Stevieslaw: Sackcloth and Ashes

Posted on March 9, 2017 by stevieslaw

Stevieslaw: Sack-cloth and Ashes

In what is probably not a hopeful sign for mankind, soon-to-be unemployed climate scientists have joined the most prominent apocalyptic groups. At a recent rally in Washington, Carbo Dio, soon-to-be former head of Nasa’s weather satellite program marched with a group dressed in sackcloth. But while the apocalypticans carried signs that said “the end is nigh,” Carbo’s sign simply said, “Scott Pruitt.”

“I give our species 100 more years at best,” said Carbo lighting up a cigarette, “although for the last 25 or so, you will no longer have to boil water for coffee. “You know,” he said after inhaling deeply, “I quit smoking for the usual health reasons, but it doesn’t seem to matter much anymore.” Eat, drink and be merry,” he concluded, taking a belt from a bottle of really fine scotch.

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Stevieslaw: Republicans divided on how best to screw over the poor and unfortunate

Posted on March 8, 2017 by stevieslaw

Stevieslaw: Republicans divided on how best to screw over the poor and unfortunate.

Republican legislators are at a crossroads in healthcare, with two very different plans offered up. The group led by Paul Ryan proposes to gut the ACA and replace it with meaningless incentives, while the group headed by Rand Paul hopes to completely torch the ACA and replace it with something really, really terrific as soon as hell freezes over.

“The two sides agree on only one thing,” said spokesperson Ian Heartles, “and that is the fundamental Republican tenet of feeding the rich by starving the poor.”

“Have no fear,” said Hartley, “If your life is hard because you are poor or unfortunate, I can assure you it will be much, much worse when we finish messing with the health care system.”

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Stevieslaw: Uncle Arthur goes round the bend.

Posted on March 5, 2017 by stevieslaw

Stevieslaw: Uncle Arthur goes round the bend.

I remember it very clearly. It was in February of 1958 that the family convened at my grandma Ada’s apartment on Riverdale Avenue in Brooklyn for an emergency Cousin’s Club meeting. The kids were rounded up and unceremoniously sent out into the snow-covered streets to search for consequence-free mischief. In those days, the neighborhood had eyes and ears and transgressions were reported. I remember it so clearly, because three of us came back with near-frostbite, which was treated at the time with very hot water. There was a lot of screaming.

The kids all knew what the meeting was about. Uncle Arthur had gone round the bend again. Arthur owned a small hardware store on the corner of Hopkinson and Lot and periodically would lose his marbles. He would start playing soldier with the nuts and bolts—imagining himself as the general of generals, or when things really got out of hand, he would start accusing each and every customer of robbing him blind. He was deeply offended when Alice, his wife, and his other friends and relatives tried calming him down instead of backing him up. Occasionally, he would call the police to demand an investigation. Once or twice, he tried to burn the place down around him.

The Cousin’s Club met to decide on plan of action. This was well before the age of psychotropic drugs and affordable analysis, so the choice was intervention or the nut ward at Bellevue. The family decided to intervene—to babysit Arthur for a month or so, to see if he might recover. Intensive matzoh ball soup and cinnamon babka therapy was immediately initiated.

It is a good thing that Arthur never had the nuclear codes. Uncle Donny does. His current accusation—that Obama had his phone tapped, confirms what many of us have long suspected—Trump is round the bend. Could it be that Wormtongue (Steve Bannon) is currently running the country?

Bellevue or Babka, It’s past time for an intervention.

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Stevieslaw: Trump re-election campaign to kick-off this weekend

Posted on March 3, 2017 by stevieslaw

Stevieslaw: Trump re-election campaign to kick-off this weekend.

The campaign to reelect Donald Trump in 2020 will be on its way this weekend. Plans are to have a kick-off meeting at the Embassy of the Russian Federation on Wisconsin Avenue on Saturday.

Jeff Sessions, current Attorney General, said “People shouldn’t read anything untoward into our choice of location. We need a big venue, close to the White House—which is hard to find this time of year, and the Russians offered to open their home to us and to cater the event.”

“It’s hard to get good Russian food in the Capitol,” continued Sessions.

Earlier today, Sessions had clarified the purpose of his meetings with the Russian Ambassador during the campaign.

“We both love to eat,” Sessions said, “and agreed to meet every now and again to exchange recipes.” “Sergey got my recipes for southern fried chicken, catfish, grits and collard greens, while I got the best recipes for beef stroganoff and borscht (a beet soup). I had the borscht just last night for dinner.”

“That’s all there is to it,” he concluded.

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Stevieslaw: The Trump Thirty-five

Posted on March 2, 2017 by stevieslaw

Stevieslaw: The Trump Thirty-five

We’ve all heard of the “freshman fifteen—“ those pounds you were sure to pack on during your first year in college. The new buzz on the block is not about college weight gain, however, but about the influence of the Trump presidency on the eating habits of liberals. My friends and I are porking up. We are eating not only in an attempt to quell the ever increasing anxiety that the craziness emanating from Washington has created—“he said what?—potato chips, he did what?—bite size snickers, but also because the meetings and protests we are attending are crammed full of comfort foods. It’s as if some wild fusion of MSNBC and the Food Network has decreed that environmental protection protests be paired with zucchini bread, while immigrant rights go best with banana nut muffins. And need we even mention the copious quantity of wine being consumed by us do-gooders, as a way to hold back the sea of new outrage.

Food scientists have estimated that the average liberal will gain as much as thirty-five pounds in the first year of the Trump show. A simple projection is that liberals, on average, will weigh at least a hundred pounds more in 2020 than they did in 2016.

Now a bunch of theorists at The Institute for Policy Studies have concluded that this weight gain was not serendipitous but was a calculated plot by the Ultra-right to push their opponents to the brink of obesity and beyond. Studies suggest that severe obesity might reduce life expectancy by 6 ½ to 14 years. Expired liberals cannot protest or vote. Also larger than life liberals might give new meaning to the term “protests rolled into Washington today.” The IPS suggests that liberals reduce their TV consumption to less than five minutes a day, stick to unbuttered popcorn and water at protest meetings, and march, march, march. Choose yoga over cabernet! Intervene when your friend orders two foot longs at Subway because of the special price.

And for god’s sake hide the “death by chocolate!” Beat the weight to beat the Trump! We can do it! Now breathe.

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Stevieslaw: “Chosen People” to go on auction block.

Posted on March 1, 2017 by stevieslaw

Stevieslaw: “Chosen People” to go on the auction block.

The concept of a “Chosen People” apparently goes way back to Deuteronomy (7:6), which says “The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.”

I would be willing to give you twenty to one odds (on any reasonable amount) that my father had no familiarity with that quote when he decided, after making it through World War II, that he’d had enough of this chosen people crap. I was raised a secular Jew— which may be defined as a non-practicing Jew with full access to chopped liver, matzoh ball soup and Chinese food on Sunday nights. When I need a bible quote, I go to Wikipedia.

Now, with the age of the asshole on the internet upon us and the continuing conviction by some people that they can only be fulfilled if they’ve made someone else’s life a living hell (think of a group of fiends in repurposed bed-linen burning crosses and swastikas as two or three children, a bemused goat, and four thousand representatives of the media look on), American Jewish groups are banding together to put the title,”chosen people,” up for auction.

The auction will be open to all minority religions–i.e., mennonites and mormons. All proceeds will go to funding the (winning religion) defense fund, the (winning religion) defamation league and the like.

Let the bidding begin.

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Stevieslaw: Snark, Snark

Posted on February 25, 2017 by stevieslaw

Stevieslaw: Notes from the Underground (a.k.a. The Rabbit Hole)

We owe much to Lewis Carroll. Thanks to his “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” and “Through the Looking-glass, we all pretty much know where we are when we wake up and realize that Trump is our president. Carroll even wrote the best description I ever read of Mitt Romney—although he never met the man,” in his poem, Antigonish:

Last night I saw upon the stair,
A little man who wasn’t there,
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away…

Now, I fear we must once again turn to Mr. Carroll to help explain the Jabberwocky that Trump spouts, his minions repeat and the Media reports in what might as well be fact. Todd Gillman, reporting in the Dallas Morning News, describes Trumps appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Trump is quoted as saying, “I’m not against the media, I’m not against the press…I’m against the people that make up stories and make up sources…”

Of course, Trump being Trump, he went on to say, “This place is packed. There are lines that go back six blocks and I tell you that because you won’t read about it.”

Of course you won’t read about it, said Mr. Gillman, because it isn’t true. There were no lines.

By now, however, the story has been repeated so often that at least half the country believes it is true. Let me reintroduce you to a little more Lewis Carroll, who explains Trump’s strategy in his poem “The Hunting of the Snark,” as:
“Just the place for a Snark!” the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.

“Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true.”

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Stevieslaw: Breitbart News Tells the Whole Truth

Posted on February 24, 2017 by stevieslaw

Stevieslaw: Breitbart News Tells the Whole Truth

While several prominent news organizations were denied access to a White House briefing and others, such as the Associated Press and Stevieslaw, refused to attend the meeting, Breitbart News has released a summary of the briefing.

Breitbart reports that:

1. Dr. Trump ( his medical degree was just granted last week) has discovered a cure for cancer, diabetes and the common cold which will change the nature of health care in America forever. It will be practically free. Huge!
2. Our Dear Leader, working tirelessly in his White House Laboratory, has found a way to turn lead into gold, thereby changing the nature of the economy forever. Everyone will be rich. Huge!
3. Nobel-laureate Trump will be awarded 3 Nobel Peace Prizes this year because he is already—even after only a month—at least three times more effective than Obama at promoting world peace. Huge!
Breitbart notes that the standing ovation to Sean Spicer’s briefing was the longest and most enthusiastic standing ovation ever. “I’m sure the whole world heard it,” said Breitbart reporter, H.W. Goering.

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Stevieslaw: Where has old Glenn Thompson Gone–long time passing?

Posted on February 23, 2017 by stevieslaw

Stevieslaw: Where has old Glenn Thompson Gone—long time passing?

Like many Republicans in Congress, our representative, Glenn Thompson has effectively gone into hiding rather than face the hordes of paid provocateurs who haunt his every step. Rumor has it that he has changed his name and has been living in a series of transient hotels in his district of Central Pennsylvania.

Said Harry Toup, a barber at Miller’s Barber Shop in Philipsburg, “some guy comes in at 1 PM yesterday—the time we had reserved for Glenn Thompson, and says Glenn can’t make it. Introduces himself as Ralph Kramden and says Glenn told him to take his scheduled time.”

“He was a spitting image of Glenn,” said Toup, “But I told him we weren’t taking any walk-in customers and that he should call ahead to make an appointment.”

“So the guy says, “I tried. All I get is a busy signal and then notification that your voice mail is full up.””

“Try our Punxsutawney, Bellefonte or State College Offices?” I asked.

“All full up,” said Ralph.

By this time, the Thompson look alike was getting on my nerves.

“Listen,” I told him, “We don’t need your kind in here making trouble. Let your hair grow out and do a combover for all I care. Now, take a hike.”

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