Let’s update the Declaration (if there’s still time)

Posted on July 7, 2025 by oddmanout215

I was telling Swamp Rabbit that I like to focus on the humor in news stories whenever possible, and this is why I haven’t posted lately. The news these days is about deportation of American citizens, more tax cuts for billionaires at the expense of the poor, abandonment of support for renewable energy options, elimination of USAID, and a host of other cruelties, all imposed on us by the crime boss in the White House and his Republican lackeys. What’s happening to this country is no joke.

“You’re wrong,” Swamp Rabbit said. “We just celebrated the Declaration of Independence at the same time that monster was tearing down everything the Declaration stands for. That’s a cosmic joke, Odd Man.”

But my swampy friend remains optimistic. He told me to lighten up and buy some hot dog rolls. If I need a morale boost, I should check out Andy Borowitz’s 4th of July post:

A New Declaration of Independence from Tyranny

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to break from a leader who governs with cruelty, contempt, and corruption, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all people are created equal, endowed with inherent dignity and unalienable rights—among these are life, liberty, equality, and the pursuit of justice.

That to secure these rights, governments derive their power from the consent of the governed. When a leader becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right and duty of the people to refuse allegiance and to stand united in the defense of their freedoms.

The current holder of high office has shown himself to be unfit to lead a free and just society.

— He disrespects women, mocking survivors of violence and stripping away their rights.

— He fuels racism and white supremacy, scapegoating communities of color and denying their equality.

— He assaults free speech, attacking the press, punishing dissent, and spreading disinformation.

— He exploits public office for private gain, enriching himself and the billionaire class while abandoning the poor and working people.

— He undermines justice, ignores the rule of law, and places himself above accountability.

— He disregards science, endangering lives in times of crisis and sacrificing the planet for profit.

— He fans division and incites violence to maintain power, wielding fear as a weapon against the people.

Time and again, we have protested peacefully, spoken truthfully, and appealed to our shared humanity. We have been met with indifference, hostility, and violence. A leader who governs through hatred and greed is unfit to govern at all.

Therefore, we, the people of conscience and conviction, do solemnly declare our independence from this tyrant and all he represents.

We withdraw our consent.

We refuse to be complicit in cruelty.

We reject the abuse of power for personal gain.

We stand for dignity, truth, equality, and justice for all people.

With firm reliance on each other and unwavering hope in our collective strength, we pledge to resist oppression in all its forms, to uphold the rights of the vulnerable, and to build a future grounded in compassion, courage, and shared humanity.

Let this declaration be both a breaking and a beginning.

“That’s pretty good,” I said, “but who do we unite behind? If this were 1776, most of the Dems in Congress would bow to King George.”

“Don’t be a cynic,” he replied. “Them midterm elections might change things for the good.”

“Maybe, but I think things will get worse until we come up with a new Constitution to go with the new Declaration. The old Constitution let us down big time. All it took was the election of a convicted felon named Donald Trump to reveal all the loopholes in it.”

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Snarky Bill Maher can’t take a joke

Posted on April 28, 2025 by oddmanout215

Bill Maher can dish it out, but he can’t take it. The aging king of snark is still whining about “My Dinner with Adolph,” a satiric op-ed by Larry David that indirectly mocked Maher for dining with Donald Trump and then announcing what a swell guy he is — “gracious” and “much more self-aware than he lets on.” The piece, which appeared in The New York Times last week, has a first-person narrator whose comments about Hitler echo Maher’s kind words for Trump:

Suddenly he seemed so human. Here I was, prepared to meet Hitler, the one I’d seen and heard — the public Hitler. But this private Hitler was a completely different animal. And oddly enough, this one seemed more authentic, like this was the real Hitler. The whole thing had my head spinning.

Maher has criticized Trump in the past. He fancies himself a hard-boiled cynic, but one free dinner from our criminal president turned him into a wide-eyed sycophant. He’s thin-skinned, too. Instead of giving David credit for writing a funny send-up, he said the piece was “not completely logically fair” and “kind of insulting to 6 million dead Jews.” And finally, “There’s got to be a better way than hurling insults and not talking to people.”

“That’s called special pleading,” I said to my neighbor Swamp Rabbit. “Maher has made a career of insulting people who disagree with his opinions about religion, world affairs and cultural issues. He calls himself a liberal, but he loves using the word ‘woke’ to put down anyone who strikes him as left of center.”

“He thinks he’s hip on account of he smokes pot and ain’t never been married,” Swamp Rabbit said. “What’s that about?”

“It’s about his level of self-awareness being less than zero,” I replied. “That’s why he got along so well with Trump.”

Footnote: You can’t be too cautious these days. As Keith Olbermann recently noted, Maher is “a shameless opportunist with no real principles” who might be treading carefully “so he can keep his HBO show.”

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An eco-friendly pope who spoke plainly (no blabbering)

Posted on April 22, 2025 by oddmanout215

The record will show that Pope Francis, who died at age 88 on the day before Earth Day, was as committed to saving the natural world as he was to saving souls. This is what he tweeted on last year’s Earth Day:

Our generation has bequeathed many riches, but we have failed to protect the planet and we are not safeguarding peace. We are called to become artisans and caretakers of our common home, the Earth which is falling into ruin.

The first pope from the Americas had a low tolerance for heads of state who blabber a lot but fail to take measures that could prevent or at least slow down further pollution of the planet. He lived frugally, rejecting the opulent lifestyle that has long been associated with those at the top of the Catholic hierarchy. I wasn’t a fan at first, but he proved to be a Christian who was also a humanist.

My neighbor Swamp Rabbit was on the porch of his swamp house, listening to me read from Francis’s obit. “What are you, one of them papists?” he joked. “They’re always hatching a plot to bring down our gov’mint and take over the world.”

“You’re thinking of that criminal in the White House,” I said. “Francis was the opposite. He wants us to clean up the air and treat the animals fair, like Captain Beefheart advised. And he wants you to do your part, Swamp Rabbit.”

He sipped beer and frowned. “You’re a kook. Ain’t no way I can help fix the planet at this point.”

“Sure you can,” I said, pointing to his front lawn. “Start by picking up all those empty beer cans. Pope Francis will bless you from beyond.”

Footnote: It’s not bloody likely, but let’s hope the next pope will pick up the empties and address the concerns raised by the eloquently plain-spoken Francis in his influential 2015 encyclical:

There are too many special interests, and economic interests easily end up trumping the common good and manipulating information so that their own plans will not be affected… Consequently, the most one can expect is superficial rhetoric, sporadic acts of philanthropy and perfunctory expressions of concern for the environment, whereas any genuine attempt by groups within society to introduce change is viewed as a nuisance based on romantic illusions or an obstacle to be circumvented.

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What’s that distant crashing sound?

Posted on April 18, 2025 by oddmanout215

From Washington Post:

President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff-driven reversal of decades of free trade is creating financial chaos for the very sector it’s meant to rebuild: American manufacturing.

Although the full extent of economic damage is still unclear, volatile tariff policies are making it tougher for American companies to make and sell goods, whether they’re producing medical devices in Florida, toys in Ohio or bicycles in California.

Inquiring minds wanted to know: Is Trump up to the challenge of wrecking the economy during the first hundred days of his second term as president?

Of course he is. The stable genius who went bankrupt six times as a businessman has reached a new level of incompetence by starting a trade war to “make America great again” and punish the rest of the world for “ripping us off.”

I read the latest tariff news and said, “Who could have predicted such a mess? What do you think, Swamp Rabbit?”

My swampy friend reminded me that almost every forecaster who isn’t a Trump lackey tried to warn Trump away from imposing new tariffs, which are crucial to his doomed effort to boost domestic manufacturing and re-establish the mid-20th century American economy. Our vindictive little Caesar ignored them; he was determined to hurt countries with which we have a trade deficit — not only China but also our long-time allies — even though they were sure to impose tariffs that would hurt us almost as badly.

The tariffs on our allies go up and down, according to Trump’s whims. Consumers are making panicky moves to stay ahead of market fluctuations that are triggering renewed inflation. Swamp Rabbit was at the liquor store yesterday stocking up on Jameson’s Irish whiskey. His probation officer, Victor Cortez, was at the local beer distributor loading his truck with cases of his favorite, Canadian-made Moosehead.

“Yes, but how much long-term damage can Trump do?” I said.

Swamp Rabbit poured himself a shot and said, “Them economists are saying chances of a recession in the next year are almost 50-50 and getting worse, thanks to the tariffs fiasco. And there’s always the chance that Trump will do something so dumb it will cause a total market meltdown. Think Black Friday, 1929.”

“Oh no!” I said. “Financial experts like you will be diving from the fourteenth floor.”

“I live in a one-story shack, remember? I’ll have to think of another way out.”

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No method, just madness

Posted on March 30, 2025 by oddmanout215

From Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now: Colonel Kurtz: “Are my methods unsound?” Captain Willard: I don’t see any method at all, sir.”

I was listing for my neighbor Swamp Rabbit some of the steps Donald Trump took to undermine the law in the first weeks of his second term — illegal arrest and deportation of foreign-born residents, a crackdown on media outlets that question his judgment and motives, ongoing defiance of the courts system, an all-out attack on environmental protection laws …

“Trump wants to fix it so there ain’t nothin’ to stop him from being a dictator,” Swamp Rabbit said. “There’s a method to his madness, I guess.”

But my neighbor was giving our first criminal president too much credit. As the New Republic‘s Ross Rosenfeld recently suggested, there’s no method — there’s only madness, and a desire to wreck anything that promotes the common good. Trump and his minions, led by Elon Musk, have already dismissed thousands of federal workers, shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, raided the Treasury Department, made enemies of countries that were our allies, explored new ways to eliminate Social Security, and much more.

“I don’t care about that stuff,” Swamp Rabbit joked. “How about the price of eggs?”

Eggs are the least of our problems, I told him. Trump’s goal is to grab all the loot in the country for himself and his billionaire cronies, and smash everything else in order to do so. Chaos is his ally. His minions lay off nuclear weapons workers. They impose tariffs that could blow up the economy. They cut health services as measles is spreading.

I played for my neighbor the Laurie Anderson recording about a lunatic airline pilot instructing his passengers to prepare for a crash landing: Put your head on your knees… Put your head in your hands… Put your hands on your hips… Ha-ha… We are going down… We are all going down together.

Footnote: Robert Reich is growing impatient regarding people who are in a position to fight Trump. A recent post of his was headlined: “Where the HELL are the Democrats?” He should follow it with “Where the HELL are the media?”

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Yo Birds — don’t help normalize the nut job

Posted on March 17, 2025 by oddmanout215

From a recent story in Philadelphia Inquirer:

The Eagles will visit the White House on April 28 to celebrate their Super Bowl victory over the Kansas City Chiefs, press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed to reporters Tuesday.

I filled in the background details for my friend Swamp Rabbit. Back in 2018, Donald Trump “uninvited” the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles to a White House ceremony that had been scheduled in their honor. Trump, at the time, was publicly badmouthing Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players who had protested against systemic racism. His cancelation of the Eagles’ visit was his childish way of retaliating against players who supported the protestors.

“Maybe you can explain this to me, Swamp Rabbit,” I said. “Most of the players in the NFL are Black. Why would Black players — or white players, for that matter — appear at an event hosted by the most racist U.S. president since Woodrow Wilson?”

“Maybe they think it’s an honor to be invited to the White House, it don’t matter who’s president,” he replied. “It’s easy to call someone a racist but where’s the smoking gun?”

I reminded him that Trump was sued by the DOJ for discrimination against Black renters. He took out an ad calling for the return of the death penalty when the “Central Park Five” were falsely accused of rape. He said “I don’t want Black guys counting my money” when he was a casino owner. He said that “both sides” were to blame for the white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville, VA. He complained that America has become a destination for immigrants from “shithole countries” in Africa. He said Mexican immigrants were rapists and murderers.

“I could show you a hundred more smoking guns,” I said. “The Eagles should snub Trump, if only to bond with the players who protested racism.”

He looked at me as if I were a Martian. “There are bonds and there are bonds. Trump is a multimillionaire and so are some of them Eagles. The millionaires club is a much stronger bond than skin color, in case you ain’t noticed.”

True enough, I conceded, but that doesn’t excuse the footballers, black or white, who are helping normalize America’s ongoing transition from democracy to authoritarian rule. Trump has installed hacks and loonies in top government posts. He’s appointed an unelected, Nazi-sympathizing billionaire to dismantle federal agencies. He’s sided with dictators, betrayed foreign allies, pardoned rightwing terrorists and taken steps to muzzle political opponents and shred the social safety net.

“There is no guaranteed safety for anyone in a dictatorship,” I said, “even for members of the millionaires club.”

Footnote: One thing for sure is that the Democratic Party won’t save us, not so long as it’s led by old geldings like Chuck Schumer.

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‘Ukraine’ rhymes with ‘Czechoslovakia’

Posted on February 22, 2025 by oddmanout215

Here’s U.S. Vice President JD Vance in Munich, scolding German leaders who say they won’t work with Alternative for Germany (AfD), a neo-Nazi party that has gained a lot of followers because of immigration and a downturn in the German economy:

To many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old, entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation, who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way, or even worse, win an election.

“Yes, God forbid,” I said. “How dare those stuffy old German moderates! Why will they not open the door to a party that emulates Hitler’s Nazi Party, which used the democratic system in the 1930s to seize power and start a war that resulted in more than 50 million deaths? It’s an outrage. What they need is an alternative viewpoint.”

Swamp Rabbit was drinking Old Grand-Dad and feeling feisty. “This ain’t no time for irony, Odd Man. That backstabbing swine Vance wants to make history with Donald Trump and President Musk. The speech he made was his way of waving bye-bye to the NATO gang that kept Soviet Russia from gobbling up the rest of Europe after World War II.”

Bye-bye indeed. The new U.S. strategy accommodates Russia’s desire to take back its old empire and Trump’s eagerness to appease his soulmate Vladimir Putin. It looks like his first act of appeasement will be the sellout of U.S-allied Ukraine, which would be eerily reminiscent of the Anglo-French sellout of Czechoslovakia to Hitler in 1938.

Swamp Rabbit said, “Okay, this is where you get to use that famous Mark Twain quote that Twain probably never said — ‘History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.'”

“That’s a good one,” I agreed. “You can’t hear it at first, but Ukraine definitely rhymes with Czechoslovakia.”

Footnote: Vance’s own words, in 2016: “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.”

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What is this thing called love?

Posted on February 14, 2025 by oddmanout215

My friend Swamp Rabbit took a look my Valentine’s Day playlist — almost the same list I used a few years ago — and began naming all the songs I should have included: “Little Walter’s ‘Just Your Fool,’ the Kinks’ ‘Who’ll Be the Next in Line,’ Bonnie Raitt’s ‘You’ve Been in Love Too Long.’ Otis Redding’s ‘Pain in My Heart,’ Dionne Warwick’s ‘I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,’ the Temptation’s –“

“Wait a minute,” I said. Those aren’t love songs, they’re regret songs. Jump off a bridge songs. I’ve learned that nobody wants to hear about love gone wrong on Valentine’s Day. Don’t be so cynical.”

“I ain’t cynical, I’m realistic. You got your flowers, you got your weeds. You got your love songs, you got your regret songs.”

I scowled at him and stepped away. “The one doesn’t necessarily lead to the other. Your problem is you don’t really believe in love.”

He went quiet for a moment. “I believe there’s such a thing as love. There’s such a thing as narcotics, too. That don’t mean I have to get strung out on ’em.”

“If you say so,” I said. “But Happy Valentine’s Day anyway.”

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Ruling class loves ‘subversive’ Kendrick Lamar

Posted on February 12, 2025 by oddmanout215

The reviews came gushing in on Monday: “…the Most Hip-Hop Halftime Show in Super Bowl History” (Billboard); “Kendrick Lamar’s performance was as Black and subversive as all get-out” (Washington Post); “The best word to describe the rapper’s halftime show is ‘existential.’” (New Yorker).

Kendrick Lamarr, the subject of the reviews, performed symbolic set pieces with a poorly choreographed army of red, white and blue-clad Black dancers on Sunday at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans. The Grammy Award winner rapped a mile a minute through a sound system that failed to make his edgy lyrics understandable to most of the huge audience watching from home. (Why no subtitles?)

My friend Swamp Rabbit shrugged as I complained. “Most of them critics liked it,” he said. “They say he was speaking truth to power, and so on.”

I had to laugh. “Truth to power? Power loves this guy. He’s making millions for the entertainment industry.”

I told my feral friend that the best thing to be said for the critics is that they were on deadline and having panicky thoughts:

Oh shit, what am I to make of this mess? I’d better write superlatives to prove I’m au courant. Better describe Lamar’s 13-minute opus as subversive, though it’s not clear what’s being subverted when a rich Black pop star performs for a mostly White crowd that paid thousands of dollars a pop to witness a bloated, anticlimactic spectacle (Super Bowl) that reaffirms the system that the pop star says he loathes...

“You’re just a cynical old white guy,” Swamp Rabbit said. “Maybe Kendrick is a pop star and a prophet preaching against racism. It ain’t no accident he gave props to Gil Scott-Heron, the guy who wrote ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.'”

I threw one of his empty beer cans at him. “Funny you should mention Gil Scott-Heron. He wrote that piece more than fifty years ago but it still sounds wittier and more incisive than stuff like ‘Not Like Us.’ I looked up the lyrics to that piece. Lamar seems more interested in dissing his pop star rival Drake than agitating for the revolution.”

“I don’t really know what revolution means. Odd Man. I guess we’ll find out when it happens.”

“It is happening, you mangy fool. The problem is it’s being led by a small gang of ultra-rich white supremacists who control all three branches of government. And it is not being televised.”

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We want you, Big Brother!

Posted on February 4, 2025 by oddmanout215

I opened my laptop and alerted my neighbor Swamp Rabbit to a recent news story:

The Department of Justice scrubbed all information about the Jan. 6 Capitol riot from its website over the weekend, online archives show, continuing the Trump administration’s apparent campaign to reshape government web content in the new president’s image. The removal of the content comes just days after President Donald Trump pardoned anyone for “offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”

“It didn’t take long for Donald Trump and his dirt bags to ditch the rule of law and erase history, did it? ” I said. “They remind me of a quote from 1984. Do you have a copy? I used to have an old Signet paperback, but it fell apart.”

Swamp Rabbit stroked his wiry goatee. “I have a copy of David Bowie’s ‘1984’ and Spirit’s ‘1984,’ and that album by Van Halen. I have ‘1999’ by Prince.”

“I’m not talking about music, you goofball. I mean the George Orwell novel that inspired the songs. But never mind — I just remembered the entire novel is on the Internet now.”

I went to Google and found the quotation in Part 1, Chapter 7: The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.

“Ain’t it ironic?” Swamp Rabbit said, noting that we can go online and read a cautionary tale that describes a fictional dictator (Big Brother) destroying the historical record as a means of wiping out information that might threaten his control, but we can’t do anything about a degenerate president who’s doing the same thing in the real world.

“It’s worse than that,” I said. “The people who voted for Trump continue to think he can do no wrong. The media has more or less normalized his tyranny. Opponents of the felon-in-chief are too discouraged to mount serious opposition to the coup that’s being orchestrated for him by Elon Musk, the unelected billionaire shadow president.”

“The peeps might hit back if Trump goes through with them tariffs,” my deadbeat buddy said. “Tyranny they can put up with, but not another major jump in the price of eggs, not to mention cars.”

“I doubt it,” I replied. “Trump will just order his minions to rewrite the history of his recent failures. He’ll blame transexual immigrants and woke bias at PBS. The MAGA crowd will love it.”

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