Well, now, rules are alright if there's someone left to play the game.

 Okay, then. I'm going to get this done before tomorrow morning. There's just no excuse for that. It's going to be mostly filling up the white space, but you get what you pay for.

 It was a fair-to-middling week for the News, though whatever severe laziness - that is, worse than the baseline incredibly lazy - has started to affect that, too. Ah, well. Monday we looked at some of the legal peccadillos the state of Mississippi is responsible for, from a possibly catastrophic U.S. Supreme Court case deciding abortion to more rage at the state Supreme Court's ridiculous decision. Yes, I'm still pissed off about that. We looked at the ramped-up investigations into Trump's possibly criminal shenanigans Wednesday, and Friday was a touch on the Israeli/Palestinian ceasefire as well as the increasingly pitiful attempts by Trump cultists to keep the Big Lie alive.

 Now, another thing that brewed this week that I never had the time for was the business between the University of North Carolina and Nikole Hannah-Jones, the journalist responsible for putting the excellent 1619 Project together in 2019. Guess I'm giving away which side of that kerfuffle I'm on. Long story short, back at the end of April Hannah-Jones accepted a position at UNC and it wasn't too long before local conservatives went ape shit.

 Why? They hate the 1619 Project. Why? Well, I don't know, really, but their whining worked. Hannah-Jones still has a job there but they rescinded tenure. To put it in a nutshell, she now has to be more careful as to what she says without the protection of tenure, plus she knows conservatives are gunning for her and smell blood in the water.

 As far as I can really tell, no one objects to the actual facts presented in the Project. They object to the focus Hannah-Jones took. They said it put too much emphasis on the idea that the Revolutionary War was fought to preserve slavery and that slavery was a capitalist venture. One thing they objected to was the perception that chattel slavery was a uniquely American sin. Again, nothing particularly was counterfactual, they who objected were doing so because they had issues with the Project's focus.

 I'm no historian, granted, and I have only a layman's interest in early American history. I do know most of the stuff we were taught in school was biased bullshit from the get-go. The Founding Fathers could've eliminated slavery. They could've told the slave states to go screw. They could've set a sundown on the practice. They didn't. Instead, they made sure Black folks were counted as 3/5 a person in the census while not allowing them to vote, to say the least.

 It's known that Great Britain didn't care for the Colonial practice of slavery. Dictionary inventor Samuel Johnson said, with a cutting edge, that "the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes." That is a burn. Now whether or not the Revolutionary War was fought to preserve slavery in the Colonies is probably a bit much but it's not so crazy a stroke. Hell, Texas' independence came because folks there wanted to own slaves and the Mexicans thought that was just nasty.

 There's a regular stroke people who defend the Confederacy use and that is it wasn't founded with slavery in mind. That is, of course, horseshit. It's in the Constitution. The South pushed for more and more power in the area, even going so far as breaking other states' laws to retrieve runaway slaves.

 And it wasn't just enshrined in the government. The whole reason we have Southern Baptists in the first place because the rest of the church wanted to get rid of slavery. Indeed, there was a serious "ailment" called drapetomania. It was the affliction that made slaves run from their masters. Think about that. This was that world.

 Here's the cold, hard truth. America does not want to acknowledge its sins no more than most of us do. Slavery is probably the worst, next to the genocide of the American Indian, and nothing, nothing, in the 1619 Project didn't happen. Conservatives just don't like the focus, they say. But that's bullshit, y'all. They don't want to acknowledge the sin of slavery at all. It's rare the American History course in high school that gives it more than a passing mention, and the only time we hear of it being taught is when some goofball teacher assigns essays about the "good side" of slavery.

Thing is, though, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube and history won't be bulldozed over. That's why there's so much pearl-clutching over "woke." That's nothing more than the screams of folks who want to believe the fairy tale of history or ignore the changes in society. Conservatives, in other words.

Final thought. Interestingly, the people who fight hardest against what the 1619 Project represents are also the ones fighting hardest for state's making voting more difficult in the wake of the highest turnout of African American voters in modern history. Funny how that works out, ain't it? Have a nice weekend.

When the blues come knockin', you better open the door.

 Another day lost in the ozone so another night of filling the white space until I hit word count. That's just how it is. I'm not getting paid for this so I see no reason to do it differently.

 This has been a weird week. Whatever ennui has got me in its clutches isn't letting go. Again, I'm not depressed or blue or angry, just lazy and disinterested. I haven't been to the gym all week and I doubt I'll go tomorrow. I haven't written anything but this and the News for a couple of weeks, and more than once I've come close to giving myself a day off.

 I don't know. I do know I need to get on the road for a while or figure out a painless way to get my head bad or something. I really don't want to change anything significant but this probably isn't healthy. I play my games and pick my guitar and blow my harps and pull my squeezebox and read my books and take naps. Lots and lots of naps. Maybe the only thing I enjoy more than naps is that lucid-dreaming time just before you fall asleep or just after you wake up.

 I've been reading an interesting Weird Western called The Six-Gun Tarot by one R.S. Belcher. It's the first book in the Golgotha series and you can tell he's spending most of the book setting up the universe. It's fun and well-written, though, so I imagine I'll get around to the other three books eventually. He's throwing a lot of different things into the stew, from Lovecraftian horrors to ancient female assassins to skinwalkers, and I always like that sort of thing.

 I haven't been keeping up with the news coming out of Atlanta about the shootings, but there really doesn't seem to be much to figure out. The guy shot up a bunch of message parlors because he, like far too many of us, figured "Asian women at a massage parlor" equals "paying for a hand job." But it's not racist, apparently, because it's not out of bounds to assume all massage parlors that staff Asian women are thus. Naturally.

 There was a place in Athens, may still be there, I don't know, but it was supposed to be a tug-job shack. There was also supposed to be a place that a dude could buy time in a glass booth watching a girl dance or get nekkid or both, sort of like a peep show joint. Again, I don't know. I find strip clubs, just plain old strip clubs, boring. It's not a knock against sex work or sex workers, it's just never been my thing.

 It is distressing that's where our society's brain goes to without almost hesitation, not only that there's no other situation massage parlors could be but that it's somehow understandable or not as bad this dude decided he had to kill what he thought were sex workers. That it's not racist to assume Asian women are sex workers because what else could they be, says the Modern American Bluenose.

 Anyhow. I'm rambling and probably not making too much sense. It's depressing that so many people on Twitter mistake "being an asshole" with "being a clear, unemotional, cynical thinker." No, you're an asshole, and maybe if you keep having to explain that the awful thing you just said "was just a joke," perhaps you suck at telling jokes. Something to consider. Maybe stop being an asshole because life is short and you'd rather not have your epitaph be "man, fuck that guy."

 So that's that for now. As always, if something comes up, blah-de-blah-blah. That's enough for now, I reckon.

Someone fetch me my coat and hat and hand me my walkin' cane.

  I don't really have a whole lot today. My brain's lazy. I'm not blue or depressed or irritable or anything. I'm just more sluggish than usual. I've skipped the gym the last couple of days and spent most of it reading, ignoring the rest of the world.

 So, really, nothing terribly unusual, just more so. Luckily the News isn't suffering, as that sort of thing just comes naturally. I guess that's a holdover from the journalism days. Sometimes you have to fill the white space and it doesn't matter that the muse isn't there because the job needs to get done. It's similar to working on a kitchen line, doesn't stop so it doesn't matter, just get it done.

 Beyond that, I don't know. "Cancel culture" and Cardi B's naughty song is still running the discourse on Twitter and I still can't be bothered to give a shit. It's funny and almost a cliche how the caterwauling over that "W.A.P." tune really isn't all that much different from Elvis' hips or that evil jass music causing nice white girls to dance. Or the devil's tritone or how reading novels is ruining young people's minds.

 No shit, culture warriors used to lament people reading novels and even tried to pass it off as some sort of mental issue. They also used to bemoan people reading newspapers on the train in case you thought "them damn kids and their celly phones" is a new thing.

 Eight people in the Atlanta area were shot today, most of them Asian American women working at health spas and massage parlors. They've caught one dude for it. Nothing's been written in stone yet, but as it was a white guy I'm going to go ahead and assume it's something to do with the rise of anti-Asian violence in this country over the past year. If I'm wrong, don't worry, I will apologize to the mass murderer.

 This is because of "the China virus." This is because of "Kung flu." This is due to all you assholes and the former president trying to stir up a little racism and xenophobia in order to distract us from the complete failure to deal with COVID-19 in any sensible way.

 And, yes, this guy was taken in without being shot or pepper-sprayed or put in a chokehold or anything like that. And, yes, it's because he's a white dude and you are a goddamn fool and probably a racist if you want to argue otherwise. And, no, no one's saying he should've been shot dead on the spot or Dylan Roof or anything like that, it's just that it's pretty fucked up that we as a culture have decided that cops immediately shooting black people is the place to start.

 And, yes, a lot of this is on Trump. He encouraged it and inflamed it and never took the time to try to calm it down. There was no reason for it but he kept calling it the "China virus" and reminding everyone he calls it the "China virus." So fuck him and fuck anyone who voted for him and fuck anyone who thinks one thing didn't lead to another because they really don't care about people getting murdered by angry white dudes for whatever reason angry white dudes want to murder people.

 Okay. That's word count and if anything comes up, I'll add it. But for now, I'm sort of tired and, frankly, sluggish in the brain. So, yeah.

Now I can see I've been away too long.

 Man, Charley Pride died today. He was 86 and died from complications for COVID-19. So that's another one lost to a virus that conservatives are still calling a "hoax" or a "plan." Rotten bastards. Eighty-six is a respectable age, particularly for a country singer, and Charley was one of the best. I would've loved to hear a no-holds-bar interview or read a book about his experiences in country music and Nashville. Being one of the first Black superstars - and the only Black singer of any significance since DeFord Bailey since the '30s - is something else.

 For me, one of country music's biggest shames, maybe the biggest, is the racism inherent in it. The fans would eventually give in like they did with Charley, but they're never cool about it. The business end almost refuses to believe that a black person could even like country music, much less want to sing it. I hope this comes out properly, but I've exposed a lot of black people of all ages to country music and never once have they come away without digging at least one song.

 I didn't care for the tune so much but I'm glad Lil Nas X had such a hit with "Old Town Road." No doubt due to his initial popularity with Hootie & The Blowfish, Darius Rucker's consider a country music mainstay. That's good. It's different now and there are a lot more folks sneaking around the bottom of the mainstream and Americana charts, but I can't think of any. That's on me, though, but that's how it should be. Thanks, Charley. You were the greatest.

 Well. Moving on, let's lay down some links to this week's News. It was a pretty good week overall, but there was a lot of good news going down. Monday we touched on the thuggery Florida governor Ron DeSanti launched against whistleblower Rebekah Jones. Again, for all the hooting and hollering conservatives do about "tyrannical government" and "free speech," they're pretty damn silent on this issue.

 Wednesday we looked at that goofy as affidavit slimeball Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched to get the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn voting results in four states that weren't Texas. Over two-thirds of House Republicans signed on and 18 attorney generals from Trump-supporting states signed on, even though it was poorly argued and completely nonsensical. Naturally, as we saw Friday, the Court slapped it down, pretty much killing any chance Trump had of peacefully staying in power.

 And that should be that. Of course, the yay-hoos - made up of Alex Jones, the Proud Boys, and other groups of dingbats who're pissed off at reality - are having a "stop the steal" march in Washington, D.C. For the most part, they're being roundly and rightly mocked, but there is an air of unease. Jones, for example, is calling for President-Elect Joe Biden to be removed "one way or another." He's a clown but a lot of deluded assholes take him more seriously than anyone should.

 Still, we live in a world where someone shooting someone else because that person's cell phone went off in a theater is seen as perfectly logical. We live in a culture where people still think a kid who shot up a black church after praying with them is seen as understandable. We live in a culture where folks think a teenager going to another town to "protect" someone else's business and his wind up shooting three people is considered admirable.

 Don't get it twisted, The MAGA faithful are willing to do just about anything for Trump and all the results of the last month haven't made a dent. If someone disagrees with him or doesn't do automatically becomes part of the "Deep State" and in on the worldwide conspiracy to be mean to Trump. Even the three Supreme Court justices that he appointed are the Enemy.

 Will they be violent? I wouldn't be surprised. Highland Park, Kyle Rittenhouse, the Proud Boys, the El Paso shooting, and the pipe-bomb guy show they have plenty of folks who don't have a problem with spilling a little blood in the name of their New Messiah. I'm not saying they will, I'm just saying watch yourself, friends and neighbors.

 They consider you the Enemy. They see themselves as Warriors of God. They see Trump - Donald Trump, of all people - as worth killing you over. Don't trust in them just flapping their gums and swinging their dicks. Some of them are serious and the rest will be fine with it. Believe that.

Everything's the same. There ain't nothin' changed.

 I have some Actual Paying Work to get done tonight, so we're going to knock this out right quick. Fortunately, we've still got plenty of Kamala Harris stuff to talk about. Apparently, Wingnut Intelligencia went decided to go full-goose loony right out the gate.

 The funny thing is until Trump started out remaking himself on Twitter, the whole Birther thing was fairly fringe. It first popped up on some Z-list wingnut blog before Obama got the nomination. I don't think it was the same folks who claimed Michelle had said "Kill Whitey" on tape, but it may have. Anyhow, the Clinton people did some opposition result and it came up nothing - naturally - and stayed on the lunatic fringe until Trump used it to make himself a public figure.

 Twelve years later, and there are still plenty of conservatives who're convinced that not only is Barack Obama not a native-born citizen, but the Republican Party and every government in the entire world is in on the con. This is the level of folks we're dealing with here. Unfortunately, the lunatic fringe has become the GOP mainstream, so the last 12 or so hours have been them going apeshit over Kamala Harris' eligibility. And here's why that's not only stupid but racist.

 For one, there is absolutely no question that she is an American citizen. She was born in Oakland, CA, and according to the 14th Amendment, that's it. Her dad was from Jamaica and her mom was from India, but both were naturalized citizens when she was born. Again, the 14th Amendment is very clear on this. There is absolutely no argument about this. Racists have called her an "anchor baby," which just means that, yes, she is a citizen.

 The height of this horseshit came from a column in Newsweek by Chapman University law professor John Eastman. His column was pretty much the above paragraph, followed by several paragraphs of "but maybe that's not so". The saddest part of this is seeing how far the once very respectable name of Newsweek has fallen. They were sold by The Washington Post for a nickel ten years ago to some far-right Christian Dominionist group that isn't "The Family," apparently, and have been running columns by the likes of Charlie Kirk and this clown.

 The opinion section is run by some yo-yo named Josh Hammer, who's a member of the same bunch of right-wing extremists as Eastman, The Claremont Institute. That wasn't mentioned in the column, by the way. For that matter, neither was the little nugget of information that Eastman ran for the same Attorney General of California back in 2010 that Harris won and brought her to national prominence. He didn't make it out of the Republican primary - finished third, actually - but is it possible he's still got some sand in his ass about being beaten by a woman of color? It would be irresponsible to not speculate.

 Even in his column defending the original mess of bullshit, Hammer said the "controversy" wouldn't go away. Well, no shit, sleazeball, way to add fuel to the fire. Way to make it mainstream and give it credence. There was no question about this, especially considering Eastman wrote a piece a couple years ago defending (rightly) the eligibility of Ted Cruz. He was born in Canada but to an American citizen, for what it's worth.

 And this, friends and neighbors, is what the next 80-something days are going to be like. We're already seeing people profess confusion over whether Harris is "black" or "Indian" or if having a Jamaican father means she's "black" enough or "African American". Laura Ingraham, She-Wolf of the SS, said on her hate hour that Harris had an ancestor in Jamaica that was a slave owner. This was supposed to be a sick burn, despite Frau Laura not stopping to think just why a black woman might have a slave-owning ancestor.

 If nothing else, this affair exposes the rank dumbness of far too many white Americans. They can't handle mixed heritages or ethnicities that don't fall neatly into census boxes. They get a hard-on for Confederate statues while pretending the horrors of slavery didn't happen, much less still have after-effects in the present. They claim the Left is "obsessed" with race when they spread stupid, ignorant shit like this at the drop of the hat.

 Look, bubba. If you're questioning about Harris' citizenship, you're a racist. If you use the phrase "anchor baby," you're racist. If you're trying to parse whether she's black enough or Indian or whatever, you're a racist. Deal with it. This is your party now. Hell, Trump is trying to scare white suburbanites by telling them Corey Booker - the Wayne Brady of American politics - will come after them if Biden wins. Own it. Embrace it. No one is fooled into thinking otherwise.

 Hell, I just wonder how long it's going to be before Trump's dumbass says something about Harris' Indian heritage but he thinks it's American Indigenous rather than someone from India. You know it's coming. You could almost set your watch by it.

So long, it's been good to know you.

Well, I'm up. Let's do this, or at least get it started. You can't expect everything.

 For whatever reason, I'm not completely in the funk I was in this weekend. I'm not exactly dancing on tables, no, but that gloom & doom that was sitting on my head has more or less dissipated. I admit I've been bad about taking my meds as of late, both the ones for my head and the ones for my heart, and that's no doubt had an effect. Yes, I do know better, but I got in a downward spiral and it's sometimes hard to pull out. I still don't know exactly what caused the start, but that's part of the fun living with chronic persistent depression.

Again, something I don't usually do, but check out yesterday's News. I think it's a pretty righteous deep-ish dive into the whole "Washington Redskins are finally changing their obviously racist name". It's not as deep as some of my other dives, but there is some neat stuff there. The situation isn't as black and white as one might think, but all in all, this is a good thing and a positive step in this country no longer being run by complete bastards.

 Some are saying the name change isn't legit because it's not being done for the "right reasons". That is, instead of a genuine come to Jesus moment about how wrong it is to name a football team after a racial slur, Dan Snyder's doing it because the people that hold the purse strings are leaning on him. They recognize that the times, they are a-changin' and aren't up for a middling football team to cut into their profits.

 Well... so? If that's true, and it probably is, it makes the name change no less legit and important. Besides, and let's be honest here, America rarely does anything for the "right reasons". If that were the case, the Civil War would've never had to happen, much less the Civil Rights movement. Or seat belts or fair working hours or women's suffrage or, hell... I really can't think of anything we've ever done solely because it was the "right thing to do". Is there? I sometimes think the only thing we as a people do with vim and gusto is go to war and/or blow someone up.

 Which is a nice transition to today's inability to act like we're from somewhere. The COVID-19 epidemic is spirally more out of control to the point where Trump-friendly governors like Dan Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida are having to weigh the choice between upsetting The Boss by defying him and being disloyal with the possibility of killing off a large number of their state's citizens because they refuse to budge from reopening. Plus, the ding dongs who're convinced wearing masks is somehow unmanly or ungodly or the first step in total domination by the Illuminati are doubling down on their dumbness to the shock and amazement of absolutely nobody.

 I really can't get inside their heads, especially over the whole "they're trying to control us" stroke. Control us to do what? Consume and spend money we don't have on absolute useless junk that's designed to fall apart within five years? Work ourselves to death for not enough money at a job that will happily replace us at the drop of a hat for any reason at all, even if it's no reason? Support thieving authoritarians who scream bloody murder if they're the least bit criticized as they give even more of the pie to the richest one percent? Keep us scared and under the thumb of an out-of-control police force whose first inclination is to fill us full of lead and then maybe ask questions a couple years later? Put ourselves in harm's way and at the mercy of a deadly, still-unknown virus, threatening the lives of our loved ones, just so the richest of the rich can keep getting richer? Then, I say mission fucking accomplished, there.

 Anyhow. Today's is Woody Guthrie's 108th birthday. I've always been a great admirer of Woody's music and his place in American history. His stuff resonates maybe even more these days, and I'd be down with making "This Land Is Your Land" the National Anthem. Another favorite is "Do-Re-Me", so is "Hard Travelin'", and I've always enjoyed the dry humor behind "Talking Hard Work Blues". I've always dug his songs about historical figures, too, like "Jesse James" or "Pretty Boy Floyd". I don't know if there's a single song by Woody that sums it all up, but this one - "All You Fascists Bound To Lose" - at least gives a little hope in a dark world.

 Let's show 'em what some hillbilly boys can do, indeed.

Please don't tell me how the story ends.

 I don't know, man. I just don't know. It's going to be a long summer, I think.

 So, the protests that started in Minneapolis over the murder by police of George Floyd for spending a possibly fake $20 bill in a grocery store have spread across the country. Atlanta, Los Angeles, Memphis, Seattle, Louisville, Houston, hell, even Tupelo. They've gone as far and wide as Toronto, London and Berlin. That's right, our embarrassment of a law enforcement system is a world-wide shame.

 Before we get too deep into it, links from the News of the week:

Monday

Wednesday

Friday

 Monday is basically catching up after a rough personal weekend, and Wednesday's talking about how Bill Barr's Department of Justice is letting insider trader and Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler off the hook. Turns out having your husband - CEO of the New York Stock Exchange - make a million dollar contribution to the President's Super PAC goes a long, long way in the interest of justice. Imagine that.

 Friday, well... I don't want to say I'm proud of it, but I do think it's a good piece. It's about the details of the Floyd murder and how the protests are becoming what they are. I didn't like having to write it, but here we are. Still, whatever it is I do, it's a primo example of it.

 That all being said, the protests have definitely changed. I don't know if it's a natural evolution or if they've been hijacked by people and groups (organized or otherwise) who're taking advantage of the confusion and anger of Black America at yet another murder of another black person by the police to advance different agendas.

 All of that sounds bad. Maybe it is, I don't know. Anti-rent groups, anti-government groups, anarchist black bloc folks, those "Boogaloo" goobers, Proud Boys, soi-disant socialists, radicals of every stripe, and people who just like to see the things burned have been accused - credibly in some cases, others not so much - of escalating the protests into riots by giving the cops a reason to turn violent. And then there are credible accusations of the police meeting peaceful protests with pepper spray and batons right out of the gate. There's been plenty of accusations of cops doing some "agent provocateur" business, and in some cases, the cops' attempts to deny it have come off... well, let's just say they're not due the benefit of the doubt and leave it at that.

 Me, I don't know. Here on my hill in Peaceful Valley, 15 miles from the nearest gas station, it's hard to tell. I am a little surprised Tupelo held a rally, but the Lee County police's reputation with the Lee County African American population is spotty to say the least. This is Mississippi, after all, and old times here are not forgotten at all. I don't really do protests anymore, mainly because my social anxiety doesn't want to be around a large group of people having a good time, much less one telling the Man to eat shit and daring him to do something about it.

 I'm not proud of it, but there you go. I do what I can, even if it's just acting as a chronicler of the times. Something is in the air, though. I mentioned the "Boogaloo" thing earlier. From what I understood, it was an outgrowth of the whole Pepe/groyper/kekistan balderdash of disaffected right-wing white kids from the suburbs who think not getting laid because they have a lot of guns is enough to wage another Civil War.

 However, according to this elucidating thread by J.J. MacNab of George Washington University, it isn't that black and white. McNab studies anti-government extremism and has shown herself to not only be a reliable source of information but also one of the more insightful chroniclers of the world of sovereign citizens, anti-tax protesters and other assorted pissed off white dudes. Some Boogaloos support the police, some detest them. Some support the military, some detest it. Some support Trump, some loathe him. Some are explicitly white supremacist, some are explicitly racist. Age, economic status, race, all of that is secondary to an anger and resentment that's looking for an outlet. It's as varied and lacking in coherent ideology as anarchism is. Some explicitly call for violence, while some merely warn that it's inevitable.

 Me, I don't know. I will never understand why we all can't just be nice to each other and have a good time. Corporate America doesn't have to be a soulless, empty hole of mendacity and greed, and the government doesn't have to be crooked, small and greedy. The masters of the internet don't have to be craven bootlickers to power who sell their soul for 30 pieces of silver and stock options. The cops don't have to be violent and thuggish, and the military doesn't have to bully the rest of the world at the behest of business interests. We don't have to screw each other over and horde all we can just to survive or, if not that, feel worthy of respect and admiration.

 I've said before that as much interest as I have in anarchism, I've never really felt welcome by any of the various strains of thought. Being a weird old writer on a hill suits me more, in that if no one wants me around, I'm fine by myself. Maybe it isn't that drastic, but I'm too tired to care and have too much fun doing what I do to risk screwing it up. Part of me wishes I could be in the thick of things, as I wonder if this is how the air smelled in the late '60s in places like Chicago and Berkeley. Only now, you don't have to actually be in those cities to be a part of the ride. The wonders of modern technology have put us all on the front lines if we want to be there.

 Again, I don't know, man. It's all too big for me. And on top of that, we're still seeing an unchecked, raging epidemic that's killed 100,000 people and shows no signs of slowing down. Be nice to each other. Have a good time but not if it comes at the expense of someone else's enjoyment of life. Don't trust the government, the cops or even the media. Trust yourself and be able to make decisions.

 Above all, get a helmet and buckle in, neighbors. It's going to be a bumpy ride in this long, hot summer.

Praise the Lord and Pass the Tambourine.

 Weird. This is a new layout for the posting page. We'll see if it's just cosmetic, but I will say I don't like the left-hand side all the way up against the edge of the screen.

 Goddamn internet's still acting up. Had a guy come out and look at it, and while I hate to be mean, he was as useless as tits on a rooster. The replacement modem he gave me didn't work. Furthermore, I learned the local telephone company that provides the DSL - which, at its fastest clocks in around 12 Mbps at best - has to reuse and repair equipment. They only cover Itawamba County and only provide DSL to my area because someone with ties to the owner wanted it. They're putting in fiber-optic cable, but they're going to stop a good five miles from here. On the upside, Tombigbee Power is coming from the other direction with fiber optic, so hopefully by the end of the year, this will be a thing of the past.

 Okay. So much for that. I'd usually wait until the weekend to shine on the News at the WordPress site, but I think yesterday's monster is particularly noteworthy. Because it wound up being so long before all was said and done, I broke it up into two chunks each concentrating on one topic. First is a rundown of the frankly risible welfare scam currently afflicting Mississippi and further weakening Gov. Tate Reeves' stroke in Jackson. While poor folks in the poorest state in the union getting shafted once again by conservative politicians and crooked rich people isn't something to laugh at, this involved Christian wrestling organizers and that just cracks me up. Don't know why. Plus, it goes over all the other dirty deeds by Republicans currently befouling my fair home state.

 The second isn't much funny at all. It's concerning the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery, a black man, by two white men in a predominantly white neighborhood in Georgia. I think I did a particularly good bit of journalism, so please do read for the lowdown. In a nutshell, Arbery was running down a street in this neighborhood, and Gregory McMichael and his son Travis chased him down, tried to get him to stop and "talk" to them, got involved in a physical altercation with Arbery involving Travis McMichael and a shotgun when he didn't, three shots were fired and two hit Arbery in the chest to leave him dead in the street. The McMichaels claimed he fit the profile of someone they thought had been robbing different houses in the neighborhood and claimed to have seen him look into the window, alternately using "stand you ground" and "citizen's arrest" as justification. Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper, said her son was jogging and indeed had jogged through that neighborhood before.

 This all happened Feb. 23. The original prosecutor had to recuse herself because Gregory McMichael used to work as an investigator for her office. The second prosecutor had to recuse himself because his son worked in the first prosecutor's office. The second prosecutor was ready to drop the charges, citing Arbery's high school arrests for shoplifting and having a gun on school campus and claiming he had "mental issues," though without any proof. The case only really got due attention after a video of the shooting - filmed apparently by a friend of the McMichaels - surfaced on a Georgia radio station's website and became viral on social media earlier in the week. The case is now in the hands of a third prosecutor from a county 70 miles away and he's announced he intends to fully investigate the shooting and, if necessary, bring charges against the McMichaels.

 Now.

 As with every time this sort of thing happens, legal geniuses on Twitter and Facebook who claim they're either "waiting for all the facts" or that for some reason, shooting a man dead because you think he might be someone who might be a robber is okay because he reacted poorly to two white men with guns chasing him down is perfectly reasonable. Either way, they're infuriated if you call either the shooter or them racist, and bemoan how liberals have tarnished the word because blahdy-blah-blah. Seriously, you sort of wish they'd get a new tune.

 To refresh everyone, I am a white man who was raised and currently lives in the South. Mississippi, in fact. Furthermore, I've not only lived in Georgia but I've never lived anywhere other than the South, either in a rural area, a college town or New Orleans. What I'm saying is, I feel very confident on making a judgment as to whether anti-black racism played a part in this, as well as the overall white supremacist leanings of both Georgia and the United States in general. For the "all the facts" crowd, I think there are enough for me to render judgement without fear of being unfair.

 This is nothing but racism. Aside from the judges' bullshit - and the first judge made the news last year for aggressively prosecuting a black woman who voted in the wrong district because she was given wrong info - the shooting itself was racist. The McMichaels are racist. Now, they may not be cross-burning, fully paid up Klansman. They may have black friends. They still thought a black man running down their street was not only probably the guy who they think had been robbing the area, though even that said robber's black is an assumption, he was worth going after armed and intending to shoot, if necessary, to make a citizen's arrest. Even then, a citizen's arrest is only valid if one sees someone committing a crime or has personal knowledge of a crime committed. Records show 911 was called, but all the McMichaels did was say "There's a black guy running down the street" as justification. Indeed, even the claim that Arbery looked through the window is supposition on their part.

 Furthermore, if you're trying to find why the McMichaels were justified in chasing down and shooting a man for no discernible reason, you yourself are racist as hell, white robe in your closet or not. That's a lot of the problem with American racism. We've relegated it to toothless hillbillies and made it almost comical, when it's a real thing most People of Color deal with almost constantly. Particularly black people who, if you read your history with an honest eye, know we as a nation have royally fucked them other from the days of slavery until the days of James Byrd, and did so with vim and gusto. No, you don't have to drop n-bombs left and right and, no, you don't have to have a Rebel Flag hanging on your wall.

 But if you think it's okay that two random yo-yos shoot someone because they think he's a burglar because he's black and running, then yes, you are as racist the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Maybe even worse, because he's at least honest about it. We pretend anti-black racism ended with the Civil War or, if we're generous, Martin Luther King's work or, if we're stupid, Barack Obama's election to president. But that just ain't so. Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, John Crawfod III, Philandro Castile, and now Aumaud Arbery and Sean Reed are all dead because we're a racist culture that doesn't care if black people get killed and white people get away with it.

 Doesn't matter if they have a gun permit. Doesn't matter if they were minding their own business. Doesn't matter if they needed medical care. Doesn't matter if they were in their own home. We as a culture are fine with white people shooting black people and suffering no consequences for it. And if you try to justify the shootings, either as a natural part of police work or people who're defending themselves, you're saying you're fine with it, too. You can try to deny it and claim all the black friends/relatives/sex partners you want, it's still so.

 Some say racism, particularly anti-black racism, is America's Original Sin. That may be so, but a large part of it is the different rules we hold for white people and everyone else. Last week saw armed and masked "protesters," many kitted out in ill-fitting combat gear, demanding to be allowed in the Michigan capitol to scream in cops' faces about how unfair it was they couldn't get a haircut. The same sort of people regularly parade around with their high-powered weaponry, going to shopping centers or even gun control rallies. These same people protested a recent vote on a gun law in Virginia and were so unhinged they ran a pro-gun Libertarian state senator into protective custody because they didn't understand the bill being voted on.

 Not a one of 'em gets shot or even asked to maybe not go to Starbucks loaded for bear. Indeed, we're told to be thankful that these "protests" don't turn into violent blood baths, the implication that maybe we shouldn't push them too far. But gun control is another issue, and really doesn't concern the police nor the law enforcement system. Both are not only riddled with racists, active and passive, but both were in large part designed in such a way to keep black people "in their place". One of the largest gun bans ever passed was by Gov. Ronald Reagan in the '60s once Black Panthers started walking around strapped and loaded. Morons claim Jim Crow wouldn't have happened if black people had access to guns, conveniently ignoring the fact the reason they didn't is because the racist white power structure set the law up that way. Black people who couldn't find work were charged with vagrancy, making finding a good job to keep them occupied that much harder.

 This isn't just a conservative issue, either. Mainstream liberals regularly ignore the black female voting block that often decides elections and as often as not, soi-disant leftists dismiss the concerns of the black community as "identity politics" not as important as universal health care or American foreign policy. We say "pimp" and "ghetto" and "ratchet" and "sleep" and don't care how a black person might feel hearing us throw those words around to describe nothing important.

 When it comes to racism, especially against black people, we are all guilty, we are all culpable and we are all responsible for fixing it. Stop asking black folks to "meet you halfway" or to "understand where you're coming from". They don't owe you the benefit of the doubt. We done pissed that away, neighbors. Stop saying you don't see color or that you judge people by their merits. You do and you don't, and neither does anyone any good whatsoever.

 All right. I believe I've made my point and, no, I don't care if you disagree. You'll have to either learn to live with being wrong or maybe reassess your behavior and ideas. As for now, I think I'll take a nap and then play some Phantom Doctrine. Cold-war era spy in an XCOM-like set up. It's pretty decent and Steam is offering it for a killer price, 80% off. Otherwise, wash your hands, cover your face and stop being shitty to service industry workers who ask you to not cough on them.

Saturday, February 29, 2020

 Here's today's offering.

 We talk a bit about the South Carolina primary, the "Southern Strategy" and the flip-flop of the national parties, and I probably talk out of my ass about African Americans. Be gentle but enjoy.