You Asked For it, Charlie Brown!

I have to confess I was well and truly gob smacked when I awoke this morning to the horrific news that the Democrats in the United States Senate had once again folded and are prepared to capitulate to the demands of the Republicans in order to reopen the government. These are the same Republicans who had their asses handed to them in the election, not yet a week old. In the wake of this wave of national support and strength from the Democratic base and beyond, despite collective suffering, the leadership took it upon themselves to demonstrate their inherent weakness and cowardice. They were given a winning hand by the people, and they decided nonetheless to fold their cards.  

And the fig leaf they've been "promised" by a party more than willing to let hungry citizens starve and sick citizens die, by this pack of jackals, is that there will be a vote on the Affordable Care Act subsidies sometime next month. And there won't be a vote, and if there is the Democrats will lose it. Lucy's football will be snatched away yet again, and the Democrats will end up on their asses yet again, sputtering about a lack of fair play. The utter foolishness of this strategy is jaw dropping. I've already sent in my message to Chuck Shumer's office that he must step down as Minority Leader of the Senate. He has failed in his job to lead yet again, and he must be replaced by someone willing to hold the line. That most likely will require an election. Expect to see new faces in the Democratic Party as the current crop will either need to step up their game or they will be replaced. 

And don't complain when it happens, you asked for it, Charlie Brown! 

Rip Off

THREE MARCHES In THREE DAYS!

For those who can make it, there are three marches scheduled for this weekend beginning on FRIDAY. Each march has a distinct purpose. The FIRST is to gather and support VETERANS who have been like all Americans abandoned by this anti-democratic administration. The 50501 outfit has joined in on his major event. The SECOND is on SATURDAY and focuses attention on the mainstream media which as abandoned its role as the "Fourth Estate". The THIRD is on SUNDAY and final march goes to the heart of the problem, the Heritage Foundation, the creators of Project 2025, the document which is designed to demolish the nation as we know it. 

For more check out the VLADIMIR LOVES DONALD website spearheaded by comedian and social activist Cliff Cash. Sadly, I cannot go. The recent protest in my state capitol proved that marching will not be the way I can effectively help the cause, much to my regret. With a knee needing replacement and neuropathy wreaking havoc with my feet, I'm breaking down at the worst possible time. But I can call Congress all day long and I can stuff envelopes when and where needed. To quote the sage Red Green (a Canadian by the way) "We're all in this together."

Normally I'd keep the politics off this site, and I know I don't have a giant audience by any means, but I want this to reach as many people as possible. 

Rip Off

Join The Rebellion!

Today I reopen The Days of our Anti-Lives Blog as a meager but clear sign that the resistance to the regime of Donald Trump, Elon Musk and their cronies is well underway. It will once again a place for political speech, especially that which reveals the depredations or the current administration of the United States. The United States of America is not just its elected officials but rather its people. After the tragic election of the current Felon-in-Chief, people were stunned, but that has worn off. The administration has moved with lightning speed to initiate its breakdown of the federal government, thinking that it robs the people of their access to any way to retaliate, but it has instead only spurred that same retaliation. 

A small thing is to show the economic might of the people. Today was just the first of many days in which we refuse to buy. The people of the United States fuel the most powerful consumer engine on the planet and today we agree to turn that engine off for a spell. 

Check the sidebar for a link. 

More to come. 

Rip Off 

U.S.A. R.I.P.

I really, really hope I'm wrong. 

But is it over for the nigh two hundred-and-fifty-year-old experiment in democracy dubbed the United States of America?  The Republicans long ago sold their withered souls in worship of their criminal cult leader. But that seems just fine with a majority of Americans, or at least a sufficient number to win the Electoral College and now possibly the popular vote as well. The Supreme Court seems to have been bought off by jokers with cavernous pockets. We now stand on the precipice of a theocracy with its help. 

The ugly truth is the ultra-rich have purchased their pet politicians who only pretend to pay lip service to the citizens, who are likely sooner than later to be robbed of even the illusion of a proper democracy in order that even more wealth can be transferred from a future serf class into the pockets of preening neo-nobility. We will be allowed enough pocket money to fulfill our roles as consumers, but little else beyond that. I really hope those saps who bought the Republican lies like being peasants. 

As the planet Earth is puking up humanity in general, we seem to not want to even go out with some dignity. We shall live a world thoroughly fracked but without enough potable water. The rising temps and the rising oceans will slowly but surely change the world in the centuries to come. Will man survive? Earth doesn't care. The Solar System cares even less. And the Universe doesn't even know of our existence. 

I am an old man and while sad and more than a wee bit bitter to see this day arrive, I know that my children will really be the ones to suffer. All of this so a handful of fat old white men can cling to their power a few hours longer. The very order of the world, one fought for generations ago by regular men and women who sacrificed it all, will be transformed for the worse. Ironically, my daughter who teaches history is scheduled to teach about "The Shot Heard Around the World" today. The irony drips she said, as he teaches about the beginning of the nation on possibly the very day it began its ending. 

The United States of America 1776-2024?

I really, really hope I'm wrong.  

Rip Off 

A Look Back!

As we prepare to say farewell to 2022 it's a propitious time to look back and see how the last annum actually performed. Compared to the previous two years overwhelmed with anxiety and dread, I have to give it high marks. The Covid pandemic has been beaten back to some degree thanks to vaccines and while still a worry it's not causing the kind of disruption that it did for quite a while. 

On the political front the dullard who once occupied the highest seat in my land has dwindled and I hope is about to go into the West. November's elections showed that his ability to pull forward his acolytes is minimal at best and the party which sold its soul to him is now at long last prepared to move on. They are far worse for the experience, having for the most part continuing to offer support to the lout even when he sought to overthrow the very government he pretended to lead. Hopefully he can go back to bilking his willing slaves and let the public business get on with itself. And it has been doing decently under our current leader, a quiet but effective president who actually does things instead of only ever just braying on about them. 

Women are the worse for this year though thanks to a Supreme Court that now seeks to make them second class citizens without full command over their own bodies. The constant irony of halfwits clucking about being "forced" to wear a mask while simultaneously applauding a decision which forces women to carry a pregnancy to term despite their own choice is grating to say the least. But the upside is that such decisions create opportunities for long-lasting change in laws across the land which will be immune to interference from church-going judges. It is in the hands of the people to rescue themselves from this assault. 

Here at the blog, I've been pretty happy with the results this last year. I wrapped a number of projects which I'd been meaning to get to for some years such as the Tarzan comic strips and movies last summer, and I was happy to at long last get a chance to read the DC Shazam series and report on it. I'm proud of the posts which related to the Holocaust and the book We Spoke Out. With Nazis putting themselves unashamedly forward in the public debate it's wise to keep such vigils. Last February's look at "Blaxploitation" was fun and informative. And the recent foray into martial arts masters such as Thunderbolt, Iron Fist, and Judomaster was a lot of fun indeed.  I've really enjoyed catching up on my Alan Moore readings and there is more (pun intended) of that come in the new year. 

I'm a retired bloke now with lots of time on my hands which makes me happy that I've held onto so much of the reading and viewing I've enjoyed over the decades. Now I have time to enjoy it all again at my leisure and with greater insight and even sometimes greater wisdom. That said, I continue to buy arguably too much new material. I need to explore the existing stacks and I make a vow to do just that. 

So, let's press ahead into the new year (as if we had a choice) and hope that things will get even better. It's not the things which creep behind us that will get us, it's what lies ahead.

Happy New Year by the way! Be safe out there. 

Rip Off 

A Day In The After-Life - The Real America!

Will the real America please stand up! That old TV show What's My Line ? always revealed the true identity of their peculiar contestant with these words. Now today the real America can reveal itself, a nation built on comity and civility. "Liberty" which is much bandied about is crucial, but it is not the sole virtue in America. Rather we are a nation not only built on individual freedom, but on common cause and civil discourse. Without these latter virtues the "liberty" the "Yahoos" bellow about becomes a yoke around another's neck as they live in fear of expressing themselves and making their wishes known on that most important of days - election day. The results of a fair election must be honored by all the citizens or no citizen's liberty is protected. Losers can always cry foul, but they are required to prove their case and not just assert the charge or just cry. This past presidential election has been arguably the most broadly and repeatedly adjudicated in American history with court after court and state after state affirming and reaffirming the results. But some choose not to believe the simple facts, rather they choose to live in a fantasy world where only their desires are always paramount and other Americans (particularly those of other ethnicities) ought to put up with that "separate but equal" environment. 

To celebrate the day I have been saving my all-time favorite Captain America story to read. It's written by Steve Englehart and penciled by Sal Buscema with inkers Jim Mooney, John Verpoorten and Judomaster's own Frank McLaughlin on the inks. It's the story of another "Captain America" who lived in a time when paranoia was rampant and dread of the foreign commonplace. This throwback Cap comes back to make this fictional America great again, but finds standing in his way the one true Captain America, the hero who fought for freedom and always sought to find a better way to do just that. First those vintage Stan Lee (actual writer is unrecorded but surely Stan had something to do with them) and Johnny Romita stories about that other Captain America and then the real Cap. Alongside his partner the Falcon, Cap fends off this threat from a misbegotten  past seeking to find purchase in the now.  

By the end of the important day the real America will have reasserted itself. And hopefully this rueful period will descend into the maw of history as just another hideous moment in a greater and nobler saga. 

Rip Off

A Day In The Anti-Life - Nice Work Cap!

All this talk about Captain America and his creators Jack Kirby and Joe Simon lit my fire to once again savor those classic Golden Age tales of the raucous Steve Rogers and his sidekick Bucky Barnes kicking the crap out of Nazis and other assorted hate-mongers across the World War II globe. For any fool to conflate the patriotic colors which adorn Cap's costume with the vile slagheap words and murderous actions of Adolph Hitler is the height of absurdity. These comics are not without philosophical flaw, but loving the race-baiting Jew-hating rhetoric of the Third Reich was not among them. Many will find fault with some ethnic presentations, typical in the heat of the day but egregious now for sure. But even so no one can say that these two men -- Kirby and Simon -- had anything good to suggest about history's most famous mass murderer. To suggest otherwise, either by direct comment or implication when manufacturing symbols, is the kind of thing which must be called out and rejected out of hand. 

This is some fine reading from a time not as long ago as we sometimes think. As these days fall from living memory we need to more than ever make certain that the ideas of madmen like Hitler and his cronies find no purchase in a country dedicated to the equality of all men and women. There's no space for saying otherwise and anyone who does properly deserves a clock on the chin, as Cap so eloquently demonstrated on his very first comic book cover appearance. As Bucky says in just the second of two word balloons to appear on these ten covers by the Simon and Kirby team -- "Nice Work Cap!"

Rip Off

A Day In The Anti-Life - Righteous Indignation!

On this most propitious of weeks we look forward to the day when at long last the United States will once again be led by people of character. It has been a dark four years under the heel of the worst President in American history, a man of questionable sanity who saw in these United States not a nation of the people, but a land of peasants meant to do his bidding and a territory to be washed of those unfortunates who did not by happenchance of birth to fit his idea of what an American should look like. The damage done will take time (years and perhaps decades) to fix, and I can only hope that it can be repaired. The new President has a might challenge before him, to deal with a pandemic which has to this point only been given limited focus by an administration that challenged its very existence. But I feel better now than I have in many moons about the state of the nation. 

The message below from Neal Kirby has been making the rounds on this here internet since that terrible day two weeks ago. I felt his response to those seditious acts would make a nice installment for the "A Day In The Anti-Life" posts here at the Dojo. The very title of these messages were inspired by Jack Kirby's Fourth World and formula for slavery sought by Darkseid so he could rule a world of lackeys, so it seem fitting indeed that his son get a word or two in. Take a look. 

Rip Off

 “My father, Jack Kirby, along with his partner Joe Simon, created Captain America in 1941. Perhaps the most iconic symbol of patriotism since the ‘Spirit of 1776,’ Captain America has stood as a symbol and protector of our democracy and the rule of law for the past 79 years. he was created by two Jewish guys from New York who hated Nazis and hated bullies. Captain America stood up for the underdog, and, as the story was written, even before he gained his strength and prowess from Army Scientists, always stood for what was righteous, and never backed down.”

“At 72, I have a fairly visit personal memory of every political and cultural upheaval since Castro’s revolution in the mid – 1950’s. Add to that my father’s stories, and I could probably paint a picture of the battlefields of northern France surrounding the city of Metz in WWII as well. However, the events that transpired at our nations’ Capitol on Jan. 6, an insurrection inspired and fomented by our own president, will be the event that haunts me forever.”

“While watching one of the horrific videos of the storming of the Capitol, I thought I noticed someone in a Trump/Capt. America t-shirt! I was appalled and mortified. I believe I even caught a quick glance of someone with a Captain America shield. A quick Google search turned up Trump as Captain America on T-shirts, posters, even a flag! These images are disgusting and disgraceful. Captain America is the absolute antithesis of Donald Trump. Where Captain America is selfless, Trump is self-serving. Where Captain America fights for our country and democracy, Trump fights for personal power and autocracy. Where Captain America stands with the common man, Trump stands with the powerful and privileged. Where Captain America is courageous, Trump is a coward. Captain America and Trump couldn’t be more different.”

“My father, Jack Kirby, and Joe Simon, the creators of Captain America and WWII veterans, would be absolutely sickened by these images. These images are an insult to both their memories.

"If Donald Trump had the qualities and character of Captain America, the White House would be a shining symbol of truth and integrity, not a festering cesspool of lies and hypocrisy. Several of our presidents held the same values as Captain America. Donald Trump is not one of them.”

A Day In The Anti-Life - The Happiness Package!

It was a surreal sight yesterday to watch hooligans scrambling across my nation's capitol. These were dull-witted mopes fueled by inchoate anger looking to get over on those they imagined had slighted them, though they were incapable of expressing just exactly what injustice they had been dealt. Simply put their chosen leader, a disreputable and cowardly bully of a man had lost a fair and carefully monitored election, but because that outcome didn't comport with the heated mythology that had been stoked within them, they sought some sort of redress. They attacked their imagined enemies and their own leadership, they stumbled into a property owned by us all and set about strutting and hopping about like clowns waiting to hear the call for the next act. And just as quickly as that it was clear they had lost their own way, there was no goal, no agenda item to tick off. Just angry self-loathing dullards screaming into the air and shoving camera men around for no particular purpose.

These cretins had got hold of what the "King" dubbed the "Happiness Package", a deceptive grim promise along with a lurid hat that made you part of a mob which sought to be "great again" or some other illusion, but which was lacking in depth of reason and thought and reflection which would actually allow sowing the seeds for such benefits. I admit it was somewhat comforting to see the rich and powerful who have been stoking this fire were startled when the flames licked at their own toes and they backed away, sheltering in place while violence cascaded through the nation's hallways. It was left to our new leader, a man of reason and compassion to label these actions sedition and I cannot disagree. There will be more of this for a short time sadly, but hopefully this is the bursting of an ugly blister full of resentment and hate, and now that it has broken and spewed forth its rancor for all to see the normal order of society can reassert itself. Then the inevitable march forward can begin again after this season of reactionary fervor has passed at long last. 

Rip Off 

In The Blacklight Of The Day

This country and the world is about to shuffle off the hate-filled leadership of a man from an olden time, a man ruled by bitter old-fashioned ideas about ethnicity and race. I choose this remarkable day to be hopeful and I am looking forward to a time of better and more civil conversations, tempered with a mutual respect for the ideas, experiences, and fundamental humanity of others. I might be foolish to imagine that the nation and the world will reset so quickly, but I wish it to be so and today I extend an offer to you to join me in my hope for a kinder and gentler world. I of course am not the only one to hope for such, not now and not in the past. Here is a sermon by Martin Luther King Jr. that says it all so much better than I am able to. I am always struck when I listen or read his words at the way he is able to conjoin the immediate concerns of a particular time decades gone with ongoing concerns of a future he would not live to see. 

Be safe out there amigos. As Red Green so wisely says "We're all in this together." 

Rip Off

A Day In The Anti-Life - Who Gets The Bird?

It's "Turkey Day" here in these United States, and a Thanksgiving like this we have not seen in my lifetime that's for sure. This holiday has traditionally been all about gathering together and enjoying a sumptuous repast and recognizing the joys that life can bring. 

This year though there ought not be large gatherings and while the food might be as good, the recognition of joy might be a bit more difficult to accomplish over Skype. These United States of mine have responded to the worldwide pandemic of Covid-19 with as little success as can be measured anywhere on the globe, and we have only our own stupidity and implacable ignorance to blame.

Half the country is fighting mightily to stave off the plague and eventually return life to normal order as soon as possible. The other half apparently couldn't wait for that reality, and were in fact encouraged by lamebrained leaders to go forth and frolic in a fantasy as if no disease afflicted the land. On all levels of government we have witnessed hapless dopes hand out off-the-cuff medical advice which has done all the harm you might well imagine such nitwit pronouncements to manufacture. 

At the top of the heap of miscreants who have wrought this disaster is our very own Numbskull-in-Chief. He's mishandled the pandemic from the get-go and now that he imagines it's no longer his "responsibility" (as if he ever did imagine it was) he's revving up the mishandling. Equally slow at the switch are the Republicans who hold sway in the Senate and have blocked relief for the regular Jane and Joe of America and instead in "Grand Old Party" fashion focused almost exclusively on business interests, their real constituents. 

Our new President has already begun to offer true leadership, but he will be blocked again and again in order for the GOP to gain a rhetorical advantage come next election. The realities of the disease are of little or almost no concern it seems despite Covid's insidious habit of afflicting the rich and powerful and stupid as well as the common bloke. True "Democracy" in action at last sadly. 

Who gets the bird today? Donald Trump and a more eloquent salute to his criminal leadership I cannot imagine. To the GOP I say lead, follow or get off the stage! Enjoy your turkey friends and pass me some virtual cranberries please.

Rip Off