Sunday, September 20, 2020

Please Vote to End...

the New Dark Ages. 

Shortly after Black Tuesday (Election Day 2016) I posted  my political prophesies for the next four years. Read it here: 


Looking back, I realize I wrote the Polly Anna of prophesies. What has transpired since January 2017, has been far worse than my active imagination could foresee. Who knew a Demagogue could achieve the highest office in the land with little or no knowledge of the US Constitution, the Rule of Law or US/World History. On top of this Witch’s Brew, the Orange Man wasn’t imbued with a milligram of decency, curiosity or a desire to learn. 

Shameful.



So...this post isn’t for his titanium solid supporters/followers. (I’ll leave out Kool-Aid drinkers). The Blowhard Billionaire is giving you what you crave and desire: Do whatever you want whenever you want Anarchy, no reasonable gun control measures and multiple loaves of Wonder Bread White Supremacy. We’re all now occupying Merica the Land of the Badass. 




Kosher Note: To the 19-24% of my fellow “Members of the Tribe.” who supported this Goyim Gonif. If his extreme supporters attain more power, your vote will not assure you a “Get Out of the Next Holocaust For Free Pass.” Remember Charlottesville, VA, August 2017 and those “very fine people,” who looked and shouted like Neo-Nazis. 



Neither is this post for us Libtards who would be OK with a Lady Gaga/Dwayne Johnson Democratic ticket. Anyone (within reason) would be preferable to President P—-y Grabber and VP Spineless Homophobic. 

This post Is for the left-sided Moderates and the Undecided. This post is geared toward the Bernie Sanders supporters who sat on the sidelines on Black Tuesday, 2016.

If Merica was a true Democracy without the tired vestige of Slavery, (AKA The Electoral College and the Three/Fifths Compromise) here’s what wouldn’t have happened since January 2017.

There would be an intact Bear Ears and Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monuments. Right now their attempted evisceration is tied up in the Courts. (Like everything else the Scammer in Chief touches.) 

Take a look at the acres of public land and waters protected by recent U.S Presidents as national monuments. Preservation of Wild Lands is what Makes America Great. 
❌ Donald Trump: -5,156,814 acres
✔️ Barack Obama: 553,500,000 acres
✔️ George W. Bush: 214,800,000 acres
✔️ Bill Clinton: 5,700,000 acres
❌ George H.W. Bush: 0 acres
❌ Ronald Reagan: 0 acres
✔️ Jimmy Carter: 54,000,000 acres

Rush Limbaugh (Spit!) wouldn’t have received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

There wouldn’t have been rollbacks in Environmental Protection Laws. 

Merica wouldn’t have lost its privileged rank among our traditional Allies. Pipsqueak Putin and other dictators have replaced our former BFF’s. (Best Friends Forever). We are now a Rogue Nation. 

Wannabe GI Joe’s armed with assault weapons wouldn’t be intimidating ordinary citizens at the Michigan State Capital. I call these fellas The White Taliban.



Merica’s  budget deficit is soaring. (Remember back in the Good Ol’ Days when the Republican Party stood for fiscal responsibility?) There’s a reason the former slumlord filed for corporate bankruptcies six times.

There wouldn’t be a dismantling of our Federal Government by placing people in charge of agencies who are either ignorant or adversarial to the stated goals of the organization. IE: Betsy Devos of the Department of Education. William Perry Pendley acting head of the Bureau of Land Management. Dr. Ben “poverty is a state of mind” Carson as head of Housing and Urban Development.  Good Government works best with good leadership. Read Micheal Lewis’ “Fifth Risk.” It’s far worse than you can believe.

The US Cabinet and Presidential Advisors wouldn’t be a “Who’s Who“ of White Nationalists.  (Isn’t  White Nationalist easier on the ears than White Supremacist?) IE: Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and Jeff Sessions. Let’s not forget David Duke (the former Grand Wizard of the KKK) has given a Five White Star Approval Rating to the Make America White Again candidate.
Read “Rising Above the Hatred” about a Born Again Former White Nationalist.

There wouldn’t have been a “Muslim ban” on immigration. Approved by the SCOTUS in June 2018 (5-4 decision). 



Merica would still be a member of the Paris Climate Agreement. Greta Thunberg would’ve been invited to the White House instead of bullied by a Man Child on Twitter.

We wouldn’t have President America Last in paying taxes.




It’s 2020!  No conversation can last more than five minutes without mentioning Covid. Here we go:

Merica would still be a member of the World Health Organization. The US would be a Team Player on the World scene.

Merica would have had a Pandemic Response Team. The US would have been proactive instead of reactive in dealing with this mindless pathogen. The PRT was disbanded in a cost saving measure in 2018. Whoops! But on the bright side, we have a Great Wall of Racism ($11 Billion) and Space Farce (no typo) proposed 2021 budget of 15.4 billion. This makes me feel so proud. As of this posting, there’s close to 200,000 Americans dead from Covid. 

No one would have drank or injected Clorox or other disinfectants to kill Covid based on an really bad idea from a really bad man. https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/05/cdc-misusing-bleach-try-kill-coronavirus/




Merica wouldn’t have had a sitting President downplaying and fibbing about the deadly virus in order to avoid a pandemic panic. To me this claim would be hilarious if it weren’t for people getting sick and dying. Here’s the King of Crisis, Chaos and BS worried about causing an uproar. This Administration has been nothing more than fear and panic based. It’s the playbook of Demagogues. Keep ‘em scared, keep ‘em stupid. 



You get my drift. Now it’s time to remove the kid gloves. 

What transpired on Election Day 2016 was a blacklash. No typo. Too many Mericans couldn’t handle the reality of a Harvard Law School educated African-American occupying the WHITE House for eight years. What an “Audacity of Hope!” 

Unfortunately,  America’s old Civil War wounds are resistant to healing. BUT! The notion of White Makes Right isn’t limited to African Americans, although they bear the brunt of this malady.

Here’s a short list of glaring injustices produced in a Land where “all men are created equal.” 

1924: Native Americans finally granted citizenship, although some states wouldn’t allow these True Americans to vote until 1962.

1882: Chinese Exclusion Act which outlawed the immigration of all Chinese laborers. It took until 1943 to get this turd off the books. https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/chinese-exclusion-act-1882

FDR’s Executive Order 9066. The forced relocation of Japanese-Americans and people of Japanese descent during WW II.

Here’s one more double espresso eye opener. In 1935, the Nazis issued the Nuremberg Laws. For the most part, these injustices made it illegal to be Jewish in Germany. Do you know what the Nuremberg Laws Nazi Committee used as a template for these dehumanizing discriminations? 

I’ll let that sink in.

Left sided Moderates, Undecided and Bernie supporters, please do the right thing and vote.
Let’s  Make America Great and Un-Racist. 

Here’s a few chosen quotes from politicians. Separate the truth from the chaff.

RIP RBG. Your righteousness will be missed. 









From Trump’s “Art of the Deal.“










Tuesday, September 8, 2020

My Great (Basin) Escape...

Dateline: Durango, CO Labor Day Weekend 2019.

“Blap! Blap! Blap! was the overriding noise heard during last year’s “Four Corners Motorcycle Rally.” ThIs audio assault was interspersed with choruses of “Varoom! Varoom!” It was all so “in your face” and ears. The few times I ventured onto Main Avenue, I saw Bud Light bellies, gray ponytails, lots of leather and too-tight jeans. The men exuded machismo and testosterone. A few of the women did too. Overall the scene was as far from Woodstock as one could get. 

When the long heavy metal weekend was thankfully done, I vowed to never put myself through that again. So... I flew at the chance to attend the 2020 Steamboat Springs Labor Day Weekend Crane Festival. Birders are the antithesis of bikers. They whisper. Alas, in our Age of Covid, the Crane Festival was cancelled yet the Motorcycle Rally wasn’t. I suppose loud exhaust pipes provide an immunity to the deadly virus. Although it didn’t work that way in Sturgis, SD.



My search for an alternative getaway began with my well worn Road Atlas. I looked west and further west until I found what I was seeking. There off Nevada’s US 50 (AKA the Loneliness Road in Merica) lies Great Basin National Park. Like a brewpub on the edge of town, it’s a destination. No one will ever say, “I was passing through the almost ghost town of GarrIson, UT (where derelict tractors and jalopies are considered lawn ornaments), and decided to visit Nevada’s only National Park. Heck! I just happened to be in the neighborhood!”

I’ve been in GBNP about a half dozen times. In fact, I was one of its first official visitors when the 77,000 acre Park was established in 1986. 



By now maybe a few of you are wondering what’s the Great Basin? I’m glad you asked since curiosity is a desirable trait. First off, Merica’s Great Basin is a BIGLY region. It’s about 200,000 square miles encompassing most of Nevada, western Utah, and scads of California, Oregon and Wyoming. The Great Basin is a “black hole” to water. The liquid flows in but nary a drop flows towards an ocean. (Unless you count Los Angeles 19O5 pilfering of the Owens Valley water. Read about it: https://jeffsambur.blogspot.com/2014/08/saving-mono-lake.html )  The landscape is stark, harsh and out worldly in nature. Long dry valleys are punctuated by many disjointed mountain ranges. The Great Basin is home to the oldest trees in the World. (Read all about them ( https://jeffsambur.blogspot.com/2018/10/lessons-from-prometheus.html  ) BTW. The distances between settlements are vast, please come prepared. Cell phone coverage is flip a coin hit or miss too, so the Cavalry might not arrive in time to save the day. 



The scenery is not for everyone, but I savor the space and openness.

On the human side, The Basin served as a sanctuary to a Born in the USA religion. In 1847, Brigham Young brought his LDS disciples (Mormons) to the edge of the Great Salt Lake. There he proclaimed, “This is the place.” (Why? I have no idea). 



The Basin’s 200,000 square miles made convenient hiding places for Merica’s embarrassments too. When FDR penned Executive Order 9066 during WW II, 120,000 Japanese residents were rounded up and placed in what amounted to concentration camps minus the gas chambers. Most of those folks were American citizens. It’s a shameful part of our history. (Read all about it https://jeffsambur.blogspot.com/2018/03/manzanar-revisited.html  ) 



The Great Basin is the birthplace of the “Sagebrush Rebellion.” (Which is still being fought. IE: the Malheur National Wildlife Reserve stand-off of 2016.) Many of the Basins residents harbor deep anti-Govment convictions. In Burns, OR the US Forest Service vehicle compound is fenced in with concertina wire. While ambling through, I keep my Liberal “why can’t we all just get along?” opinions to myself.



OK! Time for me to step out of the classroom and back to my Great Basin escape! It’s been two years since my last visit. The one and only grocery store in nearby Baker, NV (Population 68, 2010 Census) has been shuttered. Rough looking homes with “For Sale” signs are more prevalent than in 2018. Honestly it would be a tough place to live or make a living. The closest “real” towns are Ely, NV (67 miles away) and Beaver, UT (over 100 miles). Like I said before, come prepared with lots of food and IPAs. Yet! All these inconveniences don’t seem to stop people from coming. (It’s the Fort Collins Syndrome (  https://jeffsambur.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-fort-collins-syndrome.html
once again. The NPS campgrounds were all full. However my neighbors weren’t  seeking life long buddies or conversation. They were practicing high grade social distancing. There wasn’t one “Mayor” personality amongst them.   https://jeffsambur.blogspot.com/2020/07/people-who-need-people-are-the.html
All in all, it was a mellow, relaxed trip and not once did I hear “Blap!Blap!Blap!” or “Varoom! Varoom.”

Shhhh!

Stay safe, sorta sane in these crazy times and healthy,
Cheers!
Jeff back in Durango 
I was supposed to stay out longer exploring the vastness, but smoke and the onset of below freezing temperatures chased me back.
It’s all so freaking 2020