Etiquette redux

Office  of·​fice | \ ˈä-fəs  Noun  A place where we are on our worst behavior.
synonym: see  restaurant, public restroom, automobile, court room.

Nation Building

America is just no good at nation building.

The Philippines, the Bay of Pigs in Cuba, the Korean War, the humiliating helicopter exit from Viet Nam, the fall of the Shah of Iran, the Contras of Nicaragua, and Iraq weren't lesson enough. Each incident ended up building dictatorships or other undemocratic totalitarian regimes in the guise of republics. The closest thing to democracy these nation building missions managed to accomplish were banana republics.

Even within its own borders, nation building among native Americans has been a dismal failure. Instead of nations, Indian reservations have become synonymous with poverty, crime, and failure.

America has forgotten the foundation that it was built on. Colonial Americans grew fed up with remote foreign mismanagement of their domestic affairs which they had managed on their own since the first day the Old World left them stranded in the New World: us versus them.

We are longer the little guys battling big guy domination. US has morphed from the we into them.

What goes 'round comes 'round

Don't let your head be turned by compliments.

Today's accolade may be tomorrow's epithet.

Will the Circle be Unbroken?

Back when America was just getting started, being called "American" was an epithet that stood for uncultured, ignorant, and boorish.

Fast forward to the middle of the twentieth century, "American" stood for all things refined, wise, and altruistic.

Scarcely half a century has passed, and "American" is back to uncultured, ignorant, and boorish.

Will the circle be unbroken by and bye?

Reality check

The Postmodernists, Nihilists, or Leninists as one - Chief White House Strategist and Senior Executive Council referred to himself - who want to bring everything down into chaos don't get what FDR did when he created the New Deal to inspire confidence in the government:

What they would tear down is the very thing that enabled them to acquire and keep the wealth and privilege they so jealously guard.

Tear it all down, and they stand to loose everything they have with no hope of regaining any of it.

Reality check

The madness of it all:
The death of truth.
Truth supplanted by alternative facts of the moment.
What's to save mankind from plunging the planet into chaos?
The very thing mankind denies: climate change.

State of the POTUS

President POTUS:

A bleached-blonde Bob's big boy after one too many burgers and one too few psych meds .

Star Wars Redux

Biowatch is now Biodetection 21.

Trigger devices and handheld devices are now the high-power lasers and particle beams of today's Star Wars version of biodefense.

It doesn't matter how questionable their efficiency. They just need be imperfect enough not to be considered the enemy of close enough.

Witten in ink

Finger tattoos creep up the back of the hand to become a wrist bracelet, then on up the forearm onto the shoulder to become a sleeve. The long-sleeved shirt retreats to short sleeve, to muscle tee, to tank top as it desperately tries to keep pace as the sleeve tat spreads across the full back, across the chest, then down the stomach to areas best left unimagined.

A foot tat evolves into an ankle bracelet. The ankle tat climbs up the calf and onto the thigh. Long pants must then recede to ever higher shorts.

People will eventually need to stroll about nude if they are to strut their ink.

Feel the burn?

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Post says furloughed federal employees and federal employees working uncompensated for their labor should get loans.
The workers don't need to get a payday loan. The Secretary needs to get a grip.

Presidential hairstyle

If President POTUS thinks furloughed federal workers will take one of his haircuts he foisted upon his construction vendors, he may find end up losing his own scalp and political hide with it.

"What luck for rulers men do not think."

"What luck for rulers men do not think."

The Presidential hand gesture - not the gesture - the gesticulation. The attempt to heighten drama by summoning the press to the White House Situation Room instead of the Oval Office or Press Room. Angry obsessions with unrealizable goals.

It brings to mind the author: a man who reignited national pride and confidence in his disgraced country. He ended up besieged in a bunker war room while issuing delusional orders to vanquished armies in a war he'd long ago lost.