writers Thomas E. Mann and Norm Ornstein, writing in their 2012 (fourteen years ago!) opinion article titled "Let's Just Say It: The Republicans Are the Problem" ...

“The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

I continue to be utterly amazed that so many of my fellow Americans can ignore the relentless outpouring of distortions, outright lies, and vicious threats from a party to which I once belonged. I continue to be utterly amazed that so many of my fellow Americans can ignore the obvious unfitness of Der Furor for any position of public responsibility, much less the Presidency: his incoherent word salad "speeches"***, reluctance to sit for unscripted interviews by actual journalists^†, and increasingly violent rhetoric.

No Republican figure currently in office or anxious to be elected to one is willing to admit that their emperor has no political, economic, or policy clothes. They either ignore questions completely or avoid commenting on the most bizarre examples of Der Furor's behavior and rhetoric ("I haven't heard that so I can't comment" is a common dodge). They refuse to acknowledge that Der Furor lost the 2020 election, in spite of overwhelming evidence that this is true. They ignore or wink at Der Furor's most outrageous, fascistic comments about rounding up and deporting migrants (whether legal or illegal is often unclear), turning the National Guard and the Armed Forces against American citizens, trying his political opponents for treason, endorsing violence by police, etc. They are craven, spineless wretches in the service of a man unworthy of their debasement.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Readers, as we enter the home stretch of the 2024 elections, I present October's Left-Cheek Ass Clown Award to the Republican Party - a once-proud party that has tied itself to a charlatan living in an alternate reality.

Have a good day and make sure you vote on November 5th if you haven't already (as I have).

More thoughts tomorrow, when we visit the kings and queens of wrap ... mummies ... for Cartoon Saturday. See you then.

Bilbo

* I could have said "bimonthly," but because that can mean either "twice a month" or "every two months," I'll just go with the unambiguous "twice a month."

** The list: September, 2011; 2011 Ass Clown of the Year (ACOY); October, 2013; 2017 ACOY; October, 2018 Left-Cheek; April, 2020 Right-Cheek; September, 2020 Special Award; May, 2021 Right-Cheek; October, 2021 Right-Cheek; November, 2021 Left-Cheek; February, 2022 Left-Cheek; March, 2022 Right-Cheek; August, 2022 Right-Cheek; October, 2022 Right-Cheek; August, 2023 Right-Cheek; September, 2023 Left-Cheek; and 2023 ACOY.

*** He calls it "the weave," as if the name gives a rhetorical veneer to incoherent juxtapositions of words generally unrelated to the questions that were asked or the topic to be addressed.

†Say what you will about Vice-President Harris, she sat for a less-than-friendly interview on Fox News ... while the network provided a softball "town hall" for Der Furor with an audience of hand-selected Republican women supporters.

Poetry Sunday

Halloween is rapidly approaching, and that means it's time for our first Poetry Sunday offering of the spooky season. Today, we revisit this quietly unsettling poem I first encountered when it was quoted in Stephen King's novel 'Salem's Lot ...

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

by Wallace Stevens

Call the roller of big cigars,

The muscular one, and bid him whip

In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

Let the wenches dawdle in such dress

As they are used to wear, and let the boys

Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.

Let be be finale of seem.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,

Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet

On which she embroidered fantails once

And spread it so as to cover her face.

If her horny feet protrude, they come

To show how cold she is, and dumb.

Let the lamp affix its beam.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

I haven't looked at ice cream the same way since.

Have a good day and enjoy the rest of your weekend. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

If the Halloween season isn't frightening enough, there's still the news ...

Hurricane Milton roared across central Florida this week, wreaking more havoc on a state already reeling from the destructive effects of Hurricane Helene and the governorship of Ron DeSantis; war continued to rage in the Middle East, with Israel and Hizballah forces continued to battle in Lebanon; the Oklahoma State Superintendent directed the purchase of tens of thousands of bibles for the state's public schools, and the specifications for the contracted bibles matched only the "God Bless the USA Bible ... the only bible endorsed by [Der Furor]" ... which are printed in China; and in the latest case of rampant illegal immigration, a Chinese woman has been arrested in Vermont for attempting to smuggle 29 eastern box turtles, a protected species, across a Vermont lake into Canada by kayak. 

For our second Halloween-themed Cartoon Saturday, we visit (after sundown, of course) with everyone's favorite bloodsucker not employed by a collection agency or your local loan shark - Dracula ...

Somebody's in trouble ...

When doctors face off against vampires ...

Even the undead keep up with the times ...

Who's more frightened? ...

Practicing defensive eating ...

I guess the old coffin wasn't comfortable enough ...

We may need to update our definition of what constitutes a monster for a new era ...

Okay, vampire boomer ...

Dracula's dog ...

What was the ... dead ... giveaway? ...

And that's it for our Cartoon Saturday visit to Transylvania, and other parts. Hope you enjoyed it!

Have a good day and a great weekend. More thoughts tomorrow, when Poetry Sunday takes its own first look at Halloween. See you then.

Bilbo

Great Moments in Editing and Signage

It's time for October's first collection of Great Moments in Editing and Signage - in true Halloween fashion, designed to scare the bejeezus out of linguistic and editorial purists. And away we go ...

When your band wants to make music that's a cut above all the other bands ...

See historic odors? ...

Having seen those historic odors, if you need to get rid of some of them ...

If you're willing to put out, we've got your job! ...

The counter assistant must have been one of those new hires that puts out ...

I don't really think that a wet t-shirt contest in a nursing home is the draw they think it is ...

Methinks Dr Johnson's husband needs a shave ...

At my age, I think I could easily win that pee knuckle tournament ...

A particularly useful admonition at Halloween time ...

Now, this is a scary set up for a jump scare in a horror movie ...

And there you have it - our first collection of Great Moments for October ... I hope you enjoyed it.

Have a good day and be sure to come back tomorrow for the second Cartoon Saturday of the Halloween season, this time visiting the threat posed by evil bloodsuckers. No, not loan sharks, vampires. More thoughts then.

Bilbo