my jaundiced eye

from russia with love

Okay, so yesterday the conald suggested that maybe the ruskies could find hill’s missing emails since they seem to be great! hackers. But MJE has a much better idea, how about they dig up the conald’s tax returns so we can all see how much russia means to his bottom line.

However, the conald seems to have an on again off again relationship with vlad (who, by the way was named for vlad the impaler, the figure upon whom dracula was based, which may or may not be true but since the conald has invited us into his fact free zone, enjoy). Last year the conald said that he and vlad were bff’s because they were both on the same 60 minutes broadcast. Nevermind the fact that the interviews were conducted on different continents. I guess in the conald’s mind if you are on a segment of a tv show that also has a segment on another person, then you both must in fact have been in the same place at the same time. And that you know one another. Really well.

That thought process reminds me of a discussion I heard on the radio about how literally children think. A psychologist related a story about a child flying for the first time who turned to her mother after take off and asked her when they were going to get tiny. It makes perfect sense, she sees airplanes in the sky and they are tiny…MJE agains turns to the good book for an apt quote “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I set aside childish ways.” (1 corinthians 13:11) Bless his ever-loving soul, I guess the conald just isn’t quite there yet.

But now the conald seems to have dropped vlad like a hot bowl of borscht, he said yesterday that not only does he not know him, but he doesn’t even know who he is…I will be the first to stand up and state that the conald has the intellectual curiosity of an eggplant but I will give him credit for at least knowing the name of the thug that runs russia. After all, several years ago the conald sold his (GREAT!!) russian miss universe pageant to one of vlad’s oligarch pals for a fat wad of rubles and even personally tweeted vlad an invite to the extravaganza. Sadly vlad was busy impaling a couple of ukrainians that night and couldn’t make it. But he did send the conald a nice thank you gift.

So, heads up you ruskie computer nerds, quit playing pacmaninoff and get to work! If you can hack the DNC and the departments of state and defense then why not the IRS for god’s sake. Just do it! We need to end this freak show and put the conald in america’s communal email trash can where he belongs.

be careful what you wish for

Praise the lord (as I suppose the conald has been doing a lot lately since being born again…too bad it wasn’t in another country and century) the GOP convention has finally come to an end. And not a moment too soon, if MJE had to hear from one more cretin in a funny hat yammering on about how the conald is the only savior for what ails this god forsaken country I would seriously consider puncturing my own ear drums.

Ted Cruz’s speech was a barn burner, unfortunately it was his own barn. He’s as slimy and self-serving a politico as I have ever had the misfortune to watch, with an ego that can go toe to toe with the conald’s. His self-absorbed rant about people voting their values and conscience accomplished what four grueling days of the convention could not, actually making the conald look human. However, that’s a parlor trick you really can trot out just once because digging your own political grave while simultaneously elevating even further the biggest narcissistic gasbag in memory can’t be topped.

Now we know for certain that the conald is the ONLY person in this country who can solve the devastating conditions that plague our nation because he told us so. I must not have been paying attention because the landscape doesn’t look nearly as bleak as the conald described. But then again MJE always walks on the sunny side of the street, unless someone who looks sort of foreign happens to come along, then I hot foot it to the dark side until the threat passes. But if he’s right then my guess is that once inaugurated his first order of business (after gold plating all of the WH bathroom fixtures) will be to set up a cabinet post to design our own Hunger Games.

And poor Mike Pence, I never thought I would feel sorry for a guy who is straight out of central casting as a nazi storm trooper. He really must be one hellova needy individual to hitch his wagon to a sleaze ball who embodies the polar opposite of his purported principles, ideals and (christian) values, a man who’s ethics, if any, are as malleable as the filler in melamia’s lips. Mike, you sure better hope that jesus saves because buddy you are going to need it after making this faustian bargain.

I am guessing that as we have seen, the conald’s family will be very involved in his administration. Obviously, Ivanka has the chief of staff post nailed down and maybe head of the joint chiefs too. Eric is looking good for secretary of commerce, what with his business acumen selling trump wines to trump owned businesses. Tiffany’s a tough call, hmm, how about head of health and human services, she can be in charge of government-produced work out videos and testing new beauty products. Conald junior puts on a pretty swell show, got the swagger down, seems serious….how about ambassador to nato. Scratch that, forgot we don’t need nato. Then secretary of defense seems like a good slot for him, MJE is sure that he will be the steady hand and cool head when dear old dad gets pissed off and stomps off to the situation room with the nuclear codes.

Melania will have lots of time to fine-tune her sultry demeanor. Being first lady and running the white house is nothing compared to having to stay one step ahead of those wily trump kids.

sterno

MJE lost a great friend last week, my pal, sterno. And yes MJE DOES have friends, some. But it’s not a very deep bench so when one of them isn’t here anymore it’s sort of like losing a continent. “What the what, where the hell did Australia go?” The world just doesn’t seem quite right.

There’s a hole in it.

Sterno was an amazing guy, and not just because his hair came into the room a full ten seconds before the rest of him. Word is he used to light firecrackers in it in college, but I could be wrong. He was one of those glass half full people (not the annoying kind) but not just half full, I’m talking filled to the top (with Bud Light would be my guess). Now MJE knows that not every one of sterno’s days was a day at the beach on the redneck riviera but he sort of made you imagine that it could be. And he was a walk the walk (or limp the hike) kind of guy…every day was the perfect day for hitting the trail or the river or bayou. Sterno had more kayaks than the OB&C has egg poachers (what can I say, he had an egg poacher thing for awhile). He would jam the back of his bad ass macho truck with those kayaks, and paddles and life vests and refreshments and sunscreen and bug spray and any other thing anyone might need, and that was that. All the work was done, just have to enjoy.

He’d lead hikes all over the mountains too, probably to a lot of places he’d really seen enough of, for people he didn’t even know or probably want to, most of whom didn’t appreciate it either. And no hiker on any of sterno’s treks ever got lost (well, maybe a time or two, but some people just can’t follow directions) or left behind. Sterno was like a brood hen with her chicks; the old, the lazy, the slow walkers, the cell phone talkers, the country clubbers, the low lifes, even the wine drinkers, for god’s sake, (and that last bunch is a handful I can tell you) he kept track of them all.

Then there were the good deeds (not the annoying kind)…trail tending, cooking up a storm for righteous causes, bird watcher watching, and plenty more that MJE doesn’t even know about, and frankly can’t imagine because I don’t do that altruistic stuff.

Sterno’s wonderful wife jellybean (who normally behaves in a sterling fashion, except there was that one time the OB&C and MJE got her snockered at our oyster party and she fell asleep in the grocery parking lot on the way home) is gonna have a rough time, but she’s a pretty tough cookie, and unlike MJE, her friend bench is loaded.

So good bye sterno, dear friend, MJE’s world is literally darker without you.

born again

MJE just heard that the conald has been born again. Holy crap wasn’t once enough?? If KRST (beaming from macon ga, 88.3 on your radio dial) can be believed, this time as an evangelical christian. Well played conald, all of your sins are forgiven, at least by almighty god. But MJE bets there are more than a few drywall hangers and carpet layers who are not quite there yet, having been summarily flushed down the economic toilet when you declared one of your four bankruptcies. Conald’s “conversion” sort of reminds me of the paraprosdokian, “ I asked god for a bike but I know he doesn’t work that way so I stole one and asked for forgiveness.”

Just to clarify, this is the same conald who not too long ago spoke at liberty university, not to be confused with trump university. Although to be fair MJE is not familiar with the comparative curricula of the two institutions, nor the benefits of either on one’s resume. Liberty is one of those creepy fonts of (oxymoron alert!) baptismal intellectual knowledge where politicians routinely grovel for the evangelical vote. The conald launched his speech with the famous “two corinthians “ quote from the good book. I thought he was about to start a joke….”so 2 corinthians walk into a bar…” but no, he was dead serious and prattled on in the most cringe worthy example of political pandering that MJE has ever had the misfortune to witness. As the blessed student body sat in somewhat befuddled silence he actually asked for reassurance from the assembled flock that the biblical passage he had chosen was a winner, “this is the one you like, right?” Conald, stop before you kill again!!!

But all that has now been dumped into heaven’s septic tank of sin. Poof! Gone. The conald is now as pure as the new driven snow. Therefore MJE is assuming that whatever comes out of the conald’s mouth from here on is verily the word of god. FYaweh, better bring your A game because bringing jesus back from the dead is chump change compared to keeping the conald on the one true path.

Jeremiah 9:23-24

Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”

Amen. And good luck with that.

trexit

The conald has a real knack for being in the right place at the right time… in scotland on the historic day of britain’s decision to leave the european union. As we all know, the conald is the ultimate optimist, always looking on the sunny side of the street and so characteristically remarked that brexit is actually a great thing because he’ll make more money! It makes the dollar stronger making it more affordable for americans to come to his golf courses there! Leave it to the donald to put his private financial gain first and foremost over the disruption of the personal lives of the people of europe and the interconnected economies of world.

Initially I thought he might be going abroad to finally get a clue about foreign relations and diplomacy. But why would he do that, he already knows all he needs to from watching the national geographic channel and anthony bourdain scuttling around the world eating weird stuff. Nope he went to scotland to kick some scottish ass from their ancestral homes to make more room for his golf courses. Those poor folks were bamboozled by the conald sales pitch about how great this would be for their local economies, and how everyone would get good jobs and maybe even some big tips as waiters or caddies. Once the deal was done, he elbowed his way into these quaint towns, treated the locals like they didn’t exist and became by all accounts a classic nuisance neighbor, erecting huge walls on the property lines, and ignoring their landowner rights. He even managed to get the scottish government to amend their plan for a wind farm because the turbines would ruin the golfers’ view. Talk about international negotiation street cred!

As they say, Fore! warned, is forearmed, but sadly the scottish citizens and their governmental representatives did not do the proper due diligence about the broken promises that accompany most trump ventures; the string of bankruptcies that left a trail of unpaid contractors, ruined small businesses and blighted unfinished projects. But don the con always comes out on top (and dodges all the debts via chapter 11) because he’s “a great businessman.” MJE is flabbergasted that the very people who are voting for him are the same hard working people that he crushes every time he declares bankruptcy,

MJE moves for a trexit, ASAP. Who’s with me?

trump r us

If you have been living in a cave for the past six months and are unaware of the political goings-on in this great country of ours then you be one fortunate son of bitch, take my word for it. You might want to squat on a rock for this newsflash: republicans have now officially chosen an APPRENTICE, not for some two-bit internship in amazon’s shipping department, nooooooo, but for their nominee for president of the united states. Yeah man, you heard me right, Donald J. Trump is, in the hearts and minds (such as they are), of a majority of the conservative electorate, considered by his supporters to be the absolute best person in the whole fricking country to be our head of state and commandeer-in-chief! So unless you are a glutton for punishment I’d crawl right back in your cozy burrow, sharpen your crayons and try to distract yourself with a mural or two. Consider yourself lucky, unless you have cable in there.

As noted in MJE’s last post, dt doesn’t seem to have the psychological constitution to either solicit or take advice from others, nor to react positively should someone suggest that he could possibly be off his goddam rocker. “Get em outta here!” would be his probable response to say the secretary of defense or another head of state. Not much of a team player from what I can tell. Too bad he forgot his 6^th grade civics class lessons on the make up of the u.s. government. Unlike being a CEO of a self-promotion empire, he’ll need to work with 535 members of congress, none of whom is in his employ nor subject to his whims and simplistic notions of governance. So good luck with that.

As for the shell-shocked republican congressmen and women, it has been hilarious watching them tie their tracheas in knots struggling to distance themselves from trump while at the same time attempting not to alienate the staggering number of crackpots who support him. They spout claptrap like they’ll vote for him but not endorse him, or they won’t attend the convention to thumb their noses at their nominee, or weasel by with the “I will vote for the republican nominee” avoiding mentioning his name altogether.

The next round of this surreal farce will be dt’s choice of a running mate. Who in their ever-loving mind would do that to themselves? Aside from being a career killer, it would be four years of unadulterated hell. Imagine standing day after day behind a bombastic, ill informed and probably dangerous president and stoically nodding in agreement. What about having to do his hair-brained bidding when it is clearly not be in the best interests of the country, or being ridiculed or derided for voicing an opposing position. But despite those gruesome scenarios, there are always some groveling quislings who are more than happy to betray the tenets of their party and their country. Christie the bully and Palin the pinhead come to mind. As if trump isn’t frightening enough, imagine either one of those two spine-chilling contenders being one breath away from the presidency.

troompaloompa

troopaloompa

Sorry for the lengthy delay since my last post but MJE has been immobilized, transfixed by the terrifying troompa-loompa juggernaut. I feel like a jew watching hitler and wondering what the hell happened. One day you’re part of a civil society that embraces the melding of different cultures and respects its citizens and the next you’re thrown in a boxcar or over a fence.

What do psychiatrists make of troompa-loompa’s behavior? Writing a profile of trump for Vanity Fair, Henry Alford asked the question, “Is Trump really a narcissist?” ‘For mental-health professionals, Donald Trump is at once easily diagnosed but slightly confounding.’ “Remarkably narcissistic,” said developmental psychologist Howard Gardner, a professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education. “Textbook narcissistic personality disorder,” echoed clinical psychologist Ben Michaelis. “He’s so classic that I’m archiving video clips of him to use in workshops because there’s no better example of his characteristics,” said clinical psychologist George Simon, who conducts lectures and seminars on manipulative behavior. “Otherwise, I would have had to hire actors and write vignettes. He’s like a dream come true.”

‘Mr. Trump’s bullying nature—taunting Senator John McCain for being captured in Vietnam, or saying Jeb Bush has “low energy”—is in keeping with the narcissistic profile.’ “In the field we use clusters of personality disorders,” Michaelis said. “Narcissism is in cluster B, which means it has similarities with histrionic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, and antisocial personality disorder. There are similarities between them. Regardless of how you feel about John McCain, the man served—and suffered. Narcissism is an extreme defense against one’s own feelings of worthlessness. To degrade people is really part of a cluster-B personality disorder: it’s antisocial and shows a lack of remorse for other people. The way to make it O.K. to attack someone verbally, psychologically, or physically is to lower them. That’s what he’s doing.”

MJE dread’s the thought of troompa-loompa in the oval office, but should that occur I would relish being a fly on the wall of the dasha if he seeks the counsel of the world’s most narcissist ruler, rootin-tootin-putin, playing yoda to troompa-loompa’s luke skywaker. Talk about an alpha thug who really thinks outside the box and doesn’t hesitate to take bold self-serving action! RTP’s advice might go something like this: Mexicans entering the country illegally? Annex everything south of the rio grande and give it to the Palestinians, snap! knock off two birds with one stone. People not showing you enough respect? That’s why god made gulags. Politicians putting up roadblocks on your god-given path to being the best, I mean THE best president ever? Comrade, you frog march those pinheads right into ted cruz’s prayer circle and keep them there until every last liberal repents. Just the thought of it will make them fold like a cheap suitcase.

Dasvidaniya.

is frank feeling the bern?

Bernie’s headed to the Vatican! Holy cow, did anybody bother to tell him that there aren’t any delegates there? Maybe he’s he hoping for a bit of divine intervention in the upcoming primaries? Or trying to woo the roman catholic vote? Well good luck with that, since he’s loudly pro-choice which I’m guessing is a deal breaker with that crowd. Plus he’s not even going to meet with il papa, and I hate to tell him but the line to get into the Sistine chapel is going to eat up the better part of a day. The good news (I guess in the Vatican all news is the good news) is that MJE knows a great trattoria about two blocks away. The tagliatelle alla boscaiola is to die for.

So what gives? I guess bernie’s a major frank fanboy. His battle cry that inequality is the root of all evil is a clear shout out to the catholic (or as is pronounced in new orleans “cat-lick”) handbook. MJE’s gonna give bernie a hall pass on that one, because hey he’s jewish, so from what does he know to quote the bible? Actually the good book, for Christians that is, says that the love of money is the root of all evil (1 timothy 6:10). see: trump, donald j. Or maybe he’s just had it up to his crazy hair with the whole “who’s qualified” to be president fracas he’s been waging with Hillary. God knows (hence the visit to the Vatican) the exhausted geezer needs a time out, grab a few days to chillax, take in the highlights of rome (MJE offers a bit of advice. Get a really good guide, it’s so worth the money, especially if you’re pressed for time.) eat some divine (ha ha) italian food, wash it down with a good chianti and maybe go wild and finish the evening with an ice cold limoncello. Talk about feeling the bern.

MJE looks forward to seeing bernie’s instagram pix of the trip and desperately hopes that there’s a selfie with frank in there somewhere.

life’s $#@!!*?^& frustrations

MJE feels a certain twisted desire to burst the bubble of that small subset of humans who blithely accept life’s endless disappointments, frustrations and irritants calmly and with good humor. What gives with these insensitive pollyannas? Being a glass half empty (and would it kill you to put it in the dishwasher for god’s sake) kinda gal, I suspect MJE suffers many more irksome botherations in everyday existence than most due to an extremely low tolerance for anything annoying.

Things like the old person ahead of you in the grocery line who decides she’ll write a check (holy 1955, batman!) for her goods. It’s not bad enough that she waits until she is all rung up and bagged up to rummage around in her massive pocketbook for her checkbook and a pen, she then takes longer than Dostoevsky took writing War and Peace to fill out the damned thing in the painstakingly delicate cursive of yesteryear. That is naturally followed by the subsequent tedious search for a proof of identity etc., during which she discovers a 25 cents off coupon for that can of cocktail weenies she bought and the whole process starts all over again. I don’t know about you but after having to endure this proceeding for what feels like eons, MJE has to consciously squelch the overwhelming desire to wrench that pen out of her haggard hand, give her a goddam quarter, load her bags into the shopping cart, and shove it and the geriatric into the parking lot.

Or how about the person in the drive through lane at the bank who is jawboning on her fricking cell phone during the interminable wait then once she’s finally abeam the little pneumatic tube, decides that that’s the time to complete her deposit slip (which is usually a week’s worth of sketchy checks from her tattoo parlor business or something). At a standstill, you seethe as the other lanes move like greased lightening but are trapped because by now some low rider with its woofer at maximum decibel level has just pulled up behind you. Banking purgatory. You watch the little cylinder go up and come back down, and up and down over and over because the aforementioned cretin forgot to endorse the checks or didn’t write out the deposit slip correctly, or some other doofus blunder. This sort of thing may not infuriate you but it vexes MJE to the snapping point and I have to physically restrain myself from hopping out and grabbing that little plastic sucker when it makes its next touchdown, walking it into the bank, making the deposit and returning the receipt to the offender. I then want to warn her in the strongest possible terms that if she ever sees MJE behind her in the drive through she had better just keep on driving.

And don’t even get me started on the US postal service. First of all they are gazillion dollars in debt but have enough dough to run endless ads trying to convince the populace how terrific they are. That must be why they don’t have enough money left to pay for more than one teller at a time. And if there are two people ahead of you in line or twenty, it still takes just as long, because I can guarantee you that if you find yourself lucky enough to have even just one person in line, they will have 35 packages going to 35 countries the clerk never even heard of. They will also want all the extra time consuming bells and whistles on each one: insurance, return receipt requested, proof of delivery, etc. To be followed by a lengthy cost benefit analysis over the postage on every single box: standard delivery vs express vs 2^nd class…by the time this person finally walks away from the counter the clerk is so exhausted she puts up a “window closed” sign and disappears into the bowels of the building.

Is it any wonder that people want to crawl inside their computers and live a human interaction-free virtual life. That is until the damned thing crashes, at which point you actually do desperately want some human interaction in the form of a technical support person. So the rest of your day is frittered away on hold being told every 15 seconds how very important YOUR call is to them. Finally mike in mumbai answers and cheerfully tells you that he will absolutely figure out and solve your problem. Several clicks later, he regrets to inform you that he is so dreadfully sorry but your tech support contract just expired. But thanks you for being a valued customer.

no guns, no shame, no money

MJE has recently learned that guns will be banned from the republican national convention!! Are you seriously kidding me? That sure sounds like an infringement of my 2^nd amendment rights…if I can take my gun into an intro biology class at UT, my kid’s kindergarten class, or a booze infused tailgate party before the big game, why not into the repub confab. Where is the fricking NRA when you need them? Do the convention organizers have a beef against responsible gun owners? What happened to the old chestnut that guns don’t kill people, people kill people and its kissing cousin that if we take guns away from law-abiding people then only criminals will have them. Are they implying that republican delegates are criminals? Are they afraid that there might be a shootout between Utah and Massachusetts over whose hats are zanier? Too bad Scalia isn’t with us anymore because he’d sure as hell stand up to these lily-livered pantywaists. If I didn’t know better, I might think we were talking about those peacenik pinko democrats for god’s sake.

MJE would also like to draw attention to the fact that the convention is being held in the Quicken Loans Arena. Quicken Loans is the fifth largest subprime mortgage foreclosure inducer in Detroit. It’s a company that currently owns over 60 large real estate parcels there, which it picked up at fire sale prices after it foreclosed on them. It is accused by its own loan officers of pressuring them to falsify applicants’ incomes and helpfully coached them on how to boost their commissions by locking clients into higher interest rates even when they qualified for lower rates. Loan officers have furthermore testified that Quicken Loans management instructed them to “bruise” clients by telling them that there were red flags in their credit reports and that no other lender would work with them. In 2010 Quicken Loans was found guilty of fraud in a suit filed by a homeowner and in 2011 both Quicken Loans officers and its customers filed suits against the company. Subprime mortgages, like politics make for strange bedfellows.

The kicker is that the big corporate republican convention sponsors of yesteryear are running for the hills, afraid that they will be linked to what MJE suspects will be a food fight of epic proportions, or worse. Not anxious to see the headline “This Riot is Brought to you by Coca Cola” (which doesn’t exactly comport with their image of achieving “perfect harmony” via consumption of high fructose soft drinks) or the breaking news “Trump Supporters Shoot off More Than Their Mouths Before Being Forced to Surrender their Guns” followed by a message from the sponsor American Airlines. Even Walmart , which is known for black Friday mayhem is debating the upside to exhibiting its logo above a sea of thrashing bodies.

Boy oh boy, looks like the republicans are in a real pickle here. They are pissing on our constitutional rights in a venue named for a company that was partially to blame for the 2008 recession (for which it went unpunished) and to top it off, their once reliable money bags are staying away in droves. What’s a political pachyderm to do? Got me, but MJE can’t wait for this clown car to get to Cleveland.