My sins have overtaken me.

  We are in week two of the 2020 Presidential Election. It seems most of the votes have been counted and verified, and Joe Biden leads 290 to Trump's 214. He's also up by four to five million in the popular vote. Trump, most of the GOP, and the Base, however, insist that every weird conspiracy theory and silly misunderstanding of how presidential elections work is so real and Trump totally won, you guys.

 But this was to be expected, really, or should have been. If anyone thought they wouldn't do just this regardless of how the vote turned out has not been paying attention to anything. Trump could've lost the entire country apart from the Deep South, Montana and Idaho with a popular vote lead of a solid million and they'd still cry about voter fraud.

 This is an aspect of the GOP that Trump brought into sharp relief, the idea that whoever whines the loudest is the most right. To date, the only evidence of any sort of chicanery was the revelation that the Erie, PA, mail service worker that told cheap punk James O'Keefe's laughably named "Project Veritas" that his claims of vote tamperings were lies. He admitted that his signed affidavit was nothing but bullshit once federal investigators interviewed him.

 And that's where I stand on all of this, from Hunter Biden's laptop to any claims of voter chicanery. If it's coming from Republicans, it's all bullshit. It's up to them to prove to me otherwise. That's pretty much where I stood beforehand, but this is a fine example of why. Sort of like when I consider white people being racist, they're actually being racist and I'll apologize if I'm wrong. I rarely am, though. I've been taking notes for a long time.

 So much for all of that. I have no doubt Trump will never concede, and I for one hope he doesn't. I want to see him pulled out of the White House, screaming and crying, like William Macy at the end of Fargo. I am rarely this vociferous, much less this vindictive, about politicians, much less presidents. I'll make an exception here, though. Just like I would love to have seen that shoe connect with George W. Bush's head, I will get a massive chubby if Trump is reduced to a blubbering, squealing, snot-nosed mess by people who no longer have to say "yes, sir" to him. Again, though, the Base will see him as the Alpha Male, but what the hell. They're beyond redemption and should be treated as such.

 Now, moving on. I'm almost finished with the fourth book of the "Reality Bleed" series. I made a mistake when I mentioned these books earlier, neglecting co-author Justin M. Woodward along with J.Z. Foster. My mistake. Anyhow, I'm still enjoying it and still interested in seeing where it goes. It moves at a fast clip, though most of the books are less than 200 words. I don't have a problem with this. The plot stays lean and uncluttered without all the unnecessary fluffery that slows down most serial books. There's been a couple of auxiliary short stories to expand the world. It works.

 Unfortunately, I made a mistake and didn't check to see if the other issue with book serials, and that is the revelation that it isn't finished. Dammit. It's just halfway done. The fifth book comes at the end of the month and the series is planned until next August. That's a bone of contention for me. I want to finish the goddamn story once I start. This dates back to Timothy Zahn's first Star Wars books, the Thrawn Trilogy. I knocked out the first two in less than a week and then had to wait almost a year before the third and final book hit paperback. No offence, Mr. Zahn, but there's no reason a Star Wars serial should be a twenty-dollar hardback book.

  Anyhow. That's enough for now. I mentioned in this weekend's News that there might be changes since Trump won't be around to kick around in two months' time. Or it may not, since the GOP doesn't seem to show any signs of not being complete dirt.

I love being a free man.

 Google Chrome is acting screwy again. It's not wanting to load anything but the home page. Nothing times out, it just doesn't load. Microsoft Edge works as does iTunes so it's not a connectivity issue. Matter of fact, this just happens with my tower. My laptop's Chrome is running fine. It did this the other day and only kicked back into gear after putting to sleep and waking up the computer. Weird. I need to get this thing looked at.

 Anyhow. Pennsylvania got through counting all their votes and the state goes to Joe Biden, which means he is the 46th President of the United States of America. Or is projected to be so, anyway. Like we discussed yesterday, there's something called "faithless electors" to contend with but I doubt they'll matter much. Regardless, it doesn't become official until the electors cast their votes and that doesn't go down until December 15.

 Of course, Trump is still pitching his fits and promising to fight it out on the hill that he was robbed all summer. However, the general consensus apart from the hardcore faithful is "sit down and shut up, you had your shot and muffed it." There's a lot of celebrations going on across the country and a lot of Very Serious People admonishing liberals and leftists. Reach out and try to build bridges, they say. Listen to the Trumpers who's been saying "fuck your feelings, America hater" for the last four years and try to understand where they're coming from. Sure.

 Before we get too much further, let's put out this week's News links. Of course, a lot about Tuesday's election this week. Monday was the lead-in and Wednesday was the fallout. Friday was a look at how interesting and unique this year's race was rolling out. From a purely observer's standpoint, as someone who just gets off on how the Game is played, it was entertaining as hell. As someone who has to live in this country and deal with its fellow citizens, it was nerve wracking as a son of a bitch.

 And to paraphrase a Twitter acquaintance, I'm not going to feel completely at ease until Biden is sworn in and Trump is running from the Southern District of the State Court of New York. Now Chrome is working. Weird. Momma just got back with supper from Peppertown Restaurant and I've completely lost my train of thought on this. To sum up, I reckon, unless something weird happens, Joe Biden is our next President and Trump will spend the next two months being as big a pain in the ass as he can be, partly to stay out of jail, partly out of an attempt to scuttle the Democrats, and partly because he's a dick.

 Moving on, I started and finished a rather neat science fiction book by one J.Z. Foster titled Hell On Mars. In a nutshell, the near-future of an alternate universe where the Cold War took a different turn and hasn't ended sees mankind is exploring the solar system among heating international tensions. On Mars, a former Nazi rocket scientist inadvertently opens a door to another dimension and Lovecraftian nasties come through as they are wont to do. A maintenance crew is sent to figure out why the Martian space station is gone black and shit goes south, as one would expect.

 As I've often stated, I'm a sucker for a good Lovecraftian horror set up especially if ol' Henry Phillip has nothing to do with it. It's not a revelation that his prose is almost unreadable purple, his racism, sexism and xenophobia leeks into his stories far too easily. One gets tired of reading how a bourgeoisie white dude from the early 20th century is scared of white people having sex with black people.

 Mixing Lovecraft and space travel seems like a perfect fit. So much of space is unknown and even if there are no gibbering extra-dimensional horrors from the dawn of time, we're still an insignificant part of a much, much greater whole. Movies like Event Horizon are great but not too give too much away, it's still too centred around human conceptions of reality, especially Western conceptions. One of the great strengths of Lovecraft's universe is that humanity is not important at all in the grand scheme of things if we make any noise at all.

 It's a quick, fun little read and a completely believable representation of a very pedestrian support crew being thrown knee-deep into the heaviest of shit. It is part of a series, though, and one never likes that. This was a quick read and did just what a book serial is supposed to do - that is, leave jonesing for the next book - but there are eight books in the series. The last time I dug into one of those it got so tedious I can't remember anything but the barest details. So, we'll see.

 Speaking of Lovecraftian horrors, thanks to the beautiful people at Humble Bundle, I've been messing around with the most recent Lovecraft-inspired game, Call of Cthulhu by Focus Home Interactive. So far, good enough if nothing particularly interesting or unique. Grizzled private dick with a troubled past gets hired for a mysterious case and has to go to Innsmouth, Lovecraft's Deep One-controlled crumbling fishing town. It looks nice and has some good atmosphere, but it doesn't bring much to the table that Call Of Cthulhu: Dark Corners Of The Earth did in 2006. A little less buggy, a bit sharper designed, but nothing really new so far. Granted, the Innsmouth Deep Ones business is probably my least favorite part of the Cthulhu Mythos and I can't for the life of me understand why it turns so many folks on.

 And that's enough for now. It's been a long week and I, for one, am glad it's over. From what I'm seeing on the internet, a collective sigh of exhausted relief is going on around the country.

It's not what I did, it's what I didn't do.

  I have some Actual Paying Work to do tonight, so I'm going to blast through this and move on with my evening. We are still, still counting ballots from Tuesday's elections, particularly in four states. Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. Joe Biden has a fairly solid lead in Nevada while Trump is still squeaking it out in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

 Interestingly, Georgia's become the battleground. The last I heard, Trump was up by a slim 3,000 votes, which is pretty startling. Have no illusions about what you think of Atlanta because Georgia is a hard-core conservative state that's sending a Q-dingbat to the House of Representatives unchallenged. That being said, there's a lot of anger in the state about the shaft they got in 2018, particularly among African American voters.

 Either way, so long as Biden nails down Nevada, he's got this in the bag. From all appearances, it looks like he does, even though Trump's gone on TV this evening to complain about it and subtly threaten he'll use the Supreme Court to twist things his way. Apparently, most of the networks have switched away from the temper tantrum, which sort of fits in with my theory that The Powers That Be are sort of tired of Trump's bullshit and aren't giving him the benefit of the doubt. Apparently, even The New York Post is turning on him.

 Trump is trying to blame all this on Democrats, especially in Georgia where all the officials and the governor are Republicans. I'm sure that will play well with his Base who still don't really care to acknowledge reality if it's contra to Father Trump's wishes. I do wonder where this going to go, win or lose, with the Republican Party and how it relates to the base they've developed to act just like this for the past 30 years.

 I could see them quietly pretending the last four years didn't happen. Both Bushes' presidencies have gone down the memory hole and no one really pays any attention to Sarah Palin anymore. It's a question of what the Base will do, though. A plethora of Republicans either dumped Trump or they held their nose for the tax cuts and I figure they'll be fine pretending Trump was just an aberration.

 The Base, though, is another story. The people who have boat parades and block off highways and buy those pictures of Jesus hugging Trump, that kind. Those folks aren't going to be giving up their Second Savior anytime soon. Plus, the popularity and availability of social media have drawn them together in a way that just didn't exist with Bush Jr. or Palin.

 It was a common argument at the end of the Bush Jr. administration that there was a split coming in the Republican Party. It didn't happen, of course, and in fact, it could be argued that movements like the Tea Party made the GOP tighter than it had ever been. That same Tea Party mentality, though, led to an atmosphere that made a cheap authoritarian who banks of his celebrity for gravitas like Trump become inevitable.

 So where do they go from here? Will some full-on fascist loon like Tom Cotton has the charisma to bring in the people who just want tax cuts together with the people who want to see liberals made into soap? I wouldn't be surprised one way or another, but I doubt we'll see a massive split in the party anytime soon. Or at least after Trump's no longer a part of the scene. His weird kids do not have his swing and anyone who says otherwise is high on their own farts.

 Okay. That's word count. Supper's done and I have work to do. Relax, it'll all be over soon.

Election night hangover

 I’m going to kvetch and get it out of my system.

 The ballots aren’t all counted. Trump is declaring victory and insisting the count is stopped, but anyone who’s surprised by that hasn’t been paying attention the last four years. Biden has a slight lead in the electoral count, but as of right now, 71 votes are still up in the air. Pennsylvania seems to be the keystone and there have been shenanigans going on there all day. Some hinky shit has been going on in Georgia, which is also up in the air.

 Voting is stopped for the evening and will continue in the morning. Trump is going to try to stop it and Biden says he’s going to fight it. The impression I’m getting through Twitter is that a lot of folks in conservative media are of the opinion Trump went too far with this. I’m not sanguine, but the week will be one.

 Now, the reason I said that was to get it out of the way. If you've read this blog or my stuff over at The News at the WordPress site - or even the stuff at the Tumblr site - it'll come as no revelation that I don't have much for Trump, his cabinet, the GOP in general, and the entire conservative infrastructure, from the talking heads and media bloviators to the bagmen and movers behind the scene. I don't pretend to be unbiased or bipartisan in my loathing for them. I sincerely believe that the ills and evils in American society derive directly from the blackened heart of American Conservativism.

 I rarely discuss the Democratic Party because, frankly, they're rarely all that interesting. Whether it's old-timers or even the firebrand young guns in the Squad, most of their legislation is what they've been doing for as long as I've been paying attention to politics, just shit to keep the ship of state afloat without the plebes going after them with ropes and sharpened farm implements. You rarely see them doing things like taking away affordable health insurance or constitutionally define marriage to exclude gay people.

 It may take them forever to actually recognize the validity of gay marriage, but they'll get around to it when we make enough noise. LBJ didn't pass the Civil Rights Acts out of the goodness of his cholesterol-sodden heart, he did it because shit had gotten so fierce that there would be blood in the streets had he not. We're near that with the issue of police brutality and that's going to turn real ugly real soon unless something is done.

 But I'm getting off-topic. My problem right now is soi-disant leftists, socialists, communists, and basically anyone on the left side of the political spectrum who're taking tonight to point how ineffective the mainstream party is and how much better the leftists, socialists, communists, yadda yadda would do if they were given the reigns. And that's the problem.

 I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000. I wasn't crazy about Al Gore or Bill Clinton, for that matter, and living in Georgia, I figured the state would go for George W. Bush. I figured, hey, let's try to make things where a third party could get a little play. It came close and despite it all, I figured either Nader or the Green Party would do something with that passion and support.

 But they didn't. If drifted away like a fart in the wind and Bush readjusted the precedent. Kerry was a lightweight and Obama really, really didn't shake the tree that much. So when Bernie Sanders came along in 2016 and re-lit a bunch of fires, the soi-disant left had another chance to do something with that passion and energy even though they didn't get the nomination of the party they claimed were as bad as the Republicans.

 And we got Joe Biden, who's fairly pedestrian and dull at best. Why? Because the Sanders people didn't even bother to try to expand their base beyond what they already had in hand when they actively didn't try to push away anyone who didn't give a knee. And even after Biden won the nomination and Sanders came into work with him, they really didn't do anything with the passion and energy but piss and moan they're not getting the wheel.

 Okay, I'm tired, so let's wrap this up. "Matt," I hear you say, "you criticize conservatives of all stripes and the soi-disant left. Where do you stand?" I don't know if I can give you a name, per se, but one of the reasons I appreciate anarchism as a political philosophy is I really don't have to align myself with one political ideology or another. Don't get it twisted, I am far, far to the left. Whatever the question or stance, I take the left of it.

 Defund and rebuild the police. Decriminalize all drugs. Deform and rebuild the prison system, making private prisons illegal. Tax the living shit out of anyone who pulls down more than six figures a year for whatever reason they make it, especially unearned income. Slash military funding and use that money for infrastructure, nationalized health care, universal basic income, and housing for everyone that wants it.

 Hierarchy of any kind is suspect and there is no reason to believe that communism would be any better (or worse) for human happiness than capitalism. Authority demands respect and respect must be earned. There is no viable argument that a person must submit to someone in authority, be they a cop or your boss, just because that's "how it's done." Life shouldn't be too expensive for anyone to enjoy.

 One of the biggest failures of COVID-19 is we're a culture that allows people who are multi-billionaires to get richer doing absolutely nothing and they give absolutely nothing back than the crumbs they were giving in the first place. The richest 10 people in America made over $10 trillion off investments and the stock market during the first six months of the pandemic while 30-plus million lost their jobs.

 This is different from politics. Politics, the man said, is the art of controlling your environment. It's also been compared to sausage in that you really don't want to see how it's put together. Whatever the Trump and Biden people do throughout the week, however the Democrats and Republicans react to how the Senate and House shake out, all that's politics. Just like they need to give up waiting on a Savior, people need to wrap their heads around the simple fact that even in the state the size of Mississippi - a little over two million people - you're not to satisfy everyone much less get everyone in lockstep.

 Anyhow. I'm wandering again and my head's starting to hurt. Might have to break into that Klonopin before the week's out. I'll say it again, this is no longer my world. I'm 45, unmarried with no kids. I doubt I'll ever change that and really, really don't want to. I've got maybe 30 years on this planet before my body gives out. I have land and guns, own my house and unless something drastic happens, I'm debt-free. I leave nothing behind me but this land. So I'm just going to keep enjoying myself and trying to make people's days a little more pleasant than it might have been.

 If this culture is what y'all want for your future and the future of your offspring, go nuts. I'm out in the boonies and medical marijuana has passed in Mississippi. Otherwise, I'm just here taking notes.

If you live on the road, there's a new highway code.

  Well, today's the day. It's go time. If you haven't voted yet, you've still got a couple of hours, depending on where you live. It's 5:30 p.m. Country Standard Time here at Enon Holler World Headquarters and the reports from the local precinct tell of an excellent turnout. When I voted around 2:30 p.m., I was the 100th voter out of something like 215 registered. Usually we don't cross the hundred mark until after everyone gets off work.

 Now, of course, this probably means a lot of Trump votes coming out of Southwest Itawamba County, but I don't think that's surprising no one. Between here and Peppertown, there may be a dozen Trump signs but I haven't seen any for Biden. We do have some heavy things on the ballot this time around apart from the very contentious Presidential election. Mike Espy is getting a rematch against Cindy Hyde-Smith, and that has certainly stirred up a lot of folks. They're either fine with Hyde-Smith being nothing more than a boot-licking Trump rubber stamp with no soul or they're not.

 We've also got some heavy ballot measures, three as a matter of fact. One is finalizing the newly chosen Mississippi State flag, replacing the one from 1889 that was designed to give the finger to African Americans. Another one was to change the way the governor is elected, which was set up as another finger to newly christened black voters. I'm sort of shocked at how many folks didn't know the latter was necessary, that a candidate had to win on votes and counties, but it really hasn't been an issue in over 20 years.

 Finally, we're voting on whether or not to allow medical marijuana in the state of Mississippi. Sort of. You have to vote yes or no for the whole thing in general, and then there are two initiatives to choose from. Initiative 65 is actually designed to be effecting and help folks while 65A is designed to, at best, make sure the state legislature profits from the initiative if not outright scuttle it.

 I don't know how anything will work out nor will I make any projections. I am not confident in how anything will end nor am I confident either the Trump people (and their lickspittles in the Senate or on the Supreme Court) or the Mississippi state legislature will play fair. Anyone who still gives the Republican Party or conservatives, in general, the benefit of the doubt has no one to blame but themselves.

 In any event, I haven't decided how I'm going to spend the rest of the evening. I may play some games, I may do some reading, or I may do some writing. Sort of depends on what sort of headache Otis insists on being. Either way, I'm going to try to avoid election news as much as possible because I do not need that kind of stress.

 We've had a remarkable turnout all over the country, not just here in Cardsville. Long lines in other Mississippi towns and in polling places across the country despite an extremely healthy turnout for early voting. If nothing else, hopefully people will get how important turnout is. I firmly believe if voting turnout had been this strong for the last couple of decades, well, we wouldn't be dealing with a petulant third-rate game show host-slash-cult leader for the biggest marks on the planet in the White House.

 And most reports say voting has gone rather smoothly despite big fears on both sides. Republicans are, of course, pushing false information about voter shenanigans, but official sources say all is cool. They need something to whine about to be happy anyway, so that's nice for them. Some places are extending hours because of hiccups here and there, and everyone should realize that if they are in line when the polls close, they're still allowed to cast a ballot.

 Supper's about done. So unless something interesting pops up, we'll leave this here. I'll check back in tomorrow. Everyone cross your fingers.

I ain't good lookin', baby, but I'm some woman's sweet angel child.

  Three more days. It's 6:30 p.m. Country Standard Time here at Enon Holler World Headquarters, and in less than 75 hours all the mess will be over. More likely than not, though, a whole new mess will kick into gear. Before we get started with anything, though, let's bring y'all up to date with this week's News.

  It was a pretty good week overall, three short entries that get the job done, and don't waste your time. We touch on Amy Coney-Barrett's appointment to the Supreme Court Monday and the preparation for Hurricane Zeta Wednesday. Friday looked at the result of said hurricane and some other odds and ends.

 We also saw the slow crumbling of the Hunter Biden laptop story through the week, from a weak piece of bullshit to begin the week to Tucker Carlson himself saying it's not worth the effort for the end. It was interesting to watch it in real-time. Never really holding up for anyone except for those who really wanted it to, it nevertheless failed to catch on with a political media that not only loves bullshit scandals but was thirsty for an election horse race. Nobody wanted to touch it, and once The Wall Street Journal and Fox News turned it down, it was pretty much done. It didn't help that apparently the source for the claims, Rudy Giuliani, actively worked against giving out more info or access to the laptops he claims were slam dunks.

 I hate to play into the delusions of the Trump Base, but I do think The Powers That Be has had it with Trump shitting the bed so thoroughly and aren't inclined to put their thumb on the scale for him. That doesn't mean they're rooting for Joe Biden - doesn't mean they aren't either, I just don't know - and at the risk of going full looney conspiracy theory, I do think there are enough people with enough swing to nudge it one way or another. If that makes sense, and it probably doesn't. I'll get it into some other time. It isn't quite the "five men in the back room with the big cigars" but it's close. Anyhow.

 Hey, it's Halloween. We've probably got all the trick-or-treaters we'll see this year, meaning my cousin's kids and their neighbor. That's fine. I've never been crazy about Halloween as an adult and even less so since I quit drinking. Oddly enough, the last two towns I lived in - Athens, GA, and New Orleans - were big Halloween towns. Even so, the entertainment I got from walking around and seeing people in their costumes wore thin as I got older.

 I've been reading Edward M. Erdelac's Merkabah Rider: High Planes Drifter this week and thoroughly enjoying it. Long story short, it's a collection of novels about a drifter in the West dealing with supernatural horrors but with the gimmick of Judaic mysticism. It's the first in a series of four collections telling an overall story, and I'll probably pick up the other books. I've written a little more in my own Weird Westerns. Another set of character sketches instead of an actual story. I have a plot forming but it's pretty thin.

 I've always had a fascination with religious mysticism. Though I'm no expert, it's always been interesting that Judaism is more accepting of its more esoteric aspects than the other Abrahamic religion. I have no idea why. Christianity has actively tried to suppress its mystic side, though I think Islam is cooler with Sufism. Eastern religions are a whole different kettle of fish, particularly Taoism. Granted, most of what I know about Taoist mysticism comes from the Mr. Vampire movies, but there you go.

 Finally, two excellent CreativeForge Games titles, Hard West and Phantom Doctrine are on sale at Steam this weekend. The former for $1.99 and the latter for $7.99. Both are XCOM-style turn-based strategies, but Hard West has a Weird Western shtick while Phantom Doctrine takes an approach that resembles Len Deighton-style '80s spy thrillers. The TBS aspect of the latter takes a back seat to the spy stuff, so you'll spend more time gathering evidence and making connections, but it's still a blast. I really dig both of them, though the XCOM games are still superior. However, you can't go wrong at those prices, so dig 'em.

 Support indie gaming, enjoy your Halloween and relax this weekend. Monday and Tuesday are going to be a mess.

You know how people are. They can't stand to see you be exactly who you are.

 Six more days. Less than a week. Is it getting dumber? Yes, yes it is.

 I think it's time I do a little more explaining on how I approach the News. For what it's worth, for the Gibberish - this here - I do whatever I damn well please. Anyhow, when picking sources for links, my only rule is if it's a local story, try to use a local link. Otherwise, go nuts. There are a couple of far-right sources I won't mess with because anything useful they might provide will come from someone not skirting libel laws. But as far as it goes, Fox News or The Wall Street Journal is just as good as MSNBC or The Washington Post to make my point, and there's little intrinsic difference in The Daily Beast or Politico.

 I trust you to wade through whatever bias there is because as I've said a number of times before, every news source has a bias and anyone that claims not to is lying. Impartiality is a goal to strive for, sure, but in the real world, it's almost impossible out of stock quotes or box scores. That's just how it is. Even at the very bottom, every news source is a business trying to make rent, so there'll be bias there. And hell, that's probably the strongest bias there is.

 The same goes for partisanship. Back in the day when your average city had half-a-dozen daily publications, most of them wore their partisanship on their sleeves. The election of a particularly controversial official might spawn three or four new rags all by itself. So long as they acknowledge the partisanship - or at least wear it close enough to their sleeve that it makes no difference - I have no problem with it. Again, I trust my readers to be able to see past the partisanship. News doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's not like the speed of light.

 By that same token, I don't put much stock in names. When I was a baby journalist, sure, there were reporters I took far too seriously. And, sure, there are folks I like to read because they're good writers. But most of the journalists I follow because of the beat they're on, like David Neiwert on white nationalism or Greg Palast on voting rights. The rest? Well, your heroes will always, always let you down usually through no fault of their own, just because they're human. I mean, I admit to my admiration of Hunter Thompson's skill as a wordsmith and the way he approached the job, but I know enough to not take him too seriously.

 Now, I said all that to say all this. The big kerfuffle on Twitter today - or one of them anyway - was the split between Glenn Greenwald and the publication he helped to found, The Intercept. Apparently, it's over the mag's disinclination to take the Hunter Biden laptop pseudo-story as given while like the overall narrative that sometimes the big-time media's selectiveness in what it chooses to cover is to the detriment of the public. Here's The Intercept's take and since I can't find Greenwald's take, here's one from fellow traveler Matt Taibbi.

 Before we get too deep in the weeds here, I have to say I really don't give much of a shit about Glenn Greenwald. He's won a Pulitzer, good for him. I read his blog back during the Iraq War days on a fairly regular basis and he was good on that beat. I cooled towards him as the decade wore on, mainly because he had such a hard-on for Ron Paul, a man I've considered a pseudo-fascist con man and just another political dirtbag for going on 20 years. If that upsets you, tough titty, it's not up for debate.

 I dropped out of things halfway through the Obama administration, so by the time I got back to politics in general and Twitter in specific, around 2016 or so, Greenwald for all intents and purposes seems to have morphed completely into a tweet-feud champion. I think the first time he drifted back across my radar was his first appearance on Tucker Carlson's show. Carlson is not only a complete joke and a rotten human being, he's a white supremacist in the "lapdog for billionaires" mode. It was said Greenwald only went on his show because no one else would take him, but that doesn't speak highly. Again, this is not up for debate, and you're welcome to cry more about it.

 So I am obviously not "unbiased" about this and I'm not claiming to be. But I'm not expressing the outright glee a lot of folks on Twitter are at this news. Again, I really don't think the particulars are important much less interesting, the whos and the whats. What I do think is worth discussing is Greenwald's claim he's being censored, and that is incredibly stupid.

 What he's being is "edited" and that's part of the gig. It's being said he had a clause that no one could edit his stuff and that is, well, fucking stupid and disastrous for a writer. Really, for any creative endeavor, not having someone in the process with the swing to say "hey, let's think about this first" runs the danger of choking to death on the smell of your own farts. Doug Sahm's best music was made when Jerry Wexler was at the helm, for example.

 I won't lie, when I was a baby journalist I hated being edited for content. Especially when I wasn't involved in the process, it used to drive me nuts. But the older and wiser Matt understands that having an editor helps make things better and more focused. God knows, this stuff tends to ramble on and would probably be better with someone reading behind me.

 If that's true, though, it's pretty sad as Greenwald is 53. Furthermore, any claims of him being "censored" when by all appearances he quit on his own does little more than damage actual claims of real censorship, like when a state government prohibits its staff from talking about climate change or the federal government makes demands on Voice of America to pump up the Trump Administration.

 Best I can gather, Glenn wasn't forced out. He quit and the folks at The Intercept told him not to let the door hit him in the ass. Sort of like when Bari Weiss quit The New York Times op-ed staff in a huff, no one was all that bothered she wouldn't be in the office Monday morning. There's undoubtedly a lot of office politics going on here that's finally bubbling up, but I don't think it's really important and I really don't care.

 What this all boils down to is whatever censorship is, it is emphatically not "people disagreeing with you." Because you decide to quit a gig that won't let you do whatever the hell you want without any criticism, it doesn't mean you were "forced out." And people who disagree with aren't necessarily doing it because they're "neoliberal shills," they may simply think you've shat the bed once too often to be taken seriously anymore. Just how it goes, buckaroo.

 That's all of that, I think. Billy Joe Shaver died this week and that's a bummer. Johnny Bush died last week and that's a bummer. Otis is going through his nightly freak out and it's making my blood pressure spike. Where it goes from there, nobody knows.

Call it what you want to. I call it quits.

  Seven more days. One more week. Things are heating up. The laptop story seems to have evaporated like a fart in the breeze and now Trump is threatening to withhold COVID-19 aid to states that don't for him. Brett "Kegger" Kavanaugh wrote on a ruling basically saying if, given the chance, he's giving the election to Trump. Amy Coney-Barrett... just Amy Coney-Barrett. Interesting times, they say.

 But you know what? I am not inclined to write about politics or the election here today. I figure the next seven days of News is going to be a booger, so let's have some fun.

 I do want to mention that the Gulf Coast is looking at yet another hurricane, this one called Zeta. Once this makes landfall, we'll tie 2005 for most hurricanes hitting dirt in a year. And the season still has another month to go. The entire New Orleans metro area is under watch, but this one seems to be heading towards the Mississippi coast. It's projected to hit some Wednesday afternoon or evening, so if you're in the path batten down the hatches and don't screw around.

 And as much as I hate to bring it up, I need to mention two more police-related killings that really didn't seem necessary. One was of Wallace Walter Jr. in Philadelphia yesterday. From all reports, Walter had "mental issues" according to his father and his mother was trying to defuse the situation. He did have a knife and police shot him full of at least 10 holes. It was not necessary.

 Another shooting in Waukegan, Illinois, last Tuesday left one dead and one survivor accusing the police of actively letting someone bleed out on the street. This one is a bit more confusing. Police rolled up on Marcellis Stinette and Tafara Williams. A chase and shooting followed though it isn't clear why, and the police unloaded on the couple. Williams claims she heard Stinette still breathing when the cops put a blanket over him and they wanted both to bleed out in the street. The cops are saying she fled from a traffic cop and her people are saying that isn't so. The cop who did the killing did so because he feared for his safety and was later fired. No gun was found.

 Just putting it out there. Neither seems to be as cut-and-dried as Botham Jean or Breonna Taylor but both seem like they could've been resolved without anyone being shot. I'll say it again, white folks who are fine with this going down are basically saying their fine with living in a country where authority can do this to anyone with impunity. And it's true, they're really fine with it, even if they or their loved ones are caught in the crossfire. Authoritarian regimes don't exist without at least a portion of the population willing to have a society that keeps its thumb on its citizens.

 Whoops! Is this fun? Hell, I don't know, it's just what's coming out. What else can we do? Nothing really spectacular has grabbed me lately. I think I've about got Momma sold on Initiative 65, which would legalize medical marijuana in Mississippi. At the very least, she won't vote for the GOP legislature's clumsy attempt to crater it, Initiative 65A. So, baby steps. We've already discussed how we're going to handle me smoking it, so I think that's a good sign.

 That's pretty much word count and I don't know if I have anything else. Perhaps I'll come back to it later in the evening. Otherwise, watch the winds, kids.

Border to border and ocean to ocean, I still look for her everyplace.

 I really need to write these when they come. I was full of piss & vinegar about a subject yesterday morning and equally full about an entirely different one last night. Now, I can't remember the former and have gone back to "that's why you ignore them" on the former. I mean, Blogger allows you to schedule posts and keep some in the draft section. Ah, well.

 While everything was of modest length and nothing was too in-depth, the News was pretty good this week, I think. Three days of pretty decent old-school blogging on the news of the time. Monday was a look into how the Mississippi government's ignoring of the COVID issue is biting us in the ass this week and Wednesday was how the federal government continues to bumble along. We gave the final presidential debate a quick look Friday, plus a little on how Trump really, really needs to stop bringing up China. Like I said, nothing special but well done all around.

 I was busy on Tumblr this week, writing a lot of posts for my Jukebox In The Mind series. That's what I'm calling it, by the way. I wrote about AC\DC, Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions, Waylon Jennings, Tommy Cash, and finally a little bit on how the Kipsigis people of Kenya thought Jimmie Rodgers sounded like a man-antelope hybrid. I thought it was kind of neat and writing about music is always fun, as is writing about the ties that bind humanity that we may not see. When I can write about both, boy, that is killer diller.

 Anyhow, the thing I got wound up about yesterday that I can remember is this latest round of dumbassery with The New York Times. Long story short, a reporter named Elaina Plott wrote a story about how white suburbanites around Atlanta were still in the Trump congregation despite the rest of Georgia leaning towards Joe Biden. Okay, fair enough, but nothing worth a story in the Times. If anyone's spent any time in some of the suburbs around Atlanta this comes as no shock at all. That's Trump's base, right there.

 The problem, though, was her two sources were supposedly average white folks from the Atlanta suburbs and turned out to be hip-deep in GOP national politics. One was a former state Republican strategist and the other was the son of Trump's ambassador to Luxembourg. Even worse, this wasn't the first time that Plott had used dubious sources for a fluff piece on the Trump Administration nor the first time those two folks were used as sources claimed to be "jes' plain folk." Salena Zito has made a career out of doing just this.

 Anyhow, she gets called out, the Times does a half-ass explanation, she gives a half-ass apology, and so-called "professional journalists" who bring down big money writing dull stories about the story they want American politics to go on a crusade to defend her honor against us filthy plebes who dared criticize of one of theirs. That was last night's political Twitter.

 It's almost comical how predictable this sort of thing is. You can set your watch to something like this every time the consumers criticize the big-time media. And they don't seem to get how bad it makes them look. Even worse, Plott describes herself as a "recovering (Ann) Coulter fangirl" from high school and since she's in her late 20s, that means she was a fan of Coulter after that nasty thing said we need to forcible convert the Muslim world to Christianity. And this was at least a good decade after anyone with a functioning soul acknowledged Ann Coulter's role as a public asshole.

 So, that happened, and once again, the big-time press defended someone who carries water for a guy who calls them "the enemy of the people." He stirs up his faithful to hate them like the press is the devil, and there have already been threats against the media for being mean to Trump. What's worse is how hard the rest of the big-time press gets severely knotted up when they get the least bit of criticism or appropriation. Every time.

 You won't find a bigger defender of journalism than me, but things like this happen and it's understandable why people rail against the "mainstream media." It's a fine example of why local journalism and alternative publications should be supported and the first go-to for your news. Don't follow The Washington Post or CNN for what goes on in Portland when the Rose City has several fine local news sources and The Portland Mercury is a great example of a community-focused alt-weekly.

 As always, all of my journalism experience is with local papers and alt-weeklies, so grain of salt. It's a drag, though, that good sources on Washington, D.C., politics are thin on the ground. Not sources that reporter on the news about American politics, we've got plenty of those. But straight news reporting that doesn't eventually get sucked into the Mainstream Morass.

 But little will be done about it at a level that could actually fix anything and we'll probably play the whole passion play all over again sooner than later. So I wonder if it's worth getting too bent out of shape over. In any event, I finished Jennifer Government last night and I recommend it. I don't want to give anything away, so all I'll say is everyone who thinks they've got what will keep everyone else under their thumb really needs to study up on their chaos theory when setting up "the perfect society."

 You can't predict people. They will always surprise you, sometimes painfully. And that's all I have to say about that.

What a faithful memory. Never lets me down.

  It never fails. We're done with supper and Otis is having his evening fit. I wish I could figure out what's causing this and what I could do to stop it. It's stressful as hell on me, I can only imagine what's going through his little skull. Momma thinks he's doing the doggy version of sundowning. Maybe he is, I don't know.

 Ah, well. We've got the third and final presidential debate tonight and the big questions are "how often will Trump try to bring up Biden's son" and "how long before Trump pitches a fit and walks out." He did the latter in an interview with 60 Minutes' Leslie Stahl. It opened with him begging for easy questions and ended with him stalking out in a massive pout. There will be a mute button tonight, so I bet the whole shebang doesn't last 20 minutes.

 Of course, the Base is seeing this as another example of 11th-dimensional chess by their Savior in his never-ending crusade of owning the libs. They're also getting gooey over some former work buddy of the Younger Biden's and some of the weirdest pictures of paperwork that shows either someone getting blessed or how the timelines just don't match up. And Trump's eldest failson is trying to wrap a pedo sex ring in there somehow.

 I do wonder, though, if all of the initial claims - that Hunter somehow got money illegally from China and cut his old man in on it - will anyone really care? One of the things the newest revelation "shows" is that this all went down after Biden was out of office. Regardless, the whole deal isn't getting much traction outside of Trump loyalists and a mess of voting's been done. It's hard to judge outside my bubble, but I'm thinking everyone has about had it with Trump, his administration, and his rotten kids. Everyone who doesn't already think he's the new Jesus, naturally.

 I'm going to throw this out. Biden wins and somehow there's something to this laptop business. He resigns and Kamala Harris becomes president. Wouldn't that be a helluva note? It makes as much sense as anything else that's happened this year.

 So, anyhow. Enough of all that. I am done with this election even if I'm terrified of the outcome. I'm ready for it to end but I have no doubt the GOP will do their damnedest to shaft the democratic process so rich old men will get just that much richer. But I'm tired of talking about it, especially since I'll probably have to write about the ding-dong debates tomorrow.

 I've been reading Jennifer Government by Max Barry. I bought it years ago - initially mistaking it for Charlie Stross' Jennifer Morgue - but just now got around to reading it. I'm about halfway through and, so far, I'm digging it. In a nutshell, in the near future, everything is run by corporations. In fact, whoever you work for is your identity. If you worked for Wal-Mart, your last name would be "Wal-Mart." Furthermore, two megacorporations are constantly at war, and the government's collapsed to the point where all it does is punish people who break the rules. However, they have neither the funding nor the chops to do much of anything. The police are a private company and their biggest competitor is the NRA, which has a private army.

 It's all pretty good, and for whatever it's worth, it's somewhat how I see society working out if we don't manage to spoil the planet to the point of being uninhabitable. Transmetropolitan and Neuromancer sort of swing along the same lines. It's interesting that most of your classic science fiction saw some sort of repressive government and totally missed the ascendency of the corporation. So did Marx, kind of.

 I've got nothing terribly interesting to add, so I think I'll get on. I've been dipping back into Freelancer, Elite: Dangerous, and Tachyon: The Fringe. I don't know if that means anything but they're fun.