Monthly Archives: June 2022

“You’re Hired”

NOTE TO TUCKER CARLSON: The following is what is known as satire. Stephen Colbert and Triumph the Insult Dog suggested I remind you of that.

MAN’S VOICE: Washington, DC is a real jungle, and if you’re not careful, it can chew you up and spit you out. But if you don’t care about the rule of law or the Constitution, you can really hit it big, I mean really big.

Good evening, I’m Donald Trump and welcome to The Apprentice: Sedition Edition.

Tonight, five teams will compete to see who can come up with the best way to stage a coup and and keep me out of prison. Let’s meet the teams and their captains. First, we have The Big Liars and captain Roger Stone. [Applause]

STONE: Our coup strategy is to convince people the only way you can lose is if it is rigged. Our motto? You can never start too early. [Applause]

TRUMP: Roger, a chip off the old block. I love it. Next, The Early Birds and Captain Rudy Giuliani. [Applause]

GIULIANI: We’re going to show you how to stage a coup by declaring victory before all the votes are counted. Let’s here it folks. STOP THE COUNT! STOP THE COUNT! [Applause]

TRUMP: That’s what I love about you Rudy. Everybody else thinks that’s a stupid idea, but I can dig it. Next we have The Batshit Lawyers and their captain Sydney Powell. [Applause]

POWELL: We plan to wear down the competition by filing hundreds of frivolous law suits. We call it the spaghetti against the wall strategy. [Applause]

TRUMP: Sydney, you’re making me hungry with all that spaghetti talk. Next up is The Alternate Electors and who else would you want at the helm than John Eastman. [Applause]

EASTMAN: It’s an honor to be here. As we love to say, two slates in the hand is better than one in the Pence. [Applause]

TRUMP: I don’t know, John. You’re talking about coordinating over a hundred people in six states. That’s a bigly ask. And last but not least, Team Hanging Loose with co-captains Proud Boy Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keeper Stewart Rhodes. [Applause]

TARRIO: C’mon patriots. Three cheers for the red, black and blue. [Applause]

TRUMP: Mike, are you watching?

Just to remind our audience, here’s how it works. Each team has one week to implement its strategy. The judges, the offspring from my first marriage–Don, Jr., Ivanka and The Other One–will grade each team’s performance. The team with the lowest score is eliminated. The other teams get to come back for round two where they each will be asked to come up with more ways to get those chumps, I mean supporters, to continue sending us monthly donations for the Not-a-Fund.

The competition ends when there is only one team left. And each member of that team wins a nomination to the cabinet position of his or her choice in my next administration.

So, let’s begin and don’t forget, you get extra points for flattery and butt kissing. See you next week.

ANNOUNCER: The preceding program was brought to you by My Pillow, the perfect bedding to cover your head when the FBI comes knocking at your door with a search warrant. And Goya Foods, when you want to be as full of beans as the conspiracy theories you’re spreading.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

Fool Me Once…

Amnesia runs deep in the Democratic Party. Especially when it comes to compromise with Republicans. In 2009, Democrats watered down the Affordable Care Act to secure bi-partisan support. Yet not one GOP senator voted for the final bill. In 2015, they accepted Mitch McConnell’s justification for blocking consideration of Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court and took him at his word he would feel the same way if the president were from his own party. Can you say, “Justice Amy Coney Barrett?”

Which is why I do not share the enthusiasm of those who believe the compromise on gun legislation reached by the Murphy/Cronyn working group represents “progress.” I’ve not heard one Republican say, “This is a good start.” If not, what is it? Look at the trade-offs to secure 10 GOP votes. It looks more like “the end.”

Consider this one example. In lieu of raising the age from 18 to 21 for purchase of a semi-automatic assault weapon, the drafters agreed to “enhanced background checks” for purchasers under 21. This morning Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy who put the working group together explained how this provision might have stopped the shooter in Uvalde. When he walked into a gun store to purchase the two AR-15s, the dealer would have been required to contact local police to see if the shooter had ever had a run-in with law enforcement.

Senator, I know you mean well. You have been the leading advocate of gun safety laws since Sandy Hook. But this provision, WITHOUT background checks at gun shows and on-line sales, ensures weapons of war will continue to fall into the hands of young men who will use them on victims in such a brutal way the corpses are beyond recognition. What good is an ENHANCED background check if there are still pathways to acquire these weapons where the seller is not required to follow the same procedures as the owner of a licensed gun store.

You may not understand what is going on here, but I can assure you Mitch McConnell does. The proposed legislation has more loopholes than the tax code. Which means there WILL be another Sandy Hook, Parkland or Uvalde. And McConnell will come out of his shell and declare, “We restricted gun sales and that did not stop these travesties. That proves it was NEVER about access to guns. So let’s stop pretending it does. We have enough laws on the books. Let’s enforce those before we consider new ones.” [After which, McConnell holds a fund-raising conference call with the NRA and gun manufacturers and reminds them how he predicted passing the 2022 bill would shut down any possibility of REAL gun legislation.”]

This morning Joe Scarborough quoted Abraham Lincoln to justify this incremental approach to sensible gun legislation. “I am a slow walker, but I never walk backwards.” Joe, if memory serves me correctly, Abraham Lincoln was the victim of gun violence. So was Martin Luther King, Jr., who said, “The arc of history is long but it always bends toward justice.”

Sadly, these and other “slow walkers” took their last steps way before their time. And in the cases of Lincoln and King, we still have not realized their respective visions of a reunited America or racial equality. Instead, we should be listening to Albert Einstein. “To do the same thing over and over and expect a different result is the definition of insanity.” Approaching gun safety the same way America dealt with reconstruction and civil rights suggests, 100 years from now, we will be engaged in the same discussion we have following every mass shooting.

No, we will not have taken a step backwards. Instead, we will have been stopped dead in our tracks.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

The Good Old Days

Critics of the “Make America Great Again” movement believe it is a euphemism for taking the country back to the 1950s or earlier. You know, before women’s rights, civil rights and gay rights. But every idea, regardless of how insane or inane it appears to be, often contains a kernel of wisdom.

In one respect, I too would like to return to the days of my childhood. For the record, my minor status ended (i.e. 18th birthday) in January 1968. As I look back, there is one aspect of my experience I would again welcome without hesitation. The way disagreements and anger among schoolmates were resolved, i.e. fisticuffs.

Human nature, especially among hormonal teenagers, is a fact of life. There has always been a caste system in American schools. The jocks versus the nerds. The bullies and the bullied. Tempers flared. There were legitimate and imagined grievances. But NO ONE was ever killed or seriously maimed. There were scrapes and bruises, and on rare occasions, a broken arm or stitches.

The difference? The only available weapon was one’s fists. And short of the Marquis of Queensberry rules, there was an unwritten code. Seldom would one combatant ambush another. The more likely scenario was an agreement to “meet me after school.” Even when hostilities broke out spontaneously during recess or in the hallway, principals and teachers would step in and separate the fighters.

If the loser wanted revenge, he (as it was always males) did not ask his parents for an AR-15 for Christmas or use his life savings to purchase an arsenal of assault weapons. He might hang a speed bag from a rafter in the attic or basement. Or lift weights. His goal was not to kill his adversary, but to defend himself better the next time.

Though not a perfect social science experiment, school children of that era were the control group in any examination of violence in today’s institutions of learning. And there is one glaring, inescapable difference. The presence of firepower in the form of handguns, rifles and assault weapons.

So, please do not tell me guns are not the issue in the ever increasing number of dead bodies and wounded students and teachers in elementary and high schools across the nation. If the totals over the past 70 years had creeped up incrementally, I would concede maybe it had something to do with video games, increases in mental instability or the extent to which school buildings have been fortified. But the jump is from ZERO to HUNDREDS.

As Edward R. Morrow once said, “The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.”

POSTSCRIPT: I WISH I’D SAID THAT

Speaking of the obvious, Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy made an indisputable argument for raising the age to 21 for a individual to buy a semiautomatic assault weapon. He pointed out the shooter in Uvalde could buy an assault weapon at 18 while current federal law sets the minimum age for purchase of a handgun at 21.

The federal law did not include rifles and shotguns because the drafters considered those firearms to be legitimate sporting equipment used for target practice and hunting. Murphy added, “At that time, handguns were considered more dangerous than a long gun and more likely used in the commission of a crime.” Under that logic, Murphy challenged his Senate colleagues to argue a semiautomatic weapon was less dangerous than a handgun. And if they could not make that case, raising the minimum age to 21 in order to purchase such weapons of war was beyond dispute.

We’ll see!

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP