Random Thoughts from the Shitshow - Cheney, RFK Jr., Gambling and More!
/RANDOM THOUGHTS
From the ‘random thoughts’ bin in my Dispatches from the Shitshow notebook.
A few people asked me if I was going to watch the big presidential debate on Tuesday night. The answer of course is…HELL NO!
I didn’t watch the Trump-Biden debate back when Biden tripped over his own dementia addled dick and I ain’t gonna watch this idiotic horseshit either. Why would anyone in their right mind watch these two raging sub-mediocrities and dim-to-mid-wits babble their inane bullshit back and forth?
I felt the same way about the conventions. How could anyone watch that shit by choice? It’s like tuning in to television just to watch a three-hour block of infomercials. You can’t help but be dumber for having watched.
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If you needed another reason to not vote – both Dick Cheney and George W. Bush are endorsing Kamala Harris.
Cheney and Bush are war criminals who stole the 2000 election, were either responsible due to negligence for, or complicit in, the 9-11 attacks, lied to start two illegal wars that killed millions, started a torture and massive surveillance program, ran the U.S. economy into the ground, and decimated working families while bailing out Wall Street bankers.
These two men are, frankly, evil to the point of being demonic. To be clear, they should not be in prison for their crimes, they should be at the end of a fucking rope.
That their endorsement of the Democratic nominee is not seen as a giant red flag to the vast majority of liberals in the U.S., is disconcerting, disheartening and should be disqualifying.
Liberals tell me that Trump is Hitler…but they fail to remember that Cheney and Bush actually were as Hitlerian as any president in history.
If you are one of those delusional folks who think Kamala Harris is the one to right the good ship U.S. of A…consider the utterly contemptible and loathsome swamp creatures that are backing her.
I’m not saying you should vote for Trump…I’m just saying that voting for Kamala isn’t the lesser of two evils, it is, at the barest of minimums, the equal of evils.
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True story - I know a guy who got crabs on his birthday.
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I know it is en vogue to think that RFK Jr. is a clown…and I get it…he talks like Katherine Hepburn with a head cold and hiccups. But even with the liability of his addled speech, he still speaks more sense than both Trump and Harris combined.
The fact that he is out there brazenly berating and beating the righteous drum against big pharma and big agriculture, says a lot about him and his integrity, and even more about Trump and Harris’ lack thereof.
Liberals, of course, loathe RFK Jr. for speaking out against the Covid vaccine…as well as many other vaccines…but the reality is that RFK Jr. was right – about the Covid vaccine and much else, and the vast majority of liberals were dead wrong, especially regarding Covid, even though they are loathe to admit it.
I certainly don’t agree with RFK Jr. on everything…most particularly his nauseating subservience to Israel – but both Trump and Harris are equally spineless and mindless when it comes to Israel too (gee…I wonder why?).
That said, the fact that Trump is now surrounding himself with the likes of RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom have endorsed him, and saying he will put them in his administration, is a very big deal considering the villainous scum who populated the first swamp creature-infested Trump term. John Fucking Bolton was his National Security Advisor for crissakes!
When I look at Bush and Cheney endorsing Kamala, and RFK Jr. and Gabbard endorsing Trump, it seems very obvious to me that Trump wins the endorsement battle by a landslide.
Having RFK Jr. fighting big pharma and big agriculture in the public eye for the next four years would be good for the country. Of course, the question becomes could Trump tolerate someone stealing the spotlight from him for four years? My guess is no…and that the relationship would sour pretty quick.
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I know I am an old man yelling for the kids to get off of my lawn, but I really, really hate the proliferation of sports gambling in our culture, and think it is insidious, diabolical and dangerous.
I am not a gambler. I don’t even play fantasy sports – another endeavor that I find to be idiotic and detrimental to sport and sports fandom.
The bottom line is that I think that gambling is so toxic and such a cancer that it will eventually aggressively degrade not only individuals, families, communities and the country, but sports itself, as everything that touches gambling is tainted by it and ultimately greatly diminished.
Nowadays it’s simply impossible to watch television without seeing some stupid DraftKings or FanDuel commercial, and all of the networks covering sports have fully embraced gambling as THE focal point of their coverage of sport. ESPN has entire shows dedicated to gambling and has started their own sportsbook, and during actual games they spotlight bets to make.
Kids growing up today will have no idea about sports without gambling being such an integral part of it. Sports and gambling will be inextricably linked for this generation, and it will have dire consequences for those kids when they become adults, and for sports in the future.
The proliferation of sports betting comes nearly forty years after the Reagan administration took the guard rails off of Wall Street, and twenty-five years after Clinton essentially allowed Wall Street to become a massive casino.
We’ve all seen how well those changes to Wall Street have worked out for regular, working-class Americans…it’s been one calamity after another. We’ve had Savings and Loan scandals, Tech bubbles, accounting scandals (Enron), the housing bubble, the housing crash and on and on and on. No matter who was responsible for those crimes and calamities, it was always regular people who were left holding the bag and footing the bill.
In 2008 the entire façade of Wall Street was exposed as being fraudulent and entirely felonious. The banks, the ratings agencies, the insurance companies, the mortgage companies, the federal oversight agencies, the local, city, state and federal law enforcement and attorney’s general, all of them were exposed for the world to see…and yet…nothing changed. In fact, Wall Street only got bigger and more corrupt and now is even more untouchable, and regular people were robbed blind and left poorer and more vulnerable than ever.
The same thing will happen over time with gambling in regards to professional sports leagues, college sports, television networks, tech companies and credit card companies/banks – as they will all make gobs of money…until they don’t, and then they’ll simply use their massive money machine to pay off corrupt politicians and get bailed out with tax payers dollars. And once again it will be regular people who will be fucked over.
You can bet on it.
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Speaking of getting fucked over….I know people are freaking out about the election. The MAGA maniacs thinks Kamala is a commie and the K-Hive Clowns think Trump is Hitler…but know this…no matter who wins the U.S. will get heinous neo-liberal domestic policies and hellacious neo-con foreign policy.
Trump or Harris…it don’t matter…we are fucked four ways to Sunday. The U.S. empire is in steep decline and will be lashing out at enemies foreign and domestic…and if you think you’re safe because you’re on the “right side of history” or are a “patriot”…guess again.
The bullseye will eventually be on all of our backs because the corrupt oligarchs and aristocrats running this country don’t just hate regular Americans, they actually want to see us suffer because they delight and live off of our misery. These ghouls will do absolutely anything to maintain their power, up to and including putting a bullet in the back of your head after having forced you to buy your own shovel and dig your own grave.
On that joyous note…I’ll sign off.
©2024