Monday, December 28, 2015

It’s time to start thinking ahead to the 2020 Republican nominee for President. My favorite crazier-than-Trump candidate of the future is Sylvia Allen.

Arizona state senator Sylvia Allen: "The vapor
trails are coming! The vapor trails are coming!"

Look, either The Donald will or will not be the 2016 Republican presidential nominee. At this stage, who can know? Who could even have suspected, only a few months ago, that Trump would be the leading contender? Or that Ben Carson would lose his footing as a leading contender by getting the story of the Biblical seven years of plenty confused with King Tut’s sarcophagus? Or that he would ever be a leading contender in the first place?

The rule of Republican politics seems to be, the more insane, the more ridiculous, the more outrageous, the more bombastic, the more twisted, the more confused, the more ignorant of the U.S. Constitution and our nation’s history a candidate sounds, the greater the likelihood that he or she will enchant Republican voters.

With that in mind, I herewith nominate Sylvia Allen as a serious candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2020.

Sylvia who?

So glad you asked!

Sylvia Allen is a Republican from Snowflake, Arizona. 

Snowflake? It’s up Route 77 from Show Low. You say that's no help? Well, it’s kind of west of Concho. Still no help? Try a long drive southeast of Flagstaff or a helluva long hike from Mesa.

But I digress.

Earlier in her still-young political career, Sylvia was county supervisor in Navajo County, which is located…oh, never mind the geography. At any rate, she came to some prominence in her supervisor’s job when she tried to interfere with an investigation into her son in law, who seems to have done something, um, worthy of of investigation, concerning female inmates in the jail where he’s a detention officer.

So the county sheriff warned that he’d arrest Sylvia if she kept on messing with an official investigation. Whereupon she filed a state senate bill that gave detention officers like her son in law greater protection from disciplinary investigations.

No no, don’t get all excited about her candidacy yet. Because her CV gets lots better.
  • In 2009, during a committee hearing concerning a uranium mine she shared her impressive  geological knowledge by declaring that the world is 6,000 years old
  • This year, she declared that people should be required by law to go to church. The “establishment of religion" clause, of the Bill of Rights, of the United States Constitution? Must be some kind of Moose-lim plot. She made her declaration during a debate on whether to let people carry concealed weapons in public buildings. (That's always a good idea, since you can shoot the opposition on the spot instead of wasting time debating them.) Allen, who said she didn’t understand the opposition to her idea, decried a “moral breakdown.”
  • With all her geological and moral knowledge, it’s only natural that somebody like Sylvia Allen should be telling professional educators what that may and may not teach. So naturally, the President of the Arizona Senate appointed her chair of the Senate Education Committee.
But here’s the pièce de résistance. Well, why should I paraphrase it when I can lift it directly from Sylvia Facebook page? Here is is, with misspellings (or typos, depending on how charitable you choose to be) preserved intact.
Ok, I do not want to get into a debate about weather. However, I know what I see weekly up here on the flat where I live outside of Snowflake. The planes usely, three or four, fly a grid across the sky and leave long white trails streaming behind them. I have watched the chem-trails move out until the entire sky is covered with flimsy, thin cloud cover. It is not the regular exhaust coming from the plane it is something they are spraying. It is there in plain sight. What is it they are leaving behind that covers the sky?
Things are happening all around us that we see everyday and just don't get what it is. I think we throw the "conspiracy theory" at people when we don't understand or have the information they have so we try and explain it that way. Plus we just don't want to believe that our government would do anything terrible to us. Well, just a few examples, the IRS attack on the Tea Party, Benghazi, wire taping, Fast and Furious just to name a few and we think that they would not manipulate our weather?

Wow, that drove the crazies out of the woodwork like swarms of termites during spring mating season.  A few choice examples lifted verbatim from the same Facebook page:

"You go girl! We used to have articles about this all the time and it is real and it is poison in the air and it is happening over Snowflake. I used to see it all the time. We had letters from construction workers and others who swear that they got sick after every dump in the sky. It got so bad that some crews when they saw them would just home and hide in their houses. Thank you for saying what needs to be said. And, by the way, we were the first on the mountain that reported on the New World Order and on the Continental Super-Highway over 10 years ago. SWe were right then and you are right now! Please go shut down that puppy mill that I told you about. It's sick and you would cry if you saw it and smelt it. Love you!?
*** 
" have lots of photos I have taken over the years of the planes making "X" in the sky. Seems like a day or so later lots of peopl get sick. I call it population control..... hmmmmm"
***
 "It's ridiculous. Is there any way we can get them to stop making chem trails? Are there bills we can pass that they can't do it in the state of AZ? And while we're looking at issues to stop or protect ourselves from, is there anything we can do to protect our state from Common Core? Happy 4th of July, btw"


Admittedly, we have a while to go before 2020. And I know that by November 2016 you’ll probably be all politicked out. So do me a favor. Just print out this post and stash it in a safe place. Four years from now, you’ll have physical proof that you read it here first.

Cross-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog

Friday, December 25, 2015

Attention Republican property owners: Get Congress to declare war on ISIS and you’ve just handed yourself a huge insurance bill

Guess what Republican
war fever will do to your
homeowner's insurance
Ever since 9-11, when terrorist hijackers flew separate airplanes into each of the twin towers, the insurance industry has been scrambling to cover its butt.

Little wonder. The original claims of the landlord there, Larry Silverstein, came to the tune of $7.1 billion. He didn’t collect nearly that much because the insurance companies didn’t want to cough up that kind of money, so they fought him bare knuckles to a lower sum. 
No surprise there. Whether it’s health insurance, car insurance or office building insurance, insurance companies hate to fork over the moolah. To paraphrase a line of advertising — from an insurance company advertising campaign, as it happens — not paying claims is what you do.

Most property insurance, whether it’s for homeowners, home renters, or for commercial office buildings, have “exclusions” for incidents like Al Queda or ISIS blowing up the premises. If you want to be covered against acts of terrorism, you have to buy, and pay through the nose for extra coverage to override that exclusion. 

Fine. But now along come a bunch of Republican presidential wannabes, drumming up a “war” on ISIS. Or ISIL. Or Daesh. Whatever the hell you want to call it. Rand Paul says we should declare war on them. Jeb! Bush says we should declare war on them. The Donald, forgetting all the property he'd have to carry additional coverage on, also says declaring war on ISIS is a good idea. Ted Cruz seems to believe the war is already declared.

Moreover, the usual suspects are also rousing the rabble to demand a declaration of war, including pundit Charles Krauthammer and the conservative Washington Journal.

Meanwhile, back in insurance company office towers, the insurance biggies are rubbing their hands together with glee. See, if it’s determined we’re “at war” with ISIS, instead of merely trying to slap them down and stomp on them like the lowlife terrorist enterprise they are, you’re going to need a third kind of insurance, “act of war insurance,” to cover your home or office building. That's in addition to fire insurance. And terrorism insurance. Which means more money will jump  out of your pocket and into the insurance companies’ treasuries.

Corporation will also pay. And since property values of skyscrapers and office parks can run into the billions, they’ll have to pay a pretty penny.

That is, they’ll have to pay unless they’re foolish enough to think they can send the bill to Jeb!, Ted, The Donald, and Charlie the K, and wait to see which of them wants to part with five or six billion bucks. Any guesses about whether any of them will volunteer to write the check?
Cross-Posted at No More Mister Nice Blog 

Thursday, December 17, 2015

A highwayman gets captured. Now, will he be appropriately punished?

Here are five words you never want to hear somebody say to you: “Your money or your life.”

In fact, in 18th Century England, if you failed to fork over every penny you had when a highwayman interrupted your journey,  it might be your money and  your life. You would be shot down and left to die at the edge of the road, your pockets rifled anyway.

Little wonder highwaymen were treated unkindly by the courts, often hanged en masse, in public, in England, or beaten until their bones were broken, and beheaded in France. (See illustration at the bottom of this post.)
Smug highwayman Martin Shkreli. When criticized for 
outrageously jacking up the price of a once-cheap lifesaving
drug for his own profit he tweeted in response, "LOL"

Now the authorities have captured a modern highwayman. His named is Martin Shkreli.

Martin Shkreli bought a company that made a drug AIDS victims need on a daily basis to survive and raised the price from $13.50 a dose to $750. He effectively said to thousands, if not millions, of AIDS victims, “Your money or your life. Fork over more than a quarter of a million dollars a year to me, or die.”

It was all perfectly legal. Someone who has the money to buy a company is allowed to buy it. And a company that wants to raise the price of a drug can raise it. And humanity be damned.

Except for one thing. Psychopaths enjoy what they do. Whether it’s the perverse lust for power, or a greed-filled adrenalin rush, or a total lack of human empathy, psychopaths are likely to be serial criminals.

And so it’s not surprising that the F.B.I. found a pattern of behavior in smug-faced Shkreli’s past that is prohibited by the criminal law. He not only seems to enjoy ripping off sick people. He also is charged with having ripped off his own investors.

Specifically the U.S. Attorney has charged Shkreli with seven criminal counts, including conspiracy to commit securities fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Let us hope that when Shkreli’s  trial comes along, defense lawyers won’t flimflam the jury. And let us hope that the judge legally can, and will have the courage to, impose the maximum penalty for each count. Serially. Because we no longer can legally hang him. Or do this to highwaymen, as they did in 18th Century France:

Monday, December 14, 2015

Five rumors invented by this blog to concern, alarm, excite, and inflame the paranoia of panicky Republicans

I haven’t posted for the past few weeks because I’ve been left almost dumbstruck by the extent of small-mindedness, unreasonable “reasoning,” fake science, complete disregard for facts, insane rants, and other thinking , either of the stupid or the neo-Nazi kind, that seems to be prevalent in the Republican party.

What can I say that hasn’t already been said? That Cruz, and Carson, and Christy, and Carly, and Trump, and (ad infinitum) are full of crap? That it’s alarming how we are tumbling pell mell down the slippery slope toward totalitarianism? That the denial of science is not only stupid but suicidal for the planet? That allowing only “Christians” to immigrate to this country is a de facto establishment of religion in violation of the United States Constitution?

Nah! It’s all being said. Over and over again. And meanwhile, rumors, misinformation, outright lies, and filthy slanders abound to reinforce either the sclerotic Congressional status quo, or the candidacy of whacko Republican candidates. 
One of Trump's towers. Why so big? The
grainy secret is revealed in this blog post.

So if you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em. Here are some rumors I’ve deliberately invented, just to see if the stuff that springs from my head is as good as the stuff that springs from Republican heads. 

1. What the Trump towers are really for.  There are several Trump towers in New York City. One is at Columbus Circle. Another on Fifth Avenue. Still another on First Avenue near the UN building. Other tall buildings bear his name on the Upper East Side. Why so many? Well, currently they contain  hotels and the apartments of millionaires and billionaires. But that is only temporary. Long term, comes the world wide famine caused by global warming, they will be used to store grain.

2. Global warming is real, but not for the reasons you think. Yes, there is an international conspiracy of scientists who are trying to keep the truth from you. They have been paid off by the oil industry and Big Government “libtards” to avoid the total panic that might occur if everyone knew the truth.

The truth is that the earth is heating up because the planet has been knocked off its axis and out of its orbit by too much and too-powerful fracking. Earth is now racing toward the sun on an erratically spiraling path that makes us feel too hot one day, too cold the next. But in the long run, we will all be fried, baked and barbecued alive by solar heat. 
Jeff Bezos in his space duds, practicing
to flee Earth with his fellow billionaires
before we're swallowed up by the sun.

In fact, the reason some billionaires like Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic) and Jeff Bezos  (Amazon) are pioneering “commercial” space travel is, they’ve been tipped off that we’re heading on a wobbly course to the solar crematorium. 

Their plan is to sell one-way tickets to another planet for $800,000,000 per seat, economy class, more for Business and First Class. Better upgrade if you can. Seventeen months in a narrow Coach Class seat could be mighty painful on your read end. And yes, baggage, meals and even use of the toilet will be extra. You don’t have that kind of money? Even for Economy? Then you’re toast, pal. Literally.

3. The blonde boy from Brazil.  The late author and playwright Ira Levin, an agreeable guy who at one time was my neighbor, wrote a book called "The Boys From Brazil." It's about a bunch of little Adolph Hitlers, cloned from the original, placed strategically by old Nazis to take over the world. The book later became a movie.

Well, Ira was partly right. There is one “boy from Brazil.” And don't be surprised if you learn that he's Donald Trump. But The Donald was not cloned from Hitler. He was a frozen embryo, fathered not by Fred Trump or by Cranky Adolph, but by Reinhard Heydrich, the “blond beast of the S.S,” who gained Hitler’s favor by making statements such as, “We will Germanize the Czech vermin,” and later became known as “The Butcher of Prague.” 

Reinhard Heydrich (right) with
Henrich Himmler. Note that 
Heydrich was photographed
with his hat on. Want to guess
what's under there?
Heydrich was every bit as good at spreading hatred as Trump is, but other parallels are equally eerie. Both Hydrich and Trump had several wives.  Both were military school cadets, Trump at the now-defunct New York Military Academy. (And by the way, what happened to Donald Trump’s school records, once kept at the military school? Hmm?) Both Heydrich and Trump were efficient organizers and builders. 

Ominously, one of Heydrich’s biographers wrote of him: “Among a crowd of lackeys, imbeciles and unredeemable thugs, Heydrich stands out as the one man who not only seethed with utter hatred mixed with emotional indifference for the welfare of others, but also knew exactly how to do something about it. He was, at that iron heart, a psychopath.”

Need proof that The Donald is The Blond Beast’s frozen embryo son? Notice that Donald Trump has never shown you his birth certificate. Not a legitimate one, at any rate. How can he, when he was born in a test tube? 

4. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are part of a sleeper cell. No no, not Muslim. Cuban. Their so-called “conservative” leanings are only a ruse. They were sent here by Fidel Castro to take over the government by becoming President, and then turn the United States into a Cuban communist satellite. There are two of them so in case something happens to one of them, there will still be another. Mark my words, in 30 years, if the Earth hasn’t been swallowed up by the sun yet, you’ll be speaking Spanish with a Cuban accent, and  driving a 30-year-old Chevrolet .

5. Carly Fiorina is the illegitimate daughter of Leona Helmsley, the Queen of Mean. Or maybe of Cruella de Vil. I mean, what proof do you Little People need?