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When shopping for vodka, I usually select the reputable brand in a glass bottle that’s on sale. I learned the hard way about plastic bottle vodka a long time ago.

Man, I didn’t anticipate writing about this one.

This isn’t James Comey’s fault. It’s not the fault of third parties. It’s absolutely not the fault of Bernie supporters.  It’s hardly because of misogyny or sexism. It has little to do with Julian Assange and fuck all to do with Russian intervention.

For a few years now we’ve been ballyhooing the implosion of the republican party.  The democratic party got out over it’s skis and beat them to the punch.  I’m done with this goddamn party. Only Wasserman Schultz and her posse could have choreographed such a spectacular ballet just prior to such a disastrous face plant.

Uneducated white people (men in particular) elected this buffoon for one simple minded reason.  Trump promised an abrupt change from the educated, moneyed elite’s control and economic suppression of their lives for profit. Nevermind that he had no intention of doing any such thing.

He closed.

These people were absolutely correct to see Hillary Clinton as one of those elite and that’s where the DNC throat raped us all.  They engaged in elaborate fuckery to force feed her to us while the one democrat who legitimately represented the actual change that all the voters craved regardless of political ideology or party affiliation built a smart and focused movement of monolithic proportion around that very change right in front of them.

Bernie Sanders’ earnest threat to business as usual scared them more than Donald Trump ever could. The DNC was neither blind or stupid, they were calculating and deliberate because they understood all too well that this man would undermine their avaricious grip on the 99%.  With eyes wide open and hearts black and hardened, the democratic corporation didn’t just sell out democrats, they sold out America.  They knew they’d do just fine in Trump’s fever swamp of ignorance, arrogance and incompetence.

It was crystal clear the people wanted change.  Trump was selling it.  Bernie was selling it.  Hillary was not.  It’s not piling on to point out that she’s scandal ridden, thoroughly lacking in transparency, authenticity and hopelessly unlikable.  It’s not piling on to point out she cost us senate and house opportunities.  It’s not piling on to point that Hillary and friends may have screwed the pooch on the supreme court for at least a generation.

She was the one candidate who could lose to Trump and the DNC knew it.

Now we have a republican senate, a republican congress and a republican fascist president.  A perfect storm.

Our national nightmare begins.

I am horrified.

You should be too.

This was an epic fail.

The Democratic National Corporation committed criminal political malpractice. Party leaders must resign or be executed.  A post mortem is in order and we need a pathologist without his head up his ass.

Drinks for my friends.

*additional reading from 6/12:*  

Fool me once…..updated as of 6/12

* This originally appeared as a post on facebook by my friend Tony Pecoraro.  With his permission, I’m posting it here on my blog simply because it nails, with a visceral honesty and angst,  just about everything I’ve been trying to say for a year.  

Wikileaks has NEVER had to retract something for lack of authenticity, accuracy or truthfulness.  While the singular political establishment along with a cowardly and complicit media shouts from the rooftops about Russian intervention in our election, they NEVER, EVER attempt to even address the substance of the material leaked that my friend Tony is only glancing at here.

I know I promised nothing more political until after this election of dread and I’m confident this doesn’t break that promise because I didn’t write it.  So there.  The subsequent comment is my original one to him on his post.

It’s long but read the whole goddamn thing over lunch if you need to.  There’s hardly a word wasted.  

This one is for you Miles.*    

“It just keeps getting worse peeps.

I’m now reading reports and leaked emails that are showing Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik tipped off Podesta and the Clinton campaign about what was going on at the Department of Justice in order to prep them for the investigation into her email scandal back in 2015. This is after I read emails last night which decisively showed that Clinton’s staff’s immediate reaction to the 2015 NYT article which broke the email scandal was to deliberately destroy the emails in question.

At this point no one has an excuse anymore to not believe that there are multiple important government institutions that are effectively subverted by Clinton allies, or that Clinton herself and the company she keeps have no real respect for the concept of equality under the rule of law. Kadzik is right now one of the top overseers in the investigation of the new Weiner emails. It should be obvious that this is a major conflict of interest which, even if it ISN’T protecting criminal activity from justice, is an enormous undermining of public trust and favor for the Clintons in particular and Democrats in general and for the US government in its entirety.

I don’t want to hear anyone claim the Clintons are not corrupt anymore. I especially don’t want to hear about how Trump is more corrupt despite having never been a public official. And I REALLY don’t want to hear about how my criticism of Clinton makes me sexist or a Trump supporter. At this point all of these arguments are a waste of everyone’s time. Supporting someone who holds the law in contempt is stupid and inexcusable. Both candidates fit that description.

Both candidates do not qualify for public office. Both have demonstrated active contempt for the rule of law, the consent of the governed, and the existential threats facing America today. Both candidates should have to face criminal prosecution without any of their buddies on the opposite side of the court room or wielding the damn gavel.

This alone would be horribly dangerous in a time of political stability, but unless you have been dead for the past, I don’t know, thirty-ish years you don’t have an excuse for not realizing that this is not a time of political stability. In the 50’s – 70’s a scandal like this was enough to help destroy the solidity of the home front during war.

In a context of socioecnomic and political upheaval such as now it represents the ominous threat of potential civil war. The righteous authority of the rule of law cannot continue to be undermined so publicly and without any perceivable benefit to American citizens or consequences for those who violate it while allowing the stability of the government to continue to exist at all.

I want to know at what point are Americans going to realize that the voter base of the opposing political party is not the enemy.

I want to know at what point Americans are going to realize that political parties themselves, both the major dichotomy and the next to irrelevant ‘thirds’, are part of the enemy.

I want to know at what point will Americans realize that the economic powers behind both major parties and an uncomfortable extent of our entire government are the other part of the enemy.

I want to know at what point Americans are going to realize that their own relaxed ethical standards are facilitating their own betrayal by the people who are supposed to represent them.

I want to know at what point are Americans going to abandon these so-called leaders who only see government and power as a tool for exploiting billions of people and finally take responsibility for their own country and their own role in human history and development.

I have said before that I will vote for Clinton to prevent a Trump presidency. This is the moment where a line has been inarguably crossed. I cannot in good conscience put my official favor towards a candidate who seems incapable of being held accountable to the law of the land, who seems incapable of even understanding why accountability is a good thing both for Americans and for herself.

I cannot vote for her and sleep at night. I cannot vote for her and look myself, or those I love, in the eye. I cannot vote for her while honestly believing I am doing the right thing for others or for myself or for the very concept of justified rule under law.

Justice is sacred, not because of hollow tradition, not because of blind circular argument, and certainly not because of political expediency, but because without justice we have no foundation for higher order civilization and sooner or later we’re just another version of the jungle.

I should not have to list the reasons why we are better off out of the jungle.
I categorically refuse to sacrifice my sense of justice simply because I am afraid, either of physical danger or simple criticism.

If you think anyone should I think you are wrong and have a lot to learn.

Do not think that I am not afraid either. We are talking about a president, in either electoral result, who doesn’t respect the law and lacks the respect and trust and consent of the majority of the electorate. Nothing good can come from either candidate aside from their dismissal in four years or their impeachment in less time than that. That’s the BEST possible outcome.

The worst possible outcome is civil war between urban and rural populations, fueled by deep seated economic and political resentment and distrust, the flames fanned by a new generation of murder technology, the violence exacerbated by the logistical tools found in communications technology.

My friends, we are not talking about a series of small militia skirmishes in unknown small towns or federal nature reservations. All the ingredients for civil war lie scattered between the International Boundary and the Rio Grande, between West Quoddy Head, Maine and Cape Alva, Washington. All it needs is someone (or more likely a couple hundred separate someones) with enough motivation and who knows what they are doing before, in the words of Colonel Couvillon, “Our way of life right here is about nine meals from anarchy.”

Over a million people easily could die from violence and starvation in the first year of such an unmitigated catastrophe. No, I am not including in this rough and conservative estimation the cost to human life across the globe that the accompanying economic crash would cause.

So yes I am afraid. We all should be. This is real, this is our country, this is US.

But if ethical standards were meant to be abandoned at the first sight of trouble or danger then there is no point to them in the first place and they represent nothing of value whatsoever. If legal standards were meant to be ignored because they are inconvenient then there is no value to legal authority and the terms “president”, “representative”, “justice”, “officer”, and “general” have no meaning and the entire concept of governance implodes from the internal pressure of its own vacuousness.

Now more than ever before we need to stop seeing our fellow citizens as the enemy, and start seeing the institutions and those wielding them to pit us against each other as the real enemy. Tea Party members and BLM advocates have far more in common with each other than with the vast majority of the leaders who claim to fight for their causes. Same goes for alt-right individualists and hardcore intersectional feminists. Everyone has much to teach everyone else about their struggles under an inhumanely insensate kleptocratic oligarchy.

We can no longer afford to pretend to do right by our nation or ourselves by dehumanizing any point of view from our fellow citizens that opposes us. We have to educate and empower each other under an unyielding faith, yes faith sneering secularists, that we are all in this together and that only as equals under this faith can we cooperate sufficiently to govern ourselves and render political parties entirely obsolete. So long as we don’t believe in the patently obvious, that as humans we share the common goal of fulfilling life for ourselves and those we love and can achieve this more easily and sustainably through cooperation than conflict, then we have lost the struggle for a more perfect union before we start.

I don’t, can’t, care anymore if my presidential vote will get lumped into the “other” category. I also don’t care about any thoughts that I am wasting my vote by refusing to cast it in favor of a candidate that doesn’t believe in the rule of law. Any vote for a candidate that holds the law of the land in contempt is a vote quite literally for a specific version of anarchy or the invitation of total anarchy. Anyone who knowingly votes for such candidate has to acknowledge the personal failure represented by their inability to understand this.

I am pressing the Post button on this status, taking a shower, walking to the early polling station, and writing in on the presidential vote the only name I’ve seen so far that belongs to a person both familiar enough with the political process and passionate enough about the actual problems endured now for decades by American citizens while also continuing to demonstrate a firm understanding of ethical respect both to the law and to us as citizens to have earned my consent for governing: U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.

By the time I get back I want to see names of people who can help me get something real started: a public super-pac that can fund media, politicians, and policies made by, of, and for the actual public. I hope you understand if you don’t declare yourself as willing and able to assist in this effort, or at least offer constructive criticisms, and I end up ignoring you. We no longer have the time to enjoy the luxury of idle conversation or petty argument. Now is the time to act for our own interests since it should be abundantly clear that no one with official authority has enough interest in doing so for us.

I sincerely hope that it is not too late to fix this.”

Assimilation.

Sponsored by the letter A.

In 1983 I graduated from high school and 90% of American media was owned by about 50 companies. By 2011, the same percentage was owned by just 6.  Just over 200 executives controlling the information diet of over 270 million Americans.

We call them corporations now.

Because they are just like people.

So AT&T is poised to buy all of Time Warner.  That means Disney and ABC, ESPN, Pixar, Marvel Studios and Miramax. Also, all of CNN, HBO and of course, Time and Warner Brothers.

Math isn’t my strong suit but I believe that takes it down to 5 or maybe 4.

What we have here is a deliberate failure to communicate. An assassination of accountability. If you’ve ever wondered how it was possible for the majority of Americans to believe the reason for the war in Iraq was WMDs or that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 as late as 2005, now you know.

It wasn’t only FOX News kids.

Just recently, a majority of republicans polled were positive that Obama was responsible for the disastrous response to Katrina, even though it happened in 2005.  Three years before Obama took office. America is fighting her longest war in history and nobody is even asking why.  Afghanistan. We’re involved in 6 other conflicts where we bomb and kill innocent people everyday but you never see that shit on the news.

This merger is all over NPR but nary a whiff on any network or cable news channel because they’re already owned by one of the five. When Rachel Maddow says on live television that Bill Clinton didn’t sign NAFTA, I know we’re all but fucked.

Our reality has become so thoroughly owned by our media that most of us would be intellectually and philosophically bereft without it.

I hate AT&T with a vengeance.  I’m on my third cable box in as many months.  They took over Direct TV and the product and service went to shit within weeks. None of the features I pay for work consistently.  I stopped paying them for internet months ago because every evening my DSL performed like a goddamn dial up.

The United States ranks 30th in the world for average internet speed.  We’re behind Romania, Iceland and Bulgaria.  We pay twice as much for half as fast.

My only alternative was Time Warner.  Except now Sauron is fixing to buy Sauraman.  The control of content and distribution will be more comprehensive than ever.  I don’t have a choice for cable or internet.

How is this not a monopoly?

This is macro and micro.

The power of Satan compels you to read “The Master Switch” by Tim Wu.  I’m putting it back within reach of the on suite toilet. Wu coined the term “net neutrality”.  It’s an absolutely fascinating book that details, among other things, the thorough and deliberate evil of AT&T and it’s creepy resurgence as a corporate leviathan.

We now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

Drinks for my friends.

*The Phenobarbidolls.  Easily the most eclectic record I ever made. “Fish Lounge”. Named after the common area lounge at A&M with the giant saltwater tank in the wall.  Betsy (her band), slept in the studio for most of the project.  She made tea in the mornings and flirted with me by giving head to a banana in the evenings.  Ropy thick sexual tension.  

The label was Sympathy For The Record Industry which means only Long Gone John ever listened to it.  Brought to you by Studio goddamn C and at least one Neve 8 channel broadcast console in addition to the the 32 input API and STILL only 24 tracks with all manual mixing.  No automation.  

Beautiful ballads and songs like this. My partner Alex had the vision here.  I fucked it all up on this song.  He made the mistake of volunteering to assist Niko Bolas across the hall in Studio A one day and showed up after being chewed up by Little Lord Fauntleroy late one night to wonder out loud what the fuck Michael Whitaker and I had done with this song.  

He said he liked it but I suspect he never forgave me.*   

   

This will be my last missive on this so called campaign.

Indulge my catharsis one last time. I absolutely must get this out of my system.  After this, I swear, nothing but navel gazing, introspective fluff until after the election for which all Americans share a single common denominator.

Dread.

That such a disgusting pig could prevail fair and square for the presidential nomination from a party that has for so long has wholesaled principle and morality as their trademark, leaves me reeling and numb.

No matter how much bigotry and hatred he foments, no matter how inconsistent and clueless he is regarding matters of policy and issues of import, the great unwashed can’t be bothered.

No matter how bad it gets, despite the daily avalanche of incontrovertible proof, evidence, corroboration and testimony that Donald Trump is some brand of creepy neanderthal preying on women, there are still tens of millions of men and women sucking at the surface of a stagnant lagoon, bleating his defense with self righteous indignation from the maws of wall eyed carp.

Oh, the hypocrisy.

On the other hand, I’m sick and fucking tired of mainstream media’s attempts to shame those of us with a conscience for understanding that Hillary is guilty of way too much of what she stands accused.  I loathe them for trying to sell us the bullshit rationale that we’re too ignorant to distinguish truth from the low brow mendacity manufactured by the right wing ministry of hate.

The “liberal media” does exist and the agency with which they pursue this obfuscation is the same one that labored on her behalf in the democratic primary.  Media yes.  Progressive not.  Neoliberal without a doubt.

That so many democrats allow themselves to take pride in a candidate so obviously flawed as Hillary for being able to best the most despicable and disgusting candidate to ever run for president under the aegis of moral or ethical exceptionalism is baffling.

No matter how inconsistent she’s been on matters of policy and issues of import, self described feminists, fiscal progressives, human rights advocates and environmentalists can’t be bothered to give a shit.

If it wasn’t for the fecal hurricane of Trump, Hillary would be caught hoarding flotation devices and kicking the elderly and infirm out of lifeboats.

Oh, the hypocrisy.

For this, liberals have no excuse.

For fuck’s sake yes, Hillary is the lesser of two evils but I wouldn’t be caught dead celebrating it.

The disgustingly prurient nature of this campaign is exactly what we asked for.  It is absolutely what we wanted.  We couldn’t wait for it.

And now everyone is sickened by it?

Hillary will be our next president and that’s not  a win by any means.

If you’re not ashamed, you’re not paying attention.

Fuck this shit.

Drinks for my friends.

* The Missiles Of October appeared on the schedule one day at the behest of the legendary David Anderle.  Because of the name of the band, I assumed it was yet another punk band.

At that point in my career as an assistant engineer, I’d worked with the best of the best.  The finest musicians money could afford.  By the end of that first day with this band, I realized we were recording and producing musicians, artists, that were more seasoned, more skilled and more in touch with their art and reason for creating than any of the big names I’d ever worked with.

They were easily fifteen years older than us but unburdened by fame and somehow we earned their trust and and confidence.  

The first time I ever recorded a tuba.  

Together we made one of the best records I ever had anything to do with.  I am as proud of this record as anything my name ever went on.  I love every man who played on it.*

I need a shower and an IV of morphine.

Regardless of what Bill Clinton did or didn’t do, it’s all already been litigated so it was politically nose blind and lasciviously tawdry for Trump to stage a pregame as an empty attempt pretend he’s not a sexist fucking pig.

Then there was the “debate”.

Trump was boorish, cheap, uninformed and full of shit.  Hillary was poised, polished and full of shit. They nailed each other on completely legitimate lies and transgressions. Neither one of them willing to answer for their flops and faceplants.   They were both successful at exposing each other for what shitty candidates they are.

He lied far more than she did but only because she’s a pro and knows better.

I’m disgusted.

We had a candidate that both these cartoons were far more afraid of than each other.  Bernie Sanders was an emulsifying, degreasing, detergent who was morally and ethically capable of running the laundry.

And that is exactly why he’s no longer around.

The debate sucked at sucking.  It was boring.  Trump was creepy but that wasn’t boring.  He was onerous.  It was just so pedestrian.  Yet Trump was pedestrian.  Like I said, he was creepy.  I just realized he’s the biggest reason I watched.  Still, it was boring.

It’s historic.

That’s why I love hated watched it.

Because it’s historic.

Drinks for my friends.

I’m a Trump supporter.

Not really, I just play one on the internet.

I have a social media troll account with just over a thousand “friends”.  I’m not really sure why I do it.  I keep asking myself.

It’s awe inspiring what ignorant Americans are willing to believe and regurgitate.  My sport is calling them on it.  Rubbing their faces in it.  More often than not they get frustrated and resort to calling me a “libtard” or a communist or worse.  Faggot, cocksucker or they threaten to drive or fly to me so they can kick my ass.

They actually ask for my address.

I tell them I’ll meet them by the bike racks at recess.

Maybe I’m being cruel.  They can’t help it.  They don’t know how stupid they are. But often they aren’t really stupid, just willfully ignorant.  They are never ever able to actually support their claims with facts or credible sources.

Never.

Ever.

Maybe it’s because I’m profoundly disgusted by the intellectual laziness and spontaneous gullibility. Because they’re bigots and confirmation bias is a chronic and pervasive disease among them. They propagate the the most obtuse and offensive tin foil hat bullshit because deep down they want desperately to believe it so they can sleep uninterrupted by a conscience infected with pathogens of racism, hate and fear.

It can’t be an easy existence.  Fraught with self doubt.  The nagging misgiving that everything you believe is complete crap.  It is what fuels them.  They have been mocked by so many for so long, they cannot afford the possibility that it just might be true.

These dumbfucks aren’t interested in policy or issues.  They don’t give a shit if he’s exactly the demon they’ve been indoctrinated to loathe.  It’s very, very scary because there could be sixty million of them. Think about that. They adore him but they don’t know why.  They hate Hillary and Obama but they do not know why.  If you ask them, they cannot answer.

Hello Dunning-Kruger.

So what we have here is a pissed off horde of maybe sixty million single cell organisms that care about nothing more than their second amendment rights who drive, reproduce and vote.

I interact with these low information voters everyday and they are proud of their ignorance.  They have nothing but disdain for anyone who aspires to be well informed.

What panics me is their numbers and by virtue of that, how much they are in the way. That this race is within five points should have you shitting like a goose.  He won’t win this election but the damage is done.

Obama nailed it the other day when he said there was a straight line between Palin and Trump.

We have way too many dumb motherfuckers in America.  No matter who wins the election we are in serious trouble here.  Our media is feckless, reckless and unaccountable.  Our system for electing people to represent us is so broken and corrupt there is no hope of repairing it.

Archaic and obsolete.

This our mess.

It is our fault.

That this is even a contest means that at least half of the American mouth is rotting.  Our breath stinks. Our friends are beginning to wonder because we don’t smile anymore.  The world sees the tin of Altoids in our suit pocket.  The bottle of mouthwash in our ass pocket.

We are in pain.

Horrible pain.

Drinks for my friends.

* The last record I ever made.  Mastered at Capitol Records.  I learned the night we mastered it that an old friend was very sick.  Not much later, I learned he died of mad cow disease.  I was 34 or 35.  His wake was a huge party.  All my old friends from the business.  I love the guitar riff here.  We recorded it at a studio called The Sandbox.  We were always able to get good sounds out of this shithole.  We mixed it at Mad Dog owned by Dusty Wakeman and managed by my old boss Mark Harvey who died just a few years later of complications from drug abuse.*

 

I don’t give a mad fuck anymore.

What I saw was two of the weakest and most flawed candidates ever beating the shit out of each other as often as not over completely legitimate issues. Yeah, there was rampant prevarication, hyperbole and unmitigated bullshit.

But the truths were just as damning.

Because they are both merely awful.

Trump admitted she had lots of experience but said it was all bad experience, he nailed it.  He crucified her on her emails but I can’t believe he didn’t mention her paid speeches to the institutions that licked us in the front and poked us in the rear.

Hillary sledgehammered him on his taxes. She killed that.  She gutted him on misogyny and racism.

None of it matters.

I hate the sonafabitch, but his callow petulance worked. He counted on the ignorance and stupidity of the average American and was well served by it.  Of course he was all about the non sequitur and scattershot mendacity but I’m watching the MSNBC post game and they have no idea what just happened.  They simply don’t understand the short attention span theater.

They are cooing over her.

All he had to do was establish dominance for the first thirty minutes until his base nodded off and began to drool. He knew he could coast and attack at will after that because he had nothing to lose.

His strength is in her vulnerability.  In the context of political judo, his belt was black and hers was yellow.  He did not lose a single vote tonight and that makes him a winner.  This media beauty pageant will not change a single mind. The polls won’t change by more than a point.

I’m in absolute awe over the focus on his truthfulness.  Why or how this matters is beyond me.  He lies so much it no longer matters when he’s telling the truth.  This resonates with millions of Americans and enabled him to lay waste to a prolific field of republican losers.

This wasn’t a debate.

The media stumble over themselves like keystone cops investigating the wrong crime.  They refuse to admit how much she actually sucks.

I don’t blame the republicans for nominating Trump.  They’re bigoted dickheads and he’s their champion.  A clear winner.  I absolutely blame the DNC for foisting such a deplorably shitty candidate on us.

I’ll eventually be more sanguine about a Hillary presidency because I will be relieved when this jackass blowhard loses by virtue of being such an asshole.  He will lose.  He deserves to lose.  The mouth breathing bigots who support him deserve to get their asses handed to them.

And the rest of us deserve a Hillary Clinton presidency.

Kill my landlord.

Drinks for my friends.

* A very cool song by The Ape Hangers.  I waded in on the arrangement on this song and changed the coda because it was a hook.  The easiest record I ever made with a band of very merry men.  We made it over the Christmas holiday in ’94 I think.  Maybe it was ’95.  They gave me one of those huge hollow candy canes filled with miniature, name brand airline booze bottles and a copy of “Leg Show” magazine as a present.  The main rhythm guitar is a Moserite through a Vox AC30.  I’ll never forget thinking I could help by changing the strings and the goddamn guitar fell apart in my lap because the neck and body were held together by the goddamn strings.*  

I’m a black and white TV survivor. I remember the appearance of microwave ovens. They called them radar ranges. I worked in a record store when CDs first came out in those long boxes so they could stick up in an album bin.

I was a flaming youth.

I’m pretty grateful for the digital age, but I lament the millions of once potentially crazy people that are now full blown nuts. People can find purchase and solace for the most absurd shit they can possibly imagine on the internet.

Technology has lent itself to the random ability of individuals to create their own little world. Impenetrable bubbles of custom fit ideology and singular paranoia that are immune to reality. I doubt Ronald Reagan was a pedophile, but search online for “Reagan pedophile” and you may start to believe it.

It’s nothing new. It’s just more efficient. There’s all manner of seductive gossip dominating the interwebs. Used to be we had to generate all that gossip ourselves or at least maintain a group of like minded, three dimensional friends that did. And watch the same television as those friends and hate the same people.

Thanks to digital technology, there’s no need to even try anymore.  We can now fear the Sasquatch while living in rural Texas without ever discussing it with our actual neighbors.  What’s worse, we can send our neighbors links to our crap and get them sitting on the porch, armed to the teeth after midnight too.

The digital age coincides pretty much with our second guilded age but it’s not coincidental.  The last one was about a hundred years ago. Back when they had to burn a lot more calories to fool the stupid.  The stupid had to burn a lot more calories to stay stupid.  They had newspapers back then but barely any radio.  Back then people traveled for miles to be bullshitted.

Now it’s just too goddamn easy.  The alt right movement learned to make and use primitive tools.  Insipid memes and empty headed slogans. The neoliberal left barks and points but can seldom answer a serious question. All the goddamn whack jobs are way too happy and feeling way too tolerated and complacent.

The antidote is youth.  It always has been.  Nascent generations have always had the potential to inoculate the masses against our worse intentions and inclinations.  They have yet to suffer our burdens and hard earned biases. They enjoy the shortest path to objectivity.

They aren’t excited about either one of these loser candidates and it’s no wonder.  The millennials have always had the ability to extract the salient and germane from the steady flow of information that is suddenly a maelstrom.

I’ve always been anxious for the generations before mine to die off so the backward ass notions and elaborate prejudice they host are buried with them.  They’ve been drunk from the cocktail of right wing radio and cable news for decades.  Now I’m confronted with my own generation lapsing into the same twisted and archaic nonsense because that cocktail has been spiked with a search engine Mickey.  My generation’s aptitude for bigotry and hate has a new force multiplier.   The harmless and fresh faced from my high school now mean spirited and ugly.  Stupid racist, redneck hypocrites. Jackasses accusing everyone of blaming everyone while they languish and blame everyone.

They know the Google.  They don’t understand that the algorithms feed them every page they want to read when it comes to Michelle is a tranny or Obama is a communist Muslim Kenyan socialist homo.  Mine is the first generation to be humiliated by the digital age.

Because we don’t read but we like pictures with captions.

We are a cautionary tale.  The archetype of what’s wrong with instant gratification media.  Everybody else is doing it but we are the first generation to be fooled by it.  I would go as far as to posit that my generation is most culpable for pissing in the pool of online information.  We are smoking our own shit.

Someone once said that it is far easier to fool a man than it is to convince him he’s been fooled.

Drinks for my friends.

*Agnes Gooch again.  Yup.  Compare and contrast to my last blog with an acoustic song by the same band recorded and mixed in entirely different venues .  This one is all Studio C A&M Recording Studios with the power and punch of the best sounding rock and roll console I’ve ever worked on.  The little 32 input API.  The tracking room was a closet no bigger than your average apartment living room.  

My goal was the biggest goddamn wall of guitars you’ve ever heard.

We put the mix to bed on a Saturday night with the intention of putting up another mix Sunday morning.

Ordinarily if the band had any minor tweaks, they would phone them in and I’d run some alternates and they would show up late afternoon the next day for the middle of the next mix in progress. I arrived at the studio the next morning and band was already there.

They wanted it “louder”.

Up is louder.  I made it louder.*

 

 

What keeps me awake at night is what happens when the wicked witch of the hand wringers kicks the orangutan’s teeth in. Of course the polls are tightening. Still, it’s all over but the shouting.

It’s complicated. Obama did elevate the discourse on racism by the simple virtue of being black. There is no action without an equal and opposite reaction. No good deed goes unpublished.  The ugly people have gotten all empowered by dog whistle politics cresting at high tide for the lowest common denominator. The dumbasses are more confident than ever thanks to the bellicose bigotry of The Donald.

Now we have this giant group of mouth breathers that feel entitled. They’ve never paid attention to shit and they’re not about to start. But when the short fingered vulgarian loses, there will be conflagrations of extraordinary magnitude. Gawd help us all. There’s a fine line between clever and stupid and these people have never even contemplated it.

I have a social media troll page and these people are dumb as fucking sticks and genuinely scary.  They can’t type a cogent sentence and they wear all caps like cheap cologne.  They don’t give a shit about policy or issues, they are all about the hate. Trump won’t lose his army of useful dipshits.  They aren’t going anywhere and they are weird and pissed off.

Throngs of them will show up carrying openly in the days and weeks after the election.  The indignant vitriol will be as vulgar as it is ubiquitous. They will be hostile and prideful. Buy them a beer and shake their hand.  Hit them in the face with the mug you bought if they get surly or obstreperous, take the gun and go home.  Wait a couple weeks before you visit the pawn shop.  Use the money to buy your kid a nice present.

They will not go quietly.  They would vote for Putin if they could. Trump has succeeded at gathering the absolute dumbest motherfuckers in America into one intellectually bankrupt cage.  I’ve seen this kind of dumb before and so have you.

They don’t have hobbies.

They are addicted to rage.

They will begin by screeching voter fraud.  The collective spittle flung from their angry maws will produce spontaneous rainbows everywhere.  They will insist that illegals and dead people voted prolifically because there aren’t enough bigoted old white men left in America to put Trump over the deficit of minority and female disgust. It’s a mathematical impossibility. A basket of deplorables indeed.  Absolutely clinging to God and guns because nationalism has long since replaced their patriotism.

There aren’t enough FEMA camps.  It’s not like they can be retrained.  Maybe we could release all the non violent brown people from prison and replace them with the army of Trump acolytes.  Put all these people back on the street, let ’em vote, put the mouth breathers in jail and candidates like Trump would find the the path a lot steeper.

I think I’m onto something.

Drinks for my friends.

*Third song from Agnes Gooch.  They were assholes but they could play and write.  We did this at a place called Grand Master.  Walking distance from Club Lingerie.  Across the street from Chandara.  Behind a Jack In The Box on Sunset.  We were all nervous for a day.

It was a dump.  

They had some decent mics, a completely hammered vintage Neve console and brilliant sounding rooms.  I tracked it there and mixed it at Mad Dog.  I have never used the sound of a room like I used the sound of these rooms in this recording.  I’m not sure what kind of voodoo there was but this recording is one of my best.

Turn it up goddamnit.      

     

Trump gave a speech on law and order a week or so ago.  Apparently, there’s no problem at all with culturally systemic racism in any of our roughly eighteen thousand police departments.  Apparently, the problem is a war on police led by the president.

Bullshit.

This coming from a man who boasted he could prove the president isn’t a citizen.  A man who said “There’s my African American” about the only black male in a sea of white on a campaign stop.

There were fewer police killed under Obama’s administration than any two term president in our lifetime.

The killing of twelve year old  Tamir Rice in Cleveland Ohio. A cop that should should never have been allowed to carry a badge or a gun killed a boy with a toy gun within less than three seconds of rolling up.

Murder.

A cop in Ferguson Missouri empties his entire clip into an unarmed teenager from a distance, without any knowledge he committed any crime other than jaywalking.  The culturally systemic record of racism for this municipality extracting revenue from it’s poorest and blackest is appalling.  The DOJ’s report was as explicit as it was scathing.

Murder.

Dashcam video of Laquan McDonald, walking away, not even running, unarmed, shot sixteen times in the back even after he fell to the ground by an officer on scene for less than thirty seconds in Chicago.  Surrounded by other cops. It took a year for the video to be released and charges to be filed.

Murder.

I could go on and on and on.

So far, no convictions for murder.

There are shitty cops.

Way too much of this now on video to arrive at any conclusion other than we have a systemic problem inside the culture of too many of eighteen thousand American police departments.

There’s no video of Catholic priests raping children but most of us realize it’s huge goddamn problem.

Black people are pissed and scared and white people are scared and pissed and this is why. Jackasses like Trump shamelessly exploit the systemic culture of racism within most of our police departments that once made white people great.

White people have never been great.

Minorities all over this country aren’t afforded the benefit of the doubt by police yet it was never predicated on that benefit of doubt being afforded to police by the citizenry. See, cops are necessarily supposed to be above that shit. It sucks but it’s clearly part of the job description.

A requisite.

Criminals are inherently shitty.

The militarization is fucking spooky. Police are supposed to do the best they can to make people feel safe as opposed to threatened. What I see is cops festooned with firepower lethal enough to take out an entire town, confronting unarmed American protesters. We are still at a point where it’s irresponsible to trust a cop if you’re brown or black in any metropolitan area of America and more so in rural ones.

This isn’t a binary issue. For or against cops. Innocent people are being murdered by cops.

Violent crime in America is at an historic low, but we’ve got more people in jail than ever.  Disproportionately black or brown men. A robust for profit prison industry with a voracious appetite.

Just about all violent crime against white people is committed by white people.  Just about all violent crime committed by black and brown people is against black or brown people. They aren’t interested in fucking with white people because  the hammer of law enforcement that never ends up in their favor.

Ever.

We have one candidate who exploits that fear and one who helped create it.

There will never be justice for white men in America until there is justice for black men.  As long as the traditional role for police in America is to protect and serve the elites and the wealthy,  white men will be sucked into this more and more because class warfare has assimilated race warfare.

Sooner rather than later, unarmed white men will start getting shot and eventually it will be Vietnam all over again.

The war will end.

Drinks for my friends.

*The second offering from Rat Bat Blue.  It’s appropriate in a non sequitur kind of way.  If you listen to this on cheesy computer speakers, you’re doing yourself a disservice  because the bass guitar is more than relevant.  It’s a pop song with blistering jazz chops and that’s how I fell in love with this band.  They could fucking play and by the way, the drummer is a chick.  I know that sounds sexist but fuck you because you assumed she’s a dude automatically.  The song exemplifies musical discretion.  Restraint.  There is no virtuosity for the sake thereof here.  They respected the silence between the notes as much as the notes they played.   It was this band that afforded me the time and patience to make it sound like it did in my head.  I never charged them a dime but occasionally there was a wad of bills on the console at the end of the gig.  I am grateful.*

 

 

 

So I posted a blog last week where I said I’d vote for Hillary.

It wasn’t easy.

I’ve been called a pussy, a faggot, a misogynist, seriously, a misogynist a coward, a traitor and a post op transsexual.  A Hillbot named Lisa Lindo, managed to disable one of my facebook accounts.   Two years, two thousand contacts.  Gone.  This after I’d already made it clear I intended vote for her favorite vagina.

Math. Bernie won’t run third party, you can’t write him in unless he consents to be a write in candidate and he’s not going to. The democratic primary was a carnival of deception and swindling fuckery.

Jill Stein doesn’t stand a chance.

Gary Johnson has stupid hair and he’s just a republican running for a different, greedy, racist party.

The fact that we’ve been cornered into making this choice leaves me furious now and desperate later. Barring any charges or indictments by our dickless criminal justice system, the corporate vixen is predetermined to be the only choice we have for battling the power in legislative and judicial corridors.

I don’t imagine it going well, but still.

I’m changing my vote to Spiderman.

Because Trump looks more like a democratic plant every day.  That he isn’t capable of any modicum of self control at all while competing for leader of the free world has begun to mess with my suspension of disbelief. The republican donor class infuses Hillary with cash. Surrogates of his primary competitors fill her coffers. He trips over his dick to be ever more offensive and moronic.  It gets harder and harder to believe that anyone who’s managed to get this close to the presidency is so lacking in discretion or humility.

He has virtually no ground game, just one field office in the most important swing state of Florida.  Campaign collateral in the form of signs, stickers etc. are all but unavailable.  He swings his dick with seismic vigor but won’t stop doubling down on flat earth stupidity.

His is a history of king hell blowhardism and sociopathic arrogance but something more is at work here.  I don’t recall him ever being as petulantly unhinged.  I’ve only watched a single season of reality television in my life and it was The Apprentice about a decade ago.  His personae on that show was docile relative to the toxically disordered personality on stage for this campaign.

Barely into the general and he’s whining about election fraud despite having won his party’s nomination equitably. He constantly threatens to bail on the RNC. He’s telegraphing excuses for losing by a landslide.  Methinks he doth protest too much.

What is most instructive here is Trump’s adamant refusal to actually campaign on Hillary’s loathsome performance as secretary of state and her record as a public servant in general.  There is so much “there” there, that willfully ignoring it all in favor of obtuse slogans and callow, incredulous lies is either breathtakingly stupid or a calculation to ensure an historic electoral ass beating.

I don’t believe such an orchestrated effort has ever been undertaken to convince me that a fascist, narcissistic dickhead is so much worse than a neoliberal, warmongering plutocrat.

Until now, I never would have imagined such a concerted offensive by the key holders to the universe to distract the American voter from the issues so salient and the policies so germane.

Drinks for my friends.

 

*This is the second song I’ve posted from the band “Missiles Of October”.  The interesting thing about is that it’s the mix I had up on the console to cut the lead vocal and therefore not a mix at all.   Right off the floor, No effects, no EQ, no compression and no fader moves straight to DAT.  It is completely raw and we never intended for a version like this to see the light of day.  We eventually re-cut the song at a studio in Laguna Beach because they changed the arrangement and added more of a shuffle beat.  The other version turned out really well and it’s the version we finished for the record, but we decided to stick this little gem at the end of the record as a sort of ghost track, unlisted in the liner notes, as was popular back in the day.*  

 

I watched the democratic convention.

It made the RNC look Fisher Price.

At least Trump won his nomination fair and square.

I adore the first lady.

Her composure and grace always give me pause.  “I wake up every morning in a house built by slaves”.  Damn.

President Obama was magical. Easily the most talented politician I have ever seen.

They spoke glowingly of a woman who would be president. They spoke admiringly of a candidate who is the the most corrupt, the least popular, the most hated, to ever run for president of the United States of America as a democrat.

The truth is awful.

They lied.

They were so good at it I felt like crying.

And then Hillary spoke. Her cadence and style are a belt sander to my sensibilities.  She hit all the right notes.  There was plenty of red meat but it was absent the protein of honesty and sincerity.

The democratic party has become a parody of itself at the very least.  The virus of neoliberlalism has proven to be as prolific as it is virulent.  Nobody seems interested in a vaccine.

A gigantic asshole that could have easily been defeated by a ham fucking sandwich is in contest because the candidate who could have wiped the electoral map with him was marginalized by the DNC and the media while we were throat raped by Hillary Clinton’s coronation.

The choice forced upon us is fucking is dumb.  I have never felt so cornered as a voter.  The Wicked Witch versus Fuckface Von Clownstick.

Maybe she’ll be indicted or arrested, gawd knows there’s enough there.  The problem  isn’t quantity but quality.  And not a lack thereof.  Her shit may just be too big to fail.

So here’s what I’ve decided.

I’m going to change my party affiliation to Green.  But I’m not going to vote for Jill Stein because she doesn’t have a chance. At a certain point, pragmatism informs my cynicism. I will ignore my gag reflex, hold my nose, vote for Hillary and come home to shower.

I will shit hammer the Clinton administration every goddamn week for my humble little platform. I will beat that meat like it owes me money.  Hillary Clinton is about to face unprecedented obstructionism from the left.

My conscience tells me this is the best move I can make.

I refuse to suffer anyone, one way or another for voting one way or the other.

I can’t cover the sun with just my hand.

Drinks for my friends.

*The band is Down By Law from the very first record I ever produced recorded and mixed “Punkrockacademyfightsong” on Epitaph.  One day after finishing some demos I did with them, lead singer Dave Smalley told me I was going to produce his next record and six months later he called to ask me if I was ready.  As records go it went pretty smooth but I was wreck nonetheless, doubting myself the whole way and melting down here and there.  And I managed to meet one of my few brothers from another mother and maintain a long distance bromance with the young drummer Hunter Oswald to this day.  He stole laminated Waffle House menus for me without me asking because he just knew how bad I wanted them.  I am proud of this record.*

 

 

 

So we don’t know if the truck driver in Nice was a jihadist or not.

It doesn’t matter for the reasons you think it does because truth is hard.

Western policy regarding terrorism is shit ridiculous. Our own president won’t even admit to the number of civilian deaths from our drones in half a dozen countries.

Americans have no idea.

We give more money to Israel in “foreign aid” than to all other countries combined.  We support genocide and the illegal occupation of Palestine. More than just tacit approval of an apartheid state.  We inject tons of cash.  We sponsor it “bigly”.  It’s disgusting.

Israel is a moral liability.  The whole region is on fire because we give so much money to them that their college and health care is free while we pay for them to subjugate and enslave an entire people because of ethnicity and/or religious affiliation.  If we just stopped doing that, things would be better in a heartbeat.

America could not be further from righteousness here.

The 24 hour news cycle spins and twists and pines over this tragedy and utterly fails to attempt the right questions. On one side there is an ignorant orangutan calling for the banning of people based on their religious affiliation and on the other we have a would be world leader who never met a war she didn’t adore fomenting for the military industrial complex because that’s her goddamn base.

Palestine has no army, no air force and no navy.

Our long history of intervention is a case study in clusterfuck.

The solution is as elegant as it is simple.  Leave them the fuck alone.  There is zero chance of solving any of this centuries old bullshit militarily.  It makes it goddamn exponentially worse.  Every time, it makes it worse.  We’ll save shit loads of money and lives but there will be no profit for once.

It only goes on because it’s profitable.

And, newsflash, foreign terrorists are hardly an existential threat.  Your chances of being gunned down by a toddler with a gun are far greater.

But we are greedy and they are petroleum product flush beyond belief.  The answer here is simple too.  We are absolutely capable of a power grid dependent almost entirely upon renewable resources.  We are there.  If you believe otherwise, you are gullible.  Developmentally challenged.  Probably a climate denier.

Here’s an idea, take the money we spend to allow Israel to be the biggest dick in the middle east and spend it on our own people who no have access to health care, a decent education or a not so stupid hair cut.

They don’t hate us for our religion, our way of life or our freedom.  They don’t give a mad fuck about any of that. They hate us because we won’t stop fucking with them.  All we have to do is stop.  What we do now is ridiculous anyway.  Battling mosquitoes with machine guns. Ant colonies with tomahawk missiles.  Killing as many innocents as enemies.  We keep spending more and more on the ability to annihilate whole countries when that hasn’t been the problem for decades.

Goddamn this is stupid.

Binary thinking.  Conservatives versus liberals.  Democrats versus republicans.  Socialists versus capitalists.  Islam versus Christianity.  Girls versus boys.

It has to end immediately.

Or it goes on forever.

Drinks for my friends.

*This band was called Number 9.  The whole project was a nightmare.  I recorded some of it, mixed all of it and produced none of it.  The producer was a semi famous songwriter who sat to my right and constructed masks out of track sheets and gear templates so that when I finally looked at him he was full on mocking me with one of my own cigarettes in his mouth.  We were in some cheap ass studio in Chatsworth and this was my best effort.  I couldn’t get any crisp or crunch out of the weird McNeve console.  The label still owes me $800. It’s crazy to me that I did this for a living for almost 15 years.  Goddamn I was good at it. This one is for you Risk Hataway.*

 

 

 

 

To survive the gauntlet of nomination for national office, you absolutely must be some fucking kind of clown.

Bernie proved that it’s possible to be viable without corporate lucre, but then there was corporate media and corporate campaign infrastructure.  Sanders managed to dominate one leg of the tripod so the system demonstrated that two legs are better than one.

We need a third party, a fourth and probably a fifth.  More parties are the answer. More parties are only possible with campaign finance reform.  We must limit our election cycle and mandate that they are publicly funded exclusively, without exception.

If we can’t accomplish this much, we’re fucked no matter what.

I am done being a democrat either way.

We have two parties wholly owned by corporations that are recognized by the supreme court as people.

The nadir of this symbiosis is Clinton and Trump.

Chew on this for a minute.  The republicans have conducted a far more representative and democratic primary than we have.  The evidence is a lying gasbag of a narcissist who beat the living shit out of seventeen other candidates because of the stink of establishment corruption seeping from their pores and because he ultimately knows no uncouth.  It was a breathtakingly stupid decision but it was completely congruent with the will of the majority of republican Americans capable only of breathing through their cake holes.

Our presidential primary on the other hand was not representative of the will of the people at all.  It ignored the overt election fraud, disenfranchisement and purging.  Closed primaries in key states.  Super delegates. It acknowledges that the goal is to select rather than elect a candidate.  That’s some real bullshit right there.

Is it irony that the republicans are way more indignant about it than we are?

Nothing changes until this does.

The liberal media is nonplussed at the fact that Jeb basically said they both suck so bad he can’t have anything to do with either of them. They just don’t get it. I think this was my favorite Jeb performance.  He killed it.  He didn’t have a goddamn thing to lose.  He explained himself fairly well. I’d vote for him over these two losers.

Thing one and thing two.

They don’t get that we’re pissed off about the choice.  The elites are much happier than the rest of us. Clinton has her hand on the brass ring. Goddamn these people are organized. We sell hope and they sell fear.  So we start using fear to sell hope.

I won’t be a part of it any more.

The whole strategy consists of making us so afraid of chronic loser Trump, we vote for serial liar Clinton.  This is why I’m furious.

There are people who think this shit is funny.

Drinks for my friends.

*The band is The Phenobarbidols, it’s a crazy record.  “Fish Lounge”, named after the lounge at A&M with the giant saltwater tank in the wall.  Eclectic.  The singer Betsy, slept in the studio for much of the project.  She made tea in the mornings and flirted with me by giving head to a banana in the evenings.  The label was Sympathy For The Record Industry which means only Long Gone John ever listened to it.  Brought to you by Studio Motherfucking C and at least one Neve 8 channel broadcast console.   A good time was had by all and thanks to Alex Reed,  because he had some idea what we we’re doing when I had none. Special shout out to Michael Whitaker who shared a vision I just wasn’t privy to at the time. There are some spectacular songs on this record.  Beautiful ones, that I didn’t really appreciate until fifteen years after we made it.  I recorded the fuck out of it.  Alex Reed did everything else.  And I mean everything.*    

 

 

 

 

So Elizabeth Warren sold out. She’s thrown all of her considerable integrity and hard earned street cred behind the the most notorious corporate Wall Street whore to ever run as a democrat for president.

She’s been tasked with doing Hillary’s dirty work. Climbing into the ditch to counter the short fingered vulgarian cheap shot for cheap shot while Hillary stands to the side and nods with her patronizing rhythm of tacit approval in a tunic worthy of a Vulcan priestess.

Warren does a great job, it’s easy work. Trump is the worst republican to ever run for president.  Awful in incredibly stupid ways.

Still, it’s hard to watch.

Elizabeth Warren, Al Franken, Cory Booker, Elijah Cummings, John Lewis, Sherrod Brown……..WTF is going on here? These alleged champions of progressive principles, pillars of social justice, shrink and skulk away when given the opportunity to advocate for the ultimate standard bearer of everything they’ve staked their reputations and careers upon.

It’s breathtakingly craven.

These few elected representatives, including and especially Warren, could have easily facilitated the nomination of the best candidate to ever run in my lifetime.  But they didn’t.

Goddamn cowards.

The DNC has rejected medicare for all, a $15 an hour minimum wage, a carbon tax, a ban on fracking, the expansion of solar power and will not commit to defeating the TPP.

Since Wasserman Schultz became chair of The DNC we’ve lost over nine hundred state legislature seats, twelve governor seats, sixty nine house seats and thirteen senate seats.  She initially scheduled six debates at the worst time possible for likely viewers and ended restrictions on lobbyist and PAC donations to benefit Hillary in the face of a Bernie threat.

This is your brain on the democratic party.

If this collection of malingering invertebrates were still in possession of their own dignity, the opportunity to smash the asphyxiating rule of establishment governance would have prevailed.  A walk in the park, despite media bias and despite a deliberately arcane and archaic voting process.

It’s elementary, Trump is the most beatable republican douchenozzle to run for president ever. He’s an idiot and he celebrates it.

This is the best opportunity we’ve had in decades to elect a true, FDR-progressive brand of democrat.

Instead, we are forced to choose between two candidates under investigation for fraud and criminal malfeasance. Two candidates more interested in winning than governing.  Two candidates that are the most unpopular in our history.  Two candidates that are on record lying over and over and over.

Our first woman president will be a pyrrhic victory.

Just the other day, the state department asked for a delay in making some fourteen thousand emails between Clinton state department aids and Clinton Foundation operatives available to the public for over two years.

Goddamn Hillary is filthy.

Pee Wee Herman could beat a jackass like Trump with this this kind of machine behind him.

It has been said that this election is about authenticity.

I’m hard pressed to imagine anything more ironic.

Drinks for my friends.

 

 

The band is The Gotohells.  Produced recorded and mixed by me and Alex Reed at Panda Studios in Clearwater Florida.  Punk rock with rockabilly seasoning.  The drummer remains one of my best long distance friends that I haven’t seen in twenty years.  He played on the first record I ever produced and engineered, “Punkrockacademyfightsong” by Down By Law.  They picked us from the Orlando airport and there was a cold six pack of Budweiser talls in the back seat.  They took their hats off when Skynyrd came on the radio and took us to the original Hooters for lunch.

 

There is conspicuous consensus in this country demanding that our elected representatives do something about these chronic catastrophes.  Mass murder is as wholesome and American as apple pie. We’re closer than ever to semi-automatic weapons being welcome at baseball games, Disney movie premieres and father daughter day events of every kind.

An overwhelming majority of us are begging them to do something. Democrats, republicans and independents.

We are begging.

But yesterday they refused.

Again.

Because they are spineless fucking cowards beholding to them that brung them. The very same assholes who invest inordinate amounts of political capital into panicking us with radical Islamic terrorism, ran from preventing the horror they enthusiastically foment so that domestic terrorists are allowed to march with hypocritical allegiance to the second amendment, shoot up abortion clinics, black churches and gay clubs.

I am disgusted.

This particular jackass wasn’t a terrorist.  He was a self loathing homosexual largely because of the ridiculous tenets of a faith that is remarkably similar to western ideology.  It’s just that easy to explain.

A uniquely American pathology that is both acute and chronic and incontrovertible proof that our elected “representatives” are sanctimonious losers and liars.

Here is proof that the people who you elect don’t represent you.

Here it is.

Here it fucking is.

So now, the republicans foist some weak sauce bill that will exclude some 2,700 loons from buying a lethal weapon as opposed to the one million out of a population of well over 340 million proposed by the other side.  3,400 Americans died at the end of household firearms in the last five weeks for fucks sake.

Seriously?

All because of some pious cunt named Wayne LaPierre and the NRA.

I use the word pious with all intentional pejorative force and the word cunt with all intentional pejorative force minus any gender connotation.  Don’t give me any grief over this, Wayne LaPierre is a pious cunt.

And they all fear him because they are ridiculous cowards.

So every goddamn republican who was too timid to vote for legislation that barely even addresses the problem at hand, including two worthless democrats, ought to be impeached for dereliction of duty.  For violating the trust of the people they were elected to represent.

The solution isn’t regulating guns or people.  They aren’t mutually exclusive.  The solution is regulating people with guns or people who would get them.

Do the goddamn math.

Drinks for my friends.

*So I’ve written chapters about this band.  The “Psychodelic Zombiez”.  Dumbest band name ever.  Might be the best band I ever worked with.  Simultaneously, the biggest long shot I ever invested in and the horse I cared about the most.  Man, they could play.  Made a whole record with them and didn’t pay a goddamn dime for any of it. Scammed it all.  First horn section I ever recorded.  If you like the song at all, search the website,  I absolutely had to write about them.  I had to make their record. Goddamn they could play.  They broke my heart and it was inevitable.  All done in Studio C at A&M Studios on a 32 input API and one 24 track analog Studer so fuck you.*     

 

Spurious drama.

Please.

Stop.

We are supposed to sit and lament with the talking heads that are even less connected to this tragedy than most of us?  Cheap ass euphoric sentimentalism. Wholesale morbid exploitation of grief at its most circus. Whatever network does the best job at connecting with our horror and dismay. Whatever pundit or wannabe celebrity infotainer makes it the most tangible or visceral.

They all have heads too big floating above torsos waving us into their church of their cult of personality, to give the sermon, pass the collection plate and count the receipts.

Because it’s all about ratings baby.

I don’t give a shit what Trump or Hillary have to say about this abject tragedy. Neither one is any closer to this than the rest of us.  Trump mocks Obama for not using “politically incorrect” terminology.  Hillary ups the ante by saying she’s not afraid to and the media spews it all reflexively.

This asshole wasn’t an Islamic terrorist.  He was a homegrown jackass.  Born here, raised here and that’s it.  He was a simple minded hater.  Full of rage for reasons we’ll probably never understand that might have more to do with how jacked up we are as a society.  Maybe it was Newt or Pat or Donald or Ted or the reckless “journalists” that breathlessly cover every word they puke. He didn’t even understand the difference between Al Qaeda and Hezbollah. Isis and Hamas. Sunni and Shia.

He was a bipolar, misogynistic, self loathing homosexual who should never have been allowed near a gun. That’s the goddamn story. Fisher Price. The rest is bullshit but they have to keep talking about it for the next three days because that’s just too neat.  Too sensible.  Not enough to enrage, confuse or distract.

I have gay friends.  People I adore.  Nothing would afflict me more than this obnoxious, cloying and insipid coverage were this to happen to any of them.

The proscenium the American media plays beneath is rotting.

Look in the mirror.  Look at what we gulp and pursue everyday.

Maybe that sent him over.

Maybe it was the NRA doing everything it can to ensure a suicidal sociopath like this can light up a joint full of queers at closing time because the losers we elect and expect to protect us are too afraid of a worthless bitch like Wayne LaPierre.

Because the NRA has convinced about 20% of mouth breathing Americans that the 2nd amendment means they have the right to kill anyone that threatens their intelligence, sexuality or bigoted political views with a rifle designed for military combat.  A rifle not designed for hunting.  A rifle specifically engineered to be as lethal as possible in a theater of war.  In other words, a “sport rifle”.

We are staring down the throat of the problem and arguing over the fucking teeth.

The way we keep this from happening, on this particular scale, is we stop selling these weapons of mass destruction to everyone, not just the developmentally challenged, but everyone.  It just doesn’t happen in countries that they aren’t available for sale in.

Next.

Drinks for my friends.

Click to play.

*The band is Pretty Mary Sunshine.  We made a record.  I’m not sure why.  She couldn’t sing.  She was perpetually flat.  There was no auto tune back then.  We did vocal comps forever.  This is the only song I think we were able to make work.  It took forever.  It’s good though.

 

 

There has been tremendous fuckery to prevent Bernie Sanders from competing to represent the conscience and will of smart people.

The smoking gun is the difference between exit polls and “official” totals. Other countries use a more than 2% difference as reason to investigate for voter or election fraud.  Someone somewhere has decided that exit polls will no longer be reported in this country because the discrepancy has been exceeded by double digits in more than half dozen states. Because the difference has always favored Hillary. Because the results for republicans were well within 2% every single time.

Last night in California, every single advance poll had them within 2 or 3 points of each other but Bernie lost by 12 points and of course, there were no exit polls to be had.  Not the first time it’s happened and not the tenth.

Absolute fuckery.

Nobody likes them.

They are mutually assured destruction.  There is no joy in choosing the lesser of two corrupt and misanthropic sociopaths.

Hillary’s reign will be a protracted bleeding and Trump’s will be a sudden blood let. You and I are gonna get pummeled no matter what.

Mainstream media devoted more attention to obfuscation and distraction than to Bernie Sanders drawing sixty thousand in Oakland last Monday.

Bill Clinton is a serial philanderer and Hillary covered for him because she had ambitions of her own. The Clintons are posers when it comes to philanthropy.  Donald Trump lies about his philanthropy and is a serial philanderer.

You’ve got be fucking kidding me.

Cable news pukes it all in our laps with awesome and reckless indiscretion.  The GOP didn’t have shit so they foisted this dickhead and now he could beat her so the DNC establishment is pissing itself because they own how rotten Clinton is.  They understand she is particularly vulnerable to a madman who will tell all the truths about her that Bernie wouldn’t, and supplement them with lies that the media can be counted on to put on blast.

A Frankenstein is about to escape.

The two party system is bullshit.

Look at how rapidly all the republican leaders who were vehemently and ideologically opposed to Trump have fallen into lockstep.  What does it take to embarrass these assholes?

Then there’s the goddamn establishment democrats lining up to endorse the most crooked and unpopular candidate they’ve championed since forever.  Who knew?  Cory Booker, Al Franken. Sheezus. This whole thing stinks like a dumpster pissed on by drunks for weeks in the dead of summer.

I am so done.

This is what I’ve been expecting for for months now.  I didn’t expect this  furious loathing I’ve developed for her.

I will not vote for this woman.

I sure as fuck won’t vote for this man.

It’s the dumbest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen.

If Trump gets elected it will be the most humiliating four years of his adult life and ours too.  My biggest fear is that Hillary gets elected, and it’s the most rewarding eight years of her life.

This is gonna suck no matter what.

Drinks for my friends.

*UPDATE:  As of June 9, Hillary has about 1.9 million votes and Bernie has about 1.5 million votes in California.  THERE ARE 2.6 MILLION VOTES YET TO BE COUNTED.  The mainstream media is LYING when they say 100% of the vote has been counted.  At least 44% of the votes have NOT been counted and their is every expectation that the majority of those ballots, provisional ballots, are for Bernie.  Among independent voters, Bernie hammers Hillary by 40%.  FAR from the only state this kind of bullshit has occurred in.  This is nothing other than ELECTION FRAUD.  If you do nothing else this election cycle, spread this information far and wide.  Post it and share it over and over.  We are being lied to, suppressed and disenfranchised overtly and prolifically.  The oligarchy has been installing presidents for longer than I care to guess and that is EXACTLY what is happening now, right in front of you.  Do something.

 

Click to play.

 

The band is Rat Bat Blue.  I had no idea what I was doing when they found me or I found them. They could play and I was trying really hard.  They ended up being amazing.  I tuned the drum kit for this song.  I actually have a picture.  I gave them, after a time, some of the best recordings I ever made.  I did at least two dozen songs with them over two or three years. They got signed to Atlantic. The legendary Bob Ezrin stepped in. I competed with the guy who made The Wall and Kiss Destroyer.  Briefly.  The record went double balsa.

 

 

If Trump gets elected we will vote in any democrat four years from now who wears socks.  If Hillary wins, we’ll elect any republican who wears pants.

Either way, we’re fucked.

And the fraud that is our two party system will endure.

This is a goddamn disaster.

I need to make this point again.  The problem with Trump, beyond being a miserable narcissistic blowhard is that he has no fucking idea what he’s doing.  The Problem with Hillary, despite being the most crooked democrat to ever run for president, is that she knows exactly what the fuck she’s doing.

Hillary is not interested in reinstating Glass Steagall or appointing justices to the supreme court that will overturn Citizens United .  Her pant suits slosh with cash.  She’s a serial liar.  She used her position as secretary of state to make quid pro quo arms deals in exchange for contributions to her money laundering charity. The cabal that made her stinking rich won’t have anything to do with Glass Steagall or Citizens united and neither will she.  She’ll pay requisite lip service to social issues. She’ll appear on television with screeching cadence and stab her hand at LGBQT concerns and racial inequality, but when it comes down to the genuine, underlying economic issues that are the impetus for it all, she’ll work relentlessly behind the scenes to serve herself and the people who got her here.

Then she’ll start a new war and escalate the existing ones to enrich the rest of her goddamn base.

I loathe her.

She scares the crap out of me.

Who the hell knows what Trump will do? He’ll be such a stumbling mumbling fuck that they’ll remove all the valuable art and hide the china. He’ll show up on television all indefatigable and the mouth breathers will swoon.  He’s a serial liar.  Get used to that idea of him being all up in our shit. He’ll be on TV every goddamn day vomiting bigotry and madness to distract us.

But he’ll be marginalized.  Thank gawd he doesn’t drink.  They won’t let him have the football or the biscuit. The secret overlords will tirelessly run interference.  I doubt he’ll start any more wars and probably won’t be interested in perpetuating the half dozen we’re already in.  It may be his biggest frustration and what finally exhausts him because that’s really what they want him to do.

He’s an idiot.

He’s not prepared to do a goddamn thing for you or me.

Neither of them is troubled at all by the responsibility of governing.  Both are consumed by the singular goal of winning at any cost and continuing a relentless pursuit of aggrandizement.

Both can be counted on to advance America’s well established legacy of prisons for profit at the expense of the proletariat.  I expect neither to do a goddamn thing about the chronic concentration of wealth in America.  Both are long established plutocrats.

He’s a sexist misogynist prick and she foments a gender bias far more sagacious than she routinely accuses everyone who opposes her of.

Zero sum.

Same as it ever was.

Both of their cults worship and celebrate their reprehensible lack of values.

The system is rigged but consider this, it is absolutely rigged for Clinton but totally rigged against Trump and we still ended up with both of them.

We deserve these two posers.

We did this to ourselves.

The two most hated candidates ever.

Us in the mirror.

We broke it and now we buy it.

We had our chance.

His name was Bernie Sanders.

Drinks for my friends.

* This song is from a band called Ape Hangers.  My third record.  Made entirely in studio C at A&M records by me and Alex Reed.  We had songs on two major motion picture soundtracks and early radio response was really positive.  Both movies tested poorly,  the label wimped out and a solid record died from asphyxiation, along with my career.  It was the first record I made after Everclear’s smash debut on Capitol and you’re only as good as your last record.  It was a cruel business.  Given the post punk and grunge musical climate in ’96, had they devoted resources already allocated to promoting this song as a single, I’d be living in hills or at least south of the boulevard in the valley.  

Click to play.

 

 

Click to play.

Rachel,

You’ve been in my living room for years. Pretty much from the beginning. You know, post Keith Olbermann. I was even a fan of you before that, on Air America.

I’ve always understood that you have an agenda, a bias.  It never bothered me.  It was usually congruent with mine. You’ve always been pretty transparent about it, so I’ve always been able to factor it in and filter it all with that in mind.

I have long appreciated that you report on issues and stories that no other network would or could. I’ve enjoyed the humor and aplomb of your approach.  I love that you broke the Flint Michigan story and the various bullshit that’s occurred regarding voting, civil and gender rights.  I adore how brave and salient your priorities have been.

Thank you.

But lately you’ve been pissing me off.  Your coverage and commentary on the Sanders campaign in general and the recent events at the Nevada convention in particular are clumsy, irresponsible and embarrassing.  It was lazy and intellectually disingenuous.  You simply didn’t report the facts.  What you did broadcast was sloppy conjecture. You interviewed the chair of the the Nevada DNC, Roberta Lange, the woman at the center of the controversy, and let her tell lie after lie after lie.

It was a smear.

Why didn’t you give equal time to someone like Erin Billbray, a Nevada super delegate, who could have given an accurate accounting of events and eyewitness testimony? If Thom Hartmann was able to get this “get”why weren’t you?  Why didn’t you invite Nina Turner?  What the fuck Rachel?

Why do you continue to repeat lies about chairs thrown, violence and people needing medical attention even on Friday’s broadcast?  These are lies Rachel Maddow.  I know that you know they are lies and I am disgusted.

There was no violence.  There were no chairs thrown.  A thousand cell phone cameras and nothing to support the crap you continued to report.  The alleged threats to Lange are completely unsubstantiated.  No proof, no evidence, no forensic investigations of the recordings. Jon Ralston finally admitted he wasn’t even there and you based most of your bullshit on his reporting.

When it comes to the Sanders campaign, you’re no different than FOX News and every other entity out there.  He is the best candidate to run for president in my lifetime and you all lie so egregiously as to not consider the well being of the people you broadcast to but rather to serve a more insidious itinerary of corporate dominance and political mendacity.

I am profoundly disappointed.  You violated my trust.  The MSNBC network is bad enough with Chris Matthews’ obvious conflict of interest, but you are clearly in the tank for a candidate that I cannot support.  I would be a fool to expect honesty and integrity from you in light of this. I will continue to rely on sources that cannot be corrupted by corporations because they have inoculated themselves by refusing to take their money.

After all, isn’t that the entire point of Bernie’s campaign?  The influence of corporations and their money in our society and our political system?  The point that you, your network, and every other media outlet exert transparent strain to ignore?

You are complicit and I am offended.

Shame on you.

Drinks for my friends.

* The band is Missiles of October and goddamn they could play.  Man I tried to get them signed.  We tried so hard.  Along with my partner Alex who is as responsible for the sound of this record as I am.  He’s a genius.  It was the MTV era and they were all in their mid to late forties.  Not camera friendly.  Dusty Wakeman from Dwight Yoakam’s band told me no as I sat outside his studio while mixing Agnes Gooch at Mad Dog Studios.  There were several bands that broke my heart and this was one of them.  We killed this record.  Among the best we ever made. Close to perfect. They were amazing.  They could write and play like nobody’s business.  Los Angeles Times record of the year but we couldn’t get them a deal.  Studio goddamn C at A&M studios back in the fucking day. Mixed at SoundCastle studios in Silverlake on an SSL.    

 

 

 

Click to play

This is how it will play.  The mainstream media will leverage the monster they are responsible for to promote the alleged sanity and safety of Hillary Clinton. The plan all along has been too convince us that she is not only the lesser of two evils, but our savior and protector from the evil misogynist bigot they gleefully created.

He was never actually going to be president.  Goofecock republicans had nothing but cadavers and they needed a horse race for ratings and revenue.  So the powers that be completed the manufacture of this reality star Frankenfucker into a viable candidate.

It’s all about obfuscation.

Let’s not forget who’s responsible for the other half of this date with insanity.  Rip off the mask and let’s see.  There’s you and there’s me and a two party system that is as corrupt as the day is long.  We’ve all been willing and we’ve all participated.  Cheer leading and sloganeering.  Red vs. blue.  Democrats vs. republicans. Neoliberals vs. neoconservatives.

Progressives versus assholes.

There hasn’t been a red pubic hair’s difference between us in decades.

Maybe there is a caveat.  Maybe they knew they could exploit the majority into thinking this is some goddamn sports rivalry.  Maybe they swabbed our cheeks in the middle of the night in order to devise a bacterial culture to infect us all with some demented populism.  All I know is I watched too many of us stagger forth to drink from the trough with a misguided thirst for patriotic superiority.  We are at least somewhat responsible for our own stupidity.

Politics has long been a swim at your own risk, no lifeguard on duty proposition.  Yet it has somehow become a personal Superbowl in the minds of many.  We can all run onto the field and play now, even if the helmets we wear were prescribed by a doctor for adventures at the museum or the mall.

More idiots think they have a voice while more reasonable people realize they don’t than ever before.

This whole campaign was over before it started.  Trump as the potential foil but only after a contentious primary. Hillary emerges on a unicorn and saves us from the short fingered vulgarian just in time to make sure fracking is safe and more troops are needed in the Middle East.

There’s no way we can afford tuition free college and medical care paid for by our taxes like every other civilized country on the goddamn planet because there is evil in the world that threatens our existence and we simply must have the most gigantic defense budget in the history of humankind.  Nevermind that we already do.  Besides, poor people don’t deserve anything because they are lazy and slovenly and morally bankrupt.

Hillary’s bankster buddies will be okay because they are weaponized on a global scale and they will take America hostage the next time they get their tit in a ringer just like the last time.  She is more of a republican than he is and he is more of a democrat than she is.

They are both lying to you. At a certain point, you have to take responsibility for being a fool. It’s easier to fool a man than it is to convince him he’s been fooled.

We had one last shot at this and we fucking blew it.

Once again into the breech.

Meet the new boss.

Same as the old boss.

Go Bernie go.

Drinks for my friends.

* This one song erases all my losses.  Agnes Gooch.  I made this one with my cock out.  I have no idea how it sounds on your device but this was produced recorded and mixed in Studio goddamn C at A&M records in Hollywood California back in the fucking day by yours truly.  It’s the biggest most pissed off and elegant song I ever had a hand in.  The bass player was a friend of mine.  He called himself Johnny Lonely.  Johnny showed up in my control room one day with Scott Thomas from Anna Purna and Kelly Scott from Dumpster and licked my arm while I was threading the multi and told me about his new band “The Gooch”.  I somehow happened into the cream of the crop from this one strain of Hollywood underground.  Exactly the band I wanted.  It’s a goddamn demo.  They made a record.  It sucked.  The A&R guy that signed them wore lime green shorts and espadrilles. Even after they made their record, they kept coming back to me to record them.  We probably did thirty songs together at least.  They were the fucking shit.  I was their slut.  I recorded them anywhere, anytime. 

 

 

Click to play:

I’m done.

I couldn’t believe it when she sent her daughter out to say he wanted to take health care away from everyone who managed to get it under the ACA.  I’m still in awe of her opposition to a $15 an hour minimum wage while she took credit for it when it passed in New York.

How much she lied about the TPP and the Keystone pipeline.  How much she lied about her vote on the Iraq war and her performance as secretary of state.  Libya anyone?  Honduras?  She can’t possibly say more about fracking around the world and she can’t possibly say less about it on the campaign trail.

The highest unfavorable ratings in history for any presidential candidate ever if it weren’t for this dickhead Trump.

This woman is awful.

There is rampant election fuckery. When the democratic exit polls are off by as much as 14% while the republican exit polls are all spot on for the exact same primary, I wonder.  This sort of statistical anomaly has only ever occurred once before.  The Bush extravaganza.  That was a party.  As many as 120,000 voters were purged from the rolls in Brooklyn alone. The official in charge of “auditing” that particular malfeasance is a delegate for Hillary.  I’m about to blind myself with a fork and some over the counter hot sauce.

I have zero doubt that we are looking at election fraud and media manipulation that is orders of magnitude greater than any ever perpetrated by a democratic candidate before.  This shit is deep.  And long.

Her roster of gigantic asshole stars of the financial sector is proof of ties to gigantic assholes that have been dry humping us forever. She just hit up the Bush dynasty for cash.  Really, she just did that.  It’s sick.

She won’t to tell us what she said in exchange for enormous amounts of money to the warlocks.  They broke our economy and still whip the backs of the middle class and she refuses to discuss it.  It stinks like a pile of cadavers.

She installed a private server in her house to inoculate herself against FOIA requests.  She made arms deals as secretary of state in exchange for contributions to her bullshit “charity”.  The biggest thing the Clinton Foundation has accomplished is making the Clintons and their friends rich as fuck.

She’s a proud archetype of the champion preeminent war criminal, her buddy Henry Kissinger.

Were I to vote for her in the the general election, she would be the single worst democratic candidate I’ve ever voted for in my life.  The single worst candidate I’ve ever voted for.

I won’t do it.

Damn the torpedoes. The DNC foisted this sea monster upon all of us and they all deserve to wake up with dirt in their mouths.  I am done with this party of thieves and liars. Full steam ahead.

Donald Trump is one adept cracker but he is far more honest than she is.  He’s only guilty of being a dumbass narcissist and an amateur serial liar. Trump is a train wreck but Hillary Clinton is an engineer who will deliver more of the same chronic ebb.  The precipitous decline of your lifestyle.  The atrophy of your buying power until you can only afford groceries and you start to really worry about your teeth.  More war.  More concentration of wealth and abject poverty.  Her supreme court nominees will be neoliberal, corporatist hawks. She will be relentless.

I’ve evolved on this issue.

I refuse to suffer this bullshit.  One is a clueless asshole of a prick who has no idea what he’s doing and the other is a cold and calculating bitch who knows exactly what she is doing. I am sick and fucking tired of choosing between the lesser of two evils foisted upon us by this criminally archaic two party system.  The lesser of the two evils in this election is Donald goddamn Trump.

I’m not kidding.

We didn’t like her in ’08 because we saw her.  We like her even less now because we can see her better.

We’re about to get what we deserve.

Fuck this shit.

I will not vote for her.

I will not vote for him.

I’m out.

Go Bernie go.

Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV_PLCC6jeI&app=desktop

Drinks for my friends.

*Press the play button at the top of the blog. This is 16 Horsepower.  This was actually released by A&M and did pretty well.  A very cool band.  They gave us a week or so and we made an EP. The bass player was a luthier and I remember he built the upright bass I recorded here. They never made a better record. Ever. It was the first time I ever recorded a banjo, a concertina and a stand up bass. I killed it.  

I’m about to piss you all off.

Bernie Sanders is not going to get the nomination. Media complicity and the most formidable and corrupt political machine ever don’t even see party.

Symbiosis.

Unless she somehow finally earns an indictment.

I’m not holding my breath.

The democratic convention will be contested and the republican convention won’t. That’s ballsy and I adore it. He should piss them off. Frustrate the fuck out of them and leave them reeling.

She punctuates her lies on my TV with the disturbing rhythm of a stabbing hand that is somewhere between a self righteous fist and what she thinks is conviction. I experience ear nose and throat pain. Her female card makes me want to cut off my junk and join the church as a eunuch just to make a point.

Way too many Americans don’t like this woman.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Donald Trump is the biggest fraud ever to garner enough celebrity to lead a party of such incorrigible douchenozzles. The irony is, even they hate him. The irony is, they can’t even stand the jackasses they offered up instead.

So here we are.

It goes without saying that I will vote for Bernie in the California primary, but the two candidates with the highest unfavorable ratings in the history of the contest have somehow become our only choices.

Tough love.

There is absolutely no way for Bernie to mount a third party campaign. Too late for state ballots.  It’s not gonna happen.

I totally get the “Bernie or bust” movement. I’ve entertained the notion of obstinately writing him in or voting for Trump to hasten our demise so we can get on with the burning it all to the ground thing and the revolution. Smart progressives see this as a conundrum.

I am sorely tempted.

I hate that we have to choose between two such assholes.

Here’s the deal, if we don’t vote for the candidate that might restore balance to the Supreme Court, we are screwing ourselves for a generation at least. There won’t be any revolution. No single issue looms larger.

He is not going to get the nomination.

Bernie Sanders, Alan Grayson, Elizabeth Warren, Russ Feingold and even some of them who defected to Hillary are handing us a cudgel. Maybe a corked bat.

It could be useful.

It’s as simple as that.

Don’t fucking whine at me. I’m not interested in telling you I told you so. Put on your big boy pants. Be proactive and get ready for what happens next. Change doesn’t happen in a single goddamn election. He will storm the convention and burn the house down. The democratic establishment and the punditocracy will have no choice but to bear witness and testify.

I won’t be a democrat after this campaign.

Fuck this shit.

Drinks for my friends.

*This musical selection is the from the last record I ever made.  A straight up pop song.  Just locate the little play button at the top and click it.  I remember mastering it at Capitol Records when I found out my friend Keith was dying of Mad Cow disease.  He was a vegetarian. The bass line unlocks the entire song.     

Everywhere there has been an open primary or caucus, Bernie won decisively.  Just about everywhere he lost was a closed contest. Closed,where independent voters weren’t merely excluded, but would have had to register democrat as long as six months ago just to vote.

Independents are a far larger voting bloc than democrats or republicans.

Last night was no exception. The four he lost were closed.  The one he won was open.

Deliberately arcane bullshit.

This system that Sanders and Trump rail against is absolutely rigged.

Minus the archaic rules that exclude independents, we’d be looking now at a general election starring Sanders and Trump. Bernie would be well on his way to making the callow megalomaniacal jackass cry in front of his ignorant bigoted supporters by now.

What we have now is a choice between two candidates with the highest unfavorable ratings in our history. One is filthy rich and refuses to release any tax returns and the other refuses to release the transcripts of absurdly lucrative speeches made to the arch enemy of you and me that made her filthy rich.  Both are world class blowhards that will say anything to win.  Both are morally and ethically bereft and both alternate between empty slogans and embarrassing displays of inauthentic populism.

Americans are stupid and the system somehow knows it.

I can’t stand it.

The political revolution Bernie Sanders championed must continue until the rich have to deal with only cake left to eat.  Or at least until our representatives aren’t only there because of some transactions and the districts bought for them.  Until we begin to jail the white collar pricks that crashed us all and still crack the whip everyday. The ones that will get away with it again. Until we ban fracking and take the subsidies from fossil fuels and give them to wind and solar.  Until there is racial justice.  Until we get over this perpetual war thing.

Neither doppelganger foisted on us this time will do fuck all about any of this.

These insidious devils who haunt our political process so thoroughly manage to inject into everything that we experience.

Bernie Sanders should not blunt his rhetoric against either front runner, he should hone it like a goddamn broadsword.

Go Bernie go.

Drinks for my friends.

*Once again I’ve attached an unreleased song I helped make the life of two cats ago.  There is a bar at the very top of the blog and all you have to do is click the play button.  The band was called Agnes Gooch and they were the shit.  I probably cut 30 songs with them.  They got a record deal.  The record went double balsa and they probably all have day jobs now like me.  My demos absolutely smoked the record they made.  This sort of thing happened a lot.     

 

 

 

 

She’s got a new campaign ad that exploits the Sandy Hook tragedy.

She imagines it will be the nail in Bernie’s coffin and a firewall against any republican she faces because there is barely any other divide that separates the sane from the crazy more than than guns.

She might be right.

It’s spectacularly cheap and lazy.

Just the doing of it should be revolting.

Gun violence is an issue in America but we have bigger fish to fry. What we have here is nothing compared to our gun problem worldwide.

She voted for the Iraq war when even I knew the intelligence was complete crap.  The deals she presided over and championed as secretary of state that armed whole populations with far more lethal firepower and far more lethal results is the whale not the fish.

She will say anything, no matter what she’s done.  A poster girl for hypocrisy.  Republicans don’t fear her because she’ll stop them.  They fear her because she’s better at it than them.

I fear her because her because she sold her soul to the avarice that always leads to murder on a scale that makes me shudder.

This all sounds a little hateful.

Bear with me.

It is.

With so much blood on her hands, she dares to make it a domestic issue.  I am in awe. Bernie says we shouldn’t be able to sue a gun manufacturer or shop owner for a legal product sold legally and he’s right.  If you happen to kill someone with your car, the last entity you can sue is Ford or Honda. Yes, most guns are for killing people, and some are for killing lots of people rapidly, but they are fucking legal as advertised, so you don’t get to hold the seller or the manufacturer accountable because of some crazy asshole who committed the actual crime.

Politicizing the massacre of innocent children.  Not because it’s right in any sense.  Not because it’s a morally or ethically sound position for her to stake. But because it’s expedient and it appeals to a broader fear and sentimental melancholy.  Because it obfuscates all of her career adventures as a sociopath.

Hillary Clinton wants to be lovable but she’s not.

She wants us to like her but we don’t.

We should be able to sue her and every arms dealer she ever endorsed or profited from.

No self respecting liberal or progressive has ever sought to politicize the Sandy Hook massacre.

What we have here is complete lack of self respect.

She doesn’t give a mad fuck about us either.

Drinks for my friends.

*If I did this right, at the top of the page you’ll see a bar with a play button on the left that you can click to listen to a song I produced, recorded and mixed sometime in the previous century.  I did this sort of thing for over a decade so I have lots of this stuff.  I also made at least one record that sold like fucking pop tarts.  Let me know if it actually works or if you hate it.  Let me know if it doesn’t work or if you don’t see a fucking thing.  I intend to keep doing this, so my advice is to let me know.