Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

Review of Adam Kinzinger’s Renegade…

Wednesday, January 24th, 2024

Renegade. Adam Kinzinger, author (2023). Between Liz Cheney’s book (reviewed last week) and this one, the reader will have most of the full story of what led up to January 6, 2021 and what has come after in the years that followed, laying the foundation for holding DJT accountable for the mayhem and murder that occurred as a consequence of his futile attempt to lead a coup against the duly elected new president Joe Biden and American government in general. You will only need to add the select committee’s full report to get the full story, one that most of the Marchin’ MAGA Morons don’t care about, of course. (Narcissus le Grand is their fuehrer, king, and lord who they believe walks on water. He will save them from all the non-white invaders and God deniers, don’t you know? But can he save them from themselves?)

Kinzinger’s is the most personal tale which nicely complements Cheney’s. He is more biographical and goes farther back in time. You peek inside his mind a lot more. His is a story about the makings of a true conservative, what fascist Trump and his fascist followers are not and never can be, because Kinzinger believes, as I do, that true conservatives are needed to balance that exuberant progressivism that so often fails to see the unplanned-for bad consequences of their policies. (“Sanctuary cities” are an obvious example because the federal government has so far refused to help them.) There are only a few such conservatives left in government, especially in Congress and SCOTUS. Many true conservatives in Congress have had to run for their lives literally because of fascist threats to them and their families. Even Kinzinger’s family members and friends who’d supported him in his political campaigns for the House in Illinois turned against him. He now lives near his wife’s family in Texas, of all places. (I’d never live in Texas; it’s a completely fascist state now, and it really belongs to Mexico.) And all his troubles maxed out when Cheney and he participated in that January 6th committee investigating Trump’s attempted coup. (Cheney had it worse in Wyoming. I imagine that both still have bodyguards as DJT’s “retribution campaign” for 2024 includes his spurring on followers to maim and kill anyone who defied him.) Remember the gallows erected on January 6 and the chants of “Hang Mike Pence!”? According to many fascist members of Congress, these were just ordinary Americans on a tour of the Capitol!

Kinzinger points out how Il Duce’s followers live in a fictional alternate reality created by their fuehrer and promoted by Fox News and other far-right media. That old Nazi spin-doctor Goebbels must be smiling. He had the original idea: Say lies often enough and stupid people will start believing them. Forget obvious idiots like QAnon’s conspiracy believers. American fascists keep saying that President Biden lost. He actually crushed DJT in both the popular vote and Electoral College, turning Narcissus le Grand into one of the biggest political losers in American history, which continued in the 2022 midterms. Trump has never won the popular vote, not even in 2016! Sadly, the Marchin’ MAGA Morons still believe these lies!

Kinzinger agonizes over and laments the nasty bifurcation and polarization in our country, this us-against-them attitude today’s Good Ole Piranhas continue to promote in their politics. He agonizes over how Trump has corrupted religious beliefs so much that they have become the evil tool of the fascists. And, like me but unlike Cheney, he’s not afraid to use the word “fascism” to describe what the current battle for America’s soul is all about. But Kinzinger, more than anything, laments the death throes of the Republican Party as it solidifies into the Fascist Party of America. He’s a voice crying in the wilderness, though, as the US sinks more into the fetid cesspool known as fascism.

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“Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. This nine-book series follows some of Esther’s history in working for MI6 and Scotland Yard while also helping her paramour and later hubby Bastiann van Coevorden solve mysteries and bring criminals to justice (or vice versa). The art motif harks to her association with recovering stolen artworks and running a gallery, but the case histories recorded by her one-time boss in the Art and Antiques Division of the Yard, starting with Rembrandt’s Angel and ending with Celtic Chronicles (there’s a free PDF download, Defanging the Red Dragon, that’s a crossover novel involving Chen and Castilblanco, and the duo also appears in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy), the reader will enjoy these 21st century versions of Miss Marple (Esther’s a lot more limber!) and Hercule Poirot (Bastiann is Dutch not Belgian). Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (but not always on Amazon).

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

 

“Woke”?

Wednesday, August 2nd, 2023

I haven’t been publishing my stories that long compared to some authors (my first published novel, Full Medical, also #1 in the “Clones and Mutants” series, was published in 2006), but there were many more things that concerned me at that time than the so-called “culture wars” (Saudis’ support of 9/11 the terrorists, the Iraq War, a POTUS from the Good Ole Piranhas who now looks good in comparison to the one who lost hugely in 2020, etc.). Nevertheless, from first book to my last one (so far), a celebration of diversity and its importance in our great country and the world can generally found in my prose, so much so that it’s something of a meta-theme. Certain people would now say that prose supports “woke,” a recent addition to American slang that confuses everyone across the political spectrum.

If so, I wear that label “wokeness” with pride. My parents from Kansas went to California during the Great Depression and were always celebrating the diversity found there in that greatest of great American states. (Actually, they celebrated it in their native Kansas as well—their best friend was a Mexican national who went to the same business school in Topeka.) From food to friends, my childhood was defined by my parents’ celebration of the state’s diversity, so it should be no surprise that I also celebrated it as an adult. In my California hometown, my parents’ best friends were an Armenian couple from whom I learned all about the Ottoman Empire’s attempt at ethnic cleansing; the main road in my college town just off-campus was Embarcadero del Norte; my best friend at grad school on the East Coast was a good-natured black fellow from the Dominican Republic, who married a nice Jewish girl—I read one of my poems at their wedding; and through him I met my first wife, a fantastic Colombian lady who passed on far too soon; etc., etc.

I’ve celebrated diversity all my life for so long and considered it such an important part of our American culture that I was surprised that certain scurrilous politicians now use this new term to focus their hatred, racism, and nationalist, isolationist tendencies on their enemies: “woke” recognizes the importance of diversity; “anti-woke” implies that such hatred, racism, and nationalist, isolationist tendencies should be used against any group whose members aren’t far-right white Christian women and men. In other words, anti-woke signifies a desire to have forced apartheid in our society; woke means freedom and respect for all and a celebration of all human diversity.

When Ron DeSantis or any other far-right wannabe dictator (“there were good people on both sides” one said to excuse his bigotry) says that the state or country he’s running in is where “woke comes to die,” he’s channeling Hitler and his use of Jews, homosexuals, and others—anyone considered to be an enemy—as scapegoats to be attacked, imprisoned, and executed…and will do exactly that if ever given the chance! The lesser extremes all too often lead to terrible events too. I can’t watch this going on and not think of the Armenian, Jewish, Cambodian, Rohingya, Uighur and other genocides that have appeared throughout the world. I can’t watch these occurring and not worry that too many politicians are following those same horrific plans made by the monsters of history to use any people perceived as different as scapegoats. It’s terribly sad that we continue to let this occur over and over again. That says a lot about humanity in general and a specific challenge for any democracy. Are we up to the latter? Or will “anti-woke” become the new norm in our sad world?

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Intolerance. This seventh novel in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series shows that anti-woke can take many forms and isn’t restricted only to the US. Three separate cases challenge Esther and friends here: One involves a whole town’s intolerant treatment of an atheist family; another shows how jealousy turns an old British soldier into a rabid hater of the Irish; and a third describes a right-wing domestic terrorist group’s hatred of refugees and migrants who have come from foreign lands to the UK to escape economic catostrophes and persecution in their homeland. Some of these themes will continue in the following novels in the series, but this one is a free PDF download available on my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page. The novel is a great introduction to the entire series. Enjoy.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Review of Elie Honig’s Hatchet Man…

Wednesday, February 8th, 2023

Hatchet Man. Elie Honig, author (2021, 2022). While one could argue that this is more a book for addicts of legal thrillers, it’s unfortunately non-fiction. It paints a disturbing picture of the man who never tried a case in his life yet became US Attorney General twice, William Barr. The focus here is on the second time, his two years as Jeff Sessions’s replacement in the Trump administration. In those two years, he preached the gospel of Trump’s “absolute immunity”; selectively released only aspects of the Mueller report to confuse people, and waved it off as a waste of time and money; damaged DoJ’s reputation (it’s still recovering); and promoted Trump’s “big lie.” And then he became the rat leaving the sinking ship by resigning!

I’d like to highlight four new things I learned in this expose of Barr’s incompetence and malfeasance in office. (Biopic? Chronicle? Call it what you want, but it’s an unflattering picture of an old fool who went out of his way to end his career by damaging so completely his reputation!)

First, by comparing Barr’s actions with the author’s time spent in the SDNY as a prosecutor  where he even prosecuted John Gotti a fourth time (the jury was incurably deadlocked, as in the previous three times), we not only see how unprepared Barr was to be AG but how much Trump and his family resemble a mafia family. More of an embellishment on what I already knew but with some surprises, and entertaining nonetheless.

Second, the book shows how complicit Barr was in destroying the DoJ’s reputation by turning his and his department’s focus on acting as the ex-president’s personal lawyers who would defend him at all cost. Added to the distrust we now have of SCOTUS and the court system as a whole caused by loading the courts with far-right judges, America’s justice system has been left in sad shape. It will take a long time for it to recover, if it ever does. Judges serve life terms, and Barr set the bar very low (pun intended) for any future AG who could very well think he can get away with the same crap.

Third, Barr’s actions were more driven by self-interest and furthering his own agenda. He viewed Trump only as a tool, a battle axe he could use to attack secularism in American society and promote the agenda of far-right Catholicism. I had no idea he was such an ultra-conservative Catholic. No one, absolutely no one, filled with such religious fanaticism should ever be AG! This unqualified and unscrupulous AG wrote papers about how secularism is corrupting America. Of course, evangelicals also saw Trump as their tool as well. This is also true of several current members of SCOTUS. The US barely escaped becoming an evil theocracy like Iran…and that still could happen!

Fourth, considering the damage Barr did to the DoJ, the reader of this review might ask what we can do to fix it. To Honig’s credit, he makes some sound proposals for reform in the chapter titled “The Road Back” that Garland and his minions should try to make DoJ policy. (Unfortunately, none of this chapter offers a solution for the problems with SCOTUS, which could do more lasting damage for a long time!)

This isn’t a long book, but it’s a pithy one. It will add a great deal to anyone’s understanding of how Trump and his MAGA maniacs almost succeeded in destroying democracy in America. It also provides a road map for what to avoid and what to fix in the future. Highly recommended!

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Menace from Moscow. Coming soon! In this third novel of this post-apocalyptic sci-fi trilogy, the critical and difficult management of geopolitics in a post-apocalyptic world caused by a worldwide bioengineered virus continues: Survivor Penny Castro and her friends’ new task is to recover nuclear-armed missiles aboard a US submarine that sunk off Cuba’s coast at the beginning of the pandemic. As if the train trip from Colorado to Florida across a dangerous, desolate, and devasted US isn’t enough, what awaits them in the Caribbean and beyond will put any fan of sci-fi thrillers on the edge of their seats. From SoCal to Cheyenne Mountain and on to Florida, Cuba, and what remains of the Russian Federation, Penny’s adventures are full of mystery, thrills, and suspense. This novel will be available at most online retailers (but not Amazon!) and at most library and lending services. For your consideration and enjoyment: The end of Penny’s post-apocalyptic adventures.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

 

 

Emphasis on China…

Wednesday, October 26th, 2022

[Announcement from Steve: If you’re looking for me on Facebook, for my author’s page in particular, you will no longer find me there: I have ended my long-term participation in that social media site! Zuckerberg and his minions have changed it so much and gone to the dark side that it’s now a complete waste of my time. (I could no longer post to my own author’s page, for example! And I have to put up with too many fascists whom Zuckerberg and friends are all too willing to help, including the Russians in 2016.) My readers can follow me here in this blog—hey, it’s social media too!—and on Twitter, although I might end my affiliation with Twitter too if Musk ruins it like Zuckerberg has done with Facebook. Meta be damned! Amazon (Bezos), Facebook (Zuckerberg), and Twitter (Musk) are no longer an author’s friends. Moreover, their outreach to readers has always been highly questionable. I can no longer recommend any of them to authors. Stick with your blog or, if you must, use Goodreads. (Amazon has ruined that too, of course.) Now…back to my post.]

As I explain in the end notes of my new novel Fear the Asian Evil, I’ve long believed that Xi’s China is a more dangerous adversary for the US than Putin’s Russia, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union. I gave Vladimir Putin his due as a villain in Legacy of Evil, so it was time to make Xi Jinping the villain in this third book of the “Inspector Steve Morgan” series. Putin has had made many mistakes and miscalculations; Xi’s major one so far was the mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic that threatens the Chinese economy. I suppose that’s just because Xi unleashed Covid upon the world.

In the novel, I deal with Xi indirectly by focusing on the MSS (China’s evil Ministry of State Security), specifically on its agents and spies whose goal is to disrupt western democracies and steal their ideas and inventions. (Any autocratic system kills individual creativity. The FPA in America should carefully consider that truism—that’s the Fascist Party of America, once known as the Republican Party.) How are these Chinese operatives financed? I examine one possible way in my novel, one that could be hard to thwart for any security agencies in the UK, US, or any other democratic country. There could be other ways not portrayed in my novel, of course, but what I do portray shows that China presents a clear and present danger for freedom, human rights, creatives’ hard work, and world peace.

It’s interesting that President Biden and others are echoing my concerns about China. The Ukrainians are slapping Russia around—let’s cheer them on!—but we’ve not forgotten and can’t afford to forget about that Red Dragon. It’s time that the US and all western democracies confront all the bad actors in the world, including Iran, North Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia…and China!

My new novel is another mystery/thriller featuring the Bristol PD DI Steve Morgan. It might be called a political thriller with enough romance and suspense added to make a spicy stew. Its themes should be topics of discussion around everyone’s dinner table just like the themes in all the Morgan books. If you want fluff, read a cozy mystery, not these novels. I don’t ever expect all readers to agree with me (my characters express a variety of opinions, many not my own), but if I can start intelligent discussions among you, this book and the other Morgan novels are successes!

Watch for Fear the Asian Evil—coming soon!

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Fear the Asian Evil, Book Three in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” series, will be available this November at all of Draft2Digital’s affiliated retailers (Apple, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and library and lending services (Overdrive, Scribd, etc.), but not on Amazon. Here’s a summary:

Former Scotland Yard Inspector Steve Morgan’s next case at Bristol PD involves the attempted murder of a journalist who happens to be the sister-in-law of one of his sergeants. Its prelude, though, involves a fishing trip made during a vacation when Steve and his girlfriend’ father find a dead Chinese spy afloat in the North Sea. That leads to frictions with MI5 that distract from solving what should be the routine case of the woman’s attempted murder. The hunt for spies and ordinary policework clash until they come together where mutual cooperation finally wins the day.

While you can read this novel independently from all my others, if you missed The Klimt Connection (where Morgan makes his debut), Celtic Chronicles (which leaves some things unresolved for the first Morgan book), or Legacy of Evil and Cult of Evil (#1 and #2 in Morgan’s series), you might want to check them out too. (Hint for Santa’s helpers: A gift of the entire “Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy will please any avid reader of mystery/thriller novels among your family and friends.)

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

 

Boycott movies, listen to music, and read books…

Friday, April 22nd, 2022

Hollywood aka Tinsel Town has always been self-absorbed and disconnected from ordinary life. Two things occurred at the recent Oscar ceremonies that can only reinforce that perception: One, many people were up in arms about Will Smith’s justifiable defense of his wife; and two, the Academy didn’t let Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy speak. Both show how obscenely sick the Academy is, and how sick our society has become, in general.

No one went after Chris Rock’s mockery of Will Smith’s wife, an insulting display from an uncaring comic on a par with ex-President Trump’s mockery of that reporter. Chris should have apologized to Will and his wife; Will had no need to apologize to Chris. Will did the noble thing and defended his wife.

Dissing Zelenskyy was also over the top. Hollywood pretends it’s so damn liberal and so caring about the world’s problems. BS! Actors, directors, producers, screenwriters—they’re mostly self-centered SOBs! At the very least, they live in a parallel dimension, disconnected from the realities of common people. They want to be like ostriches, effectively burying their heads in the sand to avoid the harshness of other people’s plights.

Compare Oscars night with Grammys night. For the latter, no one took sides in the Smith-Rock controversy; it was barely mentioned. (For counter balance, I would have preferred that someone went after Chris Rock, of course, and his style of comedy.) But John Legend and many other performers showed the world that musicians really do care, in contrast to Hollywood. Moreover, Zelenskyy was allowed to speak! The music industry is clearly better than the movie industry. Maybe that’s because musicians, like writers, have a moral spine that those in Hollywood lack? They believe in humanity more and can empathize with people’s suffering.

To these comments, I would add that the Oscars were otherwise dead and irrelevant to people’s lives, whereas the Grammys were alive and relevant in the lyrics and music of the songs. Like books, music needs no visuals—they both reach into the human soul, a lot more than the droll drivel that Hollywood now passes off as film art.

I suggest to everyone reading this post that you boycott movies, listen to music, and read books. You’re life will be much more meaningful if you do. I know mine will.

And this review of all of Hollywood will be my last movie review! It’s one that disses the entire movie industry. I shall never see another movie!

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Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules on the “Join the Conversation” web page, though. If you don’t, your comment will go into the spam folder.)

The Klimt Connection. This eighth novel in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series takes a close look at the war between democracy and autocracy at the local level as Esther, Bastiann, and friends battle far-right domestic terrorists out to kill migrants and refugees. The HQ for all the action is an MI5 safehouse where the crime-fighting duo must reside because the terrorist bombed their flat. And, of course, art is involved, as a parallel case recalls the horrors of World War II. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (just not on Amazon). Novels #6 and #7 are free PDF downloads (see the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page).

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

 

A special plea to all people of good faith in the world…

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2022

Let’s support the Ukrainian freedom fighters!

There’s a real possibility that Putin’s stormtroopers will overrun Ukraine. Whether that occurs or not, all people of good faith, especially Americans who pretend to be for freedom, despite Trump and his minions’ efforts, to be defenders of the free world, should make a solemn vow to support Ukraine’s freedom fighters. We know Ukrainians can fight. They ousted a Putin puppet, and they’re better prepared now than when Putin took Crimea.

Yes, Ukraine isn’t a NATO country yet, but so what? We must support the battle against Russia. If it comes to supporting resistance against Russian occupiers, though, that should still occur! We can turn Ukraine into another Chechnya for the Russians, only this time making Ukraine Putin’s Afghanistan.

If we don’t stop Putin now, he will move on to realize his dream of reconstituting the Soviet Union. The way Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland rejected the Soviet hegemony in the nineties still eats at Putin. He’s out for revenge, that’s clear, and he’s willing to ruin Mother Russia to get it. Let’s make sure he pays that price.

Sure, worldwide sanctions against Putin and his oligarchs and their finances are good—I proposed that to @POTUS and @SecretaryBlinken in a tweet—but they’re probably not enough. Putin laughs at them, although his inner circle might not. We must also stand up to all attacks on democratic countries and freedom everywhere they occur.

Let’s all take a solemn oath to do just that! We’re at a tipping point in world history not seen since the second world war, where we can either be smart and halt the march of fascism in the world, or we can surrender to it.

Cancel culture: an author’s point of view…

Wednesday, March 24th, 2021

Cancel culture is yet another current fad that smacks of censorship—in fact, just another but less common name for it in the publishing world, in fact. Like the anti-cultural appropriation movement, it inhibits free speech and an author’s right to self-expression. I know I’ll get into trouble for saying this, but go ahead and boycott me! I don’t sell many books anyway (probably more pirated than legal sales, because I favor ebooks), so, unlike that emcee of ABC’s “The Bachelor,” my livelihood won’t be affected. And what I have to say doesn’t compare with the fantastic lies and conspiracy theories that have created on both the far-right and far-left.

From cancelling Pepe Le Pew to George Washington, this so-called cancel culture begins in absurdity-land and ends in tyrannical censorship-Hades. You can’t change facts by trying to erase them! Yes, Pepe was a hilarious cad, a pursuer of women (and more a French stereotype), but he was a far cry from Donald J. Trump (have you already forgotten that “Access Hollywood” tape and his 16+ victims?). Yes, George Washington and a few other Founding Fathers of our great nation owned slaves—Blacks weren’t even counted as humans in the original Constitution! And Chris Harrison is correct: We are viewing our current culture with a lens that differs from the ones of 1776, 1945, or even from just a few years back.

Slavery was outlawed with Lincoln, it continued in Brazil until 1888, and the Brits exploited Blacks to clean up their country after World War II, but under those earlier lenses, all these were an accepted practices. Many other persons, not just the Founding Fathers, were racists. Theresa May, when she was Home Secretary (or was it PM?), tried to send them back, saying they weren’t British citizens, yet another example of the racism today’s UK inherited from its colonial past (remember, Southern plantations in the US were originally British!).

And poor Pepe! He’s a victim of LeBron James and other questionable censors who wrap themselves in the cloak of good intentions but should know better. (I’m not knocking him for being a Yankees fan who bought shares that make him a partial owner of the Red Sox.) But going after Pepe is just wrong! Next thing you know, Speedy Gonzales (Mexican stereotype?) and Bugs Bunny (“Hey, Mr. A-rab!”) will be targets. What about Daffy and Sylvester? Or Porky? (We make fun of them because of their speech impediments, you know.) Or the Big Bad Wolf? (That’s making fun of people with asthma or COPD, right?)

Censorship is alive and well in the US and elsewhere. In the US, it has a new name: cancel culture. But giving something a new name doesn’t make it right. It’s still wrong, and it has always played footsie with fascism. Admit it: No one would know how absurd that QAnon movement is if we cancelled those absurd spiels that led to its beginning in the first place. If only to help people stupid enough to believe it, we can’t cancel that from our national discourse.

A lot of cancel-culture folks scream, “But it was wrong!” about George, Pepe, and others they’ve aimed their guns of political correctness at. That “was” is an example of cultural transference, not cultural appropriation. What’s wrong now was not wrong then. It’s possible the cancelers haven’t studied history enough to realize that? In any case, consciously or otherwise, they’re indicting everyone back than for crimes they believe were committed, crimes defined by their beliefs at this much later time. Those “transgressors” lived within their cultural context; no one living now has the right to apply their cultural mores to them other than saying, “It was wrong but acceptable back then.” And there are unfair equivalences drawn in the process, which are often absurd; Slavery was terrible; the Nazis’ Final Solution was worse. Human beings were crucified, drawn and quartered, burned alive, drowned, electrocuted, hanged, and beheaded; Pepe just got laughs. Yes, human beings’ predilection for treating other human beings horribly is always wrong, but, to mimic Animal Farm, some evils are more evil than other evils.

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Op-Ed Pages #21: The dirty dozen…

Tuesday, October 20th, 2020

I have a list of bad books, so I thought I’d end this series with my political dirty dozen. Some of these are up for election etc. Let’s hope voters and followers disavow them and stop them from ruining our democracy. Most belong in jail and certainly will meet their Maker as ultimate Judge (not Amy because she’s in the list), and they won’t like the sentence He gives them. They are listed in the order of those closest to the Devil to ones who are possibly innocent but at least commit the sin of being stupid and doing damage with their stupidity. In other words, all of them are dangerous for America and the world.

The Dirty Dozen:

President Donald J. Trump

Senator Mitch McConnell

Senator Lindsey Graham

Evangelical Franklin Graham

Judge Amy Coney Barrett

Senator Rand Paul

Representative Jim Jordan

Representative Matt Gaetz

Senator Tom Cotton

Senator John Kennedy

Justice Samuel Alito

Justice Clarence Thomas

Of course, there are other possibilities. For example, between hypocritical evangelicals Franklin Graham and VP Mike Pence (the fly was sent by RBG, I’m sure, as a reminder to him that he’s a hypocrite and full of…you fill in the word), it’s kind of a toss-up about who does the most damage; let’s just say that I wish Kamala could prosecute Franklin as well to show the world what a Nazi he is. Pence’s puppet strings are fully in Trump’s hands, as that one debate showed; Graham might do more damage, though, as the evangelical leader of the hypocritical hordes.

Cult member Judge Amy is Catholic but cut from the same cloth as the evangelicals (she might not believe the pope is the anti-Christ, though, just this “liberal pope”). Her position in this list is subject to change. Consistent with her cult-member status, she’ll go after women’s rights—after all, right-wing Catholics and evangelicals are violently in agreement that women are the property of men and have no rights, and that same-sex marriage is an aberration. Amy would also willingly overturn the ACA—she’s on record for that, and, no matter what she says, her opinions won’t change—and thus she’ll kill essential healthcare for millions. She’ll probably vote against many other rights we’ve worked so hard to obtain as well.

Of course, the orange-skinned Devil with the three-ply hair foldover is number one on this list. I’ve given you ample evidence for that in these pages. The sociopathic @realDonaldTrump is a danger to this nation and the world! He should be tried for crimes against humanity because he’s a mass murderer: Tens of thousands of people have unnecessarily died from COVID because of his mismanagement of the crisis; many more will do so unless we stop him…and the others on this list.

If you don’t know who all these people are, you’re part of the problem and shouldn’t be allowed to vote! They are all out to turn America into a fascist state run by their Hitler surrogate, Donald J. Trump. They are truly the Angels of Darkness leading the hordes of zombies against American democracy.

Does your list of dirty dozen differ from mine? Should I expand the list and call it “The Misfortune 500”? Perhaps I should just save some time by stating that anyone with proclivities toward supporting the Good Ole Piranhas is likely a danger for America and the world too? Many of you have already voted. I hope you voted wisely.

In any case, thank you for reading these Op-Ed Pages. This is the last post of this type before November 3 (I might have to return to them if Narcissus le Grand wins). If you haven’t voted, please do so. Democracy is on the ballot this year. A vote for Trump is a vote for fascism!

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Comments are always welcome.

Death on the Danube. At the end of Son of Thunder, #2 in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, ex-MI6 agent and ex-Scotland Yard inspector Esther Brookstone and Interpol agent Bastiann van Coevorden finally say their I-do’s. At the beginning of this new novel, #3 in the series, they embark on their honeymoon cruise down the romantic Danube. When a strange passenger who is traveling alone is murdered, Bastiann takes over the investigation because the river was declared international waters in the Treaty of Paris. Who really is this gaunt victim? And who on the list of passengers and crewmembers is the assassin? Mystery, thrills, suspense, and romance await readers who join them in their journey. You can’t take this trip now because of COVID, but you can join them in spirit. Available in ebook and print format at Amazon, and in all ebook formats at Smashwords and its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo and Walmart, etc.) and affiliated library and lending services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Taylor, Gardner, etc.). Click to see the book trailer.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Space Force…

Thursday, January 9th, 2020

(Note: While science and sci-fi writing motivated this post, some readers might find the following material offensive. Tough.)

The U.S. president wanted a Space Force. The U.S. military capitulated. And the U.S. Congress gave it to him on December 20. Sounds neat. Does it make sense?

Traditionally the USAF took care of most things happening above the Earth’s surface, including spy satellites and whatever secret weapons are up there (yep, and they’re just as dangerous as the U.N.’s black helicopters that will invade the U.S.). Astronauts have generally been a mix of USAF and Navy pilots, discounting civilian scientists, so there was already a lot of overlap with other services. And the U.S. NASA wasn’t above getting into the militaristic aspects either. So forget tradition. Maybe we should call a spade a spade? The military is in space, so maybe we should admit it and wrap it up in one tidy package?

Is there some savings to be had? Even if the answer were yes, that’s probably not an argument most reasonable persons would make…or believe. The current administration will have created a trillion dollar U.S. debt very soon, so what’s a few more dollars here and there? A precedent might be the moving of the Coast Guard into Homeland Security, but the creation of Homeland Security also increased federal bureaucracy and incompetence (not to mention murderous enforcement on the southern border where thousand of illegals are invading). Maybe they should have put anything to do with protecting the U.S., including what’s now in Space Force, into Homeland Security? Isn’t Space Force about protecting the homeland and not invading ETs or killer asteroids? U.S. of A., uber alles!

Bigger isn’t necessarily better. Smaller isn’t either. (Seems like the Goldilocks Principle needs to be applied here, but the Pentagon’s good ole boys would never listen to a girl.) And where does the Earth’s atmosphere become space? Where does it end and space start? I can’t wait for scramjet technology, where intercontinental flights hop and skip across the atmosphere, going from the USAF’s domain to the USSF’s and back. Who will have authority over those flights? Or might that be the FSA (not to be confused with the Russian equivalent of the FBI) instead of the FAA?

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A message from the Moon muted over the years…

Saturday, July 20th, 2019

Today is a solemn but sad day, full of nostalgia and yearning. Fifty years ago, I was part of the party-like atmosphere in College Park, Maryland, as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first human being to set foot on the Moon. No good and wonderful event since then has brought the US and the world so much together to share our common humanity and hope for the future.

Space is the final frontier., but we have shied away from it and Armstrong’s hopeful and inspiring message, putting our petty and tribal squabbles ahead of that great adventure, going where no human has gone before. Will we return to space? The way into that final frontier is not to be found with militarized space commands, seeking to sully space with political saber rattling, but via a motivated and concerted effort by all human beings to go into that great beyond out of scientific curiosity. I don’t imagine that it will happen in my lifetime, if ever, which makes today doubly sad for me.

My heartfelt thanks goes out to all those courageous and intelligent space pioneers of the past. I regret that our collective myopia and efforts to further more trivial agendas have inhibited human beings’ reach for the stars. Hopefully we will come to our senses…sometime.

“Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.”—Isaac Asimov