JINXED

 

Polls seem to suggest that Joe Biden is “jinxed,” but then again, every election cycle it is claimed that voters want a “change.” A change from what to what, exactly? Why do people believe that the economy is bad? Wasn’t it bad the last year of the Trump administration, and now he wants to take "credit" that it isn't now? While Republican voters couldn’t care less of Donald Trump is a psychopath and could be a convicted felon, depending on how much weight jurors put on Michael Cohen’s testimony, which we are told did not go over very well on cross examination, to the consternation of commentators on MSNBC.

Still, people know how bad things were during the Trump years and what happens when he doesn’t get his way. The economy near tanked his last in part because of his initial refusal to take seriously the initial phase of the COVID outbreak, and refusing to take responsibility for it, he incited his brain-dead supporters to undertake a violent insurrection after he lost the election. But why would minorities support him? He doesn’t” “speak” for them, only for bigoted white people with a white nationalist bent; still he appreciates friendly gestures from Uncle Toms—so long as they don’t rent residential properties he owns.

Meanwhile, Mike Johnson appeared at Trump’s trial to lend his support and reinvigorate his MAGA “cred," bolstered by with public support of election conspiracies. The man’s a hypocrite; how can someone who claims to be a “Christian” support someone who is a liar, morally and ethically corrupt beyond all measure, and commits adultery with porn stars and Playboy models? I don’t understand why the media doesn’t call Johnson out on this; hell, his delay of approving Ukraine aide is appearing to be a disastrous mistake as the aid Ukraine needs may arrive too late to stop Russia’s current military advances. Democrats now look foolish for saving Johnson’s job, as chaos from another ouster would remind people that Republicans are not the party fit for governance.

That is the misfortune of the country we live in. We should know better, but we don’t. Well, let’s amend that and say that some people know better, some don’t, and the rest are “confused.” This is a country jinxed by poor memory. They listen to the absurd nonsense of the Marjorie Taylor Greenes, Lauren Boeberts and Matt Gaetzs of the world, and Kristi Noem telling us how she did the "right thing" by shooting her little puppy for "bad behavior." 

We are jinxed by the outlandish conspiracies and outright lies told by a “Christians” and fake “Christians” alike, and everything needs to be “changed” because too many people think that by voting for these people will make them shut-up and everything will then be “alright.” Sure, and I have another bridge about to collapse, like the one in Texas the other day.

Biden also seems “jinxed” by the inability of voters to make moral or ethical judgments based on the facts at hand, even within his own party. “Progressives” and “moderates” can’t agree if Israel is perpetrating human rights abuses or crimes in Gaza. Yes, Hamas and its patron Iran are largely responsible for their own problems at present, but when it is too far, it is too far. These accusations of “anti-Semitism” are becoming increasingly tiresome as a rationalization to cover the fact that 35,000 civilians—a large percent of whom are children—have been killed, and more is to come. 

Biden is between a rock and a hard place, and the truth is he can’t control what Israel is doing, so stop blaming him. I’m sure if Trump was president, he’d tell Netanyahu to go ahead with the slaughter. Maybe he would send out the National Guard out to college campuses, like what we saw in 1970 when Nixon announced the expanding of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. When campuses were taken over by protesters, Nixon had this to say:

You see these bums, you know, blowing up the campuses. Listen, the boys that are on the college campuses today are the luckiest people in the world, going to the greatest universities, and here they are burning up the books, storming around this issue. You name it. Get rid of the war there will be another one.

The campus protesting came to a head at Kent State University in Akron, Ohio where the governor deployed the National Guard. Guardsmen shot and killed four unarmed students, two of them women and one of them a passerby who happened to be a member of the campus ROTC; none of the dead were closer than a football field away, and none knew they were threatening the lives of the Guardsmen, like this individual:

 

Gerald Casale, who would become a member of the 80s New Wave band Devo, was there:

Two of the four people who were killed, Jeffrey Miller and Allison Krause, were my friends. We were all running our asses off from these motherfuckers. It was total, utter bullshit. Live ammunition and gasmasks – none of us knew, none of us could have imagined ... They shot into a crowd that was running from them!

He noted that the local newspaper, the Akron Beacon Journal, gave the false impression that students were “armed” and had “injured” Guardsmen. A subsequent investigation revealed that only one Guardsman was incidentally “injured” by a rock thrown, and that occurred at least ten minutes before the shooting erupted. None of the 28 Guardsmen who fired their weapons could explain why exactly they felt “threatened” enough to shoot people (nine other students were wounded by the gunfire).

Nixon sanctioned a commission to “study” campus unrest, and it found that

Even if the guardsmen faced danger, it was not a danger that called for lethal force. The 61 shots by 28 guardsmen certainly cannot be justified. Apparently, no order to fire was given, and there was inadequate fire control discipline on Blanket Hill. The Kent State tragedy must mark the last time that, as a matter of course, loaded rifles are issued to guardsmen confronting student demonstrators.

We don’t know what Trump might be doing today during the nationwide unrest, but we can “speculate” that he would be using the same terminology as  Nixon, and he might not be adverse to “practice” shooting migrants on the border, since because they are not “citizens” they have no rights that we are bound to respect. 

Don't we know how corrupt Trump and his friends are? Yet even when given the opportunity, Republican voters declined to find an alternative during the primaries (admittedly those like Ron DeSantis could be said to be even worse). It can be assumed that the far-right voters don’t “trust” more “mainstream” candidates to “represent” their views, but Trump apparently does, or pretends to their faces (what he says behind their backs may be something else). 

But that still leaves us with the question of why common sense doesn’t motivate very many of the rest. Is this country now “jinxed” in becoming encased in a self-destructive cycle, where common sense, civility, policies that benefit working people, and some semblance of “union” is only tolerable for four years?

Of course far-right paranoia and conspiracies really started to go off the deep-end during Bill Clinton’s presidency, despite the fact of his “cooperation” with the Republican-controlled Congress in passing laws “reforming” prison sentencing (including the “three strikes provision), so-called “welfare reform,” immigration “reform” that only made that issue worse, and worst of all his signing off on financial “reform” bill that led to the 2007-2008 financial collapse and Great Recession. 

Oh they are out there. You can really hear the crackpots and conspiracy nuts late nights on the old Art Bell Coast to Coast radio show—especially in a 1996 open phone lines show that Bell occasionally allowed for his own amusement called “The Paranoid People Hotline" (Blogspot won't embed mp3 files, but I'm working on a workaround to post it here; highlighting and opening the link on right-click seems to work).

https://youfiles.herokuapp.com/videodictionary/?m=Video_Player_Drive&state=%7B%22ids%22:%5B%221YEwlR8hHNVrcNIAyPRS3uZ3MTlvJZCUC%22%5D,%22action%22:%22open%22,%22resourceKeys%22:%7B%7D%7D

This country is also jinxed in part because there is a "sucker born every minute," and that includes the people who made Taylor Swift a billionaire. In one of his early videos way back in 2015, Todd in the Shadows was already onto the con that Taylor Swift was perpetrating on the world, that blonde “goddess” pretending to speak for and “shared” the problems of those less fortunately-endowed than she was:

 

He noted in later videos how female country artists like Faith Hill and Shania Twain tried to make the “jump” to mainstream pop, and only managed to alienate their country music audience. Why did Swift succeed where they failed? Because she completely abandoned the country audience, put on her baton-twirler outfits to expose as much flesh as possible (but for whom?), and continued to sing songs with “cool” sounding phrases that impressed the illiterate and only made “sense” with the help of her many “friends”—more than Ringo Starr ever had.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Holmes, who was the “front” that investors wanted to believe in and to become successful in reaching her “dream,” only took chemical engineering in her incomplete stint in college which had nothing to do with biology or medicine. Her idea about a test for a single drop of blood was crackpot to start and was really just a fantasy that legitimate scientists knew was next to impossible to achieve, but she "impressed" enough  as the “face” of the franchise that investors who wanted her to succeed threw in $600 million that was lost forever in a project that never had a chance. 

The crime that Holmes committed was that she lied about the technology ever working, and somehow hoped the Theranos lab workers would somehow bail her out even though she was warned that her “dream” was just that and would never work.

A jury found Holmes guilty only on the relatively lesser counts, refusing to believe that she was that much of a con artist. One juror said "It's tough to convict somebody, especially somebody so likable, with such a positive dream. We respected Elizabeth's belief in her technology, in her dream. We thought, 'She still believes in it, and we still believe she believes in it.'"

Holmes currently is residing at the Bryan Federal Prison Camp in Texas, where after just two years in residency she already has two years shaved off her 11-year sentence for attending “anger management” and “drug rehab” classes—neither of which had anything to do with her crimes. She also had  an additional few months shaved off for “good behavior.” The minimum security  Bryan facility is a relative country club compared to most prison, but entitled inmates there complain about things like the thickness of the bed mattresses. 

Some people think stealing $600 million isn’t that big a crime in the hope a "sympathetic" blond female con artist will be bailed out of her crime that she was repeatedly told would not work, but one may feel surprised if Holmes even serves half her jail sentence. We can speculate how much our legal system is "jinxed" when it comes to following the "heart" instead of the "head" when it comes to certain crimes committed by certain people.

Of course everyday life can make you feel "jinxed." Every week I say that I am going to give Amazon prime's delivery operation  just one more chance, and this sucker allowed this to happen yet again with a "rush delivery" that was supposed to happen between 2 and 6 PM on April 17:

 

Wednesday, April 17

Carrier picked up the package

 

12:58 PM

Delivery appointment scheduled

US

 

1:01 PM

Package arrived at a carrier facility.

Renton, US

 

1:10 PM

Package being processed at carrier facility.

Renton, US

 

3:55 PM

A carrier delay has occurred.

Renton, US

 

3:57 PM

Package arrived at a carrier facility.

Renton, US

 

3:58 PM

Package being processed at carrier facility.

Renton, US

 

4:30 PM

Package delayed in transit

 

5:01 PM

Package is out for delivery.

Renton, US

 

7:29 PM

Package being processed at carrier facility.

Renton, US

 

Thursday, April 18

 

5:17 AM

Package is out for delivery.

Renton, US

 

7:45 AM

Delivery attempted, but business was closed.

Renton, US

 

11:49 AM

Package arrived at a carrier facility.

Renton, US

 

11:56 AM

Package being processed at carrier facility.

Renton, US

 

I should have known better, but I don't.