Blackmoor Vituperative

Twitter is the very worst of humanity, delivered 140 characters at a time. It is the untreated sewage of the Internet.

I have been saying for some years now that the United States does not have a “left” and “right” — we do not have “liberals” and “conservatives”. Not in our major political parties, anyway. What we have is “conservative” (the Democrats) and “batshit crazy” (the Republicans).

It was not always like this. But the Democrats and Republicans of 2017 are not the Democrats and Republicans of 100 years ago, 50 years ago, or even 20 years ago. The Democrats have become the Republicans, and the Republicans have become something out of a Monty Python skit.

It will get worse before it gets better.

Observation: “mansplaining” is the early 21st century version of “hysteria” — with a single one-word accusation, you can devalue someone’s humanity, experience, and point of view, based on nothing more than pointing out their gender.

Of course, as usual, men have it better. No one is going to be involuntarily committed due to a diagnosis of “chronic mansplaining”.

That’s progress, I suppose.

Culture either spreads and changes, or it stagnates and dies. It is not a walled garden from which “undesirable” religions or ethnicities need to be excluded, nor is it an artifact in a museum that must be preserved unchanged for eternity.

What people sometimes mis-label “cultural appropriation” is simply racism or hatred. Those things do exist, and are reprehensible, but have nothing to do with adopting and/or repurposing cultural elements from other groups, ethnicities, nations, or cultures (nor from your own, for that matter). Intent matters.

There is no such thing as “cultural appropriation”.

This is a comparison of criminal indictments and convictions of Democrats and Republicans over the past 53 years. It was compiled by William Adkins (whom I do not know personally).

When comparing criminal indictments of those serving in the executive branch of presidential administrations it’s so lopsided as to be ridiculous. Yet all I ever hear is how corrupt the Democrats are. So why don’t we break it down by president and the numbers?

Obama – 8 years in office. zero criminal indictments, zero convictions and zero prison sentences. So the next time somebody describes the Obama administration as ‘scandal free’ they aren’t speaking wishfully, they’re simply telling the truth.

Bush, George W. – 8 years in office. 16 criminal indictments. 16 convictions. 9 prison sentences.

Clinton – 8 years in office. 2 criminal indictments. One conviction. One prison sentence. That’s right, nearly 8 years of investigations, tens of millions spent and 30 years of claiming them ‘the most corrupt ever’ and there was exactly one person convicted of a crime.

Bush, George H. W. – 4 years in office. One indictment. One conviction. One prison sentence.

Reagan – 8 years in office. 26 criminal indictments. 16 convictions. 8 prison sentences.

Carter – 4 years in office. One indictment. Zero convictions and zero prison sentences.

Ford – 4 years in office. One indictment and one conviction. One prison sentence.

Nixon – 6 years in office. 76 criminal indictments. 55 convictions. 15 prison sentences.

Johnson – 5 years in office. Zero indictments. Zero convictions. Zero prison sentences.

So, let’s see where that leaves us. In the last 53 years Democrats have been in office for 25 of those years while Republicans held it for 28. In their 25 years in office Democrats had a total of three Executive Branch officials indicted with one conviction and one prison sentence. That’s one whole executive branch official convicted of a crime in two and a half decades of Democrat leadership.

In the 28 years that Republicans have held office over the last 53 years they have had a total of (a drum roll would be more than appropriate) 120 criminal indictments of Executive Branch officials. 89 criminal convictions and 34 prison sentences handed down.

That’s more prison sentences than years in office since 1968 for Republicans.

If you want to count articles of impeachment as indictments (they aren’t really but we can count them as an action), both sides get one more. However, Clinton wasn’t found guilty while Nixon resigned and was pardoned by Ford, so those only serve to make Republicans look even worse.

With everything going on with Trump and his people right now, it’s a safe bet Republicans are gonna be padding their numbers a bit real soon. So let’s just go over the numbers one more time, shall we? 120 indictments for Republicans. 89 convictions and 34 prison sentences. Those aren’t ‘feelings’ or ‘alternate facts,’ those are simply the stats by the numbers. Republicans are, and have been for my entire lifetime, the most criminally corrupt party to hold the office of the presidency.

And so far, the Trump administration is following in the Republican tradition. As of November 2019, Trump has been office for 3 years. There have been 34 indictments, 7 guilty pleas, and 5 people sent to prison.

We watched a fun movie this evening: Bullet to The Head (2012), with Sylvester Stallone, Sung Kang, Sarah Shahi, and Jason Momoa. The villains in this movie, particularly Momoa, really made it worth watching. My only significant complaint about the Wonder Woman movie is that I wish it had better villains.

Speaking of the Wonder Woman movie, it’s really good, and you should see it. Gal Godot makes a great Wonder Woman, and the Amazonian cast was excellent. I also liked the small squad she was with in Belgium. I kind of wish there had been other women in that group, though (there easily could have been, without breaking historical authenticity). Baby steps, I guess. Overall, it was really quite good. I hope the Justice League movies follow this example.

“The human race is a remarkable creature, one with great potential, and I hope that ‘Star Trek’ has helped to show us what we can be if we believe in ourselves and our abilities.”
— Gene Roddenberry

From the files of… IT’S THE SAME GUY! We bring you the case of David Krumholtz and Oscar Isaac. We saw ONE of these men tonight playing a small part in a Seth Rogan comedy, This Is The End (2013). Which of them was it? YOU make the call!

We enjoyed Alien: Covenant. Horror movies should be rated “R” (if we must suffer under these infantile rating systems at all). I also learned several things from the Ridley Scott School Of Space Exploration.

• Embrace the weather! When landing on an alien planet, find the worst storm you can, and land in the middle of it. Why wait for the storm to end? You have a planet to explore!
• Take a walk! If there is a specific location on the alien world that you want to see, land five miles away from it, and walk there.
• Immerse yourself! Don’t use drones or remotely operated vehicles to explore. Pull on your space-galoshes and tromp around the alien biosphere.
• Breathe it in! Don’t wear a space helmet, or even a hard hat. Stop and smell the flowers (or alien fungus pods). Inhale deeply of the space exploration experience!

But we really did have fun. 🙂

Have I mentioned how much fun we had at Guardians Of The Galaxy 2? We really enjoyed it. I think it’s probably the funniest comedy I have seen in ages. Some of it was in-your-face and obvious, but some was pretty subtle, like how a character named Ego has life-size dioramas of scenes from his life in his house. Because of COURSE he does! I am laughing just thinking about it.

“And this was when I bought my first car. It was a blue 1973 Chevy Vega with a Kraco tape deck. The eject button was broken, so all it ever played was Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’ album.”