1734 The Russians are Coming

It’s hard to smile in Hell.  But John Foster Dulles is managing these days.

He has a lot to smile about.  The guy who dictated to the American people about the dictators in the USSR loved to stir up this enmity.  But for awhile he failed.  We had Gorbachev, and we witnessed the implosion of the Soviet Union and we had Boris Yeltsin riding in his tank kind of like Michael Dukakis only with credibility.

And now the Red Menace is back.  And maybe, just maybe, there’s really something to it this time.  

Who won the election? Hillary Clinton by more than two million votes.  Who will be president? Donald Trump the man who invited Russian president Putin to hack and distribute and who now denies they did in the face of evidence from our spy agencies, almost all of them.

NBC News reports Putin was directly involved in the hack.  Not that Vlad’s a computer geek or anything. But he’s said to have directed which leaked BS got published.

So basically, Putin got Trump elected. This is an even more spectacular event than the 2000 election of George W. Bush.  He needed five votes from Supreme Court justices.  This time it took only one.

All throughout the campaign the Republican candidate said the election would be rigged.  Apparently he was right.

Dulles turned the Soviet Union into a punching bag and an excuse for ridiculous excesses and money wasting.  It’s not that they were some kind of worker's paradise.  They weren’t.  What they were was an easy target.  Dulles and his brother could make them the excuse for everything that went wrong in the world.  

Well, here we go again.

There was some truth in Dulles’ arguments.  Just enough to keep us riled up.  The more we riled the greater the benefits to Dulles’ business interests. This time the shoe is on the other foot.  Ask yourself this: If the president elect invites Russia to hack his opponent and then the CIA and the FBI give him reason to believe it happened, and he turns 180 degrees and says he doesn’t believe them… what does that all mean?

What does it mean that his nominee for secretary of state won a Good Guy sweatshirt from Moscow and is on a first name basis with some of their oily-garchs?

Undermining the election is a first step toward undermining everything else that makes America America.  Or is it the third or fourth or 5000th step but we just now caught a glimpse of the line of march.

Today’s Quote:

“Nothing happened. There was no victim.” -- NYPD source when 18 year old subway rider Yasmin Seweid was arrested and charged with filing a false report about three men whom she said harassed her and tried to rip off her hijab when she needed an excuse to explain her missing curfew.

Yasmin Seweid

Via Facebook

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2016

1733 The New Bank Strikes Again

SOUTH DOGPATCH NC (Wessays) --  When you’re dealing with people in the low IQ states you have to watch your tongue.  They speak another language in the Confederacy.  

So when the bank that bought the bank that bought your bank sends you on regular wild goose chases, you have to be careful.

With some major exceptions the banks that are too big to fail have learned to deal with retail customers.  This is not out of any sense of wanting to do business, but it cuts down on the calls to their outsource-ees in Bhopal and Manila.  We are pests, cockroaches in their kitchens.

The little guys, the friendly neighborhood banks and credit unions still know you on sight and probably remember your name. But it’s the mid sizers that have trouble.

Not going to tell you which bank has a good case of short man syndrome but its name is similar to a famous sandwich.

And their online “service” is a joke.  They keep fiddling with their website and the ripple effect ripples right through the lowly customer.  When you ask for help they don’t give it to you until you ask twice by which time you have locked yourself out of your account because you can’t remember whether the answer to your security question is “San Francisco,” “SanFrancisco,” or either of the above two but in all lower case letters.

At the branch, it’s the flesh version of the electronic stonewalling.

“You want to do what?” … “Oh, that has to be done by a manager or an assistant manager or a deputy assistant manager. Mervin and Moonunit are off today and Amber is in a meeting.”

Answer this question, bonkers bankers: “Why does it take 24 hours for a cash deposit to show up in an account?  Do you first check each bill for fraud?  What if my cash doesn’t clear?”

New checks arrive in origami boxes.  They work great if you can put them together or have a crafter from Tokyo as a neighbor.  Or you’re one of the sadistic instruction writers at Ikea. Otherwise, just throw them into a drawer and try to remember which drawer you threw them into.

And don’t expect results from your threat to find a new bank.  Banks don’t care whether you stay or go.

Grapeshot:

-First use of the term “low IQ states” is generally attributed to the newspaperman Jimmy Breslin whom we thank.

-Show of hands, folks: how many of you know the origin of “uppercase” and “lowercase?”

Shrapnel:

--So two Texas oilmen joining the cabinet already larded with generals. Great. At least now the overnight attendant will be protected when the holdup artists arrive at the gas station… except for Lukoil which has its own security.

--Wait a minute.  Rick Perry running the Department of Energy?  Does he even know there is a Department of Energy?  Or did he maybe once know but now has forgotten?

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2016

1732 Flaming Star

Okay, what do you think you’re seeing?  Why it’s a Star of David.  And it’s burning.  But wait… is this fake news?  Did someone really put up a six point star on the lawn of a Jewish owned home and burn it?

Not yet… at least that we know of.  This star is burning at a recreated ancient rite in Mexico.  Supposedly, it’s to ward off evil spirits.  

So, then, are you more comfortable with this:

Ah, yes, that great white supremacist gift to African Americans and others with dark skin and or religions other than their brand of Christianity, The KKK’s infamous burning cross.

One of the reasons they burn crosses is that even an idiot klansman can put one together.  Two pieces of wood and a nail or two, a gallon jug of moonshine where gasoline isn’t available, a Bic or Zippo or box of wooden kitchen matches and voila!  Instant hatred at a bargain price (especially if you siphon the gas from some black guy’s ride and shoplift the Zippo.)

A six pointed star is a relatively complicated structure.  It’s often beyond the skills of builders who can’t count above two.

But there’s a scholarly branch of this organization.  They put on their Sunday best and visit classrooms where toddlers are learning how to make stars from  popsicle sticks or tongue depressors and Elmer’s Glue.

At some point they’ll figure out that it’s simply two triangles, one of them upside down.

So expect more and more people to wear their hate on their sleeve.  In the oncoming era bad people who’ve been hiding in their rats’ nests will surely pop out and go public.  

Even now, Klan jewelers are hard at work on star pendants with 18k gold simulated flames.  That’s killing two birds with one stone. The gold looks like fire, and it’s worth a few bucks in case they need to make bail.

Call us paranoid, but remember even paranoids have real enemies.  

Shrapnel:

--A woman of our acquaintance from Kansas long ago used to defend the charitable work of the KKK where she gave piano lessons to poor kids.  Now, the sheet-heads are claiming they’re not white supremacists.  Both take the “plausible” out of “plausible deniability.”

--It’s hard for this space to say anything sympathetic about Mitt Romney, but you have to feel sorry for the guy these days.  After all, the transition team of teasers roped him into believing he had a good chance to become Secretary of State.  No official decision has been announced yet, but when it is, it ain’t going to be Mitt.

--The president- elect’s reason for writing off charges Russia hacked the election?  No weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. If the CIA was wrong then, it has to be wrong now, too… right?

Grapeshot:

-Remembering Ed Koch on what would be his 92nd birthday.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2016

1731 The Coal Huggers

The dilemma: what do you do with the people?  

There's no question we have to stop using fossil fuels. Or at least slow down.

But the coal huggers are right when they ask “what about the jobs?”

Never mind the fevered desperation of Big Oil, Big Coal and Big Gas. (Big Gas. That has a nice ring to it, no?)

When an energy company views the world from atop a mountain of money, who can blame it for striking out in fear?  Fight or flight.

You can write off the climate change deniers as people who have deep roots in an idea.  Kind of like a town full of out of work coal miners with the idea that moving is a wrong move.

Miners are people.  And they won’t migrate from home because there aren't real jobs anywhere else and because they’re, well, home.

“Training!” you say? “Training is the answer!” Training?   For what?  You can’t even find a job as a gas jockey anywhere in this country except New Jersey and Oregon.  And the fringe benefits?  You’re allowed a couple of free coffees from the convenience store each day to ward off the cold of winter and boost your flagging energy. So take what you get and don’t forget to say “thank you” to Manager Bob or even the free coffee will go away.

So what’s the solution?  Don’t look here, folks.

And don’t believe everything you hear about solar power and wind power.  We are not going to look like the Netherlands with its quaint windmills sitting passively in the lowlands.

To make enough electricity for a community larger than your block you need a propeller the size of the everglades and it has to be sitting in a typhoon zone.

Electric cars?  Earth to Earth-dayers.  They’re not selling well.  Even though they’re environmentally friendly and have won the hearts of cheating spouses and hard drinkers who need to sneak home silently in the small hours of the morning.

Doing good is good. Saving the whales, saving the spotted owls, saving the redwoods, saving the fruit flies.  All fine goals. And we should continue to do that.   But we also need real jobs for real people.

Yes, the unemployment rate is technically low. Don’t look too closely at how they arrive at those figures.  

What we’re in is not a recession and not a depression. What we’re in is a regression, a hillbillification.  There’s nothing wrong with “self reliance.” But there are limits in a country of this size, scope and population.

So stop pretending you’re living in the era of Davy Crockett and Wild Bill Hickok.

Those who will soon be in charge of dismantling modern America are trying to bring back a wonderful era that never was.

Today’s Quote:

“There’s (a sucker) born every minute.”  -- Attributed to P.T. Barnum but a phrase common among crooked 19th century gamblers.

Grapeshot:

-Let the record show that El Generalissimo, the chief- elect of the oncoming junta, is not really channeling Leona Helmsley except for the “only the little people pay taxes” part.

-Is it just me, or is there something wrong with the story of California mom Sheri Papini who disappeared while jogging on November 2nd and was found along a roadside on Thanksgiving Day.

-A sad farewell to pioneer astronaut and former Senator John Glenn of Ohio who has died at age 95.

Shrapnel:

--You may not realize it but the right and its “alt” have their own version of politically correct speech.  If you don’t call the Democratic Party the Democrat Party, you’re a “liberal,” or “the L word.” And you’re not anti abortion, you’re just “pro life” at least when it comes to protoplasm residing in a womb.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments and accusations to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2016

1730 I the Jury

1730 I the Jury

That’s Mickey Spillane. Tough guy. Author of the novel with the title stolen for this post.

But this is not about Mike Hammer, private eye. This is about a one man jury in that bastion of democracy and equality, South Carolina, who dissented from eleven others and made a mistrial for Michael T. Slager, disgraced and disgraceful ex cop and killer.

Eleven jurors voted guilty.  The holdout -- and we don’t yet know who he is -- couldn’t bring himself or herself to go along.  

The slayer Slager who is white killed Walter Scott who was black as he ran away from a traffic stop for a broken tail light.

If you haven’t seen a bystander’s phone video,  here's a link provided to and by the New York Times. Caution: violence.

The cop feared for his life?

What happened here is called jury nullification, which the courts have declared illegal but cannot stop.

Nullification happens when a jury decides that the accused is guilty but the law is lousy or wrongly applied and acquits.  It’s easier to do this in trials that don’t require unanimous verdicts.  This one did.  So the result is a mistrial.

The judge can overturn a verdict. So if this jury had voted to acquit, the judge could reverse.  But in the case of a single holdout in a hopeless deadlock, there’s nothing much a judge can do but start over.

It is impossible for a rational human being to not see the evidence in the Scott case.  But there certainly could be nullification. The jury may dislike black people and decided that the cop killed a black guy just because he had a pretend reason.  The jury could nullify because it believes that broken taillights are a true menace to society.  There are such people.  Some of them are cops.  

Put yourself in the position of the officer who “feared for (his) life.”  Page 2 of The Police Officer’s Guide to handling street crime:

“(1) When a guy has a gun you can see and he’s running or walking toward you, your life is in danger. (2) When you see a guy with no gun running away from you, your life is not in danger.  If necessary you may fire in situation number one, but not in situation number two.

Slager must have missed class that day. Hope he had an absence note from mommy.

Shrapnel:

--Broadcast news people from an earlier time confused “innocent” with “not guilty,” which are not the same. The theory: if someone tuned in at the exact wrong moment, they’d hear the “guilty,” but not the “not.”  Some of us rebelled against the policy and won.

Today’s Quote:

“Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” -- President Franklin D. Roosevelt on 12/8/41 describing the attack the previous day on Pearl Harbor and asking congress for a declaration of war.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2016

1729 Missing Channels

Note to readers: this is an edited Least Worst Wessays™ from 2006. Most readers had not seen it. It appears today while the entire staff and management concentrates on extracting antidictions from WestraDamus in time to make the year-end deadline. Oh, and attending raucous holiday parties.

Yes, there are missing channels, hard to believe as that is.

Here are some we should have and don’t:

THE CLOCK CHANNEL: Just a clock. Big and easy to read. 24/7. No need to hunt around the screen while Fox and CNN and MSNBC and ESPN and CNBC and Bloomberg play “hide the time.”

Maybe a little background music to go with it. “Time On My Hands,” “the Right Time of Night,” “’til the End of Time.” “The Syncopated Clock,” “My Grandfather’s Clock,” “Do That To Me One More Time,” “Time After Time,” “Sleepy Time Gal,” you get the picture.

Great for offices, factories, hospital rooms, jewelry stores and just a little something to pass the time of day.

THE FENCE CHANNEL: Tour the world’s favorite fences, from the Great Wall of China to the President elect’s fence on the US border with Mexico. Look into the DMZ between the Koreas. Check out the back 40 from the comfort of your den. Check out your favorite ball park.

THE TATTOO CHANNEL: Watch body artists at work. See bikers and schoolgirls, sailors and stockbrokers. Learn about this fine craft and maybe sneak a peek at some piercings, too.

THE WHITLING CHANNEL: Live from the front porches of America, professional and amateur whittlers show you what to do with a knife and a stick. Prime time lessons in how to carve a decoy duck out of a left over 4x6.

WEATHER CHANNEL CLASSICS: All the great storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, snowfalls, and clear days from history. They have this footage, why not use it?

THE COAL MINE CHANNEL: What’s it really like down there? Find out 24/7 with helmet cams and mics worn by real miners working real mines. See how they seek it out, bring it out and sometimes get snuffed out right before your very eyes.

THE JUNKYARD CHANNEL: Tour America’s great junkyards. Learn the complex puzzle stacking systems used by modern computerized yards, and the haphazard slapdash methods of Old School operators. See junkyard dogs trained. Find parts for that rusting Oldsmobile on blocks in your front yard. Or for that 1929 Packard you’re restoring or for that bumper you just busted when you hit and ran.

THE SHIPPING CHANNEL: Watch boats loaded and unloaded in stories port cities like or New Orleans.  See how they bring in cars through the Port of San Francisco and make jobs disappear at the same time. Be a part of the shapeups. Watch the Longshoremen’s Union collect dues. View incoming drug shipments at the Port of Miami or Port Arthur, Texas. Watch middle eastern terrorists get out of cargo containers on the Canadian coast.

THE PIPE LIGHTING CHANNEL: There are as many ways to light pipes as there are guys who still smoke them. Learn technique, wind measurement, the flame properties of everything from a common gas station matchbook to an elaborate antique Zippo.

THE ROADPAVING CHANNEL: You’re always stalled at construction sites, and never get to see what’s going on behind those road cones and blinking orange lights. Now, you can find out what goes on while guys seem to just stand around doing nothing. Watch them spread rock and then gravel and then asphalt or tar. Watch them carefully grade the road so it floods in low lying areas and they are re-called to fix it, adding to the economy through the time honored tradition of cost overruns.

THE MAIL DELIVERY CHANNEL: Postmen and women from coast to coast brave rain, snow and gloom of night. Now, see what THEY see, as they see it. Watch them dump mailbags into rivers and oceans. Watch them as they try to read the handwriting on envelopes. Watch them try to pick YOUR mailbox out of the crowd.

THE GRASS GROWING CHANNEL: keep track of someone’s lawn as it sprouts from seeds, grows into grass, gets fertilized and mowed and infested with weeds and insects and finally is covered with snow. It’s a slow story, but satisfying.

THE DESTRUCTION CHANNEL: This will be a favorite all over the world. Implosions, explosions, wrecking balls, gunfire of infinite variety, samurai swords beheading dislikeable parents and western humanitarian aid workers, bows and arrows, grenades, missiles, poison manufacture, auto wrecks, shootouts, building collapses, house fires, high rise fires tire blowouts and much, much more.

Steal these ideas. Let no niche go unfilled.

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

(c) WJR 2006, 2016

1728 Leave No Question Unanswered

Times have changed.  Little kids used to ask parents why the sky is blue. Many parents didn’t know. They encouraged the kids to look it up.  The kids looked it up. Or didn’t.  But many of them retain the answer to this very day.

Today’s kids ask the same question.  And in moments, they’ll hear something along these lines:

“A clear cloudless day-time sky is blue because molecules in the air scatter blue light from the sun more than they scatter red light.  When we look towards the sun at sunset, we see red and orange colors because the blue light has been scattered out and away from the line of sight.”

One Philip Gibbs wrote that in May of 1997 on the website of the University of California/Riverside.  But 12 year old big brother Hank probably didn’t tell six year old Jimmy, thus consolidating his power as the go to guy for all the answers.

Hank didn’t know the answer either.  But he had his smart phone with him and found the information in mere seconds.

And now we all have the brains and memory we never had before.  Amazing what’s out there… much of it pretty accurate and easy to find.

You can translate anything from any language to any other language and while it comes out in a stiff electron-rich kind of way, without decoration or nuance, it works pretty well.

Some things are harder than others to find.  For example, trying to find out how many retail customers do business with Wells Fargo bank the other day required some research.  Research, of course, means going beyond the first website that comes up. Maybe even as far as a third or (heavens!) fourth.

The answer is around 70 million.  Out of context, that factum is meaningless.  But it could win you a last call drink at the Dew Drop Inn some future early morning.

So bring it on, kids.  Real questions get real answers. The better the formation of the question, the better the answer.

But sometimes, even stupid questions get instantaneous answers.  To experiment, we typed in “How much wood wood a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck would chuck wood?”

In less than a second, there appeared a reasonable answer and a little scolding:

“Showing results for how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood

“According to a Cornell publication, the answer is ~700 pounds.”   (The tilde means “approximately.”)  

The answer then went on to compare the chucking ability of a woodchuck to that of a beaver and a groundhog.  And apparently “chuck” in this context means “moving timber.”

Ya learn something new every day.

In any event, there’s no question that begs for an answer.

Grapeshot:

-Some websites are not only for research, they work as Ouija Boards… as happened when I put in the song title “When Will I Be Loved?” and the answer came back “Never… you don’t deserve it… and don’t ask questions in the passive voice.”

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2016