Hey, Mr. Tangerine Man

Did you see that rancid kumquat's recent tweet, "I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally." Is the walking Orange Terror Alert admitting the election was rigged? I'm sorry. My blood pressure is at risk. I made a promise to myself to remain calm about this nasty business and concentrate only on what's positive, which is why I've chosen to tell you about my cat. I still can't believe that my country elected a dunk-tank clown as their president. I'm not a "cat person" by tradition. In fact, I come from a family that actively disliked cats. There's a word for it: Ailurophobia. What about those Russian hackers and Ukrainian "Fake news" sites that meddled in our election?  My Grandmother had a skin tag on her little finger that she always told us had come from being scratched by a kitten when she was young. It wasn't until adulthood that I found out she was lying. They plan to privatize Medicare and Social Security.This cat loathing was passed down to my mother, who, in turn, passed it down to my sister and me. I never had any experience being around a cat until college, when I lived with two of them. They didn't like me and I didn't like them, but they came in a package-deal with a young lady who wasn't very conscientious about maintaining the litter-box. When we all parted amicably, that ended my cat fraternization. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III for Attorney General? He has opposed every immigration bill for two decades. Last week he said, "Good people don't smoke marijuana." Kiss legalization goodbye.

We're dog people over here. We have three- two older black dogs and a speckled pup named Nancy. All of them are rescues but Nancy's the only one we got from the shelter. Steve, the oldest, just wandered up one day, and Carney (named after Rodney), is my step-son's dog who became part of the pack after his daddy found an apartment. The Secretary of Defense's nickname is "Mad-dog." So, we can't have visitors unless they have a lot of patience and don't mind enthusiastic barking. Heaven forbid a friend ring the bell without knowing the snarling rage about to erupt on the other side of the door. He has continually brushed-off the president's daily briefing. I don't even know how this happened, but now I share my side of the bed with a puppy who weighs ninety pounds. There's so much hair lying around that you could create an entirely new dog. And we've invested more in dog beds than some poorer countries' GDP. Are we just forgetting the twenty-five million dollar fraud settlement to victims of Trump University? There are now seventy-five open lawsuits against Trump, from unpaid contractors to angry golf club members cheated out of their dues. It's too late for obedience school. These animals don't even let the pizza delivery guy get a foot in the door. Can you imagine how they'd treat a cat?

While I was sitting on the porch one day, a kitten strolled through the bushes and sidled up into my lap. A neighbor yelled, "Do you want that cat? She's been hanging around for weeks." This habitual midnight tweeter actually demanded equal time from a comedy show. His Chief Strategist is an unapologetic white nationalist and anti-Semite. Of course, I had no intention of keeping the cat, which I named Peaches. She's very soft and a ginger color. We gave her food and water and she wouldn't leave the front porch. My wife, Melody, fixed her a basket to sleep in. There ain't gonna be any stupid wall. I visited several times a day because she was so sweet and would bump noses with me when feeling affectionate. One day, two cats were heard fighting and Peaches was gone. A large tomcat was eating her food which we immediately removed, but Peaches didn't return. The Secretary of Education never attended a public school, married the heir to the Amway fortune, believes in for-profit education, and donated 9.5 million to the Trump campaign. Fun fact: her brother, Eric Prince, was the founder of Blackwater USA mercenaries who did such a bang-up job in Iraq. She was gone a month before Melody got a text on her "Nextdoor" App that Peaches was spotted two blocks over living in a cardboard box inside a culvert. When we drove over and called to her, she came out of the ditch and jumped straight into the car. The National Policy Institute, A Neo-nazi front group, celebrated the election in the nation's capitol, with cries of, "Hail Trump," and the Hitler salute.

Peaches' new home was a garage, in which to hunt mice, and a screened-in porch to sun herself. She was afraid of the dogs at first, but after a little catnip, she calmed down. Over four hundred hate crimes have been recorded since the election. I was finding the cat to be fascinating. I watched a Netflix video called, "The Lion in Your Living Room," to help me understand her mannerisms, including the love-bite which I discouraged. Dare I mention the pending rape case? Also, she's very vocal and each "meow" means something different. We got her spayed and chipped and then it got cold. We had no choice but to bring her in and risk what canine hysteria might follow, but to our surprise, the dogs were calm- except Nancy who wants her to play. If Trump claims presidents are exempt from conflict-of-interest statutes and intends to continue involvement in his business, which one will be his day job? Peaches has her own room now and seems content to stay there. She'll come out eventually, but there's no rush. I've begun wondering, have I become a cat person in my dotage? I hear her prowling around at night, but because of my upbringing, I keep thinking she's trying to steal my credit card. Hey, Mr. Tangerine Man play a song for me. In the jingle-jangle morning, I'll come following you.

No Mas

Is it over yet? Somebody please make it stop. Like Popeye the Sailor Man used to say, "That's all I can stands, I can't stands no more." This is the vilest, most repugnant election in recent memory- maybe ever. And if you're still one of those people who think both candidates are equally atrocious, you need to get your news from another source- maybe from one of those mainstream outlets that actually believe in responsible journalism. Hillary may be duplicitous and opportunistic, but Trump leaves a trail of slime behind him wherever he goes, like a garden snail. I know I'm not alone in wishing this ugly torrent of daily disgust would just go away. But reputable sources have said that the new Facebook reality show, "Trump Tower Live," is a stalking horse for a Trump TV network in case he doesn't get the president gig. According to New York Magazine, Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is building a database of 14 million email addresses and credit card numbers, so even when Trump loses the election, we can still enjoy his daily rants and midnight tweets 24/7- or at least until the venture fails like so many other of Trump's skeezy products. The Orange Blossom Special took time out from campaigning last week to drag the press to the grand opening of his new Washington D.C. hotel, where room prices have been slashed by half because no one wants the name "Trump" appearing on their credit cards. His malignant remarks have damaged his brand so badly that a new hotel chain to open next year will not be called Trump anything, but "Scion," which means, "a person born into a rich, famous, or important family." I guess it gives the kids something to do.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has to be the luckiest candidate of all time. Anyone barely sane on the Republican side would have had an excellent chance of winning the White House, but Donnie keeps stepping on his dick. Can I say that after the women accusing Trump of grabbing them by the pussy has risen to twelve? The latest is the former Miss Finland who was publicly humiliated by Trump with a YouTube video to prove it. Trump then traveled to the Gettysburg battlefield to attempt a Lincolnesque speech. But where Lincoln pledged to unite a divided country, Trump promised to file lawsuits against his female accusers after the election. And nobody has a seedier bunch of surrogates than Trump. Chris Christie has exited stage right and will likely be summoned to appear in court to defend against his closest staff accusing him of lying and abuse of power. But Don still has Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich, all serial adulterers with nine wives between them. Trump was being advised by former Fox News head, Roger Ailes, himself the target of multiple lawsuits claiming sexual misconduct before he was bounced from the network. But, even Ailes had to walk away in disgust over Trump's inability to accept anyone's advice but his own.

Hillary's "October surprise" came in a letter to Congress by FBI Director James Comey, stating that new emails had surfaced from a laptop shared by Clinton aide, Huma Abedin, and her estranged husband, former congressman Anthony Weiner, aka "Carlos Danger- Private Dick." Weiner had a separate account for his fetishistic behavior which resulted in an investigation of his allegedly sexting with a fifteen year old girl, but Comey, "in an abundance of caution," said that he had not seen the new emails and that they may, or may not, have any significance to Secretary Clinton. Trump gleefully pounced saying that the FBI had "reopened" the case against Clinton and that this was "the biggest political scandal since Watergate." It's worth pointing out that Comey was a Bush appointee picked by Obama to head the FBI in a gesture of bi-partisanship. Big mistake. Comey was the second highest official in Dubya's justice department, head council for Lockheed Martin- the country's largest defense contractor, a hedge-fund millionaire, and the lawyer who put away Martha Stewart. Last July, in a breach of protocol, after Comey had absolved Clinton of any criminality in the investigation of her emails, he openly castigated her for "carelessness." It was the first time that the FBI publicly disclosed its recommendations to the Justice Department, which advised Comey against sending his letter to Congress. But eleven days before the election, Comey sent the letter anyway, which said in part, "Given that we don't know the significance (of the emails), I don't want to create a misleading impression."

Along with the Clinton campaign calling foul, dozens of former federal prosecutors signed an open letter critical of Comey. Minority Leader Harry Reid accused him of violating the Hatch Act, which bans the use of a federal government position to influence an election. If I were Barack Obama, I'd fire his ass tomorrow if it wouldn't rile-up the renegades. As it is, Comey should be gone on the ninth of November. So, what else can happen in this brutal election where the rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem to be born? You have an Australian, Julian Assange, holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London with a Wikileaks vendetta against Mrs. Clinton; widespread agreement among cybersecurity experts that Russian government hackers are behind the theft of DNC communications, a candidate that constantly cozies up to Vladimir Putin, and an FBI Director who, purposefully or not, has gravely interfered in a close presidential election. Who does James Comey think he is, J.Edgar Hoover?

Apocalypse Now

There's an old proverb that goes something like: "Be grateful you're only miserable, because some people are horrible." Watching the daily disaster known as Donald Trump is like that proverbial pile-up on the interstate from which you can't turn away. The Trump campaign has turned into a mosh-pit of tweet tantrums and discredited surrogates screaming repugnant falsehoods at full voice. It's all become, frankly, horrible. I did not savor the thought of writing about politics again when there are so many other important things to discuss, like Kim Kardashian being robbed of ten million dollars worth of jewelry at gunpoint in a Paris Hotel. Of all people, she should have known to stay at the Paris Hilton. Or, Lindsay Lohan losing a fingertip in a Turkish boating accident. Fortunately, the piece was found and surgically re-attached, adding to Lohan's cosmetic procedures. Anything would have been more pleasant than delving into the bilge known as Trumpworld. But this carnival continues to grow more bizarre by the day. Despite the best efforts of his handlers to contain him, Trump's post-debate trashing of a former Miss Universe continued for a week . All Hillary Clinton had to do was mention the name Alisha Mechado to send Trump into a stammering frenzy. All he had to do was shut up and no one would have thought twice about it, but he couldn't help himself. Trump's taking to Fox News to say Machado was a "disgusting" person who "gained massive amounts of weight" struck at the heart of every woman who has ever struggled with a diet. But, congratulations Alisha Mechado, Trump has made you Miss Universe again, twenty years after the fact. And Trump proved himself to be something other than a con-artist; he's a mark as well. Hillary hooked him right up.

I don't understand how any woman could vote for him, but Trump is correct in saying there's nothing he could do to shake his supporters. This puts him in league with former Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards, who once said, "The only way I can lose is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy." Trump's misogyny is fairly easy to trace since he has so diligently documented it through the years. His recent ugly attacks on women merely began with Rosie O'Donnell, but continued with Hillary, who "doesn't have the look to be president," Carly Fiorina, Megyn Kelly, Huma Abedin, Heidi Cruz, correspondent Katy Tur, columnist Gail Collins, who has "the face of a dog," Arianna Huffington, of whom he tweeted, "..I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man," and "goofy" Elizabeth Warren, who he calls "Pocahontas," not even cognizant of his racist remarks. Trump has promised to attack Bill Clinton's past sexual transgressions and re-litigate the whole Monica Lewinsky affair. Hasn't this poor woman suffered enough? It's hard enough to be known as the world's most famous fellator without having to relive it twenty years later. We know all about Bill Clinton's infidelities from the voluminous Starr Report of 1998, which described in detail everything from intimate sexual acts to the shape of the former president's penis. The author, Kenneth Starr, has recently been ousted as president of Baylor University over a sex scandal involving the football team. Karma's funny that way. If I were coaching Hillary for the next debate and Bill's betrayals are exhumed, I would say, "I have been married to the same man for thirty years. We have had marital problems that played out in public, but we have resolved them in private and emerged with a stronger marriage than ever."

The New York Time's explosive expose of Trump's partial tax records from 1995, declaring a personal loss of nearly a billion dollars, which allows him to avoid paying federal income taxes for eighteen years, was verified by his personal accountant. Fox News immediately declared that the Times was "trying to take Trump down," and castigated all those liberal newspapers that endorsed Hillary, like The Dallas Morning News, The Arizona Star, and USA Today. The Trump campaign countered by saying newspaper endorsements are meaningless because no one reads them anymore, and he's probably right. Logic and reason don't dissuade the Trump army. They're locked in, even though the online fact-checker Snopes declared that in the previous debate, Trump's lies were "unprecedented." Some undecided voters, however, might have been among the millions of TV viewers who watched the season premier of Saturday Night Live. Remember when Al Gore's staff had to force him to sit down and watch Darrell Hammond's brilliant parody of his sighing, pompous debate performance against Dubya in 2000?  If Trump's team forces him to watch SNL, maybe he'll spend this week invoking Alec Baldwin's sexual history.

The tax charade is rapidly falling apart. Trump claim that it's "smart" not to pay taxes just makes him a burden on the middle class. The only comparable tax cheat that comes to mind is Leona Helmsley, who once famously said, "Only the little people pay taxes." It doesn't matter. They don't care. In the ongoing virtual whistle-stop by Twitter, Trump wrote, "Remember, don't believe 'sources said' by the VERY dishonest media. If they don't name the sources, the sources don't exist." Such stunning hypocrisy from someone who prefaces every right-wing conspiracy theory with, "I've heard many people say," or, "I don't know if it's true but a lot people are saying it." This is the laziest journalistic trick in the book. You can say whatever the hell you want if your sources are anonymous, like the time Trump tweeted that "an extremely credible source" told him that Barack Obama's birth certificate was a fraud. I don't care how much you hate Hillary Clinton or think she's a liar, at least she is in control of her mental faculties. The next debate is Oct. 9, plenty of time for Trump to exhibit his more disgusting simian characteristics. There's another old country saying appropriate for this moment that equates watching the nightmarish Trump campaign to having intercourse with a skunk. I didn't get all I could take, but I've had all I can stand.

Star Spangled Outrage

Can we have an adult discussion about the national anthem without everyone getting all pissy about it? I understand that the sight of the stars and bars means different things to different people. Some accept it as a symbol of the United States while others don't get the symbolism and revere a brightly decorated polyester stretch of fabric right up there with the Bible. I was taught in the Boy Scouts that the flag had to receive special treatment. It had to be folded a certain way and if it touched the ground, the proper response was to burn it, which makes the topic of flag-burning more complex. We were also taught from infancy that when the National Anthem was played to remove any head coverings and stand with either one hand over your heart or both by your side. While some people have deeply-held convictions that soldiers bled and died for that flag, others believe just as strongly that soldiers died to protect the freedom to protest, even if it includes the flag. If you love the Second Amendment you have to respect the First. But just let one professional athlete remain seated while the anthem is played and social media explodes in anger and outrage. We have hurricanes, wildfires, zika, and a lunatic running for president, and people are upset because a football player chose not to stand?

The latest in the saga of San Fransisco Forty-Niners' quarterback Colin Kaepernick's objection to standing for the anthem occurred at a pre-season game in San Diego, and who doesn't love a pre-season game? San Diego was celebrating its 28th annual "Salute to the Military," with over two-hundred servicemen and women presenting a "super flag" while color guards from all four branches of the military presented the regular sized one. If that weren't enough jingoism for you, they played the repugnant and nausea producing Lee Greenwood song, "Proud to be an American," with the stadium joining in. Even George M. Cohan thought it was a bit over the top.Then came Kaepernick's gesture and the crowd erupted in rage. Kaepernick was lustily booed louder than an illegal immigrant at a Trump rally. He explained his singular act as a way to protest racial oppression and the near monthly killing of unarmed black men by the police. "I'm not anti-American," Kaepernick said, "I love America...I want to help make (it) better." Something about the public anger reminded me of the days when certain people expressed their patriotism by putting "Love it or leave it" bumper stickers on their trucks and flag decals in their windows. This is not the first time that this nation's patriotic symbols have been appropriated by reactionaries and war hawks. Sometimes, it takes more courage to protest against what you believe to be unjust than to run to join the lynch mob.

From a songwriter's point of view, the National Anthem just isn't that great of a song. First, Francis Scott Key merely wrote a poem in 1814 called the "Defense of Fort McHenry," while captive on a British ship watching the bombardment of Baltimore. Only later was the poem conjoined with a British drinking ditty called, "The Anacreontic Song," whose last verse offered a toast, "with the myrtle of Venus with Bacchus' vine." It wasn't declared the National Anthem until the Hoover administration in 1931. You've seen those ads that say, "Send us your poem and for a nominal fee, we'll put it to music." I knew guys in Nashville that ran that scam for years and it never produced a single good song. If F.S. Key had sent his poem to Nashville, it might have been difficult to put a peppy melody to his third verse, which reads in part, "Their blood has wash'd out their foul footsteps' pollution/No refuge could save the hireling and the slave/From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave." Historians agree that Key, a slave-owner himself, was expressing his revenge over the deaths of freed slaves who fought with the British. We usually skip that verse.

I never understood why they play the National Anthem before sporting events in the first place. And why do different sports get to pick and choose who plays it. Football, baseball, and basketball all do, but you've never heard the anthem before tee-off time in professional golf. At Churchill Downs they sing "My Old Kentucky Home." At the Preakness they sing "Maryland, my Maryland," and at the Belmont Stakes they belt out Sinatra singing "New York, New York." During the recent Rio Olympics, after the first ten medal ceremonies, I started to mute the "Star Spangled Banner." I mean, how many times can you hear the same song in a row? I like "Uptown Funk," but I don't want to hear it played fifteen consecutive times. Is muting the National Anthem worse than sitting for it? I'll bet all the incensed trolls who stormed social media were sitting on their asses too. Just because you're in the Barcalounger in your underwear, why shouldn't you stand for the anthem? These days, the "Star Spangled Banner" has merely become a vehicle for aspiring pop stars to demonstrate their vocal pyrotechnics and attitude. (See Christina Aguilera). The three greatest versions of the song are by Jimi Hendrix, Whitney Houston, and Marvin Gaye. In fact, YouTube "Marvin Gaye, 1983 NBA All-Star game." Since I respect freedom of expression, I stand with Kaepernick sitting. "America the Beautiful" should be the National Anthem anyway. If you lovers of tradition want something to really get mad about, be upset that the uber-patriotic "God Bless America," has replaced "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the seventh-inning stretch.