At Random: In Defense of Worrying

By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)

Worry is thought by some to be avoided, an unhealthy stress. But I consider worrying and plain old thinking to be basically interchangeable terms. In most cases, thinking instead of ignoring is the first step toward taking action, and worrying is second-level thinking, taking a further step toward action.
    I find the more I worry about something instead of “just thinking” about it, the more likely I am to do whatever I can to help whatever cause.
    For example, in the case of worrying about people in this country who are likely to attempt an autocratic takeover, DeSantis and Trump top my list. What I’m doing about this might be the subject of another column. Or not.

Copyright © 2023 by Paul Clark

​Acting Citizen: ​My Name Should Be on the List

By James Knudsen

WHAT?!?! 
HOW MANY?!?! 
THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!!!
    I am insulted. I am aggrieved. I am HURT.
    For seven years I have been taking shots at Donald J. Trump. Some of my best work has been devoted to mocking the Putrid Platinum Pompadour. I have dropped one-liners that served no purpose in advancing the column’s message. The only reason they were there was to take a well-earned jab at the Orange Menace. And several articles exist SOLELY to make fun of the twice impeached, one-term, former head of the executive branch. All this is not enough to warrant a place on Russia’s list of sanctioned individuals. Sad.

From “The Scratching Post”: Attention entrepreneurs!

By Ken Marks

[From the original on The Scratching Post, March 22, 2023, published here by permission of the author.]

Remember the collectible Trump Cards, the ultimate case of hucksterism and self-aggrandizement? Each of them sold for $99, and you didn't even get a physical card. Only a certifiable fool would buy one, yet to no one’s surprise, they sold out! Go ahead and click here. Laugh again.
    I’m reminding you of his cards as a point of reference, so you can contrast them to another set of cards that doesn’t yet exist but should before the year’s out. I think of them as the “Trump Disgrace Cards.” I see them as scenes from Trump’s fall from glory, ranging from his soon-to-come perp walk in Manhattan to a picture of a hulking brute molesting him in prison. Of course, the collection would not be complete without mugshots and pictures of his face at each of his sentencing hearings. If a photo of him in an orange jumpsuit holding a mop is obtainable, it would be the prize of the collection. (Although some might favor the one of Trump getting buggered.)

    As a bonus, the Disgrace Cards could include the faces of his many toadies and suck-ups when they get the news of a fresh conviction. And by all means Melania and his children should be included in this group.
    These should be linen cards, like the best poker cards but somewhat larger. The price of a card should be the production and distribution cost plus a profit of no more than 20%. Every effort should be made to ensure that something so desirable is affordable.
    So step up, those of you with some risk capital. It’s your chance to clean up!
[Read this in situ on The Scratching Post.]

Copyright © 2023 by Ken Marks Ken Marks was a contributing editor with Paul Clark & Tom Lowe when “Moristotle” became “Moristotle & Co.” A brilliant photographer, witty conversationalist, and elegant writer, Ken contributed photographs, essays, and commentaries from mid-2008 through 2012. Late in 2013, Ken birthed the blog The Scratching Post. He also posts albums of his photos on Flickr.

From “The Scratching Post”: Out of the mouths of idiots …

By Ken Marks

[Opening from the original on The Scratching Post, March 14, 2023, published here by permission of the author.]

Back in early 2020, I wrote a piece titled “Thinking the unthinkable,” arguing why a divorce between the Red and Blue States was thinkable, if not desirable. I followed that with a companion piece, “The necessity of divorce,” offering a plan for getting through the messy separation process. Not surprisingly, the feedback was sparse. Few people are willing to come to grips with the unthinkable.

    So I decided to bark up other trees … until now. A month ago, the frumious Marjorie Taylor Greene called for the same separation in a couple of tweets. My reaction was mixed. I was happy to see that a public figure had put the idea into mass circulation, but I cringed to see that the advocate was MTG. In today’s politics, her face is to buffoonery what Washington’s face is to patriotism. Why couldn’t a Republican intellectual — pardon the oxymoron — like Thomas Sowell have been the spearhead? As time passes, it seems that neither he nor any other Republican is willing to take up the banner. I’d be discouraged but for a recent survey of 1,000 likely voters. It found that 34% of them agreed with the idea, and nearly as many Republicans favored it as didn’t.
    The silence of Republican politicians is easy to explain. They gave up on thinking at least two decades ago. (Truth be told, they never liked it much after Reconstruction.) Then came the ultimate retreat — the refusal to speak their minds for fear of alienating crackpots in their leadership and base. They’ve given leadership a bad name.
    Mitt Romney, a Republican of a different stripe, scoffed that we’d disposed of MTG’s idea in the Civil War. Steve Schmidt, a former Republican and “never Trump” activist, also chimed in. He claimed MTG had “called for a second American Civil War.” Both men ignored a key sentence in one of her tweets: “National divorce is not civil war.” Maybe they would counter with, “Yes, but the very attempt to enact a divorce would lead to civil war.” That’s quite a leap. The attempt might also lead to a deeper examination of grievances and eventually to a reconciliation. Or it might lead to the creation of two new nations with two different constitutions. Is the danger so great that separation must not even be discussed?….
[Read the whole thing on The Scratching Post.]

Copyright © 2023 by Ken Marks Ken Marks was a contributing editor with Paul Clark & Tom Lowe when “Moristotle” became “Moristotle & Co.” A brilliant photographer, witty conversationalist, and elegant writer, Ken contributed photographs, essays, and commentaries from mid-2008 through 2012. Late in 2013, Ken birthed the blog The Scratching Post. He also posts albums of his photos on Flickr.

From “The Scratching Post”: 2022: Stories of the year

By Ken Marks

[Opening from the original on The Scratching Post, December 24, 2022, published here by permission of the author.]

Each year, I try to pick the most important story of that year, the one most likely to affect our immediate future. This year, however, I’ve picked two stories. They seem to have little in common but are strangely inseparable, at least to me. Perhaps it’s because they share the same theme — the death spiral of a monster.

The first story involves the war in Ukraine, which started late last February. It was supposed to be a quick mauling of any Ukrainian forces that resisted the Russian invasion. It was anything but. To understand why, we have to imagine a dictator who is among the greatest fuckups in history, and also one of the cruelest, most impulsive, and most vengeful — Vladimir Putin. If you’re wondering what he could have done to earn these distinctions, here’s a record of ineptitude that may challenge your credulity:

• Putin’s first responsibility was to gather intelligence, and in this he failed utterly. The estimate of Ukraine’s readiness and will to resist missed the mark completely. The estimate of the West’s commitment to Ukraine also erred badly. The West quickly agreed on crushing sanctions that all but crippled Russia’s economy. Then it followed through by providing Ukraine with advanced weapon systems, technical assistance, military intelligence, food, clothing, medical supplies, and infrastructure support. Putin failed to realize there was no way to intercept supply lines without invading NATO nations and triggering a doomsday scenario. In effect, Putin found himself fighting against the entire industrialized world, minus China, India, and Iran.
• He never bothered to understand the logistics of fighting a war. He had no access to Ukraine’s rail system, so he sent countless military and supply vehicles down Ukraine’s roads, where they stalled and became targets. The glut of traffic was so immense that fuel, munitions, spare parts, and other materiel couldn’t be efficiently moved to troops in forward positions.
• He put quickly trained — and therefore poorly trained — soldiers in the field. Moreover, he sent far too few of them. Approximately 150,000 to 190,000 Russian soldiers, regulars and irregulars, were in the initial invasion force, facing a country of 44 million people. That’s a ratio of 4 Russian soldiers for every 1,000 Ukrainian inhabitants. Data from modern warfare shows that roughly 20 soldiers for every 1,000 inhabitants are needed to conquer and pacify a hostile population. This explains why Putin has been desperate to find more soldiers. He has hired mercenaries and offered convicts freedom if they agree to fight. He has gone so far as to institute a draft, but this caused such an uproar that he had to give it up.
• Last April, Russian troops halted their advance on Kyiv. It was the perfect moment for Putin to cut his losses and pretend he had delivered a harsh warning to Ukrainians who dared to collude with NATO. Sadly, he was too proud to accept the rebuke he was dealt. He redeployed Russian forces to the East and South, where many Ukrainians identify with Russian culture. The Russians were brutal in asserting their claims to these regions. Rockets destroyed urban centers and residences. People on the street were indiscriminately executed and consigned to mass graves. Many of the survivors were tortured; women were raped. The new strategy was to demoralize Ukrainians by subjecting them to a barrage of war crimes. The memory of this savagery will evoke Ukrainian hatred for centuries. Even if Russian reverses its record of screwups and losses, it will never pacify a single acre of Ukrainian territory. Russia hoped to avoid sharing a border with a NATO country. Now they will share a border with something far worse, a blood enemy. And if Ukraine is ever in a position to dictate the terms that will end the war, Putin and his surviving generals will certainly face war crimes trials, imprisonment, and execution.
• He is oblivious to the enormity of his crimes. This winter he has doubled down. He’s sent missile barrages against Ukraine’s infrastructure, depriving Ukrainians of light, warmth, water, and food supplies. He has actually weaponized winter. This strategy will never drive his foe toward capitulation; it will have exactly the opposite effect.
• He has never had a contingency plan for a long war. After 10 months of fighting, he’s using charity drives to supply soldiers with medicine, sleeping bags, felt boots, woolen socks, mittens, scarves, and body armor. One charity event raised the equivalent of $45 thousand. Contrast this with the $45 billion that Congress recently passed for emergency assistance to Ukraine and NATO allies. The appropriation includes a critical infusion of Patriot anti-ballistic missiles.

    The war will end in either of two ways. One, Russia loses in the traditional way — they capitulate and Ukraine dictates terms, which will undoubtedly include Putin’s removal (if he isn’t already dead), loss of the Crimea, and war reparations. Two, Russia loses in the pyrrhic way; that is, they win but pay a staggering price in lives, leadership, prosperity, and reputation. If it’s the second way, it won’t be called “pyrrhic,” because no winning military in world history will have paid such a disastrous price. It will be called a “putinic” (poo-TIN-ic, with two short i’s) victory. It’s amazing to think that the likelihood of a no-win scenario has probably never occurred to Putin.

The second story begins….
[Read the whole thing on The Scratching Post.]

Copyright © 2022 by Ken Marks Ken Marks was a contributing editor with Paul Clark & Tom Lowe when “Moristotle” became “Moristotle & Co.” A brilliant photographer, witty conversationalist, and elegant writer, Ken contributed photographs, essays, and commentaries from mid-2008 through 2012. Late in 2013, Ken birthed the blog The Scratching Post. He also posts albums of his photos on Flickr.

Acting Citizen: Trump’s Journal for January 6, 2021

By James Knudsen

Former President Donald J. Trump is known for communicating using unconventional methods. Conventional for a mob boss, but unconventional for the Leader of the Free World. Unknown to many is that he frequently used a journal to record daily thoughts and observations. It is difficult to decipher in that it is composed entirely in crayon and Sharpie, but we present here the 45^th President at his most introspective on that most consequential day of his presidency, January 6, 2021.

Correspondence: January 6 Hearings & SCOTUS Ruling on Roe v. Wade

Edited by Moristotle

[Items of correspondence are not attributed; they remain anonymous. They have been chosen for their inherent interest as journalism, story, or provocative opinion, which may or may not be shared by the editor or other members of the staff of Moristotle & Co.]

Acting Citizen: Trump’s Notes on the Hearings

By James Knudsen

June. Summertime. Vacation. Committee Hearings. It’s reminiscent of the summer of 1973, except summer school programs are a thing of the past thanks to the efforts of Howard Jarvis and Grover Norquist. Millions of Americans are watching the hearings, millions are not. One particular American is watching the hearings and making notes in crayon and these notes may well have the greatest impact on our nation in the years to come. That particular American is the particularly loathsome former President Donald J. Trump.

Want to Know Who Set the Tablefor the Big Lie?

Go Look in a Mirror

By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)

Even though I’m 67 years old, fairly world-wise and extremely well-traveled, it wasn’t until five years ago – when my son was almost two years old – that I fully realized that a shocking number of people are innately and almost maniacally dishonest. I had always noted that many people – including “good” people, and definitely not just “bad” people – routinely used exaggeration, partials truths and “white” lies in their normal conversation with me, but it wasn’t until I saw them blatantly lying to my toddler-age son that the point hit home.

West Coast Observer: Roe v. Wade

By William Silveira

In 1965 the United States Supreme Court decided the case of Griswold v. Connecticut, which held that the 14th amendment’s due process clause implied a fundamental right to privacy and overturned the Connecticut law. This was the first recognition by the Supreme Court of a constitutional right to privacy. But it has withheld court challenges ever since.

    So, along comes Roe v. Wade in 1973, in which the Supreme Court had to decide whether a woman’s right to privacy is outweighed by the due process clause, which gives an unborn child a right to life. So then, you had all the debate about when an unborn child is viable and deserving of due process protection, and so on.

Ray Just Being Ray (a poem)

By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)

He stands on his back porch and stares,

crosses his arms, flexes his forearms, glares,

he shoots a finger, just before he turns away,

yet another day of Ray just being Ray.

Acting Citizen: Trio of Trumpism’s Comic Tragedies

By James Knudsen

Eight months into President Biden’s first term, millions of Americans remain convinced that:

1. Biden is not the legitimate President and COVID isn’t real, but if you are feeling a little under the weather, horse de-wormer is the remedy you want, and
2.  “If things stop being normalish and don’t get worse, we will make ’em worse, ’cuz we’ve been preppin’ for over a decade and if we don’t start in on that pallet of pork ’n beans, they’re gonna spoil.”

    All this has some of us wondering, “What is the endgame for these folks?” As luck would have it, I have been able to find out.

Acting Citizen: Czech Republic 4, U.S.A. 1

By James Knudsen

What would your reply be to the following statement? “Donald Trump was right.”
    That’s rather broad. Allow me to rephrase. “Donald Trump was right about immigration.”
    No, not the golden escalator moment; I mean when he was actually President. And to be fair, he really didn’t know he made a statement that included a milligram of truth. It was early January of 2018, and the former, one-term President (we cannot say that enough) was doing what he does best, complaining. Specifically, he was complaining about immigrants who come from— At this point, the former, one-term President used an expletive to describe the sort of country that, in his mind, most immigrants hail from. Statistical figures from the Pew Research Center show that in that same year, 2018, the top five countries of origin were: Mexico, China (including Hong Kong and Macau), India, The Philippines, and El Salvador. I know, the former, one-term President still hasn’t said anything accurate, but bear with me. The former, one-term President also suggested that the United States should be allowing immigrants from Norway. Hmm.

The Crucifixions

Spread the Word

A Parable of Reversal

By Moristotle

I have revised and retitled the parable “Easter Uprising,” which appeared on April 30, to try to better express my central idea for the poem. A few days after that version appeared, I thought about adding a third stanza, but I quickly saw that some rewording in the second stanza could plant the cross on firmer ground.
    Finally, eight hours before scheduled posting, I made one more change: at the end of the first line of the second stanza, I changed “restoration” to “resurrection.” And then, at last, I saw what my muse may have been trying to tell me all along – the January 6th insurrectionists were, in effect, attempting to resurrect Donald Trump from the crucifixion he seemed to think he had suffered in losing the 2020 presidential election.

Easter Uprising

Spread the Word

A Parable

By Moristotle

God the Father’s people thank Him for resurrection.

His Son had been assailed with “Flog him!”

“Crown him with those thorns!” “Crucify him!”

“Nail his hands and feet!” “Mortify him!”

God‘s people kneel and worship Him for Jesus’ restoration.

Trump’s proud people stand by, they demand his restoration.

They’re very special people; he needs them.

They rally and smash her office; he loves them.

They storm the Capitol. “Get heavy!” “Trash them!”

“Make America great again.” They bring the pain of insurrection.

Copyright © 2021 by Moristotle

Acting Citizen: Looking Back

By James Knudsen

Now, why would I begin a column with a picture of my high school ring? Hidden from view, inside the band, is an inscription, Jimi Jai. It’s a disaster phonetically, but I was “going through a phase.” A new wave of conservativism was sweeping the country, and I had recently discovered my older sister’s record collection, with its hopeful strains of the late ’sixties and early ’seventies. I wanted to be a hippie, change my name from James to Jimi – yes, like Jimi Hendrix – and swim against the prevailing current of Reagan-era optimism and conspicuous consumption.

Penny for Her Thoughts: Where, Oh Where?Part 3 [Final]

Kim & Tom

From There to Here

By Penelope Griffiths

Fast-forward five more years, when, with two kids in tow, I made my escape.
    Divorce is never pretty, but I just wanted out. My lawyer told me that if I left the marital home, I’d lose everything, but all I could think of was, if I didn’t leave, I’d be miserable and probably do something I’d regret – possibly with a heavy, blunt instrument. So, I left, but only after I’d made arrangements for my mother, who was living with us, to get an assisted-living house, and an agreement from my soon-to-be-ex-husband for me to have some of the furniture, along with our dog, Cindy.

Penny for Her Thoughts: Where, Oh Where? Part 1 [of 3]

To an Alternative Reality?

By Penelope Griffiths

I’ve only lived in the USA for three years, but I visited this country multiple times after the 1980s. The shortest visit was just for five days but most of my visits were for from three weeks to the full permitted twelve weeks.
    I’ve travelled east to west, north to south, taking in the sights and sounds from city to mountain to rural and back again. From the beginning, as much as I love the US, I have always felt the undercurrent of racism and homophobia in varying degrees, wherever I went.

From “The Scratching Post”: Get over it!

By Ken Marks

[Originally posted on The Scratching Post, February 11, 2017. Republished here by permission of the author.]



Few insults are as infuriating as “Get over it!” It’s on a par with “Oh, grow up!” It labels you as someone who is so childish, deluded, or simple-minded that you don’t grasp the facts of life.

Correspondence: About the country

Conspiracy theories

Edited by Moristotle

[Items of correspondence are not attributed; they remain anonymous. They have been chosen for their inherent interest as journalism, story, or provocative opinion, which may or may not be shared by the editor or other members of the staff of Moristotle & Co.]

Headline from a Kansas native: “Kansas City won [the Super Bowl] in a landslide.”
    The game was rigged. There were massive scoring irregularities. We have hired Rudy Giuliani to represent us.
                            —Q you