Comic Relief in the Time of Trump. Hat Tip to Gabriel García Márquez.- UPDATE

UPDATE: Thank you, President Biden for ending forever War. I can take a deep breath now. We can have nice things now. We must clean house now. Remember this: -------------> ----------->

Published 12-26-17

READY FOR WAR? 

I am ready for and need some comic relief. Maybe you do too? So I posted the funny stuff first.

If you have reached peak rage too, just skip the editorial shyte below and stick with the laughs. I am getting so scared and angry that I am too distressed to read more than a few pages at a time.

The first video is just evil. I do not find the pelvic thrust convincing. But videos are like assholes; everybody has one.

US military leaders have sent an ominous warning to American troops to be prepared, saying the enemy is ‘watching you.’ General Robert Neller pointed to the near future possibility of Russia and the Pacific theatre being the next major areas of conflict and said a “big ass fight” was on the way, reports military.com.
Read more by Patrick Knox... 

When have we not been at war since Vietnam? War is why we cannot have CHIPS, speed controls on our trains, decent airports, bridges that are not going to fall any minute.

From Eugene Victor Debs, American Socialist Party candidate for POTUS:

As we have said, the bankers are for bullets—for the fool patriots that enlist at paupers' wages to stop the bullets, while the bankers clip coupons, boost food prices, increase dividends, and pile up millions and billions for themselves. Say, Mr. Workingman, suppose you have sense enough to be as patriotic as the banker, but not a bit more so. When you see the bankers on the firing line with guns in their hands ready to stop bullets as well as start them, then it is time enough for you to be seized with the patriotic itch and have yourself shot into a crazy-quilt for their profit and glory. Don't you take a fit and rush to the front until you see them there. They own the country and if they don't set the example of fighting for it, why should you?
As quoted in "American State Trials: A Collection of the Important and Interesting Criminal Trials which Have Taken Place in the United States, from the Beginning of Our Government to the Present Day", Vol. 13, 1921

Where is Benjamin Franklin when you need to talk to him? - UPDATE

I wrote this in 2017. Now this article from Wapo gives more substance to my alarm:

The U.S. says humans will always be in control of AI weapons. But the age of autonomous war is already here.

The Pentagon says a ban on AI weapons isn’t necessary. But missiles, guns and drones that think for themselves are already killing people in combat, and have been for years.\

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote. - Benjamin Franklin 

Congress is not at all interested in what the American people want. And they have no plans to give us anything we want. That becomes more obvious by the day and the event. 

And the government (yours and mine) is working on robot soldiers to kill a lot of us when:

Scott Olsen - Getty Images

1. climate change produces riots because of famine and liack of potable water everywhere or 
2. there is an "American Spring." Mass civil rights demonstrations and food riots are so messy. 

Governments are planning to kill you and me only if necessary, of course. And they have the machines to do us now in great numbers. Right now. And they are working on improving them. And they have secret courts.

So stop with the "lizard people" and "they coming to take our guns, RickyBoy" conspiracy theories and wake up. Just because you are paranoid does not mean no one is following you. Wake the fuck up, World. We all have a big problem. A problem not amenable to retaliatory force. And we cannot solve it if we do not help each other.


UPDATE: Nobody read this much. Most folks probably dismissed my concern because they think I am a crackpot.

I am a crackpot. So the only argument I can extend is continuing to provide information. Talk me down. I am scared.

Progress on developing armed robot soldiers is continuing. As this article from WIRED asserts. I do not know what Franklin's concept of "well-armed" could be when we are confronted with such golems.

Killer Robots With Automatic Rifles Could Be on the Battlefield in 5 Years

• BY ALLEN MCDUFFEE
 

“They’re not just tools, but members of the squad. That’s the goal,” Lt. Col. Willie Smith, chief of Unmanned Ground Vehicles at Fort Benning told Computerworld. “A robot becoming a member of the squad, we see that as a matter of training.”

Darpa Robotics Challenge

UPDATE 2: 

Military Researchers Develop Corpse-Eating Robots

• BY JOHN SCOTT LEWINSKI  
 

From the file marked “Evidently, many scientists have never seen even one scary sci-fi movie”: The Defense Department is funding research into battlefield robots that power themselves by eating human corpses. What could possibly go wrong?

UPDATE 3:
If the Atlantic is writing about robots, robot weaponry and other golems, I guess I am not crazy paranoid after all.

If the Robots Kill Us, It's Because It's Their Job

Don't kill us, guys.

PATRICK TUCKER

UPDATE 4:
Is this a mosquito? 

No. It's an insect spy drone for urban areas, already in production, funded by the US Government. It can be remotely controlled and is equipped with a camera and a microphone. It can land on you, and it may have the potential to take a DNA sample or leave RFID tracking nanotechnology on your skin. It can fly through an open window, or it can attach to your clothing until you take it in your home. 

Read more At http://www.snopes.com/photos/technology/insectdrone.asp#pQ6D2qlAHs9yrW0o.99

Primer on Propaganda for RESISTERS. Go HIGH; Stay HIGH.

This comment appeared on social media. It speaks to my condition.

By bootster

That's what I am hearing as well. The GOP are trying to make it impossible to believe what you read anymore, but the truth is, it's only to be highly doubted by when they are the authors. They are still not convincing the Democrats to do the same thing.

I have noticed a lot of folks on here wanting the Democrats to get to the level of the GOP. That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, but it's only because those particular individuals have the capacity to want to "fight like that".

If I wanted to, I could get down and dirty and start to throw insults at the people who attack me on here, but that's what they want. They want to get me to start the personal attacks so they can point to them, smearing me.

The GOP are doing the same thing. They want the Democrats to go full down and dirty so they can use actual clips of them saying things that no politician should ever say, and then it's GAME OVER for the Democrats.

The GOP OWN the "media", and they would come out the winners if the Democrats ever started to get into the gutter with them. The trolls on here thought that they could ban me by now by luring me into a tit for tat personal assault fest, and that would be a sure way to get myself banned, and that's what they want.

The same tactic is being used by the GOP. They are trying to piss off the liberals to come out and start looking like the cretins that THEY are, but it's not working. We just won't go there. This pardoning of Libby was a direction to get the liberals upset enough that some may break and go to the gutter, and then it's over for them.

The deal here is the the GOP can say any nasty thing they want, and they get away with it, but the Democrats would commit suicide by doing that, so now they are attacking the Democrats for being "weak". The trolls who are constantly complaining that the Democrats are weak are just trying to get them to commit suicide by going to the mat and self destructing in the "media" shortly thereafter.

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win".
- Mahatma Gandhi

Poster by Mitchell Loeb, 1934. The Jewish Labor Committee, the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, the Labor Chest to Combat Nazism and Fascism, and others made use of it in outreach campaigns.

Peace on Earth

There is no trust more sacred than the one the world holds with children. There is no duty more important than ensuring that their rights are respected, that their welfare is protected, that their lives are free from fear and want and that they grow up in peace. -- Kofi Annan

Banner from D&B Graphics

America, we still have a problem. I wrote this in 2014. Gun Regulation for Xmas?

 

Gun control? We need bullet control! I think every bullet should cost 5,000 dollars. Because if a bullet cost five thousand dollar, we wouldn't have any innocent bystanders. - Chris Rock

I like graphs a lot. Graphs make things clear in a way that words alone cannot. Grok the graphs and weep.

I also like tattoos. I thought this design was subject appropriate. The tattoo design can be seen with other designs by the artist HERE.

In the fierce debate that always follows the latest mass shooting, it's an argument you hear frequently from gun rights promoters: If only more people were armed, there would be a better chance of stopping these terrible events. This has plausibility problems—what are the odds that, say, a moviegoer with a pack of Twizzlers in one pocket and a Glock in the other would be mentally prepared, properly positioned, and skilled enough to take out a body-armored assailant in a smoke- and panic-filled theater? But whether you believe that would happen is ultimately a matter of theory and speculation. Instead, let's look at some facts gathered in a five-month investigation by Mother Jones. See the rest of the article at the link. 

Getting Real Jiggy in Texas

I'm from Texas, and one of the reasons I like Texas is because there's no one in control. - Willie Nelson

By August 1 of next year, if you are a frugal college student attending a state school like the University of Texas, everybody is allowed to conceal carry a gun into your classroom and on campus.

They are posting signs and making slide shows to counsel the Faculty.

The Faculty is beside themselves and many are threatening to quit or strike. Daniel Hamermesh has already quit.

“Will I be the first of many?” Daniel Hamermesh told the Guardian. “No.

The reason I won’t be the first of many is for me it’s a pretty low-cost item. I’m 72, I have a very large pension and I have lots of alternatives. I’m fairly successful and economics is a good business. So it’s sort of cheap heroism. I’m a cheap hero. On the other hand it will cost the university and other universities in the state.

Because while people who are here are to some extent stuck, those who are thinking of coming here have alternatives. So I think the real thing is, it’s going to cost us either more money to recruit people or we’re just not going to get as good-quality people recruited to the faculty here; that’s where I think it’s going.”

If you are a rich kid and can go to private college, Baylor University for example, guns are/can be forbidden. All the private Texas schools have yet to make a decision to allow guns on campus and in classrooms. Most have opted for gun free campus. The state schools do not get a choice.
Nobody really knows for sure what the LAW means in its entirety. Everybody has to figure it out before August 1 of next year. Meanwhile...

A bill that allows children of all ages to handle guns passed Iowa’s house of representatives on Tuesday.

Approved by a 62-36 vote, the bill permits children under the age of 14 to have “a pistol, revolver or the ammunition” while under parental supervision. The bill will now head to the state senate.

A Common Dream

Spike91sz says:

Aggressive and violent political tone takes the country to a place of reactive paranoia and fear. It also takes us to a fascistic corporatist state. We must have some hopeful idea to replace the fearful and vitriolic narrative of the right. That narrative only serves their interests and ensures their power. It is a dead end of progress to turn us upon one another in suspicion and violence.

Hope is more efficient than fear. Where is the hopeful narrative of what we may become, when we have a common dream? The right's dream is of the few and holds no promise for common opportunity.

Note: I troll the Net message boards, political and otherwise. I come across thoughts that must have a wider audience. So I put them on my Blog.