I suppose Tommy Tuberville can view his obstinacy as being principled, maybe even brave, in the face of the mounting pushback and calls to go around him in his one-man crusade to deny approval of over 300 military promotions.

In reality, he’s just another male of the species who has trouble with a military provision that grants access to abortion services. Apart from this situation, the visual, the “optics”, just reinforce the derisively laughable notion that men have the last word in this matter.

I suppose as a “concerned” Christian who takes the Ten Commandments seriously, Tuberville may think he has the only leg anyone should be able to stand on. But he needs to realize it’s not as simple as holding one’s ground based on something the Bible says. It’s time for him to back off, let go of his stubbornness or whatever it is that’s driving him, and stop messing with our national security, which according to some, is being compromised more with each passing day– because of one old school, obstinate former college football coach.

Football isn’t life. What worked in football doesn’t necessarily work in the real world, especially when you’re a guy trying to tell women what they can and cannot do with their bodies.

Give it up, Tommy. You’re barking up the wrong tree, and you won’t be proving your point—if there is one—anytime soon.

It might be difficult to get one’s head around what’s happening in Gaza. It’s difficult to gauge what Netanyahu’s end game is, or if anyone has even thought about the end game. So far, it’s been exactly as Bibi said it would be, or as we’ve known the Israeli response to be in previous conflicts—excessive and disproportionate. But the civilian toll—in lives and in upset and dislocation and horrible living conditions—is what’s getting the world’s attention.

It’s not as if the only source of information is a screed from Hamas. The major networks, the traditionally trustworthy outlets, are all reporting pretty much the same things. Soon twelve thousand civilian deaths running the gamut of age and gender, a majority of the population displaced and on the run, half of all dwellings destroyed, growing shortages of life-sustaining necessities, woefully inadequate medical care.

It’s hard to visualize a daily four-hour stoppage in fighting to allow for refugee movement and humanitarian aid. How easy is that to pull off? And what good will it do? How long is it going to take to rebuild, or is that a sadly laughable consideration at this point? By the sound of it, there will be little left for families to go back to, anyway.

So many lives destroyed and upended. It’s a tragedy among worldwide tragedies, I know, but this is too much. We’re no better than your average animals fighting over territory or a harem.

And I can’t shake the highly unsettling, infuriating thought that religion is playing a role in all of this. Mere words are inadequate when trying to express how tragic that is. Opiate of the masses? How about curse of the masses?

Ivanka walks into the courthouse like she’s the Queen of Sheba. I can’t stand these people. It’s not a trial, it’s a fashion show, a chance to show off the latest plastic surgery, to prance and thumb noses. Just another photo op.

They drink in the attention, try to cover their asses, then go home to their palatial penthouses and drink their aperitifs, unless they’re all tea-totallers. They get on with their cake eater, insulated lives, wondering why they’re so picked on and vilified, or maybe not caring at all about stuff like that.

Like father, like children, though.

The Trumps are a black eye on humanity. Yet there are many who wouldn’t mind being them, who think they’re livin’ the Dream.

Ugh.

There hasn’t been space. There hasn’t been a period when we’ve been able to take a breath and a break from the noise of election season. Trump has made sure of that, with his non-stop whining and griping and laser focused vengeance crusade. Not to mention his attempt at tearing it all down on 1/6/21.

He dares crave another shot at POTUS—not because he cares about the country, but because he’s a sore loser and he dreams of payback. And he has designs on making all the indictments he faces go away.

At the moment, polls have him in the lead, despite everything that a sane person might think would have him sucking hind teat. He is infuriatingly persistent. What the hell drives him?

He needs to go away- whether holed up at Mar-a-Lago, or to Rikers for a while. Either way, the unanswerable question will persist: why do people still plan on voting for him?

He’s a soulless paper tiger. Self-serving, crafty, conniving, and somehow dumber than a bag of hammers.

Not sure what Maddow was doing the other night, with her interview of the reporter from the Washington Post re Jeffrey Clark and the alleged efforts to hit the ground running with the Insurrection Act, if Trump (gulp) wins a second term as POTUS.

From what she was saying, it sounds like Clark and others are already working on how to implement such a plan on Day 1 of Trump’s time in office—i.e. call in the U.S. military to patrol American streets and quell the inevitable demonstrations that will result if Trump happens to win.

OK, first of all, holy shit. And second of all, I can’t get used to the matter-of-fact discourse surrounding the topic of Trump winning another term— like his candidacy is just a given, an assumption, a part of the normal course of events. Despite everything that’s on his plate. And, more pointedly, despite the kind of person he is.

People would vote for him despite his incompetence, despite knowing that a central reason he’s running is revenge– to punish those he perceives as being disloyal? Not to mention having designs on dismantling the Justice Department and facilitating the dissolution of all those nuisance felony counts?

Anyway, the Post reporter didn’t come right out and say that this is what’s happening. Unless I missed something, I didn’t catch this gentleman directly corroborating Maddow’s assertions regarding the Insurrection Act or other details she was sharing with us, which was kind of weird.

So even Maddow engages in sensationalism from time to time, needs to keep the viewers engaged by raising her voice and dangling juicy tidbits of stunning news that may or may not be factual? That’s disappointing, if true.

Come to think of it, she spent the first five minutes of the show plugging her new book, so I guess all’s fair in love and ratings and free enterprise.

What can be done about a defendant who doesn’t seem to care about a judge’s threat to make every negative inference when arriving at a verdict, because this gigantic ego refuses to cooperate, refuses to answer the questions posed him as he sits in the witness stand and tries to turn a court session into a political rally?

What do we do when a defendant appears to be daring a judge to find him in contempt?

His supporters, no doubt, are cheering Trump on. They love that he’s acting out, succeeding, in their eyes, in getting the judge to lose his cool, to lose control, though apparently oblivious to the potential outcome of Trump’s boorish behavior: he could end up in jail, if the judge has the courage to pursue that option.

How much more can the judge take before he goes there? Before he does what I hope most of the country would love to see—Trump being handcuffed and escorted from the courtroom to a jail cell?

Here we have a narcissistic windbag who continues to feast on any press, good or bad, riding the coattails of once being POTUS, bleeding that stint dry, acting as if none of what’s happening is real or has any basis in fact. Of course he’s going to do whatever he can to keep from incriminating himself, but his bloviating and bluster and disrespect, his neverending rants about victimhood and total disregard for decorum are wearing thin. Who does he think he is?

Is it as predictable or karmic as “what goes around comes around?” Why is it that we as a nation still find it difficult to swear off of this dunce cap in a suit? He’s been a distraction for at least eight years now. It’s time for him to face a reckoning. And to shut the hell up.

He has reacquainted us with the periodic tendency to forget who we are, though. I’ll give him that much.

They’ll get their memorials and statues. Candles and other flames will burn in perpetuity, a Foundation might be started, because that’s all we can do for them. Sort of like “thoughts and prayers” after a classroom’s worth of first graders is mowed down by an evil crazy person.

Our soldiers who go off to war and don’t come back will be remembered as fallen heroes who answered the call to duty, who died too young, too soon. Those left behind will ask “Why?” and there will be no good answer. There will never be a good answer, except to admit to the same old story– that we are slow to learn, and are as yet unable to move beyond pettiness and the relentless need to prevail.

Well, that and believing that the fight is all about God’s will. No one dare forget what God ordains in the midst of all this tragedy and bloodshed and squandered promise.  

If there are words that suffice to capture the violence and depravity and selfishness we see all around us, I want to know what they are. I want to capture the essence of this moment in human history, a moment that in some ways is like others that have preceded it, yet is somehow emerging as a watershed moment for me, because I’ve come to realize that the human race is just a more sophisticated animal that is evolving too slowly—assuming that evolution moves us toward some kinder, gentler, and wiser version of ourselves.

Maybe it won’t do that. Maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe we won’t get in on any of the improvements that’ll be hardwired into our future relatives. Or maybe that’s just not how any of this works.

We awaken every morning to news that disappoints, that frightens, that angers, that chips away at hope and has us rolling our eyes. We are made to feel that we’re on a path to inevitable ruin, but that, somehow, we still have time to make things right, to change course. It’s just a matter of will…

But of course it’s more than that. It’s a matter of leadership and courage, of rational behavior, of making better choices. A matter of enough people being both satisfied and unsatisfied with how life is going, freed from the curse of pride and self-indulgence, from the draining rigors of basic survival, and energized by the possibilities of an honorable cause, a vision enough of us can agree is worth pursuing.

Man, I am rambling. Lots of words but not much being said.

And it’s November. We turn the clocks back this weekend, which begs the question: Why are we still doing this? I don’t get it, have stopped trying. I guess because we’ve done it for so long that we just keep doing it?

Is this the last time? Does anyone know? Personally speaking, I’d be good with staying on Standard Time all year. I don’t need sunlight at 5am or until 9pm in the summer, when it’s 150 degrees out.

I guess Ben Franklin mentioned it way back when, and it went into limited practice in Europe during WWI, then it benefited farmers with more daylight in which to farm. But let’s just go with the way we kept time before the changeover was officially sanctioned in 1966.

Let’s go back to just plain old Standard Time, because that’s the most “natural,” considering that timekeeping is a human construct, anyway.

Or, is there a more beneficial, sensible way of organizing our 24 hours? If there is, let’s legislate the hell out of it and stick with it, chalk one up for bipartisanship.

The trouble with hiding behind biblical inerrancy is that eventually one paints oneself into a corner.

I understand that the Bible reflects certain truths, but I also get my information and guidance from other sources. I acknowledge that the Christian Bible is comprised of two Testaments—Old, and New. My observation of certain people in positions of power is that they—whether for reasons of convenience or motivated by fear—seem to want to linger in the Old Testament, where one can more easily find the language of law and prohibition and a God who rains down judgment on anyone who “disobeys.”

The world as we know it, as it comes at us each day, is more complicated than these people would like it to be. They would benefit from guidance found in the New Testament, but they don’t like going there, because there they will find guidance and admonition from Jesus, who had much to say about loving one another. It is in the New Testament that we’ll find numerous accounts of Jesus’ confrontations with authorities who preferred a narrow reading of who’s in and who’s out.

There is also much to be commended in the writings of Paul, in whom, New Testament scripture tells us, Jesus worked a miraculous 180, and from whom we get passages like 1 Corinthians 13 and Romans 12. It seems more often than not that certain leaders on the right ignore such passages because of their exhortations to, as Jesus teaches in Matthew 7, pay attention to the log in our own eye before worrying about the speck in someone else’s.

Life is easier when it’s clear who can be blamed, who’s doing life “wrong.” This is why, when I learned that the new Speaker of the House is a biblical literalist, I cringed. Because experience should tell us, by now, that such a person is operating heavy machinery with insufficient training. Flying blind, maybe by choice. And he should know better.