Aquarian Weekly
9/28/22
 
Reality Check
 

James Campion
 
 
THE CRUEL DUMBNESS OF RON DESANTIS 
Or How to Use Innocent Humans as Political Props and Get Sued 
 
Florida Governor and phony political hack grandstanding media whore Ron DeSantis thought it was a good idea to lure 48 Venezuelan migrants in San Antonia, Texas onto buses and then air shuttle them to Massachusetts to continue his I OWN EVERY RIGHT-WING GRIEVANCE variety show. And while wildly popular with racists and general morons who get their news from gum wrappers and Fox News, it has painfully backfired. This embarrassingly unoriginal and agonizingly transparent political, and more pointedly inhumane stunt has drawn the usual ire from the sane, but now a lawsuit and investigation could bring what Tallassee immigration attorney Elizabeth Ricci suggested was “human trafficking and kidnapping charges” down on him.

Up until DeSantis piggybacked on this cynical idea from Texas Governor Gregg Abbott and Arizona Governor Don Ducey – the Republican bigot fascist brigade – he was rolling. He is the leading Republican candidate for president if Donald Trump goes to jail for stealing classified government documents, defrauding the state of New York, or fomenting an insurrection against the United States, or if he finally has that massive heart attack his appearance and diet has been hinting at for decades. He has managed to all-but own the base of Republican politics 2022, which is now anti-LGBTQ, anti-women’s reproductive rights, fearmongering, book-banning embrace of ignorance, which predictably shot him to the top of his party’s dung heap. He was the man, and may still be among the great unwashed, but this migrant thing is so onerous and pitiful, and to tweak Evangelicals, anti-Christian, never mind plain stupid, it may have not only gotten him into legal hot water, it might (gulp!) queer his chances at high office.

When you mull over the details of this stunt, it gets more and more horrifyingly stupid. And none of it had to happen. If DeSantis wasn’t obsessed with owning the national narrative of every Trumpist bottom feeding edict, this likely gets laughed off in the high-grade glue sniffing stage. Because, you have to ask: Why is the governor of Florida involved in quasi-border security debates he knows next to nothing about and has no jurisdiction over? Isn’t there enough stuff to wreck in Florida? Health Care? Civil Rights? Environment? The man has his hands full with his minimum ten press conferences a day schedule. A mere toe stubbing merits a podium, some mics, and his best 1987 Ronnie Reagan “deep in dementia facial tics mistaken for pride” schtick. The whole thing is like watching a monkey trying to fuck a greased football, despite it being a big winner in Florida, which may give us a clue why this cruel prank got out of the glue sniffing stage.

Of course, DeSantis stands by all of it. Using Florida taxpayer cash to pay conmen from something called Vertol Systems Inc. armed with what is termed in the underground as a “birddog fee” to lure (a term used by San Antonio law enforcement) 48 migrants, many of them women and children, from a sanctioned government migrant installation to an undisclosed taxpayer funded hotel with the promise of food vouchers and job opportunities in Boston. These poor, duped, confused and desperate people were then shipped to Florida on the taxpayer’s dime to give DeSantis another PR “win,” before hauling them off to Martha’s Vineyard in a tax-funded $615,000 airplane trip (that is over 12-grand a migrant, even though the normal cost of a flight from anywhere in Florida to Boston is like $400). This all done in service of a ham-fisted “gotcha” on a sanctuary state. The guess by those with brain bubbles was that DeSantis would make the (very expensive and likely taxpayer defrauded) knuckle-dragging point that New England elitists would be outed as out-of-touch with illegal immigration? Except none of the migrants are illegal. They were peacefully awaiting asylum like every migrant in the history of a nation built by poor and frightened people escaping persecution.

The whole thing is like watching a monkey trying to fuck a greased football

A stunned and disgusted Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salavar held a press conference to announce the investigation into this alleged crime, during which he could not fathom the exploitation of humans for what he described as “nothing more than political postering before being stranded with no shelter or food on an island off the coast of Massachusetts.” Sheriff Salavar concluded, “What infuriates me is that these poor people, who are here legally, and have every right to be where they were, were preyed upon by paid out-of-state operatives, who hoodwinked them into taking this needless trip to Florida.”

So, like some evil Bond villain petting a white Persian cat, DeSantis orchestrates this thing from afar, ripping off both the performance art of governors’ Abbott and Ducey (who run states actually on the fucking border) while making his weekly “Look at me, because daddy didn’t love me” cry for attention. And, in a move that might piss off the hardline anti-immigrant cabal, DeSantis’s scrambling administration began trying to make this a “human rights” effort by the governor, stating their hopes to cherry-pick 48 random people, lie to them, and send them all over the place before dumping them with no food or money on an island “for their benefit.”

The fun postscript to this travesty is that now faced with a class action lawsuit and criminal investigation, if DeSantis is found culpable in these shenanigans he will not only go down but the very migrants he hopes to kick out of America will get special visas due to being victims of human trafficking. And, to make matters worse, this heretofore political genius has ticked off the all-important Latino vote for Republicans in his state. The GOP previously enjoyed the lion’s share of the 200,000 Venezuelans in Florida, not to mention Cubans, who recall these kinds of draconian tactics from the late dictator Fidel Castro and are starting to voice their displeasure.

So, you know, a lose-lose-lose-lose move by the leading GOP candidate for president. 

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Aquarian Weekly
8/24/22
 
Reality Check
 

James Campion
 
 
DON’T BE FOOLED – ALL REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES WANT ABORTION BAN
         
As the mid-term campaign season heats up after Labor Day the key word has dramatically shifted from Inflation to Abortion. Thanks to the June Supreme Court Dobbs decision that systemically enslaved women, the political narrative has flipped from a Republican wave to a Democratic surge. There has been an enormous increase in Democratic Party (the only party that stands for women’s rights left) support, enthusiasm, and voter registration across the country, and it shows no signs of abating. Because of the aforementioned inflation, President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings, and mostly racist gerrymandering, the Republican Party will take the House, but the Senate and the national fervor has gone from close Republican to strong Democrat in a wild two and a half months. None of this data has escaped Republican candidates, who now either run the other way from Dobbs, lie that they don’t support complete bans on abortion, or simply scrub their strong anti-women’s reproductive rights rhetorical history in the hopes no one will realize a fascist Republican-controlled Supreme Court has stolen the liberties of 51 percent of the electorate.

A new Pew Research Center poll the last week of August showed abortion rising as a “very important” priority for Democratic voters – 46 percent in March to 71 percent currently. Excuse me? What? You couldn’t find a 25-percent jump in a political position to support a law banning the drowning of kittens in this polarized environment. Even Republican voters (poor, misguided fools) support some portion of women’s reproductive rights – rape, incest, the life of the mother – but that’s not where their party has been or is now. It’s currently a federal crime in Texas, with a lifetime sentence for murder, to get an abortion today. It is complete madness, and it is all on Republicans. And those running with an R next to their name are finally getting the hint people are pissed. 

Take New York’s 19th Congressional district special election last month. Talk about Purple. These people have voted for Obama, Trump and Biden in that order. Republican Marc Molinaro was a shoo-in before Dobbs. After Dobbs, Democrat Pat Ryan beat him because he rightly warned voters Molinaro, if elected, could move New York in the direction of enslaving its women like Texas, tossing them in jail for what happens inside their bodies.

This special election result, and the results of four others including Red State Alaska in which former Masked Singer and Wife Swap contestant Sarah Palin was defeated, and the numbers coming out of the Kansas voter overwhelming election support stopping a ban on abortion, has reverberated throughout the Grand Old Party. Democrats have out-performed prognostications and previous electoral metrics by as many as eleven points in the aggregate. As a result, Republican candidates should be and are becoming concerned. You can see it in their complete refusal to touch the issue their party made an issue. But don’t believe for one minute any of the whiplash pivots Republican candidates make. Just remember what the game show president’s parade of Supreme Court Justices said when asked about Roe v Wade when being vetted for the gig. “It’s settled law.” Really?

Take the phony Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters, who trails Democrat Mark Kelly by eight points, causing him to scrub his website of his support of a “federal personhood law,” which would turn fetuses into full citizens with social security numbers and allow pregnant women to claim as burdens on their tax returns. Masters then, within hours after the pro-women’s rights Kansas vote, immediately released a video softening his abortion stance from “100% pro-life” to “exceptions across the board.” Sure. “Settled law” and all that. 

If you want women to retain the rights to their organs, then you should NEVER under any circumstances allow a Republican to gain power.

“We regularly update the website,” said a spokesman for previously bold “100% pro-life — no exceptions” Michigan congressional candidate Tom Barrett, who within hours after the Supreme Court decision, wiped that nonsense from his campaign platform. Same goes for Iowan Republican House candidate Zach Nunn, who a month before Dobbs raised his hand when asked during a primary debate in May whether “all abortions should be illegal in this country.” After Nunn’s Democratic opponent, Rep. Cindy Axne, ran an ad using the video of this, Nunn rushed to publish a fifth-grade level op-ed backtracking like a busted cheating spouse.

Minnesota Republican gubernatorial nominee Scott Jensen (a fucking doctor!) was asked about abortion by Minnesota Public Radio in March and said he would “try to ban abortion” if he were running the state. This is before the Supreme Court left it up to states to enslave women, and now he says he supports abortions for victims of rape, incest or if the life of the mother is threatened. Something no one believes. Because, you know, “Settled law.”

To wit: The week before I write this, South Carolina State Rep. Neal Collins emotionally recounted the arduous journey faced by a 19-year-old woman whose fetus was not viable, but that attorneys told her doctor they couldn’t extract it because it still had a heartbeat — the standard set in the bill supported by Collins that had gone into effect just the week before. “The doctor told me at that point there is a 50 percent chance she will pass the fetus in the toilet and a greater than 50 percent chance that she’s going to lose her uterus. There’s a ten percent chance that she will develop sepsis and herself, die.” The young girl was sent back into the street. Collins later blubbered: “That weighs on me. I voted for that bill. These are affecting people.” Days later he voted for another bill banning abortion. “Settled…” Oh, forget it. 

No Republican should EVER be believed on this issue. If you want women to retain the rights to their organs, then you should NEVER under any circumstances allow a Republican to gain power. If they do, they have shown time and again they will strip you of your rights and do not care who believes what. They are lying and will continue to lie to save their political hides. But their actions speak loudly.

The mid-terms are coming. And there is only one voice you have. Keep Republicans from office until a national protection for women’s reproductive rights are guaranteed. And if this means taking the senate and eliminating the filibuster and filling the Supreme Court with justices that will protect their constitutional rights or get enough true Americans in the Houser and Senate to make it law, so be it.

Until then, ALL Republicans want to do is control the rights of women, no matter what they say.

Period.

Believing otherwise is stupid and insane. And if you vote for a Republican, you get what you deserve. 
 

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Aquarian Weekly
8/24/22
 
Reality Check
 

James Campion
 
 
REPUBLICAN HYPOCRISY 101
Cops, Government Overreach, Domestic Terrorism, Lecturing      
 
When Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green tweeted about defunding the FBI in the wake of the seizing of our property from Donald Trump’s criminal organization Mar-a-Lago headquarters, it got me thinking: How do Republicans, who have indiscriminately defended shitty, racist police no matter what sub-level of murder and maleficence they enact on the citizenry, square this sudden anti-law enforcement rhetoric? The furor in which the Republican Domestic Terrorist Machine has come out vehemently against the nation’s top law enforcement unit doing its job protecting the U.S. against its enemies is plain weird. There is another word for this, hypocrisy. 

Anyone has every right to question the motives of the Justice Department, although for decades Republicans defended its worst kind of criminal behavior when they had a Republican in the White House and bitched against it when they didn’t. Democrats do that as well. It’s Politics 101. Hypocrisy is built in. This, however, is a different level of hypocrisy. Since the Black Lives Matter movement in the past few years sprouted from the protests against police murdering unarmed Black people, some of them in their homes, the knee-jerk, completely asinine All Lives Matter/Blue Flag set have gone above and beyond. It has also been a very effective tool to tie the Defund the Police cries to major Democratic candidates. And yet, now that their beloved orange Al Capone has been caught stealing top secret documents, he claims as his own, the cops are the Gestapo. 

It should also be pointed out, because it is glaringly obvious, that Republican Boogie Woman and all-around crap-candidate par excellence, Hillary Clinton’s misuse of top-secret info on unsecure email accounts when she was secretary of state was a main sticking point for Trumpists in 2016, making this whole defense of the same fuck-up spectacularly hypocritical.

They do not stand for anything. It is a house of cards and a sandcastle. None of it is real.

Now, I know pointing out this monumental idiocy is like shooting fish in a barrel and doesn’t reflect the usual nuanced arguments of this space, but come on, it is so blatantly insane I had to address it. Especially now since all these jabbering cretins waving the sacred Don’t Tread on Me flag while complaining like spoiled brats that they couldn’t be bothered wearing masks to help keep their neighbors safe from a deadly virus, are now perfectly happy with having random state governments controlling the inside of every woman’s body. Of course, the flag does say, Don’t Tread on Me – Treading on you if you have a vagina is a-okay!

Of course, this is assuming that any of what Republicans have espoused for decades is even real. It’s clearly not. Not one Republican went nuts over the exploding deficit or national debt when George W. Bush put two useless wars on the national credit card or Donald Trump acted like a drunken rich trophy wife on a binge for four years – two of which with a Republican congress. Nope. This doesn’t matter. Nowadays fiscal responsibly is magically all the rage when a Democrat is in the White House. These are same phonies who defended Bush’s war machine then quickly sided with Trump, who wanted to end NATO and called Bush a war criminal and Iraq a stupid waste of money. Suddenly the global police force built by their purported god, Ronald Reagan, is reduced to isolationism. 

But without a scintilla of doubt, the greatest hypocrisy in the Republican playbook is the constant harping on Cancel Culture. That’s a good one. These are the same morons who spent the 1980s trying to undo the freedoms fought for and won during the progressive 1960s and 70s in civil rights, women’s rights, film, literature, music, drugs, sexuality, and who spent the first years after 9/11 demanding everyone call French Fries Freedom Fries, and who now want to summarily ban books, revise history to keep white people from being upset, and ban pride flags and silence the voice of the LGBT community at school levels everywhere, not to mention suppress the vote and hand the reigns of elections over to anti-American zealots who still claim Trump won in 2020.

Republicans are the #1 purveyors of Cancel Culture. They invented it. And while this wimpy, head-in-the-sand political correctness run amok is an anathema to the very concept and construct of the most sacrosanct American values of free speech and expression, the last motherfuckers on planet earth fighting against it should be goddamn Republicans. 

#religiousright

My favorite example of the latest “all-up-in-yo-business” from the former “Fuck Your Feelings” Trump cabal is when a good friend of mine (an Independent conservative, who was sick of paying high gas prices) was driving his new electric car and minding his own business (not “treading” on anyone), when some Trump goober asswipe with a giant truck (small pecker substitute) started tailgating him and revving his engine at a stoplight, and then, with his Trump flags flying, yelled “Electric cars suck!” at him. Hmm… that sounds like “treading on” him with some serious “hurt feelings” while infringing on his “personal freedom, man” there. It is remarkable how easy the “don’t lecture me” side is all about lectures. 

Hypocrisy.

Don’t be fooled by Republicans. They want to control your lives, your bodies, your language, they are anti-law enforcement, and they do not want you to vote for your candidate only their candidate and they have chosen the cult of a damaged daddy-please-love-me personality over sane governance. They do not stand for anything. It is a house of cards and a sandcastle. None of it is real. It changes with the wind. It is self-aggrandizing bullshit. As stated before here, the Republican Party Republicans is now a domestic terrorist organization that must be stamped out. 

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Aquarian Weekly
8/10/22

Reality Check


James Campion


PUT PRO-CHOICE TO A VOTE EVERYWHERE
Red-State Kansas Shows the Way

I want to first point out that putting the personal sovereignty of a citizen’s internal organs on the ballot in any way shape or form in places not called China or Russia is beyond comprehension. It is flat-out icky and so incredibly unconstitutional it is hard to believe I am writing about it. But that is where we are now thanks to Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s ramming of underqualified radical Supreme Court picks that had one agenda – overturn Roe v Wade and enslave the wombs of women across America. And since I am not a crybaby like most Republicans, and frankly many Democrats, I just deal with the circumstances and get on with what we’re dealing with. Revolution. And the revolution was televised this past week. And in all places, Kansas.

Fucking Kansas!

You know, one of the box-shaped, fly-over spaces somewhere along the fruited plain where Dorothy came from in a book written by a New Yorker by way of Chicago and made famous in Hollywood, U.S.A.? The Deep-Red state that voted overwhelmingly for the aforementioned Trump twice? That Kansas.

Now, if you are regular reader of this mess here, you know I’ve been on this wall throughout the crucial month of June when the Republican Party would officially become a fascist regime after the former shit-for-brains domestic terrorist president’s justices summarily overturned what they deemed “settled law,” forcing 51-percent of the populace into bondage to government control and made abortion illegal – fines, jail, harassment. I promised a follow-up routinely, and most importantly a political temperature-check on the fallout of this generation’s most significant socio-political event.

And the very essence of that fight played out this week in the most unlikeliest of places.

Fucking Kansas!

Kansas is as a Republican controlled state as can be found north of the Mason-Dixon line – it’s state legislature, senate, its congressional delegation and both of its senators are all GOP controlled. And this electorate went to the polls during the middle of summer (okay, so there are no beaches in Kansas, but still) in a lousy little primary (no one really votes in primaries except shut-ins you might glimpse at goofy things like rallies), to obliterate the Republican-concocted proposal to completely ban abortions even for rape and incest by a tally of 59 to 41 percent. This, by the way, equals what is the nationally polled average of ALL voters – Republican, Democrat and Independent – 60-percent in favor of abortion rights or Pro-Choice or really Pro-Freedom and Pro-America. To use a rarely uttered political term: Oof.

That’s not all, kids. Digging deeper, Kansas released new voter-registration numbers around the time of the primary. Before the June 24 take-down of Roe v Wade, which formally protected the rights of women to control their own bodies, new voters, usually dominated by Republicans, averaged around 19 points, was slashed to an eight-point advantage. Seventy percent of these newly registered voters were women. And they also apparently have an agenda, and that is to expunge this draconian shit from their state.

And they did. At the ballot box. Overwhelmingly.

Fucking Kansas!

Digging even deeper into this keening political siren reveals that nearly one-million votes were tallied, doubling the total of the last competitive primary season in 2018. That is staggering, determined, energized turnout on any scale of measurement. To compare: The last two general presidential election cycles drew 1.2 million. This vote was national. This was major. This was a voice, a very powerful and meaningful voice coming out of the American hinterland.

Those are the kind of numbers come November that could greatly lessen a Red Wave.

Oooh, another good one, courtesy of our pal, political stat-guru, Steve Kornacki: When Democratic Governor Laura Kelly won the position in 2018, she carried eight counties, and Biden, who lost the state by 15 points, carried five. The “No” vote on the expunging of abortion rights in Kansas carried 19 counties!

Fucking Kansas!

So, what does this mean for this fall’s mid-terms, which looks bleak for Democrats in the House – record inflation, vacillating gas prices, jumpy stock market, and shitty presidential approval numbers? Well, the Senate is now favored to go to the Democrats due to some weird candidates in places like Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania. And it’s the Senate that decides the Court. And this is finally not lost on non-Republican voters. Especially suburban women, who fled the Republican Party like the plague it had become under Donald Trump.

But in the last two years this growing and influential voting block has slowly shifted back to the GOP on the vaguely made-up issue of “Parents Rights,” a goofy culture-war ploy used by hucksters like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is excellent at polarizing the electorate to his advantage. This has been a key ingredient in putting the squeeze on the MAGA crowd currently, which will be a sticky situation should Trump, who doesn’t give a shit about party politics or America, his children, your children, or anything not named Donald Trump, get into the fight and begin to paint DeSantis with the same brush as Lyin’ Ted and Little Marco and his other fifth-grade level bullshit.

But I digress, what the Kansas vote underlined is that in these suburban counties, like Johnson County in Kansas, that nationally doomed Trump in 2020 in Red and Blue states, the average percentage of the statewide vote is 20-25 percent. This past week, in fucking Kansas!, it nearly topped off at 30-percent. Those are the kind of numbers come November that could greatly lessen a Red Wave. Not sure if will, but what Kansas tells us is that it would have been a whole lot worse before the historic, damaging, and wholly unpopular Dobbs decision that started this fire.

But Republicans can tame this thing by simply not making it an issue and put women’s private healthcare on the ballot in all 50 states. This is what it has come to. And may come to with marriage-equality, contraception and other rights the conservative-packed Supreme Court is coming for.

This is what Fucking Kansas! told us this week.

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Aquarian Weekly
7/20/22

Reality Check

James Campion


DONE WITH REPUBLICANS – A STUDY IN FUTILITY & FASCISM
And A Pathetic Attempt To Wake Up Feckless Democrats

Anyone who has read this space for the past quarter century knows I am a man without a party. Reality Check has been the Freethinker Corner of political and social discourse and will remain so. But over that time, I was also a citizen of these United States and a voter. And unlike many who claim to be Independent but always vote for one party, I have actually voted for members of both. That stops today. The man who voted for George W. Bush, called former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani the most effective politician of my times, and wrote glowingly about my dear friend Rob Astorino, while also openly providing funds for his first successful run for Westchester County Executive is now forced to become a deep-throated opposition to the Republican Party. Its legitimacy ends here and it must be stamped out like a deadly pox.

This, of course, does not mean I will become a Democrat. As, again, stated here for decades of writing this wretched weekly diatribe, I will remain staunchly Independent. But in order to stem the tide of this political cancer on democracy known as the Grand Old Party, I must make it my business (given the system we endure) to expunge its barely breathing remnants from my home state of New Jersey and I guess just hope that the country never again completely falls into its hands as it did during the dark days of Donald Trump.

But this will not merely be a column to bash Republicanism. No one knows what that is, no one has ever known. Today, Ronald Reagan, the patron saint of modern conservatism, would be considered a liberal. Can you imagine his work with the Soviet Union today? It would be called appeasement. Can you imagine his work to restructure immigration? It would be called anti-American. Can you even fathom what his work to save Social Security with the Democrats would be deemed? Traitorous.

Nope, this will also be about the useless and weak Democratic Party that failed to protect the rights of women for decades, assuming Republicans would play by unspoken third-rail rules. They let fascist/zealot judges be jammed into positions to politically undermine the Constitution, and even allowed the type of bottom-feeders into national office that would produce the Patriot Act and normalize torture. Where was Barack Obama for eight fucking years after that miserable shit? Where was the press when the Republicans refused to vote on his Supreme Court nominee and then ramrod another within weeks of the 2020 election to overturn Roe v Wade? They all failed us and continue to fail us.

Joe Biden has got to stop speaking. Just put this dumbfounded empty suit out to pasture. He did his job in getting the racist/misogynist fence-sitters in the Rust Belt to vote against Trump in 2020. Thank you, now move on. Because since then it’s been a bust. He must cease talking about Executive Orders and Health Crisis. He needs to get out of the way and allow some mean-ass dogfighter to kill the filibuster and add four goddamn normal judges to overturn this political coup. Democrats yelling about voting never helps. Republicans clearly don’t care about voting. They are putting a stop to that atavistic crap in half the states in the Union. Elections don’t matter when Republicans are involved, so it shouldn’t for those opposing them. It is political warfare being fought by radicals versus high school level debate nerds.  

The Republican Party… legitimacy ends here and it must be stamped out like a deadly pox.

Who can accept the Republican party’s support/excuse/dismissing of the horrors of the January 6 insurrection by the terrorist Trump and his cronies who decided election results don’t matter and monarchy is a thing? Not this guy. If polls are to be believed, and this is a thorny issue, his party will doubtless put him back on the ballot for 2024, unless he goes to jail or decides he doesn’t need the aggravation. The Justice Department is useless. The Democrats keep talking. And a terrorist will represent one of the two major parties.

But the main take here is that the Republican Party is a dead issue now as a real alternative to voting, if you insist trying this antiquated exercise to stop the crazies. I am sure a vote of no-confidence in Europe was enough to expunge the Nazis or the reprimanding of the South figured out the slave issue. And if you think this is Campion’s usual hyperbole, I offer January 6, 2021. 

Well, fuck that. And fuck Republicans.

Look, you might want to live in a democratic construct that strips the rights of women to control what goes on inside their bodies and leave us with ten year-old rape victims having to be ushered across state lines for an abortion or wise-asses (and I shall always support wise-asses) who use the special commuter lane for at least two passengers because they’re pregnant (a good one). Fetuses should be allowed social security numbers and pregnant women can claim them as dependents. The Woke Pro-Lifers want you to change your birthday to the day your father shot a load in mommy.

And this is not only thanks to the Republican Party’s decades-long war on women finally won, but asleep-at-the-wheel Democrats for thinking they were merely an opposition party and not a fascist insurgence.

Let’s finish up this proclamation with fascism, specifically the January 6 “issue.” It is painfully clear that both parties fall short in describing what it was: Domestic Terrorism. Semantics are important. There are many who described 9/11 as freedom fighting and other as an “inside job.” I’m looking at you Q-Heads. But at least Democrats and some Republicans are concerned about this. The rest are trying to take down the United States. Shit, I expect pundits and goobers in the private sector to run that rancid dung up the flagpole, but members of two of the main parties? (and in the most minority-led way, because there are way fewer Republicans than Democrat and sane Independents out there, just see five of the last six national elections popular vote tally).

So, stop sending me campaign junk, Republicans, and if you are a friend and hope to run as one, go somewhere else for a voice.

Roe v. Wade + January 6 = Done.

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Aquarian Weekly
7/6/22
 
Reality Check
 

James Campion
 
 
WHAT THE ROE?
Man, This Is Stupid – Horrible and Un-American – But Really, Really Stupid
 
No woman in crisis should ever be a potential criminal in a democratic republic. 
– jc, Debate Team, Freehold Township HS, NJ, 1978
 
If the striking down of Roe v Wade by this politically addled joke of a Supreme Court (because legality had zero to do with a ruling that reads from its briefs as if it were written by hacks that received their law licenses by drawing a bunny on the back of a matchbook) wasn’t so horribly pathetic, then it would be hilarious. Not sure where to even begin – but it won’t be as I have written before about women’s rights or how it blithely tramples on habeas corpus and three amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Nope. I would like to ask three key questions at this juncture. No, wait, four. Four questions about this “ruling” aka “Republican puppetry.”

First one to get out of the way, because it is the easiest: Can you name another Supreme Court ruling that has so summarily and arbitrarily (or any which way) expunged a fundamental human right to sovereignty? You can’t. Move on.

Second one is also fairly easy, although it may be fraught with subjective analysis: What level of psychotic fascism does Justice Clarence Thomas practice; titanic or atomic? Because this crazy fucker wasn’t satisfied with just completely obliterating a right, he wants to attack every case that uses right to privacy in due process and the equal protection legal standards set by Roe ― specifically citing cases that legalized contraception, same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage. That is some weird medieval shit. If Thomas was a Middle Eastern country, we would have bombed him by five o’clock on the Friday this “ruling” aka “Donald Trump’s gift that keeps on giving” came down.

Now onto to the more confusing queries.

Has anyone bothered to provide a concrete, immutable answer (key in legal arguments and court decisions) on what pregnancy is? How can you tell if a pregnancy is terminated if there is no agreed upon legal and binding definition of pregnancy? Because I still don’t know, and you don’t know, and all the justices that said Roe v Wade was “settled law” so they can get lifetime appointments to do Mitch McConnell’s bidding don’t know. This entire thing is a smoke-screen magic trick. Are we sure a pregnancy is a fertilized egg? And when does it exactly become that… legally? I understand the science, but a quote in the decision of a 1964 obscenity case decided by the Supreme Court, specifically Justice Potter Stewart, “I know it when I see it” might not pass muster for someone who is about to have the federal government of a purported free country decide whether they should bring to term a mass of tissue that might kill them. 

You think the courts are clogged now with meaningless shit? Oh, wait.

Doesn’t the government have enough things to fuck up?

And this brings us to the final and most important question that will take down the fabric of what is left of this fragile republic: How are municipalities supposed to uphold abortion as a crime? To be blunt: How exactly do you police this? Already, there are southern states (of course, these people are still upset the real nation took away its slaves and burned their silly little cities to the ground) that want to put in laws to restrict travel for women escaping bondage to real states that do not want control over the innards of its citizenry. So, then, travel between states to obtain an abortion is now illegal? Also, are we trying these women as murderers? So, let’s say you eat a bad taco or guzzle a shit-ton of vodka with a side order of crystal meth, because, you know, you’re really not mommy material; and your fetus flushes out of your privates, is this a case to be investigated by law enforcement? We’re using taxpayer money, nearly two-thirds of which are Pro Choice, to prosecute teenagers who’ve been raped by their uncle?   

I am reminded of a brilliant scene in Woody Allen’s 1971 classic film Bananas that best explains what the Court aka “underqualified, unelected masters of 51-percent of the populace” has unleashed. A deranged dictator declares it a law that all citizens must change their underwear daily. He finishes this babble by qualifying that all underwear from then on will be worn on the outside, so we can check.

Not sure we should be okay with our tax dollars and law enforcement resources not spending every waking moment protecting us from crazy people with guns shooting actual children so they can monitor the pregnancy of millions of women. This is what the government is dealing with now. Doesn’t the government have enough things to fuck up? You want them fucking up our daughters now? 

This is why just striking down the basic constitutional rights for citizens to have control over their bodies was a bad move. You must govern these draconian laws and police these bodies for nine long months and decide if a miscarriage is actually a miscarriage or if it’s manslaughter or maybe first-degree murder? And what to do with the abortion pill – not available to women in 1973 when Roe was passed? Does this “ruling” aka “systemic misogyny” give the right to states to go after manufacturers who make the pill? And can users get it through the mail anymore? Should the Post Office now be involved, and the DEA and the FBI and Homeland Security? States (mostly in the south, because we mistakenly left too many of these towns still standing after the Civil War) are asking neighbors to keep an eye out on women seeking abortions through means beyond Planned Parenthood or a clinic. But, again, who polices this in an official manner? The crazy religious lady next door is now in charge of your body? And who is paying for all these new restrictions and making sure they’re adhered to? And if not murder, what will be the penalty for abortion, which is now murder in twenty states with more coming? 

Remember how organized crime flourished during prohibition? I see dollar signs in a black market for morning-after pills. Don’t worry, some clever Mexican cartel is already on it.

My favorite thing so-called Pro- Life advocates, aka “religious fanatics”, argue is that they are supporting women and that “women are not criminals but victims.” That was as big a lie as “settled law.” A woman today in Mississippi, (a slave state again we foolishly did not completely obliterate in 1865), takes an abortion pill, which now thanks to this Supreme Court aka “feckless tool of the fascism” is criminal activity: Does she go to prison? And if not, then what was the point of taking Roe down?

There is no point – not legal, not moral, not rational, not constitutional. Which is why it was stupid. Horrible and Un-American, but very, very stupid.

Good luck with all that.

We here in New Jersey respect all of our citizens, not just ones with penises or who practice ancient rituals. We’re good here. Women retain their rights in one of the states that won the original war against slavery. And don’t fret, we’re working on expunging the Republican Party entirely from the state. Send them down south where they belong. The rest of this godforsaken country can spend its tax money and police force rounding up teenaged moms filled with the neighborhood drug addict’s sperm.

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Aquarian Weekly
6/8/22
 
Reality Check
 

James Campion
 
 
INFLATION TRAIN = POLITICAL PAIN
 
 
I have been clear here for decades that I am not an economy writer. I have no fucking idea what drives national or global economics. Except for a very small group of humans I know (I’m looking at you, my bro-in-law, Thomas), this is the default for most of us. Especially in a hardcore capitalist construct, the most important thing that effects our ability to stay alive – food, home, utilities, stuff – is one big mystery. One thing that is not a mystery, and should be understood by the voting public, is how the economy affects politicians in power. Sure, it is only part of the story of political success, but when something as dramatic as the current state of national and global inflation is right now, it becomes the whole story.

On a national level, the Democrats hold power in Washington D.C. Many of these members of the U.S. Congress and the Senate, particularly our president, who has been around for 200 years and in politics for a cool century of so, should realize that with these outrageous prices on household items and especially gas, because, ya know, we go to war over gas prices around here, that the stank of all this is on them. The nuances of a recovery from the disasters of 2020, solid job reports, and a robust economic recovery in the technical is meaningless. The mere fact that things are just as bad in almost every industrialized nation on planet earth right now matters little. 

Again, we don’t know how any of this really works. 

To wit: Both strictly private-sector based economic theory and government-manipulated economic theories have both been debunked over the centuries. Many, many times. To disastrous results. Yet even people we pay to figure this shit out have zero idea what the hell just happened. Did I hear that several members of the Fed and economic advisors to our government admit they did not see this coming? Shit, the Wall Street Journal, the running Bible on capitalism just ran an op-ed that they are shocked. 

But one thing we absolutely know right now is that something has gone awry. No one should be paying over eleven dollars for a jar of marinara sauce. And it would seem for Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his party’s chances of staying in power, high prices and confusion on how it gets there means big trouble.

None of this matters as much as the pocketbook. Never did. Never will.

Forget the fact that the whole Biden presidency has been mostly a bust. His approval ratings are in the tank. He cannot get anything through a legislature he owns, and he appears to be out of it most of the time. I am glad he beat the last guy, who is a psycho lunatic anti-Democratic weirdo TV asshole. But at some point, we must come to grips that even though we needed the white old guy to convince the winy, racist, backwards states to boot that bleating thug, he has sucked ass at this. And, again, I am not necessarily putting the complete blame for the largest inflation numbers in four decades on the president, but this is how things work. And Joe knows this. If he doesn’t, then we have larger issues with this president that will have to be dealt with in another more agonizing column.

Look, first-term mid-terms are ugly anyway. But this is shaping up to be a slaughterhouse in November. And no one should be surprised by this. Granted, there are massive issues on the table right now that could ameliorate the carnage – starting with thrice-daily mass shootings and the striking down of Roe v Wade, which will put 51-percent of the electorate in bodily servitude to the federal government. But if eggs and gas and stuff are still ridiculously expensive, then you can be assured that people – even women – will bag freedom and the life and limb of grade-school kids to change the narrative.

And, of course, since we know nothing about the economy, it will likely not change. Republicans, who should absolutely run on how crazy this inflation has been now for nearly a year, routinely tell us it is the private sector that decides these things not the government. But, as they run to be in said government, they will chuck this concept to lay the blame at the feet of the party in power instead. And again, I agree whole heartedly with this tactic. It is just disingenuous. But who cares about that shit? No one knows what that word means. Especially in D.C. 

All is fair in a love and war. The basic premise of the 2022 mid-terms right now lies in the generic ballot polls. Republicans currently lead this by 2.2 percent. Considering that polling has been rather generous to Democrats over the past six election cycles, this ain’t a good sign for them. Biden, for instance, had a soldi ten-point advantage over Donald J. Trump in 2020, and only won by three percent. If anything, Biden, should have been wondering what the fuck happened that November. In a normal year, a 2.2 percent lead for Democrats would be a dire warning sign for them. This number, combined with Biden’s dismal 40-percent approval rating, is a recipe for ass-whup.

Seeing how I am writing this in the first full week of June, there is only five months for this economy to be something that won’t crush the party in power. That won’t happen. Roe v Wade is going bye-bye, and that might shift the balance of power in states where voters want to protect it. The number as of this morning for pro-choice is 68-percent of Americans. That counts for something. Sure. And if this summer is going to get bloodier – at least schools are out in a few weeks, so there will be less children to gun down – the gun issue will certainly hurt Republicans. But, again, none of this matters as much as the pocketbook. Never did. Never will. The American Revolution. The Civil War. Civil Rights. All of this was about money. 

That much we do know.      

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Aquarian Weekly
6/1/22
 
Reality Check
 
James Campion
 
 KILL U.S.A.
Running Out of Shit To Write About This… So, You Get This
 
I have a book coming out on the day this hits the cybersphere. Sorry, but I’m privileged to plug it here. Shit, I’ve been doing this for a long time, and my managing editor, Debra Kate Schafer is the coolest and she recently conducted an interview with me for the book and supports my work, and hell, it’s titled, Take a Sad Song – The Emotional Currency of Hey Jude. Of course, I would hope everyone gets it and reads it and enjoys it, And I am damn proud to include the voices of so many talented and smart people in it. But mostly the book’s release reminds me daily of how down and confused and scared we all were in 2020 during the quarantine when I wrote it. It was my pandemic project. And while I discovered much about song, the Beatles, Paul McCartney, the times, and everything in between – what always comes back to me from the experts and artists who lent their insights to it, is that while it seems easy to have empathy and care about our fellow humans on the surface, it really isn’t. It is hard. Very hard. Personal interest. Personal sovereignty. Personal ambitions will overwhelm any desire for the greater good. 

This is why we tend to eliminate people who espouse empathy as a general philosophy of life – Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, ya know.

Na Na Na… Na Na Na Na… Na Na Na Na… Hey Jude.

Okay, so enough of that nonsense. But it’s not nonsense. No. Because if it was then I wouldn’t AGAIN feel the need – against all the instinct in my bones – to comment on the Texas school shooting this week or to continue to wonder what our fascination is with guns, violence, racism, personal angst, vengeance, grievance, victimhood and everything in between. Humans, I mean. Not Americans per se. I have been quite clear here from the very first column I wrote for this paper, that America is the great human experiment. We are given a unique opportunity in the annals of civilization to lift ourselves up, but we rarely if ever do. 

I think it seems obvious to write that no one wants grammar school children to be massacred. Maybe the odd person with similar aspirations as the young man who decided to kill his grandmother, post if on Facebook, and minutes later – as blithely as one might mention taking a pop down to the market for a gallon of milk – proclaim that he planned to murder kids in a school, and then enact it. But beyond these damaged beings, there cannot be enough people that think this is okay.

Then I see this the very moment I sat down to write this on the CNN web site – “The shooting is the latest entry in the long history of gun violence in the United States. Before Tuesday, there had been at least 39 shootings in K-12 schools, colleges and universities in 2022, resulting in at least 10 deaths and 51 injuries.

Okay…what?

It is very difficult to balance that we are not kill-crazies in a country where kill-crazy has become almost a daily occurrence, like rain and farting.

There have been 39 school shootings in 2022? The year is only half over. Thirty-nine. The last time I wrote something like this, probably last year, and the year before that, and the one where I just wrote “blah blah blah” for a thousand words, some people argued that maybe the stats were off or that some could not be considered “school shootings” because they happened in the parking lot or the guy’s gun didn’t fire or something. But, I mean, 39?? In six months?

So, it is very difficult to balance that we are not kill-crazies in a country where kill-crazy has become almost a daily occurrence, like rain and farting. 

I have no idea why guns are so important to people. I do not own one. But this also doesn’t mean they are not – for whatever reason the gun people have for owning, shooting, collecting them – legit for it. That’s on them. I love Tom Waits. And not just the brilliant songs. His singing too. People think that’s weird. So, I don’t care if people dig guns, and I have never been anti-gun or went nuts for sensible gun laws. I think, like drugs, the guns are not necessarily the problem, people are the problem. And people will get guns like they get drugs. And for the record, people will get abortions. Lots of abortions after that becomes illegal. But, then again, we do have traffic lights and seatbelts. So, we always factor people being shitty into our laws.

I don’t know. I guess this is all to say that I have less to say about this latest horror show in Texas, other than perhaps one should be expected to be shot at in Texas. They have more guns per-capita than any state. It’s in their state crest. They thump their chests about cowboys and guns all the time. To say the least, Texas is gun centric. And the only reason to have a gun is to kill a mammal. It’s a kill machine. There is no other use for guns. Unlike Tom Waits, who has many elements – you can dance to some of his stuff, enjoy gin with it, even annoy your friends. But a gun is less for picking your teeth or cutting your grass or hitting a baseball. It’s a kill machine for fast and effective killing. That’s it. So, if you live in a state that celebrates this and part of its very communal identity is a kill machine, and if you send your kids to school there, maybe you should expect the odd shooting? Just sayin’. If you think about it, it’s a miracle there isn’t more of these shootings there. Maybe there will be more. Maybe today.

I guess what still irks me is that we accept this pretty much as normal. And that is a weird comment on us. Weirder than Tom Waits’ voice or my plugging my book about a song that shines with comfort and unity to then pivot and write about how we apparently dig children dying in schools when deep-down I cannot fathom this. But what other conclusion can one come to?

We have always been the kill capitol of the planet. This is what defines us. Not Judeo-Christian morals or constitutionality or rights or exceptionalism. Killing. Our national anthem is about killing. There’s lots and lots of killing. Sanctioned and not. Crazies with guns and knives and bombs. Crazies bashing their way into the Capitol or burning down a Wendy’s to protest violence. Cops are crazy. People killing. Kill. Kill. Kill.

Got nothing particularly smarmy or pithy to add to this. It’s just what’s on my mind the morning I pound this out on the old keyboard device. Killing. This is our main export to the world. We, I guess, like it, love it, embrace it. It’s part of us. The great human experiment. My thoughts have not changed on this, and I doubt they ever will. The evidence is way too strong to support my findings.

Not sure we can take this sad song and make it anything

Or maybe we can.

No?

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Aquarian Weekly
5/11/22
 
Reality Check
 
James Campion
  
UH-OH
Preparing for Women to Become Government Property
 

Fans of my decade-plus pounding of these keys for Marriage Equality and years of calling for the expunging of Donald J. Trump from anything resembling the White House will get a huge kick out of the next few months. Because although I have touched on the issue of Roe v Wade and equal rights for women before around here, and most recently this past December, things got real this past week when some enterprising American hero leaked what can only be described as the most heinous judicial attack on the personal liberty of the taxpaying citizenry yet. Get ready. This will be a continuing topic. When 51.1 percent of the populace have their bodies become the property of the U.S. government, it’s worth getting obsessed about.

None of this is surprising. This had been coming for some time, but really a deadlock certainty once the new “conservative judges” (we’ll get to that semantic clusterfuck later) took their places. No one with half a brain thought that when all three – Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh – interviewed for the gig and claimed that Roe v Wade was “settled law” it was remotely true. The man who appointed them, the aforementioned Trump, put out a litmus test that only “Pro Life” (a euphemism for allowing the government to fuck with a woman’s bodily functions) would be his picks. This was why Republicans held their noses to vote for this dink. Therefore, this is the entire point of them even being on the Court. It’s not like they were any good. The last guy was a drunk, and not even a good drunk, one that leans into you and smells bad and tells you about how he could have played centerfield for the Red Sox and then tries to grope your date.  

The Religious Right (not particularly conservative) was allowed into American politics in the 1980s, because Ronald Reagan mistook them for lobbyists, and because, well, you know, Reagan. And it’s been a fun ride ever since. They hijacked what was merely a fiscally conservative, warmongering racist organization and decided to go all-in on the culture wars tearing the mantle of conservatism from the likes of William F. Buckley and George Will and handing them over to southern charlatans like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

Falwell and Robertson were part of a long line of religious loons that have been trying to tell us what to do, how to act, how to dress, what art we can consume and how guilty we should feel unless we give them money for Jesus since the dawn of civilization. But we had an awakening here in the early part of the twentieth century and it made them nervous. And until the 1980s things were moving along nicely away from government-controlled human behavior rat science to a reluctant form of enlightenment. We called this period the 1960s and 70s, during which the idea that women should have control over their bodies became law. But even the 1980s would not kowtow to the medieval idea of enslaving women – nor did the 90s or the first two decades of this century.

Then this week a leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion on the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case challenging the constitutionality of a fifteen-week abortion ban in Mississippi emerged. In it, Alito becomes another justice ignoring the progress of rights in this country to myopically return the nation to the dark ages. “Until the latter part of the 20th century,” he writes in an enviably spectacular stupor reserved for the victims of blunt head trauma, “…there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. Zero. None.”

Alito, in essence, is granting the government the right someday to force abortions like in China.

And before 1865, owning humans was legal. There was no constitutional right to obtain freedom for Africans stolen from their homeland to do our bidding for free. Zero. None.

Alito, who also voted against and wrote a bigoted screed against marriage equality seven years ago, evokes the word “abortion” here because he misunderstands the concept of the Fourteenth Amendment that grants protection to every citizen, even ones with vaginas, against “any state to deprive its citizens of life, liberty, or property.” The fundamental disconnect between abortion and property=body is at the heart of this. Alito, in essence, is granting the government the right someday to force abortions like in China.

Alito’s goofy “zero-none” nonsense is brilliantly framed from a woman’s perspective in a piece in the latest New Yorker that every American, male or female, who gives a shit about personal liberty should read. Titled “What’s Missing From Alito’s Decision to Revoke the Right to Abortion”, author/journalist Jessica Winter writes, “Alito is entirely correct that, in 1973, the Supreme Court was somewhat out of step with its time in codifying women’s rights. When Roe was decided, a married woman in the United States needed her husband’s permission to get a credit card, something that did not change until 1974. No state outlawed marital rape until 1975. No man was found liable for sexual harassment until 1977. Pregnancy was a fireable offense until 1978. Alito does not itemize forms of gender-based subjugation that persisted after Roe, many of which might be persuasively argued as ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.’”

Ouch.

And all of it true.

This is why Religious Right Republicans – you can’t call these fascists conservatives anymore, it’s silly – are up in arms about Critical Race Theory. The truth is painful. The truth is messy. But, as the man says, the truth will set you free. Or at least set women free. But the truth is going bye-bye.

Granted, I am writing this from a comfortable seat of freedom from judicial tyranny here in New Jersey, where my wife and daughter reside. We have strengthened our right to exist free of government enslavement. This column merely points out that the threat to the Fourteenth Amendment for women’s rights against “any state to deprive its citizens of life, liberty, or property” is wrong and should not exist in a purportedly “free” country. However, currently thirteen states are challenging this amendment by banning abortion after fifteen weeks, which may seem fairly reasonable to government-control freaks who are obsessed with its complete sovereignty over the bodily functions of its citizens, but all of those states have “trigger-laws” that kick in once this glaringly apparent Supreme Court ruling comes down, which grants state governments the complete power over the innards of over half of its public.

This statement and the ruling it precedes will effectively put all American women in the servitude of the federal government. There really is no other way of looking at this and calls into question contraception and the like. Because the ruling will not rid the nation of abortion – you can take an abortion pill for that anywhere. You don’t need a clinic or the drunk guy’s vote on the Court to get it. Abortions, just like the failed Drug War, is a pacifier for the Religious Right that will not curtail a single abortion, but it will affect women’s health care, and as stated here more than once over the years, the personal liberty of the female citizen. And this ruling will give rise to the attacks on contraception, another biggie for religious fanatics.

The one thing conservatives fear, government control, will be lasting and comprehensive once this all comes down in a month or so. To wit: Supposed conservative Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves, a Republican, recently told CBS News that with the felling of Roe v Wade, “Each of those elected representatives can make the decisions that they view best for their constituents.”

Let me qualify the horrors of this statement and apply it to amendments you dig, like the First or Second Amendment: “Each of those elected representatives can MAKE THE DECISIONS THAT THEY VIEW BEST for their constituents.”

Making decisions they “view best for you.” Remember all those wusses who wouldn’t wear a cloth over their face for a few months, they now want the government to crawl inside the body of a woman for a lifetime.

Let that sink in, conservatives. Unless you are a member of the Religious Right, let that sink in, ladies.

In the coming weeks we will cover what this means for the 2022 midterms and the rest of our lives in voting booths, which has pitted the concept of America with one party that has chosen to dismantle personal sovereignty.

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Aquarian Weekly
4/27/22
 
Reality Check
 

James Campion
 
 
RON DESANTIS IS DEFINITELY NOT A CLOSET TRANSGENDER COMMUNIST MEMBER OF THE KKK INSPIRED BY MEIN KEMPF
Dismantling Scurrilous Rumors About the Florida Governor One at a Time
 
 
It is better to cast your seed in the belly of a whore than spill it on the ground.
                                                                     – Genesis 38:8
 
The rumors are not true. In fact, I am here to defuse the furor over claims that beleaguered Florida Governor, rising Republican star for the 2024 nomination for president, was born a woman, and his anti-LGBTQ laws to attack these children at a vulnerable age is a prime example of Freudian sex-identity self-loathing. This is madness and an obvious attempt by radicals to attack his origins and dilute his influence over a dying economic state and add to his plummeting approval ratings. There is also no truth to the allegations that his using the state government to pass laws as blatant attacks on business rights for political vengeance is a prime example of his communist leanings. Nor is this nonsense that his constant parading of the term “grooming” as a systemic mind-control of the state’s youth by the gay community is lifted directly from the third chapter of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kempf, substituting Jews for Homosexuals. And just because the Republicans have voted to disenfranchise Black congressional districts to skew election results, does not cement DeSantis’s membership in the Klu Klux Klan. Come on. This craziness has to stop. Now.

I am no fan of DeSantis. He is a charlatan selling fear and the over-coddling of children for their inability to process information on their own without the help of the government. His banning of math books because it may upset white people is cancel culture run amok. Sure, he’s an opportunist who exploits whatever wind is blowing – anti-science, anti-gay, and whatever crap it takes to get elected. But who doesn’t? I get that. I have been at this a long time. I lived through Just Say No and Freedom Fries and Muslim Bans. I’m a big boy. I do not hate Ron DeSantis. Even though I think he is silly, his kind interests me. Like studying the grazing habit of the dung beetle.

If anything, I pity DeSantis. He is clearly mentally challenged, and these attacks are just a cheap form of bullying. For instance, I am appalled at these memes and repeated video clips played over and over on YouTube of his drooling. This is absolutely not a sign of stroking. Are these people doctors? No. And do they care that his administrative assistants are forced to calm his late afternoon crying jags or deflect these tall tales of his manic jacking off to Donald Trump sweating through interviews? They do not. Instead, they just take to the Internet to hammer on him. Where is the compassion? Maybe it is this low-rent treatment that has led him to act as a psycho bigot. Has The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, or pretty much any Dr. Suess (his canon does tend to drive a singular concept home) taught us nothing?

The state manipulation of a private business concern is not communism. The state using its powers for personal gain and vengeance for a business not supporting its ideology is not communism.

I do not have to agree with someone’s politics to defend their character against mean-spirited political mudslinging. I support LGBT rights. I do not want to see any state, even a sinkhole like Florida, either run by Democrats or Republicans disenfranchise African Americans to better the chances of electoral victory. Having read Mein Kampf and found eerie similarities between most religious-based governing and its dangerous baby, patriotism disguised as state-mandated mugging, I can state with confidence that it is a stretch to take out one or two sentences in a deplorable document to prove DeSantis is a Nazi. Enough with the Nazi comparisons. As if that is ever going to happen again. Great defenders of freedom like Vladimir Putin are putting an end to fascism in Ukraine right now. We are all safer for it. He is a great hero. At least that’s what Trump and Fox News says, and why divert any belief system beyond what a game show host and a tainted news organization have to say? There is no time for that.

Or maybe Putin is a despot? Hard to tell. I’ll have to do my own research and investigation once I am done deconstructing the quasi-science of the Covid virus. I heard a good place to start is Season 26 of The Bachelor.

Can I just break the fourth wall for a moment? I just wrote that there are 26 seasons of something called The Bachelor, wherein strangers find spouses for life on a reality TV show. That is a thing that is true. It has happened and keeps happening. The National Broadcasting Company would not put this on if it didn’t make a shit-ton of money and get big ratings. A quarter century of The Bachelor. Let that sink in.

Okay, back to the satire.

While it is true that DeSantis and his Republican-controlled government is pissing on Ronald Reagan’s grave by stripping the legal right for the Disney Corporation to control land it has built on its own with its own funds, maintain its debt, infrastructure, and other amenities, freeing tax-payers and the local government of the fiduciary burden, he is doing so in the defense of the right of parents against the company’s evil anti-DeSantis ideologies. The state manipulation of a private business concern is not communism. The state using its powers for personal gain and vengeance for a business not supporting its ideology is not communism. It is hardly communism for the taxpayers to absorb the business expenses of private enterprises, thus making it state run. This is like saying that a president not agreeing to the results of an election, trying to use the awesome powers of his office to remain in charge, and then commandeering an insurrection on the federal Capitol building is fascist. Absurd.

Finally, the most outlandish of any of these fast-moving rumors is that Ron DeSantis has had sex realignment, that he was born a woman, and he is using this crusade against the LGBTQ community and, (gulp!) LGBTQ children as a front to deflect the truth. This one is easy to refute. Firstly, no respectable Trans would ever dress like him. Have you seen his suits? It’s like a 1970s Caldor blew up and landed on his back. His gait is also far-too simian to have any female origins. And while I support his right to self-identity as sacrosanct and defend his personal choices to not be defined as a threat by the government, it is beyond believable that this man has ever been anywhere near women, much less was once one.

Okay, so maybe this Roy Cohn-esque boondoggle does come with photos of the former Ronnie Dee-Lite dancing at Birds of a Feather Lesbian Lounge in Miami Florida in 2001. And, admittedly, there are intriguing resemblances to what some, not me, might judge as pre-surgery female DeSantis. But come on. I might be led to believe Marjorie Taylor Green was a man or that Lindsay Graham was thrice the grand marshal of the Mermaid Parade, but DeSantis as a woman just doesn’t wash.

In conclusion, despite actions leaning in this direction, Ron DeSantis is not a self-loathing transgender, nor is he a devout communist, influenced in any way by the writings of Adolf Hitler, nor a member of the KKK – at least not a card-carrying one. But I will be doing further research on this. The Green Bay Packers QB is helping me out.

Considering how gullibly fickle our electorate is, and his preternatural ability to tap into the whiny zeitgeist, Ron DeSantis is probably going to be our next president.

So, come on. Leave him alone

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